Plain Verbs

Plain verbs do not inflect for number, person or location but may include aspect. (Padden, 1990: 119)

Plain verbs in ThSL are mostly stative and usually convey emotions. They are usually signed separately

as single signs. For example,

“พ่อรักแม่” (gloss: “father love mother”) “Father loves mother.”

“(ฉัน)คิด” (gloss: “( I ) think”) “I think.”

There are two kinds of plain verbs in ThSL

1. Transitive verbs, e.g., “like”, “love”.

1.1 In case both subject and object are human, e.g.,

“พ่อรักแม่” (gloss: “father love mother”) “Father loves mother”,

the syntactic structure is:

or

1.2 In case subject is human but object is non-human, e.g.,

“แม่ชอบแตงโม” (gloss: “mother like watermelon”) “Mother likes watermelon”,

“ยายชอบแมว” (gloss: “grandmother like cat”) “Grandmother likes cat”,

the syntactic structure in ThSL is:

[ [ O ] [ S ] [ V ] ]

2. Intransitive verbs, e.g., “think”, “understand”, “(be) hungry”, “(be) fat”,

for example,

“เขาหิว” (gloss: “s/he hungry”) “S/he is hungry”,

“เขาอ้วน” (gloss: “s/he fat”) “S/he is fat”,

the syntactic structure in ThSL is:

[ [ S ] [ V ] ]

Moreover, plain verbs may include aspect,

for example,

“กำลังคิด” (gloss: “(be) thinking”) “(be) thinking.”

In all, the syntactic structure for plain verbs in ThSL may be summarized as follows: