Piata complement clauses and dem.prons (was: Re: OT More pens)

Stone Gordonssen wrote:

> My lower case "i" has a dot, my upper case "J" was similar to the
> "F" but with no cross bar in the middle, and my upper case "X" was
> like a "9" and a "6" butted together.
All I have to say is that "le-kituu e-iloo luachishi ite".

In a desperate attempt to bring this thread into on-topicness,
I went ahead and made up how to form complement clauses in Piata.
It turns out that they are introduced by a prefix {e-}.

I also had to come up with the demonstrative pronouns. They distinguish
number, distance and animacy. Fixed-width font, please. :)

                      SINGULAR              PLURAL
                   ANIM.    INANIM.     ANIM.   INANIM.
PROXIMATE (NEAR)    ite      ite        itte     ite
MEDIAL (NOT NEAR)   ate      aite       atte     aitte
DISTAL (FAR)        upe      upte       uppe     upte

And, at last, an interlinear of the sentence at the beginning
of this mail:

le -kitu -u     e-    ilo    -o     luachi     -shi  ite
1>3-think-PAST  COMPL-be:dead-PAST  thread/yarn-PEJ  DEM.SG.INANIM.
'I thought that this darned thread was dead.'

Literally: 'I thought it, that dead was this thread.'

_Kitu_ 'to think' is a transitive verb, and it always takes a
complement clause. Hence the {le-} prefix, which means that a
first person is acting upon a third person.

PEJ means "Pejorative", which is kind of mild and usually
translated 'old' or 'darned'.

Also, the word order changes in complement clauses from SVO
to VSO. The verb always comes first in such clauses.

Daniel Andreasson