American. Our own verb must is as inflexible as a Chinese verb-equivalent.

(e) Articles (29). These are general words and numerals which have the function of predicating plurality or otherwise in relation to noun-equivalents, all of which are invariant like sheep.

(f) Amplifiers (417). The largest single class of words are abstractions, any one of which can take the place of a noun, adjective or corresponding adverb. They form natural combinations with operative verboids analogous to such Basic constructions as make clean your hearts, get wise to this, make trouble for them, give attention to me. The corresponding English word may be (a) a directive (preposition) such as up in he went up the hill = he ascended the hill; (b) an adjectival complement such as clean in make clean (= purify) your hearts; (c) an abstract noun, such as trouble in make trouble for others = pester or interfere with others. The student of Basic will be familiar with this class and will not ask why some of them are equally appropriate as substitutes for abstract nouns, adverbial particles, prepositions or adjectives.

The increasing use of the rhetorical present is common to many Aryan languages, when the context or an accompanying adverb suffices to date the occurrence; and a considerable class of English verbs such as hurt, shut, put, have no past flexion. So there should be no inherent difficulty connected with an idiom in which appropriate adverb-equivalents replace the entire flexional system of the verb. As adverb-equivalents, abstract words which are also amplifiers do: (a) all the work of the verb flexions classified as tense, aspect or mood; (b) all the work of modal auxiliaries. There are seventeen amplifiers which do the work of Anglo-American auxiliaries (verboid qualifiers) and as such come before the verboid.

Interglossa has no special class of prepositions. The equivalent for a preposition is an amplifier which can also do the work of an adjective, adverb and, sometimes also, of an abstract noun. The justification for the large-scale word-economy which this makes possible will come up for later discussion. A separate chapter (Chapter VI) deals with those amplifiers which can do the work of link-words (conjunctions) or preposition-equivalents if they have the appropriate (p. 109) locus in the sentence-matrix.

(d) Word-order

Word-order circumscribes the essential syntax of an isolating language such as Interglossa. The following English sentence will provide a pattern to prepare the way for what follows,