Re: CHAT: TRANS: I learned Swedish in Uppsala.

At 17:51 01/25/2000 -0600, you wrote:
>I'm the originator of the sentence, so I suppose I
>should contribute a Tokana translation:
>
>Ma ispun ulumat itom sulmo Suelia ite' Upsalai
>"I learned to speak Swedish in Uppsala"
[tokana deleted]

OK. I had to think hard about this one in Kelen, because 'learn' isn't one
of those easy verbs where the case relations of the learner and the thing
learned are straightforward. So, taking the Swedish language as both topic:

s-ale te an so'ren eswe'rene su' u'psa'la'

where "se+ale" is the transaction relational se with the 1p recipient
pronoun, "te" is the past aspect marker, "an so'ren eswe'rene" is 'the
Swedish language', and "su' u'psa'la'" is "at Uppsala". or paraphrased: I
received the Swedish language at Uppsala.

If one wanted to take 'I' as the topic, then:

pa le ien an so'ren eswe'rene to te su' u'psa'la'

where "pa" is the relational governing the sentence, saying that the
relation between 1p "le" and the comment (marked by "ien") is one of
experiencer-experience. "an so'ren eswe'rene" is a straightforward noun
phrase coll.article+noun = language and "eswe'rene" is an adjective meaning
Swedish. Then comes "to te su' u'psa'la'" which is best translated as "from
time-was at Uppsala".

One could also say

pa ci ien an so'ren eswe'rene to te su' u'psa'la'

the only change from above is to use the 1p agentive 'ci', which would
imply something like:
(Through great effort and will), I made myself learn Swedish while in Uppsala.

Occasionally I miss having verbs.

Sylvia

places to go, people to see, verbs to conjugate...




Sylvia Sotomayor
sylvia1@ix.netcom.com
http://pw2.netcom.com/~sylvia1/