Lesson 6 — Grammatical Topic — Commands with tani– "please"

You've already seen that you can make verbs into commands such as "come in!" "sit down!"
You simply drop off the p– that means "you" and add a glottal stop at the end of the verb.
		statement		command
	p–tap	"you come in"	tap	"come in!"
	p–lkin	"you sit down"	lkn	"sit down!"

There are ways to soften a command form to make it more polite and not so abrupt, as in English "Please come in" or "Please sit down."
In Samala you make a command more polite with the prefix  tani–. This is the Samala equivalent of "please."
Put  tani–  before the verb and after any person/number markers:
	tani–ip– > taniip	"please say it!"
	i–tani–tap– > itanitap	"please come in! (dual)"
	iy–tani–nukum– > itaninukum	"please bring it! (plural)"
	iy–tani–kitwon– >itanikitwon	"please come out!" (plural)

Minor Sound Rule — tani– becomes taniy– before vowels

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Many prefixes that end in i– become iy– when they come before another vowel. The prefix tani– follows this pattern.
When you add tani– to a verb that starts with a vowel, it becomes taniy–.
	tani–aqnp– > taniyaqnp	"please answer!"	xxx	xxx
	tani–an– > taniyan	"please eat!"
	i–tani–lkn– > itaniylkn	"please sit down, you two!
	iy–tani–itaq– > itaniyitaq	"please listen, you guys!"

Negative commands with tani–

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The easiest way to make the negative form of a command with tani– follows the pattern of commands that also look like statements. You keep the second-person marker p– and don't add glottal stop at the end, as in
		statement	command	xxx	xxx
	p–tap	"you come in, go in"	"come it! go in!"
	p–ukuy	"you throw it away"	"throw it away!"
	p–iy–itaq	"you all hear/listen"	"listen, you guys!"

The negative of these command forms simply adds ini– before the person marker:
	ini–p–tani–tap	"please don't come in!"		xxxx
	ini–p–tani–ukuy > iniptaniukuy	"please don't throw it away!"
	ini–p–iy–tani–itaq > inipitaniyitaq	"please don't listen, you guys!"
The literal meaning of tani– is "a little bit" or "somewhat." This is how to interpret it when it's not in a command form.
	k–tani–mxxn	"I"m a little hungry"
	p–tani–telmemen	"you touch it a little, touch it lightly"
	s–tani–tasn	"it's reddish, somewhat red"
With a command form, tani– might mean either "please" or "a little bit." It's easy to see here how the meaning can shift from "a little bit" to "please" as a way of toning down a request or command.
	tani–an– > taniyan	"please eat!" or "eat a little something!"
	i–tani–lkn– > itaniylkn	"please sit down, you two!" or "sit a little, you two!"
	iy–tani–qilik– > itaniqilik	"please take care of it, you all!" or "take care of it a little! (plural)"

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