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3. zriɬiumuɣis (Anita)

Text

pruχiɴqχoi prucçipeprits βræqχoicæm. triqurɰiuɸu zrijutauɰoczrits βrætauʁu. χræxixriuxrit, ræk triqχaijupirʁcæntitoiɴ χrætintsiχ. tawoip χrætinri, χrætimpih zi. sei prutaucçijukuqtsaipri βrapriçre kai juɣæ βræjukuqtsaiprixra, cçimpiβratautranz, “ɸri, ɸitaucçixriu, ɸiætekesamə ɰexo, waraiɣ tririçpai kruɸtimpaukh. srairʁ triqurçausɸu çautimɸa: βrahoqχcçæʝujoiqχ.”

Backtranslation

The good fire is burning to smallness. I see the thing I am writing with difficulty. The friends talked, after they consumed eight groups/units of cigarettes. We were sitting close to each other, we were not moving. Because my translator is tired and wants to sleep, I say to him, “Please, my friend, ætekesamə ɰexo, tomorrow we will ride six hours. We will certainly arrive the day after tomorrow with ease: the end is a white valley.”

Grammar

Word Order: (S)OV, where S is expressed in the verb and so may be placed elsewhere in the sentence or may be omitted entirely. OV is always expressed as a unit, and other pieces of the sentence may be placed before (or occasionally after) this unit. Sentence negation is expressed after the verb. Phonological changes: Nasals assimilate to the place of articulation of an adjacent consonant. This change occurs across syllable and word boundaries, but not clausal or sentence boundaries. The default nasal is /m/. Nouns: Nouns belong to one of the following classes: consumer (cns.), creator (cr.), inanimate (in.), and part of a whole (prt.). The creator class can be used to refer to people (usually cns.) as an honorific. A minimal noun consists of a class marker followed by the noun stem. “Dummy” noun stems also exist for each class. Generally these can be translated as “thing” or “one”. class marker dummy stem cns. pru prits cr. ɸi ɸits in. zri zrits prt. tri trits Plurals are formed by reduplicating the first consonant of the noun stem and adding /i/ between the two consonants. So XiXYZ where XYZ is the noun stem. Pronouns can be expressed without class markers but must have some sort of prefix. Adjectives & Adverbs: Adjectives appear between the class marker and the noun stem. Adverbs are productively formed from adjectives by creating a noun form with ɸu ‘way’ and then adding the adposition qur ‘with’. Adpositions & Possessives: Adpositions appear between the class marker and the adjective(s), or the noun stem if there are no adjectives. Possessives are created with the preposition cçi preceded by the noun stem of the possessor. Verbs: Verbs consist of a tense marker, the incorporated subject, and the verb stem. The incorporated subject can be a dummy root, a noun stem, or a full-fledged noun. The tense marker can be replaced by the infinitival marker ju to create an infinitive, which does not require an incorporated subject. A verb stem belongs to one of two conjugation patterns, marked as (1) or (2) in the lexicon. (Immediate future can have the idiomatic meaning of a more remote but quite certain event.) 1 2 remote past kru kri near past χra χræ present βra βræ immediate fut. çau çæj near fut. kruɸ kriɸ remote fut. sroɸ sreɸ A noun or adjective can take verb morphology to create a verb with a meaning along the lines of ‘to be X’. When the subject is fully incorporated, this allows a simple clause or sentence to be contained within a single word. An infinitival verb can take noun morphology to create a noun. This infinitive may include an incorporated subject.