| Lesson 2 — Grammatical Topic — Demonstratives: talking about "this" and "that" | |
|
In the first lesson you learned
the Samala equivalent of "that," kwek i
and heki.
These words showed up in pairs of sentences without verbs, such as |
 kwek i
ka hu u |
|||
 |
 kweki
ka huu |
"that's a dog," literally "that [is] a dog" | ||
| or | ka
huu heki |
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| Like the article ma / ha, the
word for "that" has two forms: kweki
when it comes first in the phrase and heki
anywhere else. |
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| The technical term for words like "that" and "this" is demonstrative — a word that points. There are several demonstratives in Samala, but the two most common are the following pairs: | ||||
|
initial | non-initial | ||
| keni |
heni |
"this, this one" — nearby, close to the speaker | ||
| kweki |
heki |
"that, that one" — further away | ||
| You can see how these pairs are used with some examples that show them both as first element of the phrase and elsewhere. | ||||
|
"this" | keni
ka k–ant k |
"this is my friend," literally "this [is] my friend" |  s–c c
heni |
| s–cc
heni |
"this one is sharp" | |||
| "that" | kweki
ka s–ap |
"that is his/her house," literally "that [is] his/her house" | ||
| s–alpat
heki |
"that one is running" | |||
| Demonstratives with nouns |
| You can use a demonstrative with a noun, in expressions such as "this canoe" or "that dog," just as in English. In Samala, you use the article ha with the noun that follows the demonstrative, just the way you would after a number. | |||||
|
keni
ha ii |
"this child" |  |
 |
|
| i
ha huu |
"that dog" | keni
ha ii |
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kwek i
ha u |
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| You saw earlier how in rapid speech
you can run certain words together. For example, you'd say skum
a ya instead
of skumu ha ya
for "four arrows" unless you were trying to be precise in your
pronunciation. |
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| With the demonstratives, you do this all the time. The resulting sequence is written here exactly as it's pronounced: you drop the second vowel of the demonstrative and the h of ha. | ||||
| keni
ha ii
> |
ken
a ii |
"this child" |  |
|
s–mi
heni ii
> |
mi
en a ii |
"this child is crying" | ||
| kweki
ha huu > |
kwek
a u |
"that dog" | ||
| i
ha huu > |
siwon
ek a huu |
"that dog is barking" | siwon ek
a u |
|
| Demonstratives with possessed nouns |  ke n
a antk |
||
| In Samala you can put a demonstrative in front of a noun that has a possessive marker, in an expression such as | |||
| keni
ha k–antk
> |
"this friend of mine," | ||
|
ken
a antk |
literally "this my friend" | |
| In English you wouldn't say "this my friend," which is the literal translation here, but the more idiomatic English equivalent "this friend of mine" includes all the same information. | |||
| Here are a few more examples of this construction: |  mi
en a picis
|
||
| s–mi
heni ha p–icis
> |
"this little sister of yours is crying," | ||
| mi
en a picis |
literally "cries this your younger sibling" | ||
| kweki
ha s-nono > |
|||
| kwek
a nono |
literally "that his/her grandfather" | ||
|
heki ha k–ya
> |
woyo
ek a kya
|
||
| woyo
ek a kya |
literally "is crooked that my arrow" | ||
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