tōkēñ

tōkēñ

We’re still on sentence 4 of the LCC2 Relay Text:

telme jakēña mo makīþa matēnnā ien tō wā terle jasōra xiēn jē jaþīña tōkēñ;

I’m starting this clause with the last word for a reason. Namely, the tōkēñ at the end is related to the tō at the beginning. tō here is essentially the same tō as here, a conjunctive particle meaning “because”. It is not actually required for the sentence to be grammatically correct, but, hey, redundancy is good!

tōkēñ is this particle glommed on to the interrogative mood marker kēñ to ask “why” something. The initial tō here is followed by the clause-level modifier wā which negates a clause, so altogether tō wā … tōkēñ (or wā … tōkēñ) is “why not” or “why isn’t” or “why didn’t”.

telme jakēña mo makīþa matēnnā ien tō wā terle jasōra xiēn jē jaþīña tōkēñ;
I asked the talking rock, “Why didn’t…”