Re: Oldvak - something to figure out

From: "Robert B Wilson" <han_solo55@...>
Subject: Re: Oldvak - something to figure out


> >    "Egeltas piabaya, egenelt dvalderas, nur egirelt ati."
> >    "When I am at the meadow, I am not in the woods, but I may be on
> > my way
> > there."
> >    "Egireltyeu dvalderi.  Dvalder aleltu egi."
> >    "I am not stopping my going to the forest.  The forest stopped
> > coming to
> > me."
> apparently the stem of the verb is 'elt' and means something like 'to be
> at'... 'eg-' and 'al-' seem to be prefixed subject pronouns or something
> like that... i'm guessing 'ir' is some sort of aspect marker
> (continuative?)...
Good guesses so far.

> so we have:
> eg.elt.as piabaya, eg.en.elt  dvalder.as nur eg.ir.elt   at.i.
> 1sg.be.in meadow,  1sg.NEG.be forest.in, but 1sg.CONT.be there.to.
"Egelt" is indeed "I am", but "as" (which does mean "in", more or less) is
appended to the verb, not the noun.

"Egenelt dvalderas" is just as you describe it.  The only problem in the
last part is your guess for "ir", which is not continuative, but that the
verb is not known to be true or false.

> eg.ir.elt.ye.u         dvalderi.  dvalder al.elt.u       egi.
> 1s.CONT.be.NEG.stopped forest.to. forest  3sg.be.stopped 1sg.to.
"Ir" and "ye" are misidentified, but "u" is a cessative marker as you have
surmised.  The rest is all correct.

> i'm wondering about "egeltas piabaya", though... if i'm right about the
> rest i'd think it should be "egelt piabayas" or something similar.
"Egelt piabayas" would mean "I am in the meadow", but for this part, the
English translation was much closer to the meaning.

All in all, you figured out a lot without much to go on.  Bravo!