Showing posts with label existential. Show all posts
Showing posts with label existential. Show all posts

Friday, April 27, 2012

Adjectives with the existential copula

Still wondering about the syntax of a couple of adjectival or verb psychological predicates that must appear with vaa 'exist'  or its potential aspect form gaa.  These seem rather like verbs, and can be transitive, but they don't vary for aspect, which is instead shown by the existential.

Several examples in this subsense of the word vaa:




Interlinear versions of some sample passages:






The 'free'  construction described in the previous blog entry also has the vaa before it.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Affirmative sentences in Copala Triqui -- a mysterious construction

A mystery for us as we were working on the Copala Triqui text Words of counsel for the Triqui people was a very frequent vaa ne at the end of many lines.

Vaa means 'exist, be, seem' and ne means 'and'.   Tonight I found a passage in B. Hollenbach's sketch of the language where she 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' (p. 216).

So this seems to be the right analysis for examples like the following:


This confirms my belief that the answer to (almost) everything is somewhere in one of Barbara H's publications -- the trick is finding it!