Deg hannaid alloryaro allad doideneu houh aimuhi, allugum hingim alluno hodig eunai.
/dɛg ˈhanːajd alːˈɔɾjaɾɔ ˈʔalːad ˈdɔjdɛnu həwx ajˈmuhi ˈalːugum ˈhiŋgim ˈalːunɔ ˈhɔdig ˈɛwnaj/
- Deg
- PST:GO
- hannai-d
- brother-PROX
- allorya-ro
- REL.PST:ABL-DIST
- allad
- REL.PST:PROP
- doidene-eu
- early-more
- houh
- ALL
- aimuhi,
- dawn
- allugum
- REL.PST:INST
- hingim
- boat
- allu-no
- REL.PST:ACT-3p
- hod-ig
- create-anim.sg
- eun-ai.
- COM-RECP
The brothers left before dawn, in the boat they had built together.
New auxiliaries:
ad (PROP) property - 'A has property B' 'A has the capacity to do B'
gum (INST) instrument - 'A using B', 'A in manner B'
This sentence has three clausal modifiers explicitly marked, followed by a relative clause (headed by ACT). Leima has five impersonal pronouns, each with a singular and plural form (pronouns are the only place grammatical number appears in Leima), and 'boat' gets the appropriate retained pronoun in the relative clause, the animate, which includes live animals, groups of people and animals, nations, vehicles, and body parts. I thought 'with each other' is a nice way of rendering 'together'.
The comparative
-eu is one of eleven degree suffixes. The standard of comparison is usually marked with the ablative - use of the allative here is conditioned by the flow of time.
Degwe gimra yoer meih oengen em Lohnamih goud rug duma eraig ohwe.
/ˈdɛgwɛ ˈgimɾa jɜːɾ məjx ˈɜːŋgɛn ɛm ˈlɔxnamix gəwd ɾug ˈduma ˈʔɛɾajg ˈɔxwɛ/
- Deg-we
- PST:GO-3p
- gimra
- boat.travel
- yoer
- VIA
- mei=h
- behind=PART
- oengen
- river
- em
- ID
- Lohnamih
- Lohnamih
- goud
- and.then
- rug
- LOC
- duma
- tree
- eraig
- around
- oh-we.
- PART-3p
They went down the river called Lohnamih, until the trees surrounded them.
New auxiliaries:
yoer (VIA) vialis - 'A through B', 'A along path B'
oh or
=h (PART) partitive - 'A of B' covering: inalienable possession, part, aspect, position, material
Leima speakers are spread across the valley system of a river basin. It's common to travel by river, which is why 'boat travel' gets its own verb. Speakers prefer to orient their speech relative to their boat or the nearest river.
Position is indicated using relational nouns, often with the partitive auxiliary connecting it to the frame of reference. A number of these cover position and orientation - e.g.
mei means 'upstream' or 'directly behind, facing the same direction', here indicating they are passively following the flow of the river. Relational nouns ending in a vowel often appear with a reduced form of the partitive, even when the partitive carries a suffix, e.g.
meiha 'behind me' (behind=PART-1s). (I'm pretty sure it makes sense to gloss this as a clitic?)
The conjunction
goud is used for sequential events, and covers 'and then', 'until' and 'before'.
Dain oengen roameir ad hoaneo geo dad ehidoh hihaine.
/dajn ˈɜːŋgɛn ˈɾɔ͡əməjɾ ad hɔ͡əˈnɜː gɜː dad ˈɛhidɔx hiˈhajnɛ/
- Dain
- PST:STA
- oengen
- river
- roameir
- flow
- ad
- PROP
- hoaneo
- speed
- geo
- and.simult
- dad
- PST:PROP
- ehidoh
- forest
- hihai-ne.
- quiet-much
The river ran fast and the forest was very quiet.
"The river was in a state of fast flow" - hmm,
roameir looks avalent to me, so perhaps PROP is redundant here!
Another conjunction
geo 'when/while' or 'and' for simultaneous events - there's also
nen 'before.which/after/since' and the generic
geam 'and'. They all have disjunctive counterparts.
The degree suffix
-ne covers 'much', 'many' and 'very'.
Du Eine araug hou hannai,
/du ˈʔəjnɛ ʔaˈɾawg həw ˈhanːaj/
- Du
- PST:ACT
- Eine
- Eine
- araug
- say
- hou
- ALL
- hannai,
- brother
Eine said to his brother,
Oh dear, technically the entire utterance is the object of
araug, and the syntax doesn't allow modifying material to intervene between verb and object. I'll let this one slide for now...
"Weayedain ouh gei homu oem ad hilleo rug ehidode di dallih.
/ˈwɛ͡əjɛdajn əwx gəj ˈhɔmu ʔɜːm ad ˈhilːɜː ɾug ˈɛhidodɛ di ˈdalːix/
- "We-a-yedain
- INC-E-FUT:STA
- ouh
- night
- gei
- do
- homu
- soon
- oem
- but.also
- ad
- PROP
- hilleo
- nowhere
- rug
- LOC
- ehido-de
- forest-PROX
- di
- RS
- dallih.
- rest
"Night will fall soon but there is nowhere to camp in this forest.
The stative
wain gets future tense and inceptive aspect marking. On most auxiliaries the future prefix
ye- displaces the onset, but when that onset is a glide, the past form is used as a base. The inceptive prefix requires some epenthesis here, as a simple vowel is disallowed before a glide. Simple /e/ is extended to the combined vowel /ea/, which is a centralising diphthong [ɛ͡ə]. Note that all VV sequences in Leima are tautosyllabic, being either diphthongs or long vowels (e.g. /aa/ [ɑː]).
The B argument of
wain is
gei, the dummy substantive, whose sense depends on the auxiliary. The simple present
Wain ouh gei would literally be 'night is happening'. Were something particular entering a state of night, it might be specified, but it's not, so
ouh appears as argument A, and
gei as B, since both arguments are always required. If Eine wasn't such a rural fellow, he might have chosen to use the inceptive full verb
weih 'begin', and said
"Yedain ouh weih".
Likewise,
dallih 'rest' is a full verb counterpart of the pausative aspect prefix
dar-. Here it's the B argument of PROP, literally 'nowhere ... is restful'. The resumptive particle
di appears before it because of the distance the modifier introduces between it and the auxiliary. Without it, it could feel like a garden path sentence: 'nowhere in this restful forest is...' (...is what??)
We also have two adverbs,
homu 'soon' and
hilleo 'nowhere'. Aside from a few specials (that I might revise), these are built from a base noun plus one of the demonstrative, quantifier, or degree suffixes - which is a regular productive process. Their special property as adverbs is that they can appear modifying at clause level without an auxiliary head (the implicit auxiliary is the locative
rug).
homu 'soon' =
ho 'time forward from, hence' +
-mu -MED (medial demonstrative)
hilleo 'nowhere' =
hir 'place' +
-reo 'no, none' (negative quantifier)
In this sentence,
hilleo is the A argument of PROP, so it's not technically being utilised as an adverb. The other base nouns for adverbial use are:
mo 'way/manner',
er 'point in time', and
gau 'ago, time back from'.
Demonstrative deixis is three way: proximal
-d(e) near the speaker, medial
-m(u) near the addressee, and distal
-ro far from both SPs - spatially at least; it's just linear for temporal deixis. Demonstratives are determiners when attached to nouns, and pronouns when attached to verbs and auxiliaries. We've seen
-ro behaving as a demonstrative pronoun above, in
alloryaro 'from there' - literally 'from that' (REL.PST:ABL-DIST), but the spatial semantics of the ablative are sufficient that the full adverb
hillo 'there' is not required.
The conjunction
oem 'but' is the disjunctive counterpart of
geam.
Yoin hau idyeana gimra yoer ouh."
/jɔjn haw ʔidjɛ͡əna gimɾa jɜːɾ əwx/
- Yoin
- so
- hau
- HORT
- id-yean-a
- CONT-FUT.ACT.2s-1s
- gimra
- boat.travel
- yoer
- VIA
- ouh."
- night
We should continue travelling through the night."
Another conjunction
yoin 'so, thus, therefore', followed by the hortative mood particle, and then continuative aspect on the auxiliary. With first and second person pronouns, the basic active auxiliary (i.e. not the relative form) is fused, with /u/ being elided. In the present tense, the epenthetic /m/ is retained, e.g.
ma ACT.1s, while in the past and future, the pronoun and tense affixes attach directly, e.g.
ye-en >
yean FUT.ACT.2s.