Lesson 8 — Grammatical Topic — Two verbs and their special forms:  hik and wil  

Two very common verbs show up a lot in the "what" form, so here's a brief discussion of what's special about them.

The verb hik and its special forms
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There is a common verb  hik "to do, do something (to someone).  
no–ini–k–hik > nonikik "I won't do anything"  
The  h  of this verb drops out when a prefix that ends with  l  comes before it, so the  al– form of  hik  is  alik.
And in normal speech, of course, you use the shortened forms of the question words in expressions such as
  suku ha p–al–hik? > suk apalik? "what are you doing? what is she doing?
suk alik?
  suku ha–al–hik? > suk alik? "what is he/she doing?"
  suku ha–i–al–hik? > suk aalik? "what are the two of them doing?"
  suku ha–iy–al–hik? > suk ayalik? "what are they doing?"
By the way, you've already seen the verb  qilik  "to take care of, look after." This is probably a compound of  hik  plus a prefix  qil– "of seeing," with the  h of  hik  deleted. Here's another example of   qil–:
  qil–memen "to shade the eyes with the hand when looking into the distance" he shades his eyes while looking into the distance
sqilmemen
You've already encountered the  memen  part of this verb in
  telmemen "to touch"  
where the  tel– part means "with the hand."

The verb wil and its special forms
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The verb seen wil "to be, exist" isn't nearly as common in Samala as in English because Samala terms such as  tasn  "to be red" are verbs in their own right.
So far you've mostly seen wil in expressions such as it has a young one
swil a itn
s–wil ha –itn "he/she has a child, it has young"  
  s–wil–wa ha k–huu > "I had a dog," literally "there existed my dog"  
wiliwa a kuu   there's no water
  ini–s–wil ha o > "there's no water," literally "does not exist water"  
  insil a o  
Expressions of location also use  wil — in its "what" form. You'll notice that the literal translations of these phrases sound very awkward in English, but they work just fine in Samala. insil a o
taka ha–al-wil ha p–ap? > "where's your house?" literally "where [is] what is your house?"    
  tak awil ha pap?   where are the kids?
  taka ha–i–al–wil ha k–i–talik + R? > "where are our wives?" literally "where [are] two who are our wives?"  
  tak aawil ha kitaltalik?  
  taka ha–iy–al–wil ha ii? "where are the kids?" literally "where [are] those who are child?"   tak ayawil ha ii?
  tak ayawil ha ii?  
As usual, you can see in these examples that the verb spells out number and the subject noun may be marked for plural, but not necessarily.

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