Shortening VPs

Pashto has a very special way of shortening VPs. In a language like English if we want to say "I saw her," we can only say, "I saw her." But in Pashto there are many ways to shorten and to say this.

So what is going on here? 🧐 This is another behaviour of Pashto that can seem very illogical or confusing to the learner. Thankfully though, there's a very clear rule about how these phrases are shortened up.

In Pashto pronouns can be dropped when the verb agrees with them. When the verb doesn't agree with them, they can be shrunken into mini-pronouns.

Background/Review

In the previous chapter on VP structure we learned that there are two main actors in VPs

1. The King is an NP that controls the verb
2. The Servant is another NP

The king and servant swap roles between the subject and object, depending on what kind of verb we're using.

• with intransitive verbs 🛴
  • the subject is the king
  • (there is no servant)
• with non-past transitive verbs 🚲
  • the subject is the king
  • the object is the servant
• with past-tense transitive verbs 🚲🤪
  • the subject is the servant
  • the object is the king

Or if you want to see it in our little review chart...

The Rule

So, now that we've reviewed the roles of king and servant all we need to know is one simple rule.

This is a litle memory aid to help us remember the two things that we can do to any VP phrase.

1. We can "kill the king" (leave out the king)
2. We can "shrink the servant" (replace the servant with a mini-pronoun)

Examples

With a non-past transitive verb

Now we can look at some examples to see how this works. Let's take a very simple sentence:

This is a present-tense transitive phrase. See if you can figure out what the king and servant are in this sentence, then click on the to see what they are.

Got it? So now we know we can kill the king. Since the king controls the verb, we can just leave it out.

The other thing we can do is we can shrink the servant 🪄 and turn it into a mini-pronoun. The servant here is تا - taa (you - 2nd. pers. sing.) so it will get shrunk into the 2nd pers. sing. mini-pronoun, دې - de. Because it's a little mini-pronoun 👶 it has to go in the kids' section. (After the first block)

Now if we want to make our sentence really short we can kill the king and shrink the servant.

It's very important to remember to play by the rules. You can kill the king and shrink the servant but you cannot kill the servant or shrink the king! 🙅‍♂ (That's another mistake that Pashto learners make a lot!)

With a past-tense transitive verb

Let's try another example with a past-tense transitive verb. Now the roles of king and servant will switch! But we still follow the same rules (kill the king, shrink the servant).

Here's the same phrase but using a continuous past verb. Take a second and identify the king and the servant in the phrase below, and then check by clicking on the .

Let's go ahead and kill the king, which in this case is the subject.

Looks quite different, but we're still following the same rule. Now let's shrink the servant. 🪄 This time the servant is the object ما - maa (I - 1st pers. sing.) so it will get shrunk into the 1nd pers. sing. mini-pronoun, مې - me and go in the kids' section.

And of course we can do both kill the king and shrink the servant.

Notice how our shortened sentences look completely different from the present-tense version above, but they follow the exact same two rules for shortening with the king and servant. This all feels like mental gymnastics to the learner, but Pashtuns will very casually use all these different forms of shortening depending on what they want to emphasize or the flow of conversation.

With an intransitive verb

Let's look at another example with an intransitive verb.

The king of this sentence is the subject زه - zu (I). So we can kill the king and leave that out.

Notice that we cannot shrink the servant because there is no servant in a VP with an intransitive verb. The learner is often tempted to shrink the king into a mini-pronoun, but that is not allowed! 🙅‍♂️

Other examples

Try shortening these other examples. Notice how the kids' section (after the first block), and the kids' section changes depending on what's in the phrase. If we start the phrase with an AP the mini pronoun will fall right after that first AP. Try shrinking this sentence all the way (click on "both") and see what happens.

Or if a phrase is using a perfective verb, then the front part of the verb can split off into a seperate block. This puts the kids' section in an interesting place... see what happens when you hit "both" for this phrase.

Go ahead, click on the and try making your own phrases and shrinking them.