relay: from Asiteya to Doraya

        Um, okay, I apologize for the delay . . . here's Jennifer's
Asiteya text, followed by my (mostly unremarkable) Doraya translation.

axa watalu wa k@ e sa ise xerehan
axa adoyamu wa k@ isiuh xiuhine ihwedy@h hu ta ayera
axa xerehu wa k@ iso nolane ayihxek alayu hu
tah axereha wa na seikimes sayanine inya hu

A great bird, if she sings...
A bird of the river, if she ruffles her feathers in the mist...
A bird of song, if she praises the stars of the night...
Then the song, that every ruler hears it...

--

The "smoooooth" English translation:

A great bird, when it sings a song,
A bird of the river, when it ruffles its feathers in the mist,
A bird of song, when it praises the stars of the night,
Then this song, may all rulers listen to it.

The "not-so-smoooooth" interlinear (sorta) translation:

ele' avai ana   yasa sae aidor
when bird great sing it song

ele' avai ae lisora    umai  sae uninfuis       ke lityrsa
when bird of DEF-river scare it  its-PL-feather in DEF-river

ele' avai ae aidor dio-ku-buna sae indor   ae likidor
when bird of song  praise      it  PL-star of DEF-night

ui   li'aidor ui  inda radya     ini'ta'eresar sae
then DEF-song FOC may  listen-to PL-all-ruler  it

Abbreviations:
DEF: definite article prefix
PL: plural
FOC: focus marker

Notes:

1) The <e'> in _ele'_ is supposed to be an <e> with an acute accent, and
the <i'> in _ini'ta'eresar_ is supposed to be an <i> with an acute
accent.  I didn't want to bother with figuring out how to make the
accents work right.

2) As you can tell, Doraya is really, really isolating.  Word order is
usually VSO, but lately I've been experimenting with making focus-fronting
mandatory, making many sentences SVO.  Focus fronting usually goes
something like this:

        If the focus is the subject of the sentence, it comes before the
verb and gets replaced in the main VSO clause by a corresponding pronoun,
e.g.:

        yasa avai ana   li'aidor
        sing bird great DEF-song
        The great bird sings the song. (nothing is focused)

        avai ana   yasa sae li'aidor
        bird great sing it  DEF-song
        The great bird, it sings the song. (subject is focused)

        If the focus is a non-subject clause or phrase, it comes before
the sentence followed by _ui_, replaced in the main VSO clause by a
corresponding pronoun, e.g.:

        li'aidor ui  yasa avai ana   sae
        DEF-song FOC sing bird great it
        The song is sung by the great bird. (object is focused)

3) _umai infuis_ 'scare feathers' is Doraya's idiom for "to ruffle
feathers." _umai_ 'scare' is associated with all sorts of little,
jittering movements like that.

4) My translation of the last phrase ("the song, may all rulers listen
to it") is sort of a cop-out; I don't yet have a structure for a
third-person imperative, so I just used the adverbial word _inda_ 'may',
which can have a permissive or optative meaning.


--

Later,
Adam