ai is used to attract someone's attention, a bit like "hey" (but in a less-marked register).
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jakwi jaikati=su mikwa tija inakasu
2p Jaikati=FOC already now hear.of
sati jani na ki hjasi-tami wamau hja a kawi=wati wa
COM then REL DET nose -→ADV come arrive(PFV) LOC Kawi=LOC CIS
You have heard of the slavers, and the time they first came to the Kawi.
You can see the previous post for an explanation why I translate
jaikati (originally an ethnonym) as "slavers."
mikwa tija already now produces a perfect of resulting state.
inakasu hear of, know of is almost always used for knowledge rather than perception, though it's etymological connection to
inakwi ears is obvious.
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itamu na apatu, na itai=su mikwa tija inakasu
Itamu REL spear REL rope=FOC already now hear.of
sati sau na ki k =jaikati=wati jai jaku
COM event REL DET DET=Jaikati=DEIC.3 do stay(PFV)
You have heard of Itamu the Spear, Itamu the Rope, and what she did to those slavers
Epithets use regular relative clauses with nominal predicates.
Itamu is called the Spear. No doubt this is in part because of her association with fishing, though her spear takes on a metophorical and mythic value as well (we can see this beginning later on in the story). One thing: the spears she used for fishing would not have been considered apt for proper fighting, and I do not think she was especially associated with fighting.
I'm also not yet sure about the epithet the Rope. I have an image of her tying a simple harness for herself and swinging/dancing from a tree branch, but I haven't really explored her fun side yet, and I'm not sure why that would have taken on mythic significance (though again we see something maybe getting stared later in the story).
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wahi kja hau jakwi hwati hakwai
but COMP 1s 2p give(CAUS) know
na miwa k ='iraci inakasu kja
DS NEG DET=words hear.of REL
hau wai, ka -kaiwatawapi wai, ihjatikai=wati naki ikau siwi wai,
1s TOP REDUP-yesterday TOP Ihjatikai=LOC someone right small TOP
hu tajapawi=su maiku tau
ABL Tajapawi=FOC get together(PFV)
But I am letting you know that you have not heard the account that I, long ago, very young in Ihjatikai, gained from Tajapawi.
wahi but is an adverb rather than a conjunction, but like many adverbs can get hosted by a sentence-initial complementiser like
kja, even in main clauses.
siwi small is one of Akiatu's few genuine adjectives, and it has a semantic range encompassing
small,
young,
subtle,
unnoticed,
nimble,
sharp. Here the focus is presumably on
young.
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sati sau na jakwi ki inakasu ma kwasu
COM matter REL 2p DET hear.of SUB QUOT
k ='iraci=su awi saici kici
DET=words =DEIC.1 maybe differ REDUP
Maybe this will differ from what you have heard.
The
sati... ma kwasu construction topicalises a point of reference or comparison or a perspective from which the ensuing judgment will be made. (
As far as what you've heard is concerned, maybe this will be different.)
jiraci words has a range of meanings including also
language and
story, account.
Akiatu has rather a large of
maybe adverbs. Among them,
awi indicates that the speaker believes what they are saying, but concedes the possibility of error or disagreement. (It wouldn't be far off, and might be more illuminating, to translate it as "I think.")
Incidentally, the narrator is including explicit personal pronouns more than might seem pragmatically necessary, given that they can be freely dropped. This is in large part because in this preamble she's aiming to establish her authority over the listeners.
I am going to tell you.
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suwi hau k ='iraci, na ki maiku tau hu tajapawi
here 1s DET=words REL DET get together(PFV) ABL Tajapawi
Here is my account, which I gained from Tajapawi.
The use of
tau together as a resultative/perfective complement to
maiku get, receive, gain is highly lexicalised. It's usually used to indicate that as a result of the reported action, the subject and object (or the plural subject, if the verb is intransitive) were brought together. (You'd use it, for example, with
anatu meet.) With
maiku, there's an implication of something like intimacy.
Incidentally, I don't know anything about Tajapawi so far, except that she's a respected elder from a previous generation who lived in the village now most associated with Itamu.
jajacu is used to invite the listener to proceed to the next stage of an interaction. In particular contexts it might get translated as
let's see,
let's go,
here you go,
come in,
goodbye, and any number of other things. (It's a bit modeled after Turkish "buyurun," if you know that.)
Here, the sense is something like:
but let's get on with the story.
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k =jaikati na hjasi=wati hwika cita haku, miwa papai
DET=Jaikati REL nose =DEIC.3 only four five NEG many
Those first slavers were just four or five, not many.
Numerical
x-or-
y expressions are formed just by juxtaposing the numbers:
cita haku four or five.
pipai many is another example of a true adjective, this one transparently derived by reduplication from
pai three. It's used on its own as a predicate. I still go back and forth on how common that is, the alternative would be something like
naki papai many people.
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kati ukja siwi, k =witawi sakija, akjamawi uɲu mwi kijaa tikwa,
3p short small DET=hair red skin white SS mud face
miwa sati kiwapi saici wi -wita ahiwa
NEG COM today differ REDUP-hair single
They were small and quick, with bright hair and skin light like mud, no different from today
An abundance of true adjectives!
siwi small again, compounded with
ukja short, low, lowly, demeaning---the connotations of
ukja are regularly negative, those of
siwi mostly positive.
sakija is
red but also
bright, shining. It suggests something in their hair, maybe grease.
uɲu is
white but also
light-coloured; in this context, skin counts as light if it's the colour of mud (and it's most likely light mostly because of a life lived out of the sun).
We also see two uses of the
-wi suffix.
wita, on its own, is a single hair, whereas
witawi is a mass of hair, as on a person's head (but there's no lexical distinction between the hair on different body parts or between human and anmial hair/fur). The
-wi implies not just a collection, but a collection sort of naturally belonging together---and with body parts that implies actually attached to a person. So with
akjamawi skin, it's not clear there's a singular/plural distinction worth drawing, the
-wi just tells you that you're talking about the undetached skin of a person or animal (or tree, for bark). (Whereas an animal's hide, once removed, would be just
akjama, for example.)
There's a difference, though:
witawi is marked for possession (the
k= ←
ki), whereas
akjamawi gets no marking because skin unlike hair is considered inalienably possessed.
"No different from today": or present stereotypes are getting projected into the past, of course.
And one more thing:
wiwita ahiwa as the object of
saici differ is an example of a minimal object.
wita is hair---individual hairs, not like collected on a person's head---and both the reduplication and the adjective
ahiwa single, solitary both intensify the smallness of hair. The effect is to say that there's no difference at all, they don't differ by even a speck.
kaiwaka is a dismissive interjection; I translate it as "pfui" because that's from Nero Wolfe, and no one can be as dismissive as Nero Wolfe.
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kati waɲi aja mwi ucisu mwi tijauka jai
3p say out(PFV) SS want SS trade do
They said they wanted to trade
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wahi kja
but COMP
itamu inakasu sau kja aisiwi=wati anatu jaku wai
Itamu hear.of event COMP Aisiwi=LOC meet stay TOP
ikau miwa sati kati ijau jaku
then NEG COM 3p sit REDUP
But Itamu knew what had happened with the Aisiwi, and did not believe them
Here we see an example of a locative subject,
aisiwi=wati at the Aisiwi, something new that I haven't posted about yet. It can mark non-agent subjects, and sometimes triggers valency shifts. In this sentence, the result is a sort of passive (and that's fairly common).
ijau jaku sati sit down with has here an idiomatic sense,
to believe, to trust.
Incidentally, I don't yet know exactly what happened with the Aisiwi, but it presumably wasn't pleasant.
And also: it's actually supposed to be plausible that they really were traders---what else is a group of four or five doing here? (Which is not to say that Itamu was wrong not to trust them.)
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itamu kwasu, cau sai kimija taki ma wamau hja i tijauka wa
Itamu QUOT what Q RESUM hold SUB come arrive(PFV) DAT trade CIS
Itamu said, "What have you brought with you to trade?"
Wh-movement isn't obligatory in Akiatu, but it's very common. Here, though, the
cau what corresponds to a constituent in the adverbial
ma clause; regular
wh-movement isn't possible out of such a clause, so you need a resumptive pronoun (here
kimija).
When I introduced the quotation particle
kwasu in the post on saying and thinking, I said that the ensuing quoted statement usually got its pronouns shifted. I've changed my mind about that.
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taɲuci kwasu, inika sati ati.ati wai
other QUOT inika COM ati.ati TOP
wama taki ma wamau hja wa
shell hold SUB come arrive(PFV) CIS
The other said, "We have brought with us the shells of the [i]inika[/i] and the [i]ati ati[/i].
These shells would be fancy, even ostentatious, but of genuine value to the Kawi.
I'm afraid I can't tell you anything about the
inika or the
ati-ati (or about the
takajau and the
palati birds about to be mentioned).
Note that in this back-and-forth, the interlocutor is identified only as
taɲuci other. (This is another true adjective, this time getting used as a noun.)
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kwasu, wahi kja inika sati ati.ati wai,
QUOT but COMP inika COM ati.ati TOP
hwi=wati hu jisakiwi ma ahjaicu wama
1p =LOC ABL Fish.People SUB lie.down shell
"But we have the shells of the [i]inika[/i] and the [i]ati ati[/i] from the Jisakiwi."
The main clause here is a slightly complex example of an existential construction used to indicate possession.
The next few exchanges are formulaic, and I won't comment further.
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taɲuci kwasu, takajau sati palati mati wai
other QUOT takajau COM palati bird TOP
piɲiku taki ma wamau hja wa
feather hold SUB come arrive(PFV) CIS
The other said, "We have brought with us the feathers of the [i]takajau[/i] and the [i]palati[/i] bird."
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kwasu, wahi kja takajau sati palati mati wai
QUOT but COMP takajau COM palati bird TOP
hwi=wati hu matiwi ma ahjaicu piɲiku.
1p =LOC ABL Bird.People SUB lie.down feather
"But we have the feathers of the [i]takajau[/i] and the [i]palati[/i] bird from the Matiwi."
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taɲuci kwasu, anicuta hatau wai
other QUOT boar great TOP
kaima ausu sati ikitai ma wamau hja wa
meat blood COM bone SUB come arrive(PFV) CIS
The other said, "We have brought with us the meat, blood, and bones of the great boar."
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kwasu, wahi kja anicuta hatau wai
QUOT but COMP boar great TOP
hwi=wati hu kwamuriwi ma ahjaicu kaima ausa sati ikitai
1p =LOC ABL Hunter.People SUB lie.down meat blood COM bone
"But we have the meat, blood, and bones of the great boar from the Kwamuriwi."
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taɲuci kwasu, jakwanaiwi sati aikanawi i =kaɲi wai
other QUOT ancestors COM land DET=pride TOP
ukiwaɲa taki ma wamau hja wa
tradition hold SUB come arrive(PFV) CIS
The other said, "We have brought with us knowledge of the ancestors and of the power of the land."
So first of all it's obviously crazy for the trader to be offering these things. They're real and valuable, but you can only have them if you actually live in a place (as Itamu will shortly point out). The connection is simply that when someone dies, they live on as an ancestor, and then suitably attuned shamans (or whatever) are able to call on their pride/power for various magicky ends (centrally including health, childbirth, and horticulture); and this attunement generally requires living in a place for a significant amount of time, and also that the local ancestors not think of you as an enemy.
There are similar powers that are not ancestral in nature, or at least that do not seem to be human. Volcanoes especially seem to be locations of great power (power that is often attributed to the spirits of ancient giants).
kaɲi pride, power is a very important concept in Akiatu culture.
When I referred in the last post to the Itamu tradition or the Itamu cult, it was
ukiwaɲa that I was translating as "tradition" or "cult"; here it's "knowledge." Knowledge in this sense isn't a cognitive state, it's more like a valuable possession that you can share or transmit to a chosen few.
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itamu kwasu, hwi jakwanaiwi sati k =aikanawi=su sati k =ikjamii=su ki kaɲi wai
Itamu QUOT 1p ancestors COM DET=land =DEIC.1 COM DET=river =DEIC.1 DET pride TOP
jakwi=wati miwa ukiwaɲa
2p =LOC NEG tradition
Itamu said, "You have no knowledge of our ancestors or of the power of this land and this river."
jakwanaiwi ancestors is inalienably possessed, so it doesn't require the
ki determiner here.
The second
sati is embedded within the complement of the first. As in many languages, you'd omit all but the last conjunction in a single coordinate structure (we saw this above in
kaima ausa sati ikitai meat, blood, and bones, with only one
sati).
We see here an example of something I don't think I've mentioned before, the use of a nominal predicate (here
ukiwaɲa knowledge, tradition) with an existential sense. (Above we saw the posture verb
ahjaicu lie down in another, I think less marked, existential construction.)
As noted in the last post, it's significant that Itamu emphasises that the ancestors and lands in question are those of the Akiatu peoples, not the Jaikati slavers, and that she adds a reference to the river (with which she as a fisher is especially associated).
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itamu hjaci waɲi kwasu
Itamu Hjaci say QUOT
ai! hau jai wamau hja k =jaikati=su wa, sama
VOC 1s do(CAUS) come arrive(PFV) DET=Jaikati=DEIC.1 CIS 2s
Itamu said to Hjaci, "Bring me this slaver."
A narrative hiccup: from this point on we only hear about one of the slavers. What became of the other three or four I don't know.
An imperative: as is common, you get the listen-to-me particle
ai at the start and and afterthought 2p pronoun at the end. (But neither of these things is required in an imperative, and both show up in other contexts.)
A subtlety: the 1p pronoun
hau, representing the recipient or beneficiary, has moved into the preverbal spot, leaving the reference to the slaver, the actual direct object, after the verb. This would be the usual structure with an inanimate direct object, and maybe implicitly ranks Itamu above the slaver on something like an animacy hierarchy.
Though: all the other bringing in the story uses the phrase
taki wamau hold come, appropriate with inanimate themes, but here we get instead a causative construction,
jai wamau make come. (There's a further difference:
taki wamau is perfective on its own, but
jai wamau needs a further complement---here
hja arrive---to make it perfective.)
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hjaci jaikati jai wamau hja wa
Hjaci Jaikati do(CAUS) come arrive(PFV)
Hjaci brought the slaver.
The reference to Itamu has been dropped as contextually obvious, allowing the Jaikati mention to go before the verb.
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itamu kipaja waɲi kwasu
Itamu Kipaja say QUOT
ai! hau taki wamau itai wa, sama
VOC 1s hold come rope CIS 2s
Itamu said to Kiyaja, "Bring me some rope."
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kipaja itai taki wamau wa
Kipaja rope hold come CIS
Kipaja brought rope.
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k =itai=su wai, kipaja mikwa tikwa-tami hwisaja tima
DET=rope=DEIC.1 TOP Kipaja already face -→ADV make ready(PFV)
It was rope that Kipaja had made himself.
mikwa already here marks relative tense.
tikwatami is the emphatic pronoun. I decided to mark it explicitly as an adverb (and not use the plain reflexive pronoun
tikwa face) because I definitely didn't want it occupying an argument slot.
It's a major difference between the Itamu and Kipaja traditions that in the former but not the later Kipaja is associated with rope-making.
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itamu jaikati jai wama -kasu itai ma paja jaku i tamwi
Itamu Jaikati do(CAUS) spiral-follow rope SUB tie stay DAT tree
Itamu wound the rope around the slaver and bound him to a tree.
The adverbial
ma clause has a causative of a path verb with the path verb's locative complement moved before the verb, where it occurs without the locative preposition
a---that's quite a lot going on.
At one point I thought it might be fun to do a whole post about how to describe doing things with rope to make sure I really had a handle on causatives, path verbs, and such. Maybe someday.
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tati.tati.tatu sai! jaikati ikau kahawa sii aja
IDEO EXC Jaikati right move fail(PFV) away
The slaver wiggled and writhed, but could not move.
I guess if you suddenly find yourself getting tied to a tree, you'll probably do something worthy of an ideophone.
The complementiser
sai most often marks irrealis clauses, but here it's exclamatory.
Translations of ideophones are always a bit pulled-out-of-your-ass, of course.
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itamu hjaci waɲi kwasu
Itamu Hjaci say QUOT
ai! hau taki wamau hakja wa, sama
VOC 1s hold come fire CIS 2s
Itamu said to Hjaci, "Bring me some fire."
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hjaci hu hakjawi taki wamau kawi wa
Hjaci ABL bonfire hold come stick CIS
Hjaci brought a branch from the bonfire
Yeah, the ethnonym is homophonous with a word meaning
stick, branch. Really it's a total coincidence.
kawi stick most likely goes back to something like
kaui, the ethnonym reflects earlier
gagul +
-ui (→
-wi), with the final
l dropping and the two
us coalescing and then
gagui →
gagwi →
gawi →
kawi.
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hakjawi wai, hjaci mikwa tikwa-tami acatau tima
bonfire TOP Hjaci already face -→ADV bless ready(PFV)
It was a bonfire that Hjaci had blessed herself.
I haven't gone into Akiatu fire worship at all, except to have lots of example sentences about Hjaci blessing bonfires. And this post will not be any different. (Hjaci, remember, is a sort of shaman.)
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itamu jaikati hakjasu iti
Itamu Jaikati burn PFV
Itamu burned the Jaikati.
In previous posts I've only mentioned
iti as a positive polarity item that goes in the same position in the sentence as a negator. It's also got a use as a verb meaning
to be so, be like that, do that, and by extension it can be used just to mean
yes, I agree. Here it's used as a perfective complement, without really adding any further meaning.
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k =witawi sakija sati akjamawi na kijaa tikwa=su hakjasu aja
DET=hair red COM skin REL mud face =FOC burn away(PFV)
She burned away his shiny hair and his mudlike skin.
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parai.parau sai! atawi=su cai hakjaru aja
IDEO EXCL eyes =FOC also burn away
Wide open with terror, his eyes also burned away.
This sequence displays an unusual amount of morphology. We see:
- hakja fire, the root
- hakjawi bonfire, with -wi suggesting a united collection of fires
- hakjasu burn (transitive), with -su having a meaning like use in a characteristic way
- hakjaru burn (intransitive), with -ru also showing up in sensation verbs such as kamaru to hurt, ache, from kama pain (but you won't regularly find a transitive/intransitive pair marked this way by -su and -ru)
(
-wi is still somewhat productive,
-su and
-ru are not.)
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tati.tati.tatu sai! akija wakija sai! jaikati ikau waɲi sii aja
IDEO EXCL IDEO EXCL Jaikati then say fail out(PFV)
The slaver wiggled and writhed, shrieked and howled, but could not speak.
waɲi sii aja could not speak here echoes
kahawa sii aja could not move above, a minor literary flourish.
aja has a different significance in the two phrases (though it also renders both perfective):
kahawa aja is
move away, and
waɲi aja is
say out loud.
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itamu kipaja waɲi kwasu
Itamu Kipaja say QUOT
ai! hau taki wamau apatu wa, sama
VOC 1s hold come spear CIS 2s
Itamu said to Kipaja, "Bring me a spear."
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kipaja miwa ucisu ma apatu taki wamau wa
Kipaja NEG want SUB spear hold come CIS
Kipaja did not want to, but he brought a spear.
Within the Itamu tradition, Kipaja's reluctance here signals that he is not completely to be trusted.
Since
miwa ucisu is in an adverbial
ma clause, it would also be reasonable to translate it as "reluctantly."
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k =apatu=su wai, kipaja mikwa tikwa-tami waisa tima
DET=spear=DEIC.1 TOP Kipaja already face -→ADV make ready(PFV)
It was a spear that Kipaja had made himself.
The verb used for spear-making (
waisa) is different from the one used earlier for rope-making (
hwisaja). Well, they're very different processes. (But I can't tell you anything further about the differences between them---much research still to do on rope-making.)
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kipaja wai k =itai sati k =apatu=su cai hwati wamau k =ami=wati a itamu wa
Kipaja TOP DET=rope COM DET=spear=su also give come DET=two=DEIC.3 DAT Itamu CIS
Kipaja gave both his rope and his spear, those two, to Itamu.
k=ami=wati those two looks like the remnant of a DP left when the head noun got moved before the verb for focus, but I don't think that analysis will work here (I don't think you can add a number to a conjunction).
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sai si -sijai-waka
EXCL REDUP-piss -puddle
Dumb fuck.
The translation is inexact.
This aside about Kipaja is maybe hard to appreciate without more context. Itamu comes to be known as Itamu the Spear and Itamu the Rope, and the idea here is more or less that Kipaja inadvertently contributed to his rival's power by giving her these things.
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hwika jajacu
only JAJACU
But anyway.
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jaikati=wai itamu atausa=su jai ikijiku jima apatu
Jaikati=TOP Itamu belly =FOC do(CAUS) often go.through spear
hawa jaikati jakwaru utami
and.then jaikati die cease(PFV)
Itamu put the spear through the slaver's belly several times, and the slaver died.
Another causative with a path verb. I actually feel like this would be better with a verb meaning something like
to thrust, but for some reason I'm having trouble making that work.
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watiwi mikwa miwa parai.parau tikwa,
there already NEG IDEO face
mikwa miwa akija.wakija tikwa,
already NEG IDEO face
mikwa miwa tati.tati.tatu tikwa
already NEG IDEO face
There was no more eyes-open terror, no more shrieking and howling, no more wiggling and writhing.
Here we see the use of
tikwa face to make a predicate from an ideophone. We also see a somewhat sneaky use of the stative negator
miwa, which I've tried to capture by using an existential construction in the translation.
One thing I realised while working on this story is that I'd left myself in a bit of a bind as far as the scope of negation was concerned, because I'd established (at least for myself, not sure I posted it) that the negators could only go in a single spot very high in the clause, and that made it unclear how I was going to distinguish between, say, "already not" and "not already." My tentative decision is to allow adverbs to move to Spec-PolarityP and thereby get out of the scope of negation. (So when you get
mikwa miwa already not, it's because the
mikwa already has moved, not the
miwa not.)
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itamu kwasu, k =aikanawi=su sati k =ikjamii=su wai
Itamu QUOT DET=land =DEIC.1 COM DET=river =DEIC.1 TOP
jakwi miwa i =kaɲi aɲiki
2p NEG DET=pride know
Itamu said, "You do not know the power of this land and this river."
Bam!
aɲiki know is used here in place of
inakasu hear of, know of. It's denying knowledge that you would have not by hearing the power or about it, but by living there and actually experiencing it (or something). (
aɲiki is know-of rather than know-that, for which there is
hakwai.)
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ai, k =ani =wati jani na hjasi kja jaikati wamau hja a kawi=wati wa, jakwi.
VOC DET=time=DEIC.3 then REL nose REL Jaikati come arrive(PFV) DAT Kawi=LOC CIS 2p
And that was the first time the slavers came to the Kawi.
Maybe it's interesting that this concluding statment has the initial
ai (also the first word in the narration as a whole) and the final afterthought pronoun characteristic of imperatives.