jakēña
Sentence 4 of the LCC2 Relay Text is:
telme jakēña mo makīþa matēnnā ien tō wā terle jasōra xiēn jē jaþīña tōkēñ;
jakēña is the object of se, and means “a question”. It is related to the interrogative mood marker kēñ. telme jakēña is I asked him/her/it. mo makīþa matēnnā is a renaming of who I asked, namely the talking rock. tō wā terle jasōra xiēn jē jaþīña tōkēñ is the question. More on that tomorrow.
“I asked the talking rock…”
jalā
This looks like a noun, but it isn’t. In the third sentence of the LCC2 Relay Text, concerning a talking rock, it occurs between a relative pronoun ien and the relational la. The only things that can occur in this position are conjunctions, clause-level modifiers, and peripheral phrases headed by some sort of prepositional particle. jalā functions as a clause-level modifier and indicates complete agreement with the statement one is responding to.
temle ke makīþa matēnnā ien jalā la liēn makīþa matēnnā;
The talking rock said to me, “Yes, I am a talking rock.”
Notice that the talking rock does not use the reduced first person pronoun.
riēn
This is very simply the 2nd person singular pronoun. Now, for the LCC2 Relay Text, concerning a talking rock. Sentence #2:
ē ñalla jakīþa jatēnnā rā lekū mē ōl aþ telme ien la riēn makīþa matēnnā kēñ;
This has all been blogged before (or just now). Three notes of interest, however.
1) ñalla [x] rā lekū mē is the circumlocution used to indicate that one has taken something [x] into one’s hand. The [x] is jakīþa jatēnnā, “the talking rock”. ōl is used to indicate upwards motion, so “took up into my hand”.
2) In the first clause, the talking rock is inanimate singular. In the second clause, which asks “Are you a talking rock?”, the talking rock is animate singular. This is called raising to animacy and happens when one imbues something with personhood, for example by talking to it as if it could answer back. Lowering something to inanimacy happens when one is removing personhood from something or someone. Not a nice thing to do.
3) We discussed reduced pronouns earlier this week and I mentioned that it is considered polite to reduce the 1st person pronoun. It is exceedingly familiar and thus impolite to strangers to reduce the second person pronoun.
ē ñalla jakīþa jatēnnā rā lekū mē ōl aþ telme ien la riēn makīþa matēnnā kēñ;
And I took the rock up into my hand and then said to it, “Are you a talking rock?”
anwāna
Continuing with the first sentence of the LCC2 Relay Text, concerning a talking rock:
il talōnte tiēlen ñi le rā jahāwekien nō il ñi lerāka jawāna sū jakīþa ja pa antēnnā ōl;
anwāna means “the quality of being out of place and therefore wrong” and appears here as an inanimate singular noun modifying lerāka. lerāka is simply the familiar jarāka inflected as a possessed noun. This is perfectly okay, if a bit informal. Together, lerāka jawāna means something like a “wrong step” or a “false step” meaning one that was interfered with somehow.
sū jakīþa ja pa antēnnā ōl is “on a rock that could talk” (a rock which has the attribute able-to-talk), and is the location of the wrong step, implying one tripped over this rock.
“Yesterday I was going along the beach, when I tripped over a rock that could talk.”
le
Continuing with the first sentence of the LCC2 Relay Text, concerning a talking rock:
il talōnte tiēlen ñi le rā jahāwekien nō il ñi lerāka jawāna sū jakīþa ja pa antēnnā ōl;
le is the first person reduced pronoun. It does not specify number, so it can mean I or we, either inclusive or exclusive. Reduced pronouns do not usually occur as the object of a relational, but it is also considered more polite to use the reduced pronoun in the first person. Since this story is told in the first person as if it were an anecdote of something that happened just yesterday, it is appropriate here.
rā jahāwekien nō is “along the beach”, all these words having been blogged before.
“Yesterday I was going along the beach…”
tiēlen
Continuing with the first sentence of the LCC2 Relay Text, concerning a talking rock:
il talōnte tiēlen ñi le rā jahāwekien nō il ñi lerāka jawāna sū jakīþa ja pa antēnnā ōl;
tiēlen is a past imperfective marker. Since ñi generally concerns itself with changes of state or location, it assumes that the change is completed. Here the change is not completed.
“Yesterday…”
talōnte
So, first sentence of the LCC2 Relay Text, concerning a talking rock:
il talōnte tiēlen ñi le rā jahāwekien nō il ñi lerāka jawāna sū jakīþa ja pa antēnnā ōl;
talōnte is one of the few (two?) defective nouns. It carries no prefix and inflects to talōnti for a plural which can be either collective or distributive, it doesn’t matter. It also never appears by itself; instead it always follows il, which makes it part of a clause-level modifier dealing with time. So, what does it mean, already?
It means “yesterday” or “ago” as in il talōnte wījtē “three yesterdays” meaning “three days ago”.
“Yesterday…”
antēnnā
Before I get to this word, a note on the next several weeks, if not months.
Every so often the conlanging community gets together and has a relay. A relay is a game we play, much like Telephone, where one receives a text in someone’s conlang, translates it into one’s own conlang, and then passes the text with sufficient grammar and vocabulary notes along to the next person. Some people believe in faithfully translating whatever they get, even if it is somewhat (or quite a bit 🙂 ) nonsensical. Others, and this includes me, believe in fixing up any text they get so that it makes sense to a person who speaks their conlang. This includes more than fixing grammar errors. It can involve changing all sorts of things when the speakers of the conlang are non-human or have a vastly different conculture than the creator of the text.
In honor of the relay that we are currently having, (the 18th Conlang Relay, subscribe to the Relay mailing list for news of this and subsequent relays), I will go through most of the as yet unblogged vocabulary for the LCC2 Relay Text, the LCC3 Relay Text, and the 17th Conlang Relay Text. By the time I am through I may be able to blog the 18th Conlang Relay text, whatever it turns out to be. 😉
So, the LCC2 Relay Text was a story about a talking rock. I had a word for talking as in currently speaking, but not a word for talking as in able-to-talk. Hence, this word. It is derived from the same root as the word for “story”, which I haven’t blogged yet.
This word occurs in the title and throughout the story, generally in inanimate singular to agree with jakīþa “rock”.
xiēn jē jakīþa jatēnnā;
Concerning the talking rock.