Re: "Bird in Tree" translation (was: Re: milimpulaktasin)

J Matthew Pearson wrote:
>
> Robert Hailman wrote:
>
<snip>

> > Phonetically:
> > /'odap vis'enapoki 'uxoto el'pisoto ab'rano/
> > /'nomap vis'enapa/
> > /'duz 'naja 'upoti 'uzot xinvis'enot 'dorot fel'den/
> > /'o: xinvis'enot 'upoti 'nan/
>
> Random questions about Ajuk:
> (1) How many genders are there?
That's kind of a tricky answer - the short answer would be that there's
4: inanimate, masculine, feminine, and neuter/unknown. However, the only
fixed gender distinction is inanimate/animate - no animate word has a
fixed gender, (unless it's required by the definition of the word) as
long as within a sentance the word and everything that should agree it
gender with it has the same gender. Indeed, in informal speech the
distinction does collapse into just inanimate/animate, the affixes being
-ot- and -ep-, which are the inanimate and neuter gender affixes in
standard Ajuk.

Another thing, the dialog is in somewhat casual, but not outright
informal, Ajuk. It's the type that would be used between a student and a
teacher in an informal setting, or between two coworkers. There isn't
much slang, but there aren't many formalities either.

> (2) In addition to case marking, this language seems to have an extravagant
> amount of agreement (not a bad thing, just noteworthy).  Given that fact, I
> would expect Ajuk to have an extremely free word order.  Does it?  It's
> even conceivable that Ajuk would allow discontinuous constituents, as in
> many Australian languages.  A sentence such as "Abrano odap ukhoto
> visenapoki elpisoto", although perhaps strange, would be perfectly
> unambiguous, it seems to me.  Does Ajuk have anything like this kind of
> freedom?
Not really, in short. The main freedom of order is that sentances can be
SVO or OVS, and within a noun phrase word order is pretty much
completely free, except that the noun in almost all cases comes last.
However, the agreement does mean that there is some leeway - if I forgot
to mention the small tree, I could say something like "Odap visenapoki
ukhoto abrano elpisoto." Even though the the adjective is outside the
noun phrase, it'd still be understood. You can do that in more
convoluted sentances, too, as long as there aren't two noun phrases with
the same gender, number, and case in there.

> (3) Along the same lines:  Seeing as you have full person/number/gender
> subject agreement on the verbs, is it possible to leave out the subject
> pronouns?  Can you say "Visenapa" for "I see (it)", or do you have to say
> "Nomap visenapa"?
Yeah, you can, in short. It's fairly rare outside of very informal
speech, though. Ajuk speakers don't really like to leave a verb on it's
own in a sentance.

> (4) I gather the stress rule is:  Stress the last syllable of the root.  Is
> that right?
That's exactly right.

> (5) Finally, why is "odap" pronounced /'erap/?  Just a weird idiosyncrasy,
> or is there method to the madness?  I ask because the orthography seems
> otherwise entirely sensible.
Ook. You caught a mistake - originally I had "erap" in there, but that's
the 3rd person. When I corrected the text and the interlinear, I forgot
to change it in the pronouncation. /'odap/ is the correct
pronounciation. I've corrected it up above, too, although that doesn't
make much of a differenec.

It's always a pleasure to answer questions about Ajuk.

--
Robert