RV: First original text

Oops! A couple of mistakes and notes...

>
> Amu   ly        kalpa amu   teegasi        sa.
> river be_of.SUB lord  river accumulate.GEN cannot
> 'The lord of the river cannot keep the river.'
_Sa_ 'cannot' is a merging of _t-is-a_; the root is
<t-> 'can, be able', <-is-> is the negation infix, and
<-a> is for direct marking. As with all auxiliary verbs,
the main verb goes first and in the 'genitive' form.

> Ai   lury          ho     ai   palasi   ho  saaka.
That should be:

 Ai   lury          ho     ai   paly     ho  taaka.
 land be_of.INV.SUB person land have.SUB man can.not_be
 'The one of the land cannot be the one that has the land.'

Here _taaka_ is the root <t->, conjugated (_ta_), and then
added the negation verb _ka_ (which produces reduplication
of the previous vowel). The underlying structure is *t-a-sk-a,
can-DIR-not_be-DIR; Wamen can't have /s/ closing a syllable
so there's compensatory vowel lengthening (as a duplication).
DIR is direct marking, which means just that the verb form
is finite and that the first argument and topic is the
subject. The verb-suffix here translated as 'not be' is
actually better rendered as 'not be the case'; so _ai paly
ho taaka_ is more like "(he) can (be) the man who has the
land that's not the case", "it's not the case that he can
(be)..." etc. As you see, there's zero copula. Many of the
auxiliary verbs like <t-> can also be thought as including
a copula.


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/index.html
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/draseleq.html