Skerre has gone a fair number of changes recently, so I decided that this
would be a good place to do some testing of my changes (thanks Aidan for
providing the vocab and sentences)
> Vocab:
> 1. doctor / healer
stejan (< s- agent nominalizer + tejan Œheal¹)
> 2. medicine
(treatment)=sitejan (< si- generic nominalizer + tejan Œheal¹)
(substance)=othenoo (o- COLL + thenoo Œmedinical substance¹)
> 3. ear
thon
> 4. eye
tsii
> 5. friend
arik
> 6. itch and/or scratch
kotija (v)
> 7. hurt / pain (the verb ... or not)
be hurt (v)= tehek
pain, be in pain (v)=tsix (transitive)
> 8. diagnosis
sihacatin (si- generic nominalizer + hacatin Œdiagnose¹)
> 9. cure / heal
tejan (doesn¹t really mean Œcure,¹ just Œheal¹)
> 10. ill
be ill (v)=nax
> Context:
> 1. She is my doctor.
Ajek-ta stejani hen
IMPF-be=3SG doctor-POSS¹D 1SG
This is an example of alienable possession in Skerre, where the head noun
has the i suffix and the possessor is an independent pronoun
> 2. _That_ is _my_ medicine, and _this_ is yours.
Ter ajek othenooi hen, tir ajek tari nen
that:PROX IMPF-be medicine-POSS'D 1SG, this IMPF-be this-POSS'D 2SG
The contrastive focusing is grammatically achieved by fronting the _ter_ and
_tir_ before the verbal complex.
> 3. She looked in their ears.
Ehasee-ta othone-te
PERF-examine=3SG COLL-ear-PL=3PL
ŒShe examined their ears¹
The lack of the possessed suffix and the presence of the clitic _te_
indicates inalienable possession
The effect of having both the collective and plural affixes on Œear¹ means
that examiner examined lots of pairs of ears.
> 4. She looked in (or tested, or..) her (someone else's) eye.
Ehasee-ta tsii-ta
PERF-examine=3SG eye=3SG
The presence of two _ta_¹s means that the two 3SG are not co-referential; if
they were, tsii Œeye¹ would not have any possessive morpheme.
> 5. Our friends are ill.
Senax arikei heken.
STAT-be.ill friend-PL-POSS'D 1PL
One could use the phrase with inalienable possession (_arike-he_) and still
be grammatical, but it would imply that these are absolutely inseparable
friends.
> 6. His scratch (the one on him) is worse than his scratch (the one he
> caused on someone else unspecified).
Sejek qara that sikotijai ten eth sikotija to ejojas-ta tar
STAT-be bad more NOM-scratch-POSS'D 3SG than NOM-scratch REL
PERF-TRANS-give=3SG this
ŒHis (alienable) scratch is worse than the scratch he gave out.¹
TRANS is translocative, the directional that signals motion away.
Note that Skerre uses resumptive pronouns in relative clauses like the _tar_
in _to ejojas-ta tar_.
> 7. Do y'all's heads hurt? / Do you guys have headaches?
Va acix tatara neken?
Q PERF-pain PL-head 2PL
ŒDo (your) heads pain you?¹
The person(s) affected must be the object for the verb _tsix_ (and yes, I
know I'm being inconsistent with {ts} and {c}--I'm still deciding how I want
to transcribe /ts/, which has recently become a full phoneme in Skerre)
> 8. His diagnosis (that he gave) is that she will get better.
Ejik sihacatin-ta naa vontejan-ta
PERF-say NOM-diagnose=3SG COMP FUT-MID-heal=3SG
'His diagnosis says that she will heal.'
Agents appear in nominalizations as inalienable possessors.
> 9. His diagnosis (for the disease he has) has a cure.
A'ik thaara ja sinaxi ten
IMPF-exist remedy LOC NOM-be.ill-POSS'D 3SG
'A rememdy exists for his illness'
> 9a. She will cure my friends.
Votejan-ta arikei hen
FUT-heal=3SG friend-PL-POSS'D 1SG
> 10. I am not ill anymore
Ko anax-ha neja.
NEG IMPF-be.ill=1SG still
'I am not still sick.'
Doug Ball
http://tsketar.tripod.com/skerre/