Kashmiri makes very free use of pronominal suffixes, which are added to verbs to supply the place of personal terminations. These represent almost any case.
Before these the verbal terminations are often slightly changed for the sake of euphony, and, when necessary for the pronuncia tion, the vowel a is inserted as a junction vowel.
Another set of suffixes is commonly added to verbs, with an adverbial force. Of these na negatives the verb, a asks a question, ti adds emphasis, and tyci asks a question with emphasis. Two or three suffixes may be employed together.
E. Conjugation.—The conjugation of the verb is mainly par ticipial. Three only of the old tenses, the present, the future and the imperative have survived, the first having become a future, and the second a past conditional. These three we may call radical tenses. The rest, viz., the Kashmiri present, imperfect, past, aorist, perfect and other past tenses are all participial.
The verb substantive, which is also used as an auxiliary verb, has two tenses, a present and a past. The former is made by adding the pronominal suffixes of the nominative to a base chu (h), and the latter by adding the same to a base as".
As for the finite verb, the modern future (old present), and the past conditional (old future) do not change for gender, and do not employ suffixes, but retain relics of the old personal termina tions of the tenses from which they are derived.
For the imperative we have second person singular, kar, plur. kariv; third person singular and plural karin.
The present participle is formed by adding an to the root. It does not change for gender. From this we get a present and an imperfect, formed by adding respectively the present and past tenses of the auxiliary verb.
There are several past participles, all of which are liable to change for gender, and are utilized in conjugation.
In the strong past participle and the pluperfect participle, the final v and y are only added for the sake of euphony. There are three conjugations. The first includes all transitive verbs. These have both the weak and the strong past participles. The second conjugation consists of 66 common intransitive verbs, which also have both of these participles. The third conjugation consists
of the remaining intransitive verbs. These have only the strong past participle. The weak past participle in the first two conjuga tions refers to something which has lately happened, and is used to form an immediate past tense. The strong past participle is more indefinite, and is employed to form a tense corresponding to the Greek aorist. The pluperfect participle refers to something which happened a long time ago, and is used to form the past tense of narration. As the third conjugation has no weak past participle, the strong past participle is employed to make the im mediate past, and the pluperfect participle is employed to make the aorist past, while the new pluperfect participle is formed to make the tense of narration.
The corresponding tenses are formed by adding pronominal suffixes to the weak, the strong or the pluperfect participle. In the last two the final v and y, being no longer required by euphony, are dropped. In the case of transitive verbs the participles are passive by derivation and in signification, and hence the suffix indicating the subject must be in the agent case. If the thing made is feminine the participle must be feminine, and similarly if it is plural it must be plural. The past participles of intransitive verbs are not passive, and hence the suffix indicating the subject must be in the nominative form. These suffixes may be piled one on another.
Tenses corresponding to the English perfect and pluperfect are formed by conjugating the auxiliary verb, adding the appro priate suffixes, with the compound past participle.
Many verbs have irregular past participles. Others must be learnt from the regular grammars.
The infinitive is formed by adding -an to the root. It is de clined like a somewhat irregular noun of the first declension. There are three forms of the noun of agency.
The passive is formed by conjugating the verb yi, come, with the ablative of the infinitive. A root is made active or causal by -anew, -Cm, or -ardw. Some verbs take one form and some an other, and there are numerous irregularities, especially in the case of the last.