Re: Simple sentences and how difficult they can be.

This is hard to say anything about without glosses, so I read up.

Sylvia wrote:
<<
tamma jahārme
'She swam'.
 >>

So what's missing here is that this is the past tense, third person
singular source/null goal conjugation of SE, so it's something like,
"from her, a swim".  The latter would be something like...

anX
N
"Xing (the activity)"

~

jaX
N
"a(n) X (an instance of the activity)"

Right?

If so, only two questions remain:

(1) Is the an~ja thing productive with other verbish/actiony
type nouns?  So you could have anY "running" and jaY "a run";
anZ "skiing", jaZ "a ski (as in, "Let's all go out for a nice ski!")?  I
ask because I know these guys are supposed to do other things
(marking collectives and inanimate non-collectives).

(2) So if this is what it means with a null goal, what would it
mean with a goal?  For example...

temme jaharme ke malacin mo macuma

(macron on the second a of "jaharme"; second a and i of "malacin";
u of "macuma"; tilde over the n in "malacin")

So, "From the girl to the man, a swim" = ?  If saying "The girl
swam to the man" would require a different particle (NI), would
this have to mean something like, "The girl gave the man a
swim"?

(3) A word for "girl", but no word for "boy"?  Alas, my poor
gender!  ;)  Maybe makamin? (macron on the "a")

-David
*******************************************************************
"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/

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