Preverb Spacing and Connections (suggestions and guidelines)

The Naskapi language has lots of things that are “connected to” the front of verbs (the left side). These prefixes are called preverbs. If the preverb and the verb are typed all as one word, it is harder to recognize the word. The main purpose of these rules is to make reading easier. Reading is easier when you can recognize the word faster. Often, this is easier to do when the preverbs are separated from the front of the verb, that way you can see what the word is.

In Cree, they have generally used one full space between preverbs and verbs, and full spaces between preverbs when there are more than one of them. The main trouble with this practice is that often the preverb can be left alone like an ‘orphan’ at the right end of the line, separated from it’s own verb or main word that it should be connected to.

A standardized solution to this is to use the thin non-breaking space character to connect preverbs to verbs. Remember, you can type this using the Naskapi keyboard by pressing the shift key with the dash key; that is, typing an underscore.

IN GENERAL, we use ONE thin space between each of the preverbs, and then TWO thin spaces between the preverbs and the main verb. Here are some illustrations:

One preverb:

Two preverbs:

Three preverbs:

You can see how the three preverbs are separated by ONE thin space between each one, and then the whole preverb “set” is separated from the main word by TWO thin spaces.