In (1) through (10) below are some more examples from Kwamera, and two closely related languages, Lenakel and Southwest Tanna, all languages of the Republic of Vanuatu in the southwest Pacifi c; data are from Lindstrom and Lynch (1994) and Lynch (1998). I give the original and the gloss, and your task is to suggest a translation. You will fi nd it useful to look back at Section 1.2.2.3, where the Kwamera examples are discussed in the text.
Hint
: Th ere is rarely just one correct way of translating each example; the important part here is to make sure you understand the role of the grammatical information in the glosses (in small capitals).
(1) t-r-uv-irapw (Kwamera) FUTURE3SGmove-outwards
(2) t-r-am-apri (Kwamera) FUTURE3SGCONTINUOUSsleep
Translate the ‘continuous’ prefi x
am-
using an –
ing
form of the verb in English, as in
I was sleeping
,
I’ve been sleeping
,
I will be sleeping
. Both Kwamera
am-
and English –
ing
denote an ongoing action here.
(3) iak-imiki kuri u (Kwamera) 1EXCdislike dog this
The prefix
iak-
is the form of the first person exclusive which occurs before vowels.
(4) k-rou-anumwi (Kwamera) 1INCDUALdrink
Note that the first person inclusive prefix,
k-
, does not have the same form as the first person inclusive
sa-
that we saw in (32a) in the text. The reason for this is that
sa-
is used in conjunction with a plural prefix, whilst
k-
co-occurs with a dual prefix.
(5) K-im-hal-vin-uas. (Lenakel)
3PL-PASTTRIAL-go.there-together
(6) R-im-avhi-in mun (Lenakel) 3SGPAST read-TRANS again The suffix –
in
marks the verb as TRANSITIVE (more in Chapter 2): this means that it is understood to have an object (see Section 1.3.1), and this should affect your translation.
(7) Kimlu i-imn-la-gin (Southwest Tanna) we.two.EXC 1PL-PASTDUAL-afraid
(8) Kimlu i-imn-la-hai pukah (Southwest Tanna) we.two.EXC 1PL-PASTDUAL-stab pig
Recall from Section 1.2.2.2 that the dot ‘.’ in a gloss indicates that the various pieces of grammatical information can’t be separated from each other: the
whole
form kimlu in (7) and (8) therefore has the meaning (glossed as) ‘we.two.EXC’.
(9) R-i-aamh nimwa vit ker (Lenakel) he-PAST-see house good one
(10) Nimwa taha-n r-i m-vit akin (Lenakel) house POSS-his it-PAST-good very
There is an additional point of syntactic interest concerning the element glossed as ‘good’ in (9) and (10). Can you identify how these two examples diff er?
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