The coverb movement construction in Copala Triqui

Copala Triqui has a construction in which two verbs share a subject when one of the verbs is a verb of motion.  The relationship between the two is reminiscent of control, in that it appears that the two much be in the same aspect and have the same subject.

Some examples.  The first one has a coverb relationship between cavii and ca'anj:

Luke 19:28

Here is another one.  Here the relationship is again between cavii and ca'anj, but the twist is that both are now in lower tone register (shown with underline) because
a.) The first verb is negated, and negation causes the tone register to flip, and
b.) The second verb agrees with the first in register.

John 11:6

Example number 3.  Here I've only clipped the second half of the sentence, starting in the translation with 'and he went and he arrived...'  I think that there are two coverb constructions here, if I understand correctly.  The first is the ca'anj...cuchi' 'go & arrive' in the first line.  The second is the ca'a̱nj...qui'ya̱j 'go and do (medicine)' in the second and third lines.

Notice the repetition of the subject in both cases and the matching register.  (Upper register for the first example, lower register for the second example.)

BTW, there is standard control between the object of the preposition rihaan 'to' following the verb achíín ni'ya̱j 'ask a favor' and complement clause 'go and heal'.

John 4:47

 Example 4 is the same 'go and heal' construction, but in a different passage:

Luke 10:34

Example 5 is from a folktale about possum's tale.  Note the sequence cunánj..ca'anj...quiri'  'ran and went and got'.  

The last example does raise the possibility that some examples of this are a kind of covert coordination.   It would be good to test with speakers whether it is possible to have sequences like this when the subjects are different or the registers do not agree.

Causative constructions in Copala Triqui, continued

In an old post, I pointed out some unusual causative examples in Copala Triqui.

Here is another example in a text that shows some more of the syntax:

The literal translation is something like 'Although [[you suffer problems] causes Spanish]..' corresponding to 'Although Spanish causes you problems..'

Verbs of wearing in San Dionisio Ocotepec Zapotec and Copala Triqui

Work in progress -- Verbs of wearing in Zapotec and Copala Triqui show tremendous complexity in the relationship between the lexical semantics and the syntactic realization of the arguments.  They include whether the person, the body part of the person, or the item of the clothing is selected as subject of the sentence. I think these verbs pose tremendous problems for simple versions of mapping theory.

 

Verbs of wearing in San Dionisio Ocotepec Zapotec

 

Verb	Subject	Object	Items	Example	Translation
rr-cáá	Clothing	Body part of Person	glasses, tattoos, scars, shoes, watches	1.) Cáá rrèlòj náá=eby	1.) He is wearing a watch (on his hand).
r-ajcw	Person	Clothing	shirt, dress (vestido)	1) R-àjcw Juáàny cùtòòny.	1.) Juan is wearing a shirt. (15:011)
r-áày	Person	Clothing	skirt, diapers	1.) N-ááy bdòò zù'údy	1.) The baby is wearing diapers.
rr-be'cy	Person	Clothing	pants, underwear	1.) Rr-bè'cy Juáàny pàntlòòn.	1.) Juan is wearing pants.
n-ù'ú	Clothing	Body part of Person	earrings, false teeth, wigs, stockings, belts, girdles, gloves, ribbons, hat	1.)N-ù'ú lìxtóóny ììcy=bi. 2.) N-ù'ú làày pòstííjs rù'ú=by	1.)She has a ribbon on her head. 2. He has false teeth in his mouth. (15:030)

 

 

 

Verbs of wearing in Copala Triqui

Verb	Subject	Object	Items	Example	Translation
'nij	Body part of Person	Clothing	shoes, gloves, sash	'nij ra'a Juán nuj guanté. Juán 'nij catuu̱n marque̱.	Juan is wearing gloves. Juan is wearing a sash. [Inserted BP Theme]
nuu (1)	Person	Clothing	shirt, huipil, pants, dress, underwear	Nuu Juán cotoó mare̱e.	Juan is wearing a red shirt [Wear Person Theme]
nuu (2)	Clothing	Body part of person	hat, mask	Nuu nave̱ raa̱ Juán. Nuu nuj na'na̱ rihaan Juán.	Juan has a hat on his head. Juan has a mask on his face. [Is-placed Theme BP]
nuu (3)	Body part of person	Clothing	glasses, ring, watch	Nuu rihaan Juán scura̠a̠n.	Juan is wearing glasses. [Supports BP Theme]
táá	Clothing	Body part of person	turban, mask	Táá tsej raa̱ Juán.	Juan is wearing a turban. [Be-on-top Theme BP]
nacutáj ~ nutáj	Clothing	Body part of person	diaper	Nacuta̱a̱ tséj catuu̱n ne'ej.	The baby will wear a diaper. [Encircle Theme BP]

 

Comparison phrases in Copala Triqui

I was looking today at a pattern in Copala Triqui that is new to me.  These are comparisons where the first half is introduced by nda' rá and the second half is introduced by da̱j.  Consider the following examples:

John 15:12

Or the following:

2 Corinthians 1:5

Medical phrases in Copala Triqui  | 

Frases en triqui de Copala para utilizar en situáciones medicales.

The following phrases may be useful to people who work with Copala Triquis in medical situations.

Me rej ñáán ve' ca'anj re'é' nihánj ga. [Me³ rej³² ñaan⁵ ve'³ ca'anj re'e'⁴ nihanj⁵ ga²] Where is the bathroom here?  Dónde está el baño aquí?   

Taa re'é so' na'. [taa³ re'e⁴ so'¹ na'³ ] Do you need to go to the bathroom?  Quieres ir al baño?

Daj 'yaj rmedió a'ngaj ga. Mee a'ngaj na' ase' a nicun' se a'ngaj. [Daj¹ 'yaj3 rmedio⁴ a'ngaj³² ga'³? Mee¹³ a'ngaj³² na'³ ase'³ a nicun'³ se³² a'ngaj³²?] How did you make out with the pain medicine? Are you still hurting? Or did the pain stop? Qué tal con la medecina de dolor? Todavía te duele? O ya cesó el dolor?     

Dodo' a'ngaj manj á. [Dodo'¹ a'ngaj³² manj³ a⁴.] I am hurting a little.  Me duele poco.   

A'ngaj ndo'o manj á. [A'ngaj³² ndo'o³² manj³ a⁴.] I am hurting a lot.  Me duele mucho.   

  

A'ngaj ndo'o man so' na', ase' dodo' a'ngaj.  [A'ngaj³² ndo'o³² man³ so'¹ na'³ ase'³ dodo'¹ a'ngaj³²] Are you hurting a lot or a little bit?  Es muy fuerte tu dolor, o es leve?   

A'ngaj man so' na'. [A'ngaj³² man³ so'¹ na'³?]Are you in pain? (general pain, ache)  Tienes dolor? (dolor general)   

Me rej a'ngaj man so' ga. [Me³ rej³² a'ngaj³² man³ so'¹ ga²?] Where does it hurt?  Adónde te duele?   

Bulk edit, character formatting, and regular expressions

I am continuing to proofread and correct the Copala Triqui online dictionary at copalatriqui.webonary.org.

One error that crept in at some point was the use of the wrong character styles for accented letters and anything that follows them.  (I think perhaps I cut and pasted these examples from a Word document...)  Consider the following entry:

In this entry, the accented characters are smaller than the characters before them in a way that looks odd.

In FLEx, I found that these characters don't have the default paragraph type, but instead are in a character style called "Character Style 2".  Checking on Character Style 2, I see that it is 12pt, while the Normal Text style is currently set at 16.  I change the Normal style up and down depending on what screen is being used; when we project the entries on the wall for work with our language consultant, I set it to a large font for better visibility.

 I suppose I could have redefined the font characteristics of Character Style 2 to 16pt, but it seemed to me that it would be a pain to always have to remember to change both the Normal Style and Character Style 2.

After trying various regular expressions, I found that this one gives the desired results:

The parentheses set up a capture group, which is referred to by the variable $1 in the Replace With field.  So this regular expression says "look for any character in áéíóúńj with Character Formatting 2 and make that the 1st variable" then "replace it with the 1st Variable but with Default Paragraph Characters format"

Some notes:

• I included n and j because the phonotactics of Triqui make these the only consonants that would follow an accute accent
• You can access the formats under the Format button. It seems like you need to select the whole Find or Replace string first to apply this format.
• In the Bulk Replace window, I set Example Sentences as the Target Field.

After doing this, I exported the project as XHTML again and uploaded it to Webonary.  Here is the same entry after the changes:

Creating an audio dictionary with Webonary -- A web version of the Copala Triqui dictionary

For the last several months, I've been working on a web version of the Copala Triqui dictionary, hosted by the kind people at webonary.org  (part of SIL).  They provided the space for the page and the audio files, and Philip was very helpful in giving me advice.

The current version is available at http://copalatriqui.webonary.org/  (This is a preliminary draft, and not everything works correctly.  Comments welcome!)

Steps in getting this to work:
1) Within FLEx, you output XHTML.  There are a few issues about how to set up the dictionary configuration to deal with multiple writing systems.  The hardest thing was working to get all the audio files to display.

The current configuration of the dictionary prior to export is as in the following entry:

Here the names of the audio files for the lemma and the examples come directly after these elements of the entry.

Because I had originally recorded all the audio in .wav format, I needed to convert all the .wav files to .mp3 format for the web.

If you use the Send/Receive function, then normally the audio files will be located at the following place (substituting the name of your own project):

To hold the file names for the new .mp3 files, I created two custom fields -- Audio for Web and Audio for Web Examples.

The configuration for the Dictionary looks like this, with the Audio fields directly after the Headword and the Example:

2.) To upload the audio, you use a special entry to webonary.org via the AjaXplorer interface.  The interface looks like this:

To get the files onto the system, you use the upload button, and then you see an interface like the following:

3.) To convert the .wav to .mp3, I used Audacity.   You can select a group of files in Windows Explorer and drag them onto the Audacity window.  This has the effect of opening them all at once.

Then you can use the File | Export Multiple command to convert bunches of them to .mp3

4.)  The main XHTML output from FLEx needs to be uploaded in Webonary.  After you log in, you go to the Dashboard, then to Tools | Import | SIL FLEx dictionary, where you see a screen like the following:

Here you use the Choose File button to select the XHTML files generated by the Export function of FLEx.

5.) After doing all this, you should get a web page with audio links.  It is necessary to do a certain amount of editing of your webonary dictionary to get the title, menus, etc. to accurately reflect the name of this dictionary project (and not some other Webonary dictionary for a different language).

Here's a picture of the browse screen for entries beginning with m:

'Goody goody' in Trique

One of my favorite lexical entries in a while is the difficult to translate interjection arsínj, said when a bad person, or a person who has rejected your good advice, gets into trouble.  The closest we could come up with in English was 'Goody! Goody!'

Here is an English expression of the same sentiment.

Clarification on older practical orthography for tone in Copala Triqui

In an earlier post, I was uncertain about the right interpretation of the tone orthography used in Hollenbach's (1977) versions of the Sun and Moon myth.  Barbara Hollenbach was kind enough to clarify for me that in this previous version of the practical orthography " The three lower patterns (1, 2, 13) were written with a single macron on the final vowel."

So cacaā could represent /kakaa¹, kakaa², kakaa¹³/.  The particular line that worried me in the previous post contained the word <cacaā>.  In the current orthographic practice, macron is replaced with underscore, so that would translate to cacaa̱ , and <aa̱> = /aa³¹/.  However, in the orthography of the 1977 texts, cacaā had a different interpretation, and in this text, the right interpretation is /kakaa²/.

Another way in which it is easy to get confused by the 1977 texts is that 31 tone is not indicated in any special way in that orthography.  (It is marked by aa̱ in the current practice, as just mentioned.)

The differences can (I think be summed up this way) for long vowels:

Tone     Current Orthog    Previous Orthog (1977)

3                   aa                          aa
32                 aa                          aa
31                 aa̱                          aa
4                   aá                          aá
5                   áá                          aá
1                   a̱a̱                          aā
2                   a̱a̱                          aā
13                 a̱a                          aā

The previous orthography thus makes only three distinctions — <a, ā, á> — while the current orthography makes six <aa, aa̱, a̱a, a̱a̱, aá, áá> for long vowels.

This does create a practical problem for entering in the 1977 texts in the FLEx database — at one level, it seems desirable to preserve the original orthography of these texts.  On the other hand, it is strongly at variance with the majority of the material, which uses the more recent orthography.   I can't necessarily predict the modern orthography of the word from the older orthography without looking it up in the dictionary and understanding the morphology, so there is no way to do it automatically.

More on causative in Copala Triqui

I wrote a bit about the odd causative construction in Copala Triqui in this post.  To recap, the normal syntax is

[VSO] cause SUBJ.

In the examples cited there, the aspect of the verb 'make' ('yaj) seems to match the aspect of the verb in the complement.  The following example -- if I am interpreting it correctly, seems to show a failure of aspect-matching:

One slight uncertainty -- this text comes from Hollenbach's (1977) version of these texts, published in Tlalocan.  The orthography uses a macron over the vowel to represent low register tone, rather than a line under the vowel.  So the original form of the word that I've retranscribed as cacaa̱ was written cacaā.  

In the usual form of the practical orthography for Triqui tone, cacaa̱ represents only cacaa³¹,  while
cacaa is either cacaa³ or cacaa³².  So as the text is written, it would normally correspond to c-acaa³¹. However, the word for 'burn' in Triqui is acaa³² (practical orthography acaa) and its potential is c-acaa² (c-aca̱a̱).

I'm tentatively guessing that this represents an earlier version of the practical orthography where perhaps both 31 and 32 tones were written vv̱…

If my interpretation is correct, then the two instances of the verb 'burn' are completive, while 'will make' qui'ya̱j is potential.

Update  11/23/2012

Barbara Hollenbach has kindly clarified for me by email the way the older practical orthography for tone worked.  I've tried to summarize my understanding in this post.  That means that my analysis in the earlier post is incorrect in identifying the instances of the verb <cacaā> as cacaa³².  Instead, it is an older way of writing c-acaa², which is the potential aspect form of 'burn'.  Thus the aspect of make (potential)' does match the aspect of the potential, and I don't have a counterexample to the tentative generalization that the two always match.  (A counterexample might still be found, but this doesn't turn out to be a valid counterexample.)

The new analysis of this passage is shown below:

Then he ordered the opossum

I think the syntax of the following line in a Triqui folktale is pretty interesting for its lack of anything like PRO or Condition B effects:

Literally, 'He ordered the opossum (that) it will lower it in the water'.  The verb tanij is in the potential aspect, as is normal for the complement of a verb like 'order'.  But nothing seems to signal the coreference between the main clause object 'opossum' and the two pronouns coreferent to it in the embedded clause.

Phrase-book material in a lexicon

Native speakers or learners of a language often find it useful to have a set of common phrases in the language.  But do these go in the dictionary?

It seems awkward to have entries like the following:

But an alternative is to use the Publications field in FLEx to define a separate Phrasebook.  You configure this via Lists | Publications and add a new Publication called Phrasebook. The default publication is Main Dictionary, so if you haven't changed anything, that is where all the entries will appear.

The default seems to be that all entries are in all publications.   I used the Bulk Edit commands to remove Phrasebook from the Publication lists of all the entry, then went back in and selected the entries I wanted for the Phrasebook.

For this entry, this means adjusting the Publications field to say only Phrasebook and not Main Dictionary.  After changing the field, it now looks like this:

In the lexicon pane, we can pick which dictionary to display.  The default will be the main dictionary:

From the pull-down arrow next to the words Main Dictionary Entries, we can also select other publications, such as the Phrasebook.  The following screen shows a partially populated Phrasebook:

On the trail of accusative in Itunyoso Triqui

Copala Triqui makes very frequent use of man  as an accusative marker.  But does Itunyoso Triqui have an accusative or not?

The Itunyoso Triqui cognate seems to be man'an.  In some uses it seems very much like an accusative:

Mark 1:36

But compare the next sentence in this passage, where man'an does not precede the object pronoun:

Mark 1:37

There is apparently an interesting difference between Itunyoso and Copala in this respect, since in Copala man would be obligatory before the object pronoun.

Compare the same passage in Copala Triqui:

 they said to him 'everyone is looking for you' " Mark 1:37"

inflected light verb in the psych complement construction

This terrific example from Copala Triqui shows that the light verb ne'en which appears before certain psych complements can even inflect for aspect:

Philemon 1:17

In this example, we get two sequences of uun rá...ne'en 'love, regard ... psych complement'.  The first instance is in the completive, so ne'en is also completive.  But the second instance is guun rá, the potential aspect, so the verb ne'en is in its potential aspect form (quene'en) as well.

Psych complements with ne'e(n) again

Another example of the verb ne'e(n) serving as a marker of a psych complement, from 2 Corinthians 6:11-13

2 Cor 6:13

The literal translation is something like "Thus as one loves one's child, that is how I love you, and that is why I say to you that as we have done to you, you should do also to us, and have confidence in us."

Some interesting points to note -- the typical syntax after the psych complement marker is ne'e(n) SUBJ man OBJ.   The accusative marker is typical because the NP towards which one has an attitude is typically a specific human, and specific human objects are very likely have overt accusative.  But notice that in this passage, the object is a generic 'one's child', and is not preceded by the accusative.

Also interesting that uun rá 'love' triggers the psych complement marker, but nucuaj rá 'have confidence in' doesn't, at least in this passage.

Here is another passage that uses both ne'e(n) and ni'yaj.  I am not sure if there is some difference implied by the choice of psych complement introducer:

Col 1:2

Update on Copala Triqui pysch verbs with ne'e as light verb

We spent some time today working with our Triqui speaker on the psych verbs that use ni'yaj as a light verb to introduce a complement.  (Discussed here, here, here, here, and here).

I was delighted to find out that while our speaker accepts and uses ni'yaj, he more frequently suggests ne'e  as the marker of psych complement.  The connection is that the other sense of ni'yaj is 'look at; mirar', while ne'e also means 'see; ver'.  Thus two different verbs of perception are used to introduce the psych complement.

Here's an example in the entry for the verb 'be jealous':

And here is the entry for one of the verbs that means 'like':

A particularly interesting example is 'I like the music very much'.  This shows the degree to which ne'e  is grammaticized here, since one does not literally see the music.

Here is an example from the New Testament with ne'e(n):

Hapax legomenon in Copala Triqui

The word quita'a' which appears in this verse (Romans 14:14) is the only instance of this word in the New Testament, and I am not clear what it is supposed to mean.

Here is the PDF of the relevant passage in Romans:

It seems as if it might be a form of the verb ta'aa 'take, catch', but what causes the final glottal stop to appear?

Gentiles = people apart

I worked out today that the phrase yuvii yaníj , literally 'people who are apart' is the phrase which translates 'Gentile' or 'Greek' in the Copala Triqui translation of the New Testament, as in the following passage:

Yuvii  is the ordinary word for 'people', and yaníj means 'apart, separated'.  So the combination 'people apart' or 'separated people' means 'Gentile'.

Here is an example of yaníj used in its more usual way to mean 'apart':

More on affirmative vaa in Triqui

In a previous entry here, I talked about the myserious vaa ne that comes at the end of many lines in our texts.

I noted that Barbara Hollenbach in her sketch of Copala Triqui writes

 'The verbs vaa32 'to exist' and uun1 'to become' often take a sentence of any type as a subject complement with no complementizer.  These verbs serve to affirm the truth of the complement sentence, and they can follow the complement as well as precede it'. 

This is an important clue to understanding syntax of such sentences.  The final vaa takes the preceding material as a subject complement.

However as I look at more examples, it is not clear that it correct to say that they affirm the truth of the preceding complement.  For some cases where the speaker is talking about future events, the vaa seems to express a hope that that the statement will be true.

Consider the following examples:

In this example, vaa comes after the clause 'and hopefully will live for three thousand years in this world.'  But it doesn't seem right to say that the speaker is affirming the truth of a hope.

Another example of the same thing:

Copala Triqui asa' 'when'

The Triqui complementizer asa' is rather unusual in its syntax.  It means 'when' for future events.  However, it is not followed by a verb in the potential aspect — the usual way to show future in Triqui.

Instead it is usually followed by the completive aspect, as in the following two examples:

This example seems to say literally  'I will speak to you when I arrived…'

The next example is also interesting:

In this example, look at the two instances of the verb 'yaj 'make, do'.  Both refer to future events, and the first instance has the regular morphology of potential aspect — qui'yaj.  The second instance follows asa', so it instead appears in the completive form qui'yaj.

This is somewhat reminiscent of the inversion of normal aspect morphology after the negative particle, when semantic future shows up with completive morphology.  However, after the negative, we also get the reverse — semantic past shows up with potential morphology.  The shift after asa' happens in only one direction.

Possibly we want to think of certain morphemes like asa' as having floating autosegmental material that suppresses the normal low register for the following verb?