Pam Munro's Intro to Grammatical Analysis
presented at Breath of Life 2006 - Part B

Part B: More about verbs, sentences, and subjects

§ 5. Adding things to verbs

§5.1. The Chickasaw sentences you've seen so far have all been translated with "simple" present English verbs like 'jumps', 'swims', 'looks for'. But these Chickasaw sentences can also be used to refer to ongoing actions:

33. Hattakat malli. 'The man jumps', 'The man is jumping'

34. Alikchi'at ofi'a hoyo. 'The doctor looks for the dog',
                                                'The doctor is looking for the dog'

35. Yopi. 'He swims', 'She swims', 'It swims', 'He is swimming',
                                                'She is swimming', 'It is swimming'

In the new English translations, expressions like is swimming and is looking for are verb phrases, but they still count as the V of the sentence.

      Chickasaw verbs have added endings to show differences in the tense of the sentence (the time that it refers to):

36. Hattakat mallitok. 'The man jumped'

37. Alikchi'at ofi'a hoyotok. 'The doctor looked for the dog'

38. Yopitok. 'He swam', 'She swam', 'It swam'

39. Hattakat malla'chi. 'The man will jump'

40. Alikchi'at ofi'a hoya'chi. 'The doctor will look for the dog'

41. Yopa'chi. 'He will swim', 'She will swim', 'It will swim'

• The Chickasaw ending –tok indicates the past, while the ending –a'chi indicates the future.

(When –a'chi comes after a vowel, that preceding vowel drops.)

 

§5.2. The next set of examples come from the Tolkapaya dialect of Yavapai, a language of the Yuman family spoken in central Arizona. Yavapai is seriously endangered, with no more than 100 or so speakers, all of them middle-aged to elderly. The closely related languages Havasupai and Hualapai, however, are being learned by some children.

      Like Chickasaw, Tolkapaya can use a verb with no added prefixes or endings (a bare verb) to report an ongoing event or one that would be translated by an English simple present:

42. Hamányche iimá. 'The child dances', 'The child is dancing'

43. Hamányche kthár 'úu. 'The child sees the dog'

44. Kthárche hamány 'úu. 'The dog sees the child'

(When two consonants come together at the beginning of a Tolkapaya Yavapai word, a speaker usually adds a very brief little extra vowel sound between them.)

      A verb can't end in an accented vowel plus a consonant, however. In that case, a final –i is always added.

45. Hamányche swáari. 'The child sings', 'The child is singing'

46. Kthárche hamány tk-wíivi. 'The dog chases the child', 'The dog is chasing the child'

47. Hamányche kthár tk-wíivi. 'The child chases the dog', 'The child is chasing the dog'

(In Tolkapaya spelling, there is a sound kw and two separate sounds k and w. The hyphen in tk-wíivi shows that this word has a sequence of k and w rather than the letter combination kw.)

      Word order variation is not too common in Tolkapaya, but the following is another way to say sentence 47, for example:

48. Kthár hamányche tk-wíivi. 'The child chases the dog', 'The child is chasing the dog'

Tolkapaya speakers prefer to have the verb at the end of the sentence (though occasionally one noun may follow the verb).

      Just as in Chickasaw and Garifuna, a Tolkapaya verb may be used on its own as a complete sentence:

49. 'úu. 'He sees it', 'She sees it', 'It sees it', 'He sees him', 'He sees her' (etc.)

50. Swáari. 'He is singing', 'She is singing', 'It is singing' (etc.)

 

 

The difference between Chickasaw subject and object is signaled by a pair of endings, –at and –a.In Tolkapaya, a contrast between –che and nothing is an equivalent contrast.

 

§5.3. So far, we have not looked at any examples with subjects other than nouns (or the equivalent ideas 'he', 'she', and 'it', used instead of nouns when the speaker and hearer know what they are talking about). But all languages have ways for a speaker to talk about things he or she is doing, or that the hearer is doing – to express 'I' and 'you'.

            Here's how you do this in Tolkapaya:

51. 'swáari. 'I am singing'

52. Mswáari. 'You are singing'

53. Hamány 'tk-wíivi. 'I am chasing the child'

54. Hamány mtk-wíivi. 'You are chasing the child'

• Tolkapaya uses prefixes on verbs to show 'I' and 'you' subjects. The 'I' prefix is '- (a glottal stop). The 'you' prefix is m-.

In English, of course, 'I' and 'you' subjects are indicated only with the independent words I and you. It's possible to use separate words for 'I' and 'you' in Tolkapaya also:

55. 'nyáache kthár 'tk-wíivi. 'I am chasing the dog'

56. Máache míima. 'You are dancing'

Even when you use these, however, you still have to put the prefixes on the verb. Speakers use both types of sentence often, but it's the verb prefix which actually tells you what the subject is – the separate subject words (which, you'll notice, include the subject case marker –che) are just for emphasis. (Technically, words like I, you, we, and so on, are called pronouns. Are Tolkapaya prefixes like '- and m- equivalent to English I and you? We'll come back to this question later.)

 

 

      In Tolkapaya, a command looks just like a 'you' subject sentence with a plain verb:

57. Mswaari! 'Sing!'

58. Kthar mtk-wiivi! 'Chase the dog!'

Again, intonation is very important.

 

§5.4. Now let's look at how you say 'I' and 'you' in Chickasaw. As in Tolkapaya, a prefix is used to indicate a 'you' subject:

59. Ishmalli. 'You are jumping'

60. Ishyopa'chi. 'You will swim'

61. Ofi'a ishhoyotok. 'You looked for the dog'

However, 'I' is different:

62. Mallili. 'I am jumping'

63. Yopili. 'I am swimming'

• Chickasaw uses an ish- prefix on verbs like those above to show a 'you' subject.

• Chickasaw uses a –li ending on verbs like those above to show an 'I' subject.

      We've now seen Chickasaw verb endings for both tense (past –tok and future –a'chi) and subject ('I' –li). Whenever there are two prefixes or two endings (two items on the same side of the verb) that could be used together, it's important to find out what order they come in. Here are some examples:

64. Yopilitok. 'I swam'

65. Alikchi'a lhiyohlila'chi. 'I will chase the doctor'

• The Chickasaw –li subject ending comes before any tense ending.

Separate words for the subject pronouns 'I' and 'you' are very uncommon in Chickasaw and speakers almost never use them.

 

 

§6. Three different ways to express 'I', 'you', and 'he'/'she' subjects

Languages use several different patterns for expressing these, and you never know which one you'll encounter when studying a new language. We have primarily focused on only one of these here, but you know another, and there is a third important one as well.

§6.1. The Verb-Sentence Pattern. Many American Indian languages (and the majority of California languages), like Garifuna, Chickasaw, and Tolkapaya, indicate subjects (and objects) like this by changes in verb forms (most often, by using prefixes for 'I' and 'you' subjects).

            For example, we saw that Tolkapaya marks 'I' subjects with a '- prefix on the verb, and 'you' subjects with an m- prefix on the verb. Verbs with no prefix are interpreted as having 'he' or 'she' or 'it' subjects.

66. 'swáari. 'I sing'

67. Mswáari. 'You sing'

68. Swáari. 'He sings', 'She sings', 'It sings'

The 'he'/'she'/'it' subject verb does not change when you use it with a separate noun or name subject:

69. Hamányche swáari. 'The child sings'

      Essentially, then, it looks as though the noun subject is just added to the simple 'he'/'she' subject sentence. In the Verb-Sentence Pattern verbs have different forms for different subjects, any verb can be a complete sentence all by itself, and the verb does not change when you use a noun subject. As you have seen, even if you add a separate subject pronoun word to a sentence, you still need to mark the verb for its subject with an attached subject marker.

      Some languages of this type (such as Garifuna) do have subject markers for 'he'/'she'/'it' subjects, but languages of this type work the same way – their verbs look the same whether they are used as complete sentences by themselves or with a subject noun or pronoun.

     The Verb-Sentence Pattern is the most common one used in American Indian languages, in California and elsewhere.

 

§6.2. The Pronoun Pattern. You already know another important pattern, the one used in English:

70. I sing.

71. You sing.

72. He sings. / She sings. / It sings.

73. The child sings.

The English pronouns I, you, he, she, and it (and these are just the singular pronouns – we're not even talking about plural subjects yet!) are necessary parts of sentences (70-72), but there is no pronoun in sentence (73). (You might have learned in school somewhere that a pronoun "takes the place of a noun" – in fact, that's usually true in English.) This is why, even though English you and Tolkapaya m- seem to be equivalent, they really don't work the same way.

      The Pronoun Pattern may be the least common pattern used in languages of the Americas, but here's an example of how it works in Valley Zapotec, an Otomanguean language of Oaxaca, Mexico:

74. Rùa'll a'. 'I sing'

75. Rùa'll ùu'. 'You sing'

76. Rùa'll ëhmm. 'He sings', 'She sings', 'It sings'

77. Rùa'll mnìi'iny. 'The child sings'

You can figure out from these examples that the repeated item rùa'll must mean 'sing', and that a', ùu', and ëhmm are used with this to mean 'I', 'you', and 'he'/'she'/'it'. When we use the word mnìi'iny 'child' as a subject, however, 'he'/'she'/'it' ëhmm does not appear.

      In other words, when you use a noun subject in Valley Zapotec, you don't use a pronoun, and when you use a pronoun, you can't use a noun subject, just as in English. In the Pronoun Pattern, pronouns are used for subjects when you don't have a noun subject – a sentence must have either a pronoun subject or a noun subject, but not both.

      (The Valley Zapotec pronouns are pronounced together with the preceding verbs, and are often written as one word, but nonetheless they are more like the English pronouns than like the Tolkapaya, Chickasaw, or Garifuna attached subject markers. Interestingly, Valley Zapotec has six different pronouns that mean 'he', depending on the relative location and social status of the subject referred to! The pronoun in (76) is used for children and also for small, cute, animals. This isn't the only way that Valley Zapotec is different from English, of course – what about word order?)

 

§6.3. The Particle Pattern. The third pattern for expressing subjects is, again, uncommon, though there are a number of California languages that work this way. We'll illustrate this pattern with examples from Pima, a Uto-Aztecan language spoken in central Arizona:

78. Ñe'e 'añ. 'I sing'

79. Ñe'e 'ap. 'You sing'

80. Ñe'e 'o. 'He sings', 'She sings', 'It sings'

81. Ñe'e 'o heg 'ali. 'The child sings'

Here, you can figure out that the word for 'sing' is ñe'e, and the part that means 'the child' is heg 'ali. ('ali actually means 'child'; heg is a word somewhat similar to English the, technically called an article.) The part of these sentences that means 'I' is the 'añ in (78); 'ap means 'you'; and 'oseems to mean 'he', 'she', or 'it'. Since the 'o is present both in (80) and in (81), this pattern looks like the Verb-Sentence Pattern, although 'añ, 'ap, and 'o are not part of the verb word.

      However, Pima also uses sentences like (82). Speakers generally report that there is no difference at all between (81) and (82).

82. 'ali 'o ñe'e. 'The child sings'

So what's going on here? The verb and the subject have changed places, but the 'o element still comes in the same position, after the first word. (Also, there's no heg in this sentence. Pima has a special rule that heg does not appear at the beginnning of the sentence. This is something that's just true of Pima, not a general process shared by other languages, or even by other languages that use the Particle Pattern. Every language has some little rules that make it unique.)

      (While Pima has a particle ('o) that indicates that a sentence has a 'he'/'she'/'it' subject, some Particle Pattern languages do not have a particle for this kind of subject – similar to the way some Verb-Sentence languages use a bare verb for this kind of sentence, while others have a 'he'/'she'/'it' marker.)

      Languages that use the Particle Pattern, like Pima, usually allow a number of different word orders, but require that particles indicating the subject always appear in the same position in the sentence, most commonly (as in Pima) after the first word or phrase in the sentence. These particles appear whether there is a noun subject or not. In the Particle Pattern, particles identifying the subject appear in the same position in the sentence whether there is a noun subject or noun, and regardless of the order of the verb, subject, and other items in the sentence.

 

§7.4. Comparing the three patterns. Here we've looked at three patterns for expressing subjects in sentences. Here is a chart summarizing some of their features:

• In the Verb-Sentence Pattern verbs have different forms for different subjects, any verb can be a complete sentence all by itself, and the verb does not change when you use a noun subject.

• In the Pronoun Pattern, pronouns are used for subjects when you don't have a noun subject – a sentence must have either a pronoun subject or a noun subject, but not both.

• In the Particle Pattern, particles identifying the subject appear in the same position in the sentence whether there is a noun subject or noun, and regardless of the order of the verb, subject, and other items in the sentence.

      The Verb-Sentence Pattern, though it's very different from English, is the most common pattern in California languages. The Pronoun Pattern is familiar to us from English, but is relatively uncommon in California. The Particle Pattern is used in a number of California languages.