Test Sentences, 8

Continuing with Gary’s list:

24. Once wild animals lived here.

Well, “wild animals lived here” is a simple sentence. However, “live somewhere” as in dwell is one of those concepts that tends to be idiomatic in other languages. Of course, I already sort of came up with this in the Babel text, using

ɛlɛna mesɨdɛn mɛhaŋi dɛspi.

The people make settlements on the plain.

The adverb mɛya, when prefixed to aŋi means that D dɛspi is made out of A mesɨdɛn. However, for this sentence we are going to use ko “home” instead of dɛspɛdan “settlement”, which means that “here” is essentially the subject of the SL sentence, and “wild animals” is the source.

Regarding “here”, the usual word is susi, but susi cannot be used as a subject of a sentence. 🙁 But, there is another word, sota “place” which can be used. It is a class IV abstract noun, so the motile singular is soteya. We might even make it more specific, saying deya soteya “this place”.

The word for animal is paki, pakina in the motile plural. It can mean any kind of animal, including pets, so we need the adjective “wild” to modify it. That would be gyɛttaɬ, making pakina gyɛttaɬna the source, deya soteya the subject, mɛhaŋi the verb, and ko the destination. Now all that is left is that pesky “once”.

“Once” to me implies that either the animals lived here long ago, or that however long ago it was, it will not happen again. The adverb tilɛnya mostly sort of covers that. Plus, we need the evidential dɛstɛ to explain how we know this.

24. pakina gyɛttaɬna deya soteya mɛhonnɨt ko tilɛnya dɛstɛ.

Wild animals once made home(s) here. (I’m told)

In Kēlen:

24. iēlte ñatta jamāra þō ā japāci;

Wild animals once lived here.

Questions?