liēn
On to sentence nine of the Babel text:
il tamma ien ē ñi liēn rā āke aþ ñalla anwaxāon tō tūaþ ñi anxiēna nīkamma sāim ankewōra cī;
Most of this ought to be familiar, except for liēn, which is a first person singular pronoun, and ankewōra, which I will discuss tomorrow.
“Then he said: I will go there and I will make confusion in order that the understanding between them becomes ankewōra.”
janahan
On to sentence eight of the Babel text:
il tamma ien rēha ñatta janahan ja se jaþēŋŋe jacē lā;
The unfamiliar words are janahan, jaþēŋŋe, and lā.
janahan is an indefinite pronoun meaning “something” or “anything”.
“Then he said, they will make anything that …”
jāo
Still on the seventh sentence of the Babel text:
il tamma ien ē pa mēli anānīke ī pa sāim antaxōni ān tēna ī la ankāe ancēji ja ñatta rēha pa jāo jānne;
jāo is an abstract pronoun or rather a pronoun that refers to an abstraction. In this sentence jāo refers to pa mēli anānīke ī pa sāim antaxōni ān tēna and not to ankāe ancēji ja ñatta rēha as one might think. jāo can’t refer to ankāe ancēji ja ñatta rēha because the entire pa clause pa jāo jānne refers to it already.
ñēim
The next part of the fifth sentence of the Babel text:
ē teteñ ien hēja ñanna lewēra tō tūaþ wā ñi ñēim makkepōlien rā anmārwi āñ pēxa;
consists of ñi ñēim makkepōlien. ñēim is the first person inclusive paucal pronoun. The relational ñi is not inflected to match, so “we” cannot be the agent. However, ñi plus rā as a change in location does not generally inflect either. “I went home” is ñi liēn rāmāra. Inflecting ñi as in ñalla liēn rāmāra is “I made myself go home” and implies that I was unwilling to go home or did not choose to go home but was forced to anyway.
ja
This is a relative pronoun that relativizes inanimates. In the fourth sentence of the Babel text
ē teteñ ien hēja ñanna jamāonre nīkan jakōnōr ja ñi jōl rā anīstīli;
ja relativizes jakōnōr. ñi jōl rā anīstīli is “make the top of it to heaven” and it is jakōnōr “a tower”.
And they to each other said: We should make a city with a tower whose top is to heaven.
sāim
Apparently I haven’t been blogging personal pronouns as they come up.
sāim is a 3rd person paucal pronoun, so “they, them”. I use paucal to mean a group or a collective, since that is how the paucal pronouns are generally used. However, if the group or collective is large (for arbitrary measures of large), a plural pronoun will often be used. Since the two main characters or groups in the Babel text are the Lord God and the people who build the tower of Babel, and since the people generally act and speak collectively, the paucal sāim is the appropriate pronoun to use.
Other pronominal references in the third sentence include the 3rd person paucal reflexive in the inflected form of se, teteñ, meaning “they to each other” and the 1st person inclusive paucal agent in the inflected form of ñi, ñanna, meaning “we”.
So far then we know:
ē teteñ ien
hēja ñanna jacālmi jajūti nā
aþ te sāim nīkan jacālmi ñe jakīþi
aþ te sāim nīkan ancēwri ñe anhērmi;
And they to each other (said)
we should make many baked bricks
and te they with bricks ñe stones
and te they with mud ñe mortar
ñe I will discuss tomorrow, and then te.
ien
This is a relative pronoun that is only used with the relational se. It is used to expand upon the main object of se. For example:
iēlte teteñ anþēŋŋeni ien la ma pa antāken anānexa makēñ;
The main object of se (here realized as teteñ, which is se in the past tense with a 3rd person paucal reflexive inflection “they, to each other”) is anþēŋŋeni “argument”. ien modifies anþēŋŋeni to tell us what the argument was: who is the strongest?
iēlte teteñ anþēŋŋeni ien la ma pa antāken anānexa makēñ;
Long ago they, to each other gave argument: who is the strongest?
On to the next sentence in the North Wind and the Sun.
ma & ma-
This ubiquitous syllable denotes third person animate without specifying number. As a full word it has two functions. One is to simply mark a reference to a third person animate antecedent. This is what it is doing in the sentence in the North Wind and the Sun.
la ma pa antāken anānexa;
S/he has the most strength/is strongest.
Its other function as a full word is to act as a relative pronoun when an animate entity is being referred to in a relative clause.
As a prefix, this syllable can mark an animate noun. It also can act as a prefix to the question marker kēñ to make “who”.
la ma pa antāken anānexa makēñ;
Who has the most strength/is strongest?
Tomorrow’s post will finish this sentence.