Showing posts with label questions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label questions. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Thinking in Triqui, continued + ni'yaj puzzles

The following passage shows the funny interaction between the rá 'think' construction and the question particle, namely in a passage 'Do you think this is the man who used to sit and beg...?'  what is really being asked is something like [in your thoughts [is this the man who used to sit and beg?] ].  The Triqui order is
[This is the man who used to sit and beg][you think][question].  The 'thinking' construction is discussed here, here, and here

Another puzzle -- does ni'yaj mean 'look at' in this passage?  The passersby look at the formerly blind man, but when they look at him, they also have a particular thought/attitude of surprise toward him.


Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Thinking in Triqui, part 3

In this previous post and this previous post, I discussed the unusual thinking construction in Copala Triqui.  The examples for today show the combination of a question and the thinking construction.   In Triqui, ga is the usual question particle for wh-questions, and na' is for yes-no questions.  Note that in these examples, the choice of question particle is sensitive to the main question -- not the 'do you think' part of the sentence.

That seems to imply to me that the constituency has the  NP portion as a parenthetical, and the question particle goes with the main sentence, roughly

[abc [rá NP] question particle]


where abc represents the clause that is being thought about.