Re: vocab #2.2

On Friday 25 October 2002 21:21, Aidan Grey wrote:
> correlative pronouns
> 1. whoever
> Whoever stole my wallet is going to die!
Kélen doesn't use correlatives in this context. Instead, sentence 1
comes out as:
reheme anLáta mo órra ñamma [my wallet] jaTála;
where
órra ñamma [my wallet] jaTála;
is a complete sentence: "He took my wallet" or more literally "He
made my wallet become taken."
Likewise
reheme anLáta
is also a complete sentence "He will die."
The particle mo which connects the two is a benefactive case marker,
renaming the he who is going to die and equating it with the he who
took my wallet.

> 2. Which
> Which one do you like better?
Okay, here is one:
sere jatañén ná to ja-kéñ;
to-you pleasure more from which?
kéñ is the question marker.

> 3. scale
> What kind of bathroom scale do you have?
> How many scales are there on a trout?
> Someone scaled the wall silently.
No bathroom scales.
Fish scales are -tíán-
as in
pa [trout] jatíáni jé jánnara ja-kéñ;
trout have scales jé quantity which?
(I can't explain jé. It just needs to be there.)
As to scaling a wall, sory one merely goes up it...
órra ñi mapé rá japérren ól ho ansóha;
past-completed NI someone to wall up manner silence.
órra ñi ... rá means "went"

> 4. throat
-kóL-
> My throat hurt, so I guessed I had some kind of infection.
pa lekóLa anpíññe tó-jáo pa lién jatóla tele honahan japóTa;
PA my-throat hurt therefore PA 1p-sg belief to-me+past
some-kind-of-thing, a sickness.

> 5. set
> Every one of the dish sets was chipped
te anTáwi nár pa jacíra jaketúra;
LA+past set each PA dish damaged-one.
OK, that's paraphrased to:
Each set had a damaged dish.

> Everytime he sets the table, he forgets the spoons.
setting the table is an idiom, and I'm not sure it exists in Kélen.

> 6. slight
> Whenever her son has a slight cough, she takes him to the doctor.
Kélen would use 'small' when describing a cough in this manner.
il pa mísa jakáha jíña il semme sáen mo máltanen;
when PA child cough small-one then from-her-to-him he to healer
Here from-her means the mother to-him means the doctor and the 3p
pronoun sáen refers to the child.  máltanen renames the him in to-him.

That's all for now.  Maybe I'll do more later.
-Sylvia

--
Sylvia Sotomayor
sylvia1@ix.netcom.com

The Kélen language can be found at:
http://home.netcom.com/~sylvia1/Kelen/kelen.html

This post may contain the following characters:
á (a-acute); é (e-acute); í (i-acute); ó (o-acute); ú (u-acute);
ñ (n-tilde);

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