Lesson 8 — Grammatical Topic — "what" forms with al–

There's a verb prefix  al– that may be easier to illustrate than to describe. Notice that all of these examples have  ma  in front of them, which means that they're being treated like nouns.
	ma k–al–it >	ma kalit	"what I find"
	ma p–al–uli >	ma paluli	"what you're holding"
This prefix acts just like  al– "one who is/does" when it shows up in front of consonants.
	If the verb starts with glottal stop, the  l  of  al– and the glottal stop combine into a glottalized  l —  l — and the effect is that they seem to have switched places.			ma paluli
	ma k–al–ip >	ma kalip	"what I say"
	ma p–uw >	ma puw	"what you eat"
	The  l  drops out before consonants other than glottal stop, just as you saw with  al– "one who is/does."
	ma k–al–kuti >	ma kakuti	"what I see"
	ma p–al–nukum >	ma panukum	"what you're bringing"
The verb with  al– can show up with any of the various prefixes and suffixes that you've already seen, such as the markers for dual and plural.				ma panukum
The dual and plural forms are exactly what you'd expect:  al– comes after the number markers  i– and  iy–:
i–:	ma k–i–al–aqtikat		"what the two of us need"
	ma p–i–al–sinay >	ma pisasinay	"what you two put away"
iy–:	ma k–iy–al–tamay >	ma kiyatamay	"what we forget"
	ma p–iy–al–utanin		"what you all understand"	ma pisasinay
Here are examples of  al– with the past and future tense.
	ma k–al–kuti–wa >	ma kakutiwa	"what I saw"
	ma no–p–al–aqniwil		"what you'll think of"
As you might expect, the negative prefix  ini– shows up in its shortened form after the vowel of  ma.  It's easier to write this all as one word:				manikakutiwa
	ma ini–k–al–kuti–wa >	manikakutiwa	"what I didn't see"
	ma ini–p–al–amn >	manipaamn	"what you don't know"

"What" forms and question words

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This expression with ma plus al– is called a "relative phrase" in traditional grammar but it might be simpler just to refer to it as the "what" form of the verb.
You may be wondering:  "Why bring this up now?"
The question words that you just learned usually show up with the "what" form, so you can say either				suk a palaqniwil?
	suku ha p–aqniwil?	suk a paqniwil?	"what do you think?" or "what are you thinking about?"
or	suku ha p–al–aqniwil?	suk a palaqniwil?
So it's important to know how to turn verbs into their "what" forms
Here are two points to keep in mind about question words and these "what" forms with  al–:
	The "what" form starts with ha rather than ma when it's not the first element of the sentence, as in  suk a palaqniwil? "what are you thinking (about)?"
	In a way, the expression with  al– is a sentence without a verb, just like  suku heki? "what [is] that?"  So  suk a palaqniwil?  literally means "what [is] what you're thinking?" or "what [is] your thought?"
Maybe it would be more accurate to say that the verb with  al– in  ma p–al–aqniwil  is partway between a full verb like  p–aqniwil  "you think" and a noun:  ma p–al–aqniwil  "your thought."
It's more natural in Samala to use the "what" form, but it complicates asking questions. It also makes translating questions literally rather awkward:
	kune ha p–itaq?	kun a pitaq?	"who do you hear?"
or	kune ha p–al–itaq?	kun a palitaq?	literally "who [is] what you hear?"
	taka ha p–kuti–wa?	tak a pkutiwa?	"where did you see it?"
or	taka ha p–al-kuti-wa >	tak a pakutiwa	literally "where [is] what you saw?"	tak a pakutiwa?

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