Re: Vocab #5

Philip Newton <Philip.Newton@...> wrote:
> The coffee was very bitter today.
> Miho kape pihi chali amata nichi.
> Beverage coffee [of] now day [is/was] very bitter.
That kind of construction sounds very Polynesian to me -- if you had
put the verb at the beginning, it would seem even more so to me!
"Was very bitter beverage coffee of day now"
<<<
plenty of langs do that though--like khmer:

Tuk kafe thngay nih l'ving naa.
Water coffee day this bitter very.
(but you would usually drop "tuk")

the tunu word for |today| is either |chali pihi| "day now" or |pihi chali| "now
day". adverbs are made with |wa-| "with-" like in hebrew and indonesian and can
often be turned into auxiliaries in front of the verb--like in hebrew and
indonesian too: "kape anichi wamata" = "the coffee [is] bitter with-very" >
"kape amata nichi" = "the coffee [is] very bitter" (tunu tags the predicate with
|a-|.)

the SVO word order of  polynesian langs is quite different from the SVO tunu one
but fronting the predicate is possible in tunu by making it topical:
Anichi wamata aimiho kape (yu-)chali pihi.
Is-bitter with-very TOPIC-beverage coffee (which-in-)day now.

note: |ch| = [tS]

Mathias
http://takatunu.free.fr/tunugram.htm

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