Piata tidbit (was: Re: Translation thingy)

Uhm... someone wrote:

>  > > "The girl who was hit by her brother was punished".
>  > > "The girl who hit her brother was punished"
Here's a small taste of Piata. Note that all vowels
are to be pronounced separately. There are no diphthongs
in Piata. Relative clauses begin with a prefix |to-| and
end with a clitic suffix |-i|. The grapheme |v| is /V/
as in English "cut". This looks *so* much better with the
point upwards, but with just ascii... And if Choctaw can
use |v|, then so can Piata. :) |u| is pronounced /8/ when
unstressed and /M/ when stressed.

'The girl who was hit by her brother was punished' would
be rendered thusly:

"Hualli tofasvtto fichapaai vtusuuyoto."

/hu"al:i tofa"sVt:o fitSa"pa:i Vt8s8:"joto/

hualli    to -fa-svtto        fi       -chapaa  =i
girl:AGT  REL-3 -brother:AGT  3AGT/3PAT-hit:PAST=REL.END
'The girl, who was hit by her brother,'

vtusuu          -yoto
be_punished:PAST-INCH
'was punished.'

A literal translation would be 'The girl, who her
brother hit her, became puhished.'

Note that _hualli_ 'girl' is marked as AGT because the verb
is in the inchoative aspect. Innate traits are marked with
the PAT case since they're not seen as controlled, but if
someone is *becoming* something, then it is seen as controlled.
This has spread to all uses of the inchoative. (Yes, Piata
is an active language. :)

I'm not sure if there is a problem with the girl being in the
AGT case in the main clause and then being referred to as in
the PAT case in the subclause, with the brother being the AGT.
Can anyone help me here?


And 'The girl who hit her brother was punished' would be:

"Hualli tofichapaa fasvttoi vtusuuyoto."

/hu"al:i tofi"tSapa: fasVt:"oi Vt8s8:"yoto/

Hualli    to -fi       -chapaa    fa-svtto  =i
girl:AGT  REL-3AGT/3PAT-hit:PAST  3 -brother=REL.END
'The girl, who hit her brother,'

vtusuu          -yoto
be_punished:PAST-INCH
'was punished.'

And the literal translation would go 'The girl, who
she him hit, her brother, became punished.'

Comments?

Daniel Andreasson

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