Negative construction in Copala Triqui

The contrastive negative construction in Copala Triqui has the form

Nuveé {NP|PP} [S...]   "It is not {NP|PP} that ...."


For contrasting the object of a preposition, both preposition stranding and pied-piping of the PP are possible.  This example shows pied-piping:

Stranded prepositions in Copala Triqui, continued

In this previous post and this previous post, I talked about stranded material in Copala Triqui.

In the texts, the richest natural source of stranding is found in relative clauses.  Consider the following complicated passage, which has two strandings of rihaan 'to':

Another context for naturally occurring strandings is the contrastive negation construction Nuveé NP V... 'It is not NP that...'

The last clause here is literally 'It is not God who they give that meat to'

Fronted phrases with maan in Triqui

I'm looking tonight at phrases with maan, which is rather inadequately glossed 'only' in my current lexicon.

The phrase preceded by maan is always (I think) clause initial and has some special discourse function -- maybe focus.  (I need to work out how it is different from the ro' topics, clefts with me se, etc...)

This topical phrase is sometimes a time adverb (either orá or tio, two words borrowed from Spanish, that mean 'time'):

It can also be a noun phrase.  In the following example, the cactus fruit with spines contrasts with the nice cactus fruits without spines which the rabbit threw in the previous episodes.

(This example also has preposition stranding in the fronted phrase)

Stranded prepositions in Copala Triqui

Stranded prepositions are certainly possible in Copala Triqui, but mostly I have them from elicitation.  So it is nice to come across occasional examples in text:

Why has the evil one entered your heart?

At least two things strike me as interesting about this passage.  One is that 'your heart'  doesn't require an obligatory accusative, even though 'you' would.  So possessed body parts occupy an interesting place on the hierarchy of direct object animacy.  The other is the phrase ndaa rihaan.  Ndaa alone means 'up to' and rihaan alone is 'to, for'.  The combination seems to mean 'even up to' or an emphatic version of rihaan.