It varies from time to time, but I tend to color in the 4 corners of an
imaginary rectangle surrounding the verb. The lower left hand corner I use
for tense, and I choose a different color for each tense. If Present happens
to be red today, I write a key up at the top of the page to remind me of
that fact, then put a little red "L" at the lower left-hand corner of the
word. I tend to use the right-hand side for voice and mood, marking voice
with an upside-down "L" at the upper right-hand corner, and mood with a
backwards "L" at the lower right-hand corner.
How do I do this without running out of colors? I just reuse the colors. The
position tells me if the marking refers to tense, voice, or mood. If I try
to use lots of different colors, I get mixed up.
When I'm working with text in a word processor, though, I find it easier to
insert spaces or dashes to denote the morphology, e.g.:
AG-OUSIN, H-KOU-ON, H-KOU-SA-MEN, PE-PISTEUK-A-SI
Of course, a letter may represent more than one thing - the H in the above
examples is actually E+A. I tend to separate out such a letter, as I did
above, or as in the example below:
E-BLE-Y-AN
I suppose I *could* decompose it like this:
E-BLEP+S-AN, E+A-KOU-SA-MEN
I find this very helpful as a way of practicing my verb morphology, in
addition to helping mark the tense/voice/mood for the verbs in the text.
Jonathan
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Jonathan Robie
POET Software, 3207 Gibson Road, Durham, N.C., 27703
Ph: 919.598.5728 Fax: 919.598.6728
email: jwrobie@mindspring.com, jonathan@poet.com
http://www.poet.com <--- shockwave enabled!
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