pairs: Punctuation The hyphen is used in the standard orthography in order to distinguish homophones. It appear between the possessive pronoun and the noun in the associative noun phrase, and between the verb root and the object pronoun in the verb phrase, e.g.: {| |ɛsaŋ || ||he praises |- |ɛ-saŋ || ||his showers |- |ɛsa-ŋ || ||he scratched you |} Grammar Kabiye is an SVO language. The possessive precedes the head noun. Adjectives, numerals, demonstratives, locatives and relative clauses follow the head noun. Noun classes Kabiye has ten noun classes. The first eight are grouped in pairs of singulars and plurals that are sometimes referred to as genders. Some limited cross-pairing occurs. Class 9 contains uncountables (leaves, dust, mosquitos...), while class 10 contains liquids (milk, blood, oil...). There are certain other semantic tendencies (e.g., humans in classes 1 and 2, tools in classes 3 and 4), but these are by no means systematic. The class of any noun is identifiable by its class suffix and by the agreement of other potential elements in the sentence with it, such as pronouns, demonstratives, interrogatives, adjectives, determiners and the numerals one to five. The following table gives an example of a noun–determiner construction from each class. In each case, the class suffix is separated from the root with a hyphen: Verb conjugations The verb phrase is composed of an obligatory root and TAM (tense–aspect–mood) suffix. The TAM suffix may indicate imperative (hàzɩ̀ "sweep!"), aorist (ɛ́házɩ̀ "and he swept"), perfective (ɛ̀hàzàá "he swept"), imperfective present (ɛ̀házɩ̀ɣ̀ "he is sweeping"), imperfective past (ɛ̀hàzàɣ́ "he was sweeping") or infinitive (hàzʋ́ʋ̀ "to sweep"). Kabiye is unusual in also having two designated paradigms for expressing comparatives in a subordinate clause: an imperfective form (ɛ̀zɩ́ ɛ̀hàzʋ̀ʋ̀ʋ́ yɔ́ "as he sweeps") and a perfective form (ɛ̀zɩ́ ɛ̀hàzʋ́ʋ̀ yɔ́ "as he swept"). The perfective has two forms: unbound (not followed by a complement: ɛ̀hàzàá "he swept") and bound (followed by a complement: ɛ̀hàzá ɖèdè "he swept yesterday"). The verb phrase may also optionally include modal prefixes that add nuances of meaning: adversative (ɛ̀tɩ́ɩ̀hàzɩ̀ɣ́ "he swept in spite of it"), habitual (ɛ̀tɩ́ɩ́házɩ̀ɣ̀ "he usually sweeps"), expectative (ɛ̀tɩ́ɩ́házɩ́ɣ́ "he sweeps in the meantime"), immediative (ɛ̀tɩ̀hàzàá "he swept straightaway"), pluperfect (ɛ̀ɛ̀hàzàá "he had swept"), future (ɛ̀ɛ́hàzɩ̀ɣ̀ lɛ́ "when he will sweep") and negative (ɛ̀tàhàzɩ́ "he didn't sweep"). Some of these modal prefixes may also appear in combination with each other so that, for example,