The Imperative

The imperative is the name we use in linguistics for giving commands or orders. Go! Run! Eat! These are examples of the imperative in English. In Gudjal, we use the verb ending -ya to turn something into a command.

Word order is fairly free in Gudjal. We can put words in almost any order because the word endings tell us who is doing what. But when we're giving orders, the word order is usually a bit more rigid. If we want to say – for example – look at the lightning, then the word that we are doing the action to (in this case, the lightning) usually comes before the verb.

Who are we giving the command to?

We can also specify who we're giving the order to. Are we giving the order to one, two or several people? We use the relevant doer pronoun to specify. This pronoun usually comes after the verb in command sentences.

We can also put one of the words for 'we' to say something along the lines of "let's do...".

Here is a list of the doer pronouns that we can use with the imperative in Gudjal:

Ngali	We two
Ngana	All of us

Yinda	You
Yubala	You two
Yura	You lot

Don't do that!

But how do we tell someone to not do something? We use the word ngalnga. It comes before the verb in Gudjal. (And we still use the -ya ending on the verb when we use ngalnga.)