A grammar of Pite Saami, 2014

13 Basic clauses
A basic clause is a syntactic unit at text-level consisting minimally of a finite verb.
In declarative clauses and interrogative clauses, this finite verb is marked morphologically
for person, number, tense and/or mood. Aspect can be expressed
analytically at the clause level using an auxiliary verb and a non-finite verb form.
In all basic clauses, the finite verb agrees in number and, with the exception of
imperative mood, in person with the syntactic subject of the sentence, which is
a nominal phrase in the nominative case. NPs referring to information provided
by context alone are not necessarily realized overtly. As a result, the syntactic
subject and other verbal arguments are often not overtly present.
The following sections first present basic declarative clauses with intransitive
and transitive verbs, existential clauses, copular clauses and complex verbal constructions
consisting of more than one verb (§13.1). Then, §13.2 deals with interrogative
clauses, before §13.3 and §13.4 cover syntactic aspects of the imperative
mood and the potential mood, respectively.
13.1 Declarative clauses
Declarative clauses are the most common type of clause in the Pite Saami corpus.
In the following, declarative clauses with a single verb are dealt with first, covering
intransitive and transitive verbs, and two special cases (existential clauses
and copular clauses). Then, declarative clauses featuring a modal or auxiliary
verb in addition to the lexical head verb are described; because negation is expressed
by an auxiliary verb, it is covered in the same section. While constituent
ordering is mentioned in the following sections, it mostly refers to tendencies
only, and the flexible nature of Pite Saami constituent ordering should always be
kept in mind, as discussed in §12.2.
13.1.1 Basic intransitive declaratives
The subject of an intransitive declarative clause is in the nominative case, as in
(1) through (3).