Lesson 5 — Grammatical Topic — Modifiers  

Samala has a number of words called "modifiers" — they modify or qualify the meaning of the basic word in some way.
Some of these modifiers go with nouns and some go with verbs.

Modifiers with nouns
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You've already familiar with some of the modifiers that go with nouns: the numbers.
pakas ha up "one world" one world two boats
  ikom ha tomol "two boats"  
  masx ha xus "three bears" my four children
  skumu ha k–itn "my four children"  
  yitipakas ha s–mimi "his/her five fingers" three bears
Notices the pattern in a phrase like  yitipakas ha s–mimi   "his/her five fingers"
The number modifier comes first.   his/her five fingers
The noun takes takes the ha form of the article.  
There's no marker for number on the noun.  
The noun may show up with a possessive marker.

    
Here are a couple of other modifiers that are a lot like numbers.
  waha "many, much, a lot"    
  yila "all"    
  The pattern is the same as with the numbers:   many people
  waha ha ku "many people"  
  yila ha k–antk "all my friends"  

Exercise with noun modifiers — test yourself!  You can see translations of the Samala phrases below by holding the mouse over them. The cursor changes to an I-beam (as it does over any text) and the translation appears in a moment. Try it here.
yila ha apan waha ha qsi  
  yila ha coyini   waha ha o  
  yila ha p–icis   waha ha tomol  
  yila ha –itn   –an waha ha uwumu  
  –iy–expe yila ha ii   s–iy–axutiwil waha ha ku  
  k–it yila ha coyini   s–kuti waha ha tow  
  p–tiik he yila ha p–itn?   k–is–esqen waha ha ku  

Modifiers that go with verbs
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Here are a couple of modifiers that go with verbs:
nono "very, very much, a lot"    
  kp "now"    
These modifiers usually come right after the verb.
When modifiers aren't the first element in the sentence, hi introduces them, just like ha introduces nouns that aren't the first element.
This word hi is called a "particle" — a short word that doesn't take any prefixes or suffixes and doesn't show up by itself.
The particle hi has a function rather than a meaning: it tells you about the item that comes next: it may be a modifier or various other things, but it's not a plain noun.
Here are examples of modifiers with hi at the end of the sentence:
k–mxxn hi nono "I'm very hungry"    
  s–iy–axutiwil hi nono "they talk a lot"   are you awake now?
  k–iy–esqen hi kp "we're asking now"  
  p–yxkt he hi kp "are you awake now?"  
The sentence with nono or kp may spell out a subject noun.
In that case, nono and kp can come before or after the subject noun, but the more common word order is that they come after the noun, as in
  s–mxxn ha xus hi nono "the bear is very hungry"    
  s–yxkht ha ii hi kp "the child is awake now"    

Exercise with verb modifiers.   As with the exercise above, look at the translations of the Samala phrases below by holding the mouse over them for a moment.
ini––expe hi nono –i–expe hi kp  
  –towi ha tomol hi nono   s–uniyw ha pon hi kp  
  ini–s–cc ha w hi nono   –uw ha ma hi kp  
  k–aqt hi nono   s–iy–axtikat he hi kp  
  –ioy ha eneq hi nono   ini––tuhuy hi kp  
  ini––o hi nono   k–tiik ha p–antk hi kp  
  s–yuxpan hi nono   p–amn he hi kp?  

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