Teşkami particles and relative clauses
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fairly basic grammar stuff, with cats
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 29 Jun 2017, 07:01.
[comments] tsmgrammarbasiccatsrelative-clausesadjectivesverbsparticlestopicalization Hello, friends. Today we're going to talk about some basic grammar stuff in
Teşkami. Don't worry, it's easy, with the power of example sentences! (And cats!) Follow me!In a basic sentence, the topic is marked with the particle de. Just knowing this allows us to construct extremely simple sentences such as:
Mei de tatte.
1First person (person)
speaker, signer, etc; I TOPTopic (syntactic)
the topic (key reference point) of a sentence run I run.
The topic of a sentence is optional, if it can be inferred from context. So just saying Tatte. on its own also forms a valid complete sentence with the meaning "[I] run" if it's obvious you're referring to yourself.
(Also, you can put a comma after de, if you want. You don't have to, though.)
Adjectives in Teşkami are actually just verbs with the meaning "to be X." So the word defined as "long," neba, actually means "to be long." For example, say I want to talk about my incredibly long cat:
speaker, signer, etc; I TOPTopic (syntactic)
the topic (key reference point) of a sentence run I run.
Mei ya nagi de neba.
1First person (person)
speaker, signer, etc; I GENGenitive (case)
possessive cat TOPTopic (syntactic)
the topic (key reference point) of a sentence long My cat is long.
OK, so that's all well and good. In my experience, though, people like doing stuff to things, rather than doing them in a vacuum. Fortunately, Teşkami does a little thing you might've heard of called "letting verbs have objects." Things like this are how you know a language is truly special. Anyway, the object comes before a transitive verb like so:
speaker, signer, etc; I GENGenitive (case)
possessive cat TOPTopic (syntactic)
the topic (key reference point) of a sentence long My cat is long.
Mei ya nagi de likke gisa.
1First person (person)
speaker, signer, etc; I GENGenitive (case)
possessive cat TOPTopic (syntactic)
the topic (key reference point) of a sentence milk drink My cat drinks milk.
Now let's take a little detour and talk a bit about Teşkami's relativization system. It's important, I promise.
Say we want to make a verb modify a noun, as in The person that I saw or The car that you drove. In order to do this, we put the verb in participial form. Basically, the word just gets an -i stuck on the end. This is also the form that allows adjectives to modify nouns. Compare this example sentence to the ones above:
speaker, signer, etc; I GENGenitive (case)
possessive cat TOPTopic (syntactic)
the topic (key reference point) of a sentence milk drink My cat drinks milk.
Mei ya nebai nagi de tatte.
1First person (person)
speaker, signer, etc; I GENGenitive (case)
possessive long-PCPParticiple
adjectival form of a verb cat TOPTopic (syntactic)
the topic (key reference point) of a sentence run My long cat runs.
Remember, adjectives are just verbs. So what's going on here? The -i on the end changes the verb into a participle, which basically makes it say that the noun is doing the action described by the verb. So an extremely literal translation of mei ya nebai nagi would be my long-ing cat or my cat that longs, where to long is a verb meaning "to be long."
We can also do this with verbs that aren't adjectives:
speaker, signer, etc; I GENGenitive (case)
possessive long-PCPParticiple
adjectival form of a verb cat TOPTopic (syntactic)
the topic (key reference point) of a sentence run My long cat runs.
Mei ya tattei nagi de neba.
1First person (person)
speaker, signer, etc; I GENGenitive (case)
possessive run-PCPParticiple
adjectival form of a verb cat TOPTopic (syntactic)
the topic (key reference point) of a sentence long My running cat is long.
Notice how adding -i to the verb tatte modifies its meaning in the same way as it modified neba above.
But what if we want to make an entire verb phrase into a modifier, as in the English The cat that drinks milk runs? Never fear, it's exactly the same with the object before the verb:
speaker, signer, etc; I GENGenitive (case)
possessive run-PCPParticiple
adjectival form of a verb cat TOPTopic (syntactic)
the topic (key reference point) of a sentence long My running cat is long.
Mei ya likke gisai nagi de tatte.
1First person (person)
speaker, signer, etc; I GENGenitive (case)
possessive milk drink-PCPParticiple
adjectival form of a verb cat TOPTopic (syntactic)
the topic (key reference point) of a sentence run The cat that drinks milk runs. / The milk-drinking cat runs.
What if we want to relativize on an object, though, as in the English The milk that the cat drinks is delicious? This time, the milk is the object of the relative clause (The cat drinks the milk), but the subject of the overall sentence (The milk is delicious). Oh man, however will we get out of this one?? I'm freaking out!!
It's OK. Let's just calm down for a second. Take a deep breath. Innn... out. Okay. So, the first thing we might think of would be to just add -i to the end of the verb and hope for the best:
speaker, signer, etc; I GENGenitive (case)
possessive milk drink-PCPParticiple
adjectival form of a verb cat TOPTopic (syntactic)
the topic (key reference point) of a sentence run The cat that drinks milk runs. / The milk-drinking cat runs.
*Nagi de gisai likke de altam.
cat TOPTopic (syntactic)
the topic (key reference point) of a sentence drink-PCPParticiple
adjectival form of a verb milk TOPTopic (syntactic)
the topic (key reference point) of a sentence delicious [? The milk the cat drinks is delicious ?]
However, this is ungrammatical. Essentially, de can only be used to mark the subject/topic of an independent clause. So, instead of de, we use the subject-particle ki to mark nagi as the subject of a verb but not the overall topic of the sentence.
the topic (key reference point) of a sentence drink-PCPParticiple
adjectival form of a verb milk TOPTopic (syntactic)
the topic (key reference point) of a sentence delicious [? The milk the cat drinks is delicious ?]
Nagi ki gisai likke de altam.
cat SUBSubject (argument) drink-PCPParticiple
adjectival form of a verb milk TOPTopic (syntactic)
the topic (key reference point) of a sentence delicious The milk the cat drinks is delicious.
adjectival form of a verb milk TOPTopic (syntactic)
the topic (key reference point) of a sentence delicious The milk the cat drinks is delicious.
Easy as pie! Go forth and relativize, my friends!
See you next time, when I'll talk about action nominalizations, which are not nearly as scary as they sound.
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