Description:

The term 'hyty' has to do with sorrow, sadness and regret. It is apparently related to the term 'haty' a tear, as in to dry a tear. Both are Old Common words, haty was in the concrete gender and hyty in the abstract, each with the classic vowel height in the stressed syllable for thier gender and they appear intentionally derived from each other. Hyty is very important in expressions of politeness and apology.

Noun:

As a noun, hyty means sadness, sorrow or regret. The term 'hytylawt' is specifically an apology.

Verb:

As a verb, 'hyty' means to be sad or regretful. It is an intransitive pali verb that takes an absolutive subject, the one who is sorrowful. It is very often used in a causative skurun form. In this form, it takes an ergative subject which is the reason or circumstance that has caused the sadness, often expressed as a dependent caluse introduced by 'xi'.

In this causative form, it is the basic expression of apology or regret. 'We te hyty' just means 'I'm sorry', and leaves whether the cause of the sorrow is your own actions up to context. To make it clear, you would add the ergative agent explictly, for example:

We te hyty xi je tene.
I(ABS) hit(NP.IM) sad that(ERG) I(ERG) hit(NP.PF).

'I'm sorry for what I did'

This form has the reverse of the normal SVO sentence order, which is quite common in these expressions, and the head term in the dependent clause is omitted (and might also be replaced with 'wero') as a generic way of admitting fault.

You might say 'we te hyty' as just an expression of regret or condolence for an unfortunate situation, without there being fault on your part.

The derived form 'hytylawt' is not used as a very meaning to apologise - due to its head, it comes across more like 'to craft an apology'.The more usual way to talk about someone's apology is to use an expression based on 'hap wero a hyty', a benefactive form of the verb 'wero', to make. The dative indirect object is the recipient of the apology - the benefactive form is usually used even if the recipient is omitted. The thing you are sorry for can be stated periphrastically using rowéro.

Ja pocuk hapo wero a hyty ija mamma rowéro tene skurun a paluh.
The(ERG) child hit(P.IM) make the(ABS) sad the(DAT) mother because hit(NP.PF) the(ABS) dog.

'The child apologized to his mother for hitting the dog.'

When used in the normal pali sense, hyty just means to be sad and not sorry for something. If you want to talk about a topic or reason for the sadness, it can be introduced periphrastically with 're'. This structure deemphasizes the causation aspect and is less apologetic.

Modifier:

As a modifier, 'hytys' means sad or regretful.