While I haven't done much conlanging in a while, I figured it'd be fun to showcase a cool feature from my conlang. In this conlang, gerunds are used to make dependent clauses. The best way to demonstrate this is probably to show an example, starting with content (noun) clauses like indirect statements.
Take the following sentence:
Ölo Ken pʌpʌ.
Ölo Ken pʌpʌ.
eat Ken fish
"Ken is eating a fish."
Let's say we want to turn this into an indirect statement, such as in the sentence, "He is saying that Ken is eating a fish." To do this we apply the following transformations:
- The verb ölo becomes a gerund (ölor) and the direct object of the main verb (lŭk — to say).
- The subject Ken is given the possessive preposition son (which indicates an agent when used with gerunds).
- The object pʌpʌ is given the dative preposition ky.
The resulting sentence would be this:
Lŭk' ʌk ölor son Ken ky pʌpʌ.
Lŭk' ʌk ölo-r son Ken ky pʌpʌ.
know 3SG.SUPAN eat-GER PREP.POSS Ken PREP.DAT fish
"He is saying that Ken is eating a fish."
LIT. "He is saying the eating by Ken to a fish."
If the subject of the content clause is the same as that of the main clause, you can omit the possessive constructionː:
Lŭk Ken ölor ky pʌpʌ.
Lŭk Ken ölo-r ky pʌpʌ.
say Ken eat-GER PREP.DAT fish
"Ken is saying that he is eating a fish."
LIT. "Ken is saying the eating to a fish."
In auxiliary verb constructions, the main verb ends up acting like an adverb to the auxiliary verb. For example, in the following sentence, the verb t'ʌ (to go) is an auxiliary verb indicating the future tense:
T'ʌ ölo Ken pʌpʌ.
T'ʌ ölo Ken pʌpʌ.
go eat Ken fish
"Ken will eat fish."
In a content clause, the auxiliary verb gets turned into a gerund, whereas the main verb (again, acting like an adverb) stays the same:
Lŭk Ken t'ʌr ölo ky pʌpʌ.
Lŭk Ken t'ʌ-r ölo ky pʌpʌ.
say Ken go-GER eat PREP.DAT fish
"Ken is saying that he will eat a fish."
Moving on from content clauses, relative (adjectival) and adverbial clauses work in a similar manner. To make one, take the gerund of a content clause and give it a preposition. For example, take the following sentence:
Pasŭ Sali, öx par ky k'ejŭ, tik'ĭ.
Pa-sŭ Sali, öx pa-r ky k'ejŭ, tik'ĭ.
like-NEG Sali PREP.COM like-GER PREP.DAT sun moon
"Sali, who likes the sun, does not like the moon."
LIT. "Sali, with a liking to the sun, does not like the moon."
Here, the gerund of the verb pa is given the comitative preposition öx (meaning "with") to create a relative clause. Like with content clauses, the subject is omitted (i.e., we don't need to write "Sali, öx par son Sali ky k'ejŭ…") when it's the same thing as what the relative clause is modifying (the antecedent).
However, in the case when the object of the relative clause is the same as the antecedent, we still need to write out the object in the clause:
P'a k'eju, öx par son Sali ky ʌk', tik'ĭ.
P'a k'eju, öx pa-r son Sali ky ʌk' tik'ĭ.
be_bigger_than sun PREP.COM like-GER PREP.POSS Sali PREP.DAT 3SG.SUPAN moon
"The sun, which Sali likes, is bigger than the moon."
LIT. "The sun, with a liking by Sali to it, is bigger than the moon."
To make an adverbial clause, we just need to use a different preposition than öx. In the following sentence, the locative preposition nɔ is used:
Nɔ k'lenĭr son tik'ĭ, k'lenĭ ɔqi k'an.
Nɔ k'lenĭ-r son tik'ĭ, k'lenĭ ɔqi k'an.
PREP.LOC shine-GER PREP.POSS moon shine star PL.SUPAN
"While the moon is shining, the stars are shining."
LIT. "During the shining of the moon, the stars shine.
EDIT: Formatting changes