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):

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:

Complement structures in Triqui

I like the following example because it shows a contrast between two kinds of complement structures in Copala Triqui.   One type is

V_{[ASP x]} [_S  V_{[ASP x]}...] 

with matching aspect between the two verbs. Hollenbach calls these subject complement structures, which seems like a good name to me.

The other type is


V_{[ASP x]}  SUBJ_i [_S  V_{[ASP x]} SUBJ_i...] 

with matching aspect between the two verbs and coreference between the two subjects.  We might call these subject equi structures, remembering that in Triqui the second instance of the SUBJ is usually overt.

In the example below, ca'vee 'be possible' is a subject complement verb, while quisij 'succeed in doing'  is a subject equi verb:

2 Thessalonians 1:10

Another example of a subject-equi verb is nó xcúún 'should':

1 Cor 14:33

(More of Paul's sexism here!) Nó xcúún is a little different from sij 'succeed in', since the complement of nó xcúún seems to always be in the potential, regardless of the aspect of the main verb.  So it is subject-equi, but without the aspect-matching requirement.