Discover Your Language Course Notes (2013)

DiscoverYour

Language

Course Notes

Ukarumpa, 23rd Oct – 20th Nov 2013

Name _______________________

Discover Your Language Course Notes1

AcknowledgementsThese notes have been created by Phil King and Ryan Pennington in 2013 for the four week long Discover Your Language course held in Ukarumpa. They include definitions and worksheets to accompany the Tentative Grammar Description document that participants will complete as part of the course, and the FLEx database that they willwork on. Materials have been drawn from those developed by René van den Berg and used in Dictionary Workshops, materials used in the Translators Training Courses at Ukarumpa, developed by Terry Borchard and others, and materials used at the VITAL project in Alotau. Many thanks to all those who contributed resources.

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Table of ContentsAcknowledgements...................................................1Table of Contents..................................................2

Introduction and Overview..........................................4Using FLEX (Fieldworks Language Explorer) for language discovery in PNG................................................................5TASK 1: Starting a new project:..................................5

TASK 2: Adding Tok Pisin as an analysis language.................9TASK 3: Entering a Text.........................................12

TASK 4 (optional): Adding Tok Pisin Glosses.....................15TASK 5: Adding Another Text.....................................17

Task 6: Finding Nouns and Verbs.................................17Task 7: Backing up your project.................................19

Task 8: Making a list of verbs or nouns.........................20Task 9: Copying a sentence example to your grammar description. .22

Text Collection Steps.............................................25How to Gloss......................................................26

Parts of Speech 1: Nouns..........................................27Investigating Singular and Plural Nouns...........................28

Parts of Speech 2: Verbs..........................................30Introduction to Morphology........................................31

Parts of Speech 3: Pronouns.......................................33Possession........................................................35

Introduction to Active Clauses and Noun Phrases...................37Subject and Object Markers......................................38

Noun Phrases....................................................41Parts of Speech 4: Adjectives.....................................43

Parts of Speech 5: Numerals.......................................44Parts of Speech 6: Demonstratives.................................45

Noun Phrase Structure.............................................46

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Parts of Speech 7: Adpositions....................................48Clauses: Intransitive, Transitive and Di-transitive...............49

Subject, verb and object (Transitive clauses)...................49Intransitive clauses............................................50

Clauses with a Recipient (Di-transitive clauses)................51Verb morphology: Subject, Object, Recipient and Benefactive Markers..................................................................52Verb morphology: Tense............................................55

Verb Morphology: Aspect...........................................58Verb Morphology: Realis and Irrealis..............................60

Verbs: Serial Verbs...............................................61Verbs: Medial Verbs...............................................63

Parts of Speech 8: Conjunctions...................................65Commands..........................................................67

Negation and Negative Clauses.....................................69Questions.........................................................71

Parts of Speech 9: Adverbs........................................73Time..............................................................75

Relationships between clauses: Reason / Purpose / Result..........76Reason and Result...............................................76

Purpose and Result..............................................78Parts of Speech 10: Articles and particles........................82

Topic.............................................................83Focus.............................................................85

Participant Reference (How we Refer to Characters in a Text)......87Parts of Speech 11: Interjections.................................89

Parts of Speech 12: Review........................................90Parts of Speech 13: Extra notes...................................91

Parts of Speech 14: Extra practice................................93Bibliography......................................................94

Answers to Parts of Speech exercises..............................95

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Glossary..........................................................97Process to Investigate Translation Issues........................104

Problems, Questions and Areas That Need More Study...............1051. Individual Words (Key Words Or Others)......................105

2. Idioms, Sayings.............................................1063. Bible Customs...............................................107

4. Grammar Problems with English (where English is hard to understand)....................................................108

5. Grammar Problems with Your Own Language.....................109

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Introduction and OverviewPapua New Guinea has over 800 different languages, and these are oneof the greatest treasures of this part of the world. We would like to help you understand more about that treasure as you spend time here. During this course you will be finding out things about your own language and learning some linguistic concepts to talk about your language to other people. Below are some of the objectives of this course.

By the end of the course, participants will have:

1. Collected several different texts in their own language, recorded them, entered them into a FLEx database, and glossed them into English.

2. Become familiar with many words for talking about how different languages work

3. Produced (with the help of a mentor) a tentative basic grammatical description of their language

4. Presented different features of their language to other courseparticipants

5. Discovered differences between their own language and English that are significant for translation work

It is our hope that at the end of the course you will be better equipped for translation work you are involved in, and that you willbe able to explain to others in your community some of the features of the grammar of your own language. We want this course to help youwith your translation work, so every day we will ask you to compare what you are discovering about the language with the way you have written your Bible translation. Hopefully, this will become a habit for you and help you to continue studying your language and making your translations more natural.

Every day we will have time at the end of the day for you to share what you have learned during the day. This will help you to gain confidence in speaking to others and in talking about features of your language. At the end of the course, you will have time to give a presentation to the class of some of the features of your language.

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We will also occasionally have short tests throughout the course to help us see how well you understanding the material. The tests will usually be on understanding the new words and concepts we introduce during the course.

We will be using computers and the FLEx software created by SIL to write texts and begin to analyse them. It is a very powerful piece of software that can do a lot of things, but we will only look at some of them. You can use your own computers or borrow one from the training centre. This course will help you develop your computer skills.

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Using FLEX (Fieldworks Language Explorer) for language discovery in PNG

TASK 1: Starting a new project:1. Click on the Language Explorer icon on the desktop.

The very first time you do this, you will see the Training available dialog box. Click Yes to open Sena 3. Then you will see the Field Usage Report System dialog box. Click the I’m unable to send this information link.

2. On the Menu bar, click File, and then click New FieldWorks Project.

The New FieldWorks Project dialog box appears.

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For the name of the project, type in your language name. (Here, I have used ‘Kasup’)

3. For the vernacular language writing system, click Define new. This brings up the select language for new writing system window.

Type the official name of your language into the search for box, andclick search. I have used ‘Gadsup’ and the software has found the official ethnologue code, gaj. If you have problems here, ask for help from a mentor or member of staff.

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If it has found your language, click OK. This will bring up the writing system properties window.

If your language just uses the same letters as English, click OK. Ifyou have special characters in your writing system, like i3 or ŋ, aska staff member for help.

You should now be back at the New fieldworks project screen.

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4. Leave the Analysis Language Writing System as English, and clickOK. The software will now start creating the project for your language. It will ask you to choose a list of anthropology categories. Just click OK to select the Enhanced Outline of CulturalMaterials.

The project for your language should now be created. But, you will find that you have two windows open now, one is called Sena 3, and the other has the name of your language. Close the Sena 3 project byselecting that window and clicking the x in the top right corner.

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TASK 2: Adding Tok Pisin as an analysis language For most people in this country it will sometimes be helpful to addglosses or descriptions in Tok Pisin, so we need to add this as a language of analysis, as well as English.

1. Go to the top left of the screen. Click on File, then select Project Management, then Fieldworks Project Properties.

This brings up the Fieldworks Project Properties window:

Click on the Writing Systems tab. You should see this window:

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Look at the area called Analysis Writing Systems. Click the button that says Add that is next to this area. This will bring up a list of languages:

Look at the bottom of the list and click New… This brings up the Select Language for New Writing System window.

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Where it says Search For:, type Tok Pisin and then click the search button. It should find the information about Tok Pisin. Then click OK. This brings up the writing system properties window again.

Just click OK again. Now you should have a window showing English and Tok Pisin both as analysis languages.

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Again, click OK.

TASK 3: Entering a TextNow we are ready to type in a story in your language.

Click on the Texts and Words tab on the bottom left navigation pane.

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Make sure that Interlinear Texts is selected (shaded grey) on the top left corner of the navigation pane, and that you have the Baseline tab selected in the big window on the right.

Click anywhere in the white space under the Baseline tab, and you can then start typing in your text.

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You should also make sure you give your text a title in your language and in English. Enter this in the Title box. I gave this text the title ‘manaa bainta’ in Kasup, and ‘one man’ in English.

Note that the name of your text now appears in the Texts pane. Then click on the Gloss tab.

Before you write any glosses, click on box that says Add Words to Lexicon, so that a tick appears in the box.

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Enter an English gloss for your first word in the Word Gloss line, then click the green check mark. Continue glossing the text.

At the end of the line you will be asked to fill in a free translation. Make a free translation and type it in.

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TASK 4 (optional): Adding Tok Pisin GlossesIf it is helpful for you, we can also add Tok Pisin glosses. Click on Tools, then Configure, then Interlinear…

This brings up the Configure Interlinear Lines window.

Click on Lex./Word Gloss in the LEFT hand window, and then the Show button. This will add a word gloss in Tok Pisin to your list of displayed lines.

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Click OK. Now you will see a Tok Pisin gloss line underneath the English gloss line, and you can begin to enter Tok Pisin glosses underneath the English ones.

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TASK 5: Adding Another TextTo add another text, click on the icon showing a page with a green ‘plus’ symbol.

You can now enter another text on the Baseline tab, and gloss it using the Gloss tab. Remember to give your text a Title.

Task 6: Finding Nouns and VerbsNow we are going to mark which words in your texts are nouns and verbs. Choose one of your texts in the Texts pane by clicking on it.

We are going to enter information on the line which says Word Cat. (this is an abbreviation for ‘Word Category’). Look for the first noun in your story, and click on that word.

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A grey box will appear, and you can see three * symbols in the Word Cat. line. Click on the small black arrow to the left of the * symbols, to bring up a choice of word categories.

At the moment, <not sure> is selected (which is why there are three * symbols). Choose Noun instead. Now the three * symbols will change to a letter n (for noun).

Do the same for the rest of the nouns in your texts. Then find the first verb and use the same process to click on the word and select the Word Cat. called Verb. In the end your text will look something like this. If you are not sure of the category for a word, just leave the three * symbols.

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Task 7: Backing up your projectMake sure that you are saving your data and backing up a copy to a safe location! Click on File, then Project Management, then Back up this project.

This opens the Back up this Project window.

Delete what is written in the Save in: box, and type in \\ttc\D\TTC\Language Discovery\Fieldworks instead.

Click OK. This brings up the Change backup location? window. Click Yes.

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Task 8: Making a list of verbs or nounsSometimes it is helpful when we are studying a language to look at alist of all the nouns, or all the verbs, or all the adjectives, or any other part of speech. We can do this quite easily in FLEx. When you have entered a few texts, click on the Lexicon box on the left hand side.

Make sure the Lexicon Edit item is shaded grey. If not, click on it.

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You should see a list of all your words, with a column of glosses and a column that says Grammatical Info. Beneath the headings are several boxes that say Show All. Find the box that says Show All underneath the Grammatical Info. heading. Click on the little triangle to the right of the words Show All.

This will bring up a menu. Select the last option, which says Choose… Now you can choose which part of speech you want to show. Click in the box beside Noun to select it.

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Then click OK. Now you will see a list of all your nouns in the dictionary. Now use the same process just to show all the verbs.

To get back to entering texts, just click on the Texts & Words tab on the left had side.

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Task 9: Copying a sentence example to your grammar descriptionWhen we have collected texts and given them glosses, we will want tocopy them into our grammar description as example sentences. I will show you the easiest way to do this. First make sure you are on the Texts & Words window. Click on Texts & Words as shown above if you are not. Make sure that Interlinear Texts has grey shading, and click it if not. Then select the Print View tab.

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Now you should be able to see your text lined up with the Tok Ples, English gloss and a free translation. If you have too many lines showing, use the Tools menu, then choose Configure, then Interlinear…, to choose which lines should be shown. Remove any thatare unnecessary.

Choose the example sentence you want to put into your grammar description. Practice with a very short sentence. Click and drag your mouse over it to select it. Then copy this text by pressing andholding ctrl and at the same time press c. (This is written as ctrl+c). Or you can choose the Edit menu and select Copy.

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Now go the correct place in your grammar description document and press Ctrl+V (or use a paste command). You should end up with something like this:

1.1 Word Fili sukuru pa kumeno .

Word Gloss Phil school towards go down

Free Phil went down to the school

This has all the correct words in it, separated by tabs, but the words are probably not lined up under each other correctly. Left click and drag your mouse to select the whole example, then click inthe ruler bar at the top of the page to set tabs where you need to in order to line up the text (ask your mentor for help if this is difficult, or if you are using a different word processing system).

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If a tab ends up in the wrong place, you can click and drag the L tomove it to the correct place. When you have put all the tabs in goodplaces it should look something like this:

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Text Collection StepsHow to collect a story

1. Turn on the recording device

2. Press the Record button

3. Hold the device a hand’s distance from your mouth

4. Say your NAME in English

‘My name is _______.’

5. Say the DATE in English

‘Today is ______ 2013.’

6. Give your story in your language

7. Press the Stop button

8. Repeat steps 2–7 for each new recording

9. Write information down on metadata form

How to type a story

1. Open FLEx

2. Click on the ‘Add a new text’ button

3. Select the correct file on the recording device

4. Press Play on the device and listen

5. Press Pause after a sentence is finished

6. Type what you heard

7. Repeat steps 4–6 for each new sentence

8. Turn off device

*At the end of each day, return your recording device to Ryan. He will charge your device and back up your recordings for you.

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*If you want to keep the recording device overnight, let Ryan know so he can quickly back up your recordings.

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How to GlossGlossing is writing words under each word in something written inanother language to show what each word means. It helps people todiscover many things about how a language works.

These are some tips for helping you write glosses for your storiesin FLEx.

1. When you must use more than one word to gloss a tokples word, puta period with no space after it between each word in the gloss for that tokples word.

Doing this shows that each word in the gloss only gives part of the meaning of the tokples word. If you know both English and Pidgin, you don’t need a period between words in the gloss to show you that several words have been used to gloss one word, but other readers will not know your language, so you should put in periods to show which words go together in the gloss.

2. If the parts of a word in your language are glossed by words thatare in a different order than the words would be in English, show that in the gloss.

Your language may be very different from English and Pidgin, so hereare some examples from the Ipili language to help you to know how togloss a story in your own language.

Jone bala tanonga pea.

Jone he town.to went.

The letters “nga” after the word ‘tano’ mean ‘to.” Putting the word “to” after the word “town” in the gloss shows one way that Ipili is different from English. The period between the 2 English words “town” and “to” shows that they go together to give the meaning of 1Ipili word.

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Parts of Speech 1: Nouns

The soldiers came and threw the apostles in prison.

The underlined words are nouns.

Nouns are naming words. They are often objects that can be seen and touched:

a. people: soldier, king, boy, woman, thiefb. things: table, house, boat, tree, sun, skyc. places: prison, village, bush, country, ocean, earth

In English nouns have the following characteristics: nouns can be preceded by the word a or the: a chair, the

queen, the sky. nouns can often be preceded by my or his: my house, my son, his

land. nouns can usually be preceded by words such as good or big:

a big chair

Notice that some nouns name things that cannot be seen:

a. invisible things: wind, electricity, mind b. times: morning, evening, day, yearc. abstract words: love, hate, peace, friendship, forgivenessd. action words: prayer, suffering, confession, speech

How do we know these words are nouns? We know they are nouns because they can be preceded by such words as a, the, my and good (or a combination of these): the big wind, a good year, the forgiveness, my peace, his prayer, her suffering, the speech.

Names of people and places are a special type of nouns, calledproper nouns.

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Exercise

Underline the nouns in the following verses. Ignore names of people and places.

1. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads. (Rev 13:1)

2. As Jesus was walking beside the sea of Galilee, he saw twobrothers (…) They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. (Mat 4:18)

3. ‘Teacher, I brought you my son, who is possessed by a


Now look at the text you have written in FLEx, find the nouns,and enter ‘noun’ as the word category for these words (see theFLEx instructions).

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Exercise

Underline the nouns in the following verses. Ignore names of people and places.

1. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads. (Rev 13:1)

2. As Jesus was walking beside the sea of Galilee, he saw twobrothers (…) They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. (Mat 4:18)

3. ‘Teacher, I brought you my son, who is possessed by a


Investigating Singular and Plural Nouns1. In your texts, find examples of some nouns which refer to just one thing or person, and some nouns which refer to more than one.2. a. Is there sometimes a marker on the noun to show if it refers to one or more than one person or thing? If so, write down the marker(s) and give examples.

b. If there are markers on some nouns to show ‘more than one’,can the markers go on all nouns? If not, what kind of nouns dothey go on?

c. Is there a marker on any of the other words in the noun phrase (the words linked with the noun) to show ‘more than one’people or things that the noun is referring to? If so, write down the markers and underline them in the examples you give.

d. Is there sometimes another word in the noun phrase to show if the noun refers to many people or things? If so, underline the word in each example you write.

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e. Is there a marker in the verb to show if the noun refers tomany people or things? If so, underline the marker in the examples you give. (Are these markers in all verbs?)

f. Does your language sometimes repeat the adjective (describing word) or noun in a noun phrase to show that there are many things or people?

g. Are there some nouns where there are no markers and no other words to show how many people or things the noun is referring to? Do you know if the noun is referring to one or many? If so, how do you know?

3. When you have looked at more nouns, write down anything more you have found out that shows how many people or things anoun is referring to. Also write down anything you are not sure about.

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4. Look at your translation work. If your language has different ways to show if a noun is referring to one or many people or things, are you making use of these in your translation?

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Parts of Speech 2: Verbs

The disciples gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. (Mark 6:30)

The underlined words are all verbs. Verbs tell you what is happening in a sentence. They form the most essential part of the sentence, and in English almost all sentences have a verb.

Most verbs are action verbs: do, go, run, play, jump, break, steal, kiss

Some verbs are saying verbs: speak, say, tell, whisper, warn, rebuke

Some verbs are thinking verbs: think, remember, know, understand, believe

Some verbs are helping verbs: be, have, can, will, shall, must

In English, verbs can be recognised through the following tests:

verbs can be preceded by to: to see, to go, to run, to play in the third person singular (he, she, it) verbs take -s:

he runs, she plays, it breaks. in the past tense verbs take -ed (only regular verbs of

course): played, kissed, remembered. verbs can take -ing in combination with a form of to be: I

am trying, she is going, we are laughing.

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Exercise

Underline the verbs in the following verses.

1. Jesus left the house and went to a solitary place, where he prayed. (Mark 1:35)

2. I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. (Rev 1:12)

3. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailor was commanded to guard them carefully. (Acts 16:23)

4. Praise the Lord, o my soul, and forget not all his benefits. (Psalm 103:2)


Now go to your text(s) in your language in FLEx, find the verbs, and put ‘verb’ as the Word Category for each of these words. If you are not sure whether something is a verb or not,select ‘not sure’ and talk to your mentor or a member of staffabout it

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Introduction to MorphologyMany words are made up of several parts that together give you the whole meaning of the word. The study of these parts of words and howthey fit together is called morphology. For example, the English word cats has two parts: the stem cat, which tells us what type of animal we are talking about, and a suffix –s, which tells us there ismore than one of them. Similarly, in Gadsup, the verb ureko ‘I go up’has a stem ure meaning ‘go up’ and a suffix –ko, telling us that it is me doing the action.

The different parts of words which have their own meaning are calledmorphemes. So, we can talk about –s being a ‘plural morpheme’ in English, or –ko being a ‘first person singular subject marker morpheme’ in Gadsup. Three very common types of morphemes are: stems, the part of a word which tells you the main meaning of the word; prefixes, which are morphemes that are attached before the stem; and suffixes, which are morphemes that come after the stem.

Sometimes it helps to draw straight lines between the morphemes in aword, to help us see how they are made up, like this: cat|s or ure|ko.Draw straight lines between any morphemes in these English words, decide which morphemes are stems, prefixes and suffixes, and try to explain what they mean:

dogs

buses

going

walked

unlocked

antivirus

eats

disappearance

kangaroo

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slowly

national

concentration

postnatal

cities

Notice that both the words dogs and eats have a suffix –s at the end of the word. However, even though they look the same, they are not the same morpheme, because they do not have the same meaning. The –ssuffix at the end of dogs attaches onto nouns and tells you there ismore than one (it is a ‘plural’ morpheme). The –s suffix at the end of eats attaches onto verbs and tells us that the person who is doingthe eating is not me, or you, but a third person. This is a ‘third person subject marker’ morpheme.

All languages have words that can be broken down into morphemes. We are going to look at the words in our languages to see if we can find some of the different morphemes and explain what they mean.

Look at the list of nouns and verbs in your language in your FLEx project (see FLEx task 8 earlier in this book), and write down otherexamples of nouns and verbs. See how many different morphemes you can find.

Can you work out the meaning of some of the morphemes you find?

Share some of your examples with others in the class.

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Parts of Speech 3: Pronouns

Who do you think I am?

The underlined words are pronouns. They take the place of nouns and almost always refer to people. We make a distinctionbetween first, second and third person.

First person refers to the speaker or speakers: I, we mi,mipela

Second person refers to the audience (the listener)you yu, yupela

Third person refers to other people or things: he, she, item, ol

These forms can either refer to one person (singular) or more than one person (plural)

English makes a distinction between subject pronouns and object pronouns. In addition there are also possessive pronouns. That gives us the following table:

subject pronoun

object pronoun

possessive pronoun

singular

1 I me my

2 you you your3 masculine

he him his

3 feminine

she her her

3 neuter it it itsplural

1 we us our

2 you you your3 they them their

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Exercise

Underline the pronouns in the following verses.

1. I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way. (Mark 1:2)

2. He saw James and his brother John in a boat, preparing


Many languages have pronoun systems which are very differentfrom English.

Tok Pisin, for example, does not make a distinction betweenmasculine, feminine and neuter like English does. It just hasem for ‘he’ ‘she’ and ‘it’. But it has something else: dualpronouns such as mitupela. A dual pronoun refers to two people.Also, Tok Pisin distinguishes inclusive and exclusive firstpersons. Exclusive means ‘exclusive of the hearer’ (e.g.mipela) while inclusive means ‘inclusive of the hearer’ (e.g.yumi).The following chart shows all the Tok Pisin pronouns.

Tok Pisinsingular

1 mi

2 yu3 em

dual 1 exclusive

mitupela

1 inclusive

yumitupela

2 yutupela3 tupela

plura 1 mipela

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Exercise

Underline the pronouns in the following verses.

1. I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way. (Mark 1:2)

2. He saw James and his brother John in a boat, preparing


l exclusive1 inclusive

yumi

2 yupela3 ol

Other languages have much simpler systems. Kuman (Chimbu Province; data from Foley 1986) has only four pronouns. Noticethat there is no singular-plural distinction for second and third person.

1 singular na ‘I’ plural no ‘we’2 ene ‘you’3 ye ‘he, she, it, they’

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Exercise

a. Try to make a list of all the pronouns which occur in your language. Focus on free words, not on prefixes and suffixes (parts of words). Look for normal pronouns and possessive pronouns.


PossessionMy house

Your ear

John’s car

In all these examples, we have a noun that belongs to someone, or is‘possessed’ by them. The word possession is used to describe the grammatical study of these sorts of phrases.

In English, we always need to use at least two words. One tells us the thing that is possessed (house, ear, car) and the other word tells us the possessor – who it belongs to (my, your, John’s). In English, we could also say the car of John, but this often does not sound so natural.

In many Papua New Guinean languages, there are some words that can be possessed a different way, using suffixes rather than separate words. There is a part at the end of the word that tells you who it belongs to. This is often used for words describing family relationships (brother, mother, child…) or parts of the body (hand, eye, ear, shadow…) For example, in Awad Bing (Madang Province), these are the words for ‘bellybuttons’ belonging to different people:

bisow ‘my bellybutton’ (1sg)

bisom ‘your (sg) bellybutton’ (2sg)

bisiy ‘his/her/its bellybutton’ (3sg)

bismaham ‘our (exc) bellybuttons’ (1 exc pl)

bisood ‘our (inc) bellybuttons’ (1 inc pl)

bismim ‘your (pl) bellybuttons’ (2 pl)

bisod ‘their bellybuttons’ (3pl)

The same suffixes are used for lots of different words in Awad Bing,including tey ‘little brother’ (3sg), matey ‘eye’ (3sg), tiniy ‘mother’ (3sg), talngey ‘ear’ (3sg). The suffixes can be listed on their own like this:

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-w 1 sg possessive suffix

-m 2 sg possessive suffix

-y 3 sg possessive suffix

-maham 1 exc pl possessive suffix

-ood 1 inc pl possessive suffix (the vowel changesin other words)

-mim 2 pl possessive suffix

-od 3 pl possessive suffix (the vowel changes in other words)

When a noun belongs to a particular person, most languages still need to use at least two words, to show who is the possessor and what is possessed. Usually there is a suffix attached to the possessor, or to the possessed noun, or an extra word between the possessor and the possessed noun. Sometimes the possessed noun comesfirst, and sometimes the possessor comes first.

Kevin-ha aweki Kevin’s knife (Konai, Bradshaw 2001: 3)

Kevin miniy aab Kevin’s house (Awad Bing)

ing-i Kevin Kevin’s house (Seimat, Wozna & Wilson 2005: 38)

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Exercise 1:

a. Can you use one word to translate phrases like ‘my eye’, ‘his father’ or ‘your ear’? If so, list all the different forms when these nouns belong to different people, and type them up into your grammar description (section 3.1.3).

b. Make a list of other nouns which use possessive suffixes, rather than a separate word. Can you describe anything similar about all these words? For example, are they all body parts or family relations? Are there other


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Introduction to Active Clauses and Noun PhrasesHere are some words for talking about some parts of an active clause:

Actor: The person or thing that did, does or will do something. Theactor is the subject in an active clause, because an active clausefocuses on what an actor did, does, or will do.

Verb: A word that tells what someone or something did, does, or will do.

Patient: The person or thing that has something done to it. The patient is the object in an active clause.

Marker: A word or some letters attached to another word that tell us what a word, or a group of words, do in a sentence or paragraph (for example, a subject marker will tell us which word is the subject in a sentence).

Clause: - A clause expresses ‘a whole thought’. It usually contains one whole verb and other words that are related to it. Besides the verb, the clause usually contains a subject (the actor in an active clause), and often a patient (or object), and sometimes someone who receives something (a recipient, often called an indirect object).

Active Clause: A clause that has a verb which tells what someone did, does, or will do. An active clause always has an actor, butthe actor may not be mentioned in some clauses. An active clausemay also have a patient and other things in it.

Sentence: A sentence may be only one clause, or it may be more thanone clause connected to one or more other clauses by some kind ofconnector, such as the word and in English. A sentence ends in a full stop. There is usually a short pause after a sentence, and a person’s voice often goes down at the end of a sentence.

Exercise 1

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Draw 1 line under the actor in each sentence below:Draw a circle around the verb.Draw 2 lines under the patient.

1) God tested Abraham. (Gen 22:1)

2) Abraham i redim donki. (22:3)

3) Abraham i lukim dispela ples. (22:4)

4) Abraham took the wood. (22:6)

5) Abraham i karim paia. (22:6)

6) Abraham built an altar. (22:9)

7) Em i pasim pikinini bilong en. (22:9)

8) Abraham i kisim naip. (22:10)

9) He saw a ram. (22:13)

10) Bikpela i singautim Abraham. (22:15)

11) Abraham i kisim Aisak. (22:19)

Subject: The person or thing being focused on in a clause. The subject of an active clause is the actor, because an active clause focuses on what the actor does.

Object: An object tells which person or what thing the action in a clause is focused on. Sometimes this is the patient, as in “the dog bit the pig”, but not always. For example, in the clause “Peter saw John.” Being seen by Peter may not affect John, so John would not be a patient.

Subject and Object MarkersSubject Marker: A subject marker is a word or some letters that are

a sign that shows which word (or words) is the subject of a sentence.

Object Marker: An object marker is a word or some letters that are asign that shows which word (or words) is the object of a sentence.

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1. Subject and object markers in MotuIn example 2, the Subject Marker (SM) is “ese”. This word shows thatSisia is the subject of this sentence. The Object Marker (OM) is “na.” This word shows that “boroma” is the object of this sentence. The word “the” is not used in Motu in this sentence, but it is needed in English, so it is put in brackets in the free English translation.Example 2 – Subject and Object Markers in MotuSisia ese boroma na e koria.

Dog SM pig OM he bit.(The) dog bit (the) pig.In example 3, the word “boroma” has been moved from the middle of the sentence to the beginning of the sentence, but the word “na” which follows “boroma” shows us that this word is still the object of this sentence. The word “sisia” has been moved from the beginningof the sentence to the middle of the sentence, but the word “ese” which follows “sisia” shows us that this word is still the subject of this sentence. We see that the words are in a different order in examples 2 and 3, but the subject and object markers show us that they both mean the same thing.Example 3 – Subject and Object Markers in MotuBoroma na sisia ese e koria.

Pig OM dog SM he bit.(The) dog bit (the) pig.In example 4, the word that follows “boroma” has been changed from “na” to “ese.” This shows us that “boroma” is now the subject instead of being the object of this sentence. The word that follows “sisia” has been changed from “ese” to “na.” This shows us that “sisia” is now the object instead of being the subject of this sentence. Therefore, what this sentence says is different from what the sentences in examples 2 and 3 say.Example 4 – Subject and Object Markers in MotuBoroma ese sisia na e koria.

pig SM dog OM he bit.(The) pig bit (the) dog.

2. Object markers in HebrewIn example 5, we see that the letters used to write words in the Hebrew language are very different from the letters used to write

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words in English and Pidgin. The words that we see in this example are the words the Hebrew language uses to show which word in a sentence is the object of the sentence. Sometimes one of these wordsis used, and other times the other one is used.Example 5 – Object Markers in Hebrew

(’both pronounced ‘et) תתתת / תתת

In example 6, a Hebrew verse is written in English letters to show you this object marker.Example 6 – Genesis 1.1Bereshit bara’ ‘elohim ‘et hashammayim ve’et ha’arets

In.beginning created God OM the.heavens and.OMthe.land

3. Subject marker in IpiliIn example 7 from the Ipili language, the letters “to” on the end ofthe name “Pita” show that he is the subject of this sentence. Therefore, the word “Pitato” could be moved from the beginning of the sentence to the middle of the sentence and we would still know that he is the subject of the sentence. The Ipili subject marker is attached to the end of the subject.Example 7 – Subject Markers in IpiliPitato Jone pelea.Pita.SM Jone hit.Pita hit Jone.

Active clauses with an Actor and an Action, but No PatientAll the clauses in the examples 1 to 7 in this lesson have an actor,a verb, and a patient, but sometimes people do things that don’t do anything to anyone else. For that reason, there is no patient in theclauses that talk about doing those kinds of things. The 3 sentencesin example 8 show the kind of active clause in which the actor does something which does not affect anyone or anything else. These are called intransitive clauses.Example 8 – Active Clauses with No Patient1) Abraham got up... (Gen 22:3)2) Abraham looked up... (22:4)3) Tupela i wokabaut yet... (22:7)

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What Pita did in example 9 did not affect anyone or anything else, so there is no patient. In the Ipili language, sentences that don’t have a patient usually don’t have a subject marker on the actor likethere is in example 7, but the word “bala” which means “he” is oftenadded after the name of the actor.Example 9 – An Ipili Active Clause with no Subject Marker on the ActorPita bala palea.Pita he slept.Pita slept.

Exercise 2

Write how you would say each sentence in your language. Then write the gloss under each tokples word.

1) John hit Peter. Tokples _________________________________________________________

Gloss ________________________________________________________

2) Peter hit John. Tokples _________________________________________________________

Gloss _________________________________________________________

3) The dog bit the pig.Tokples _________________________________________________________

Gloss _________________________________________________________

4) The pig bit the dog.Tokples _________________________________________________________

Gloss _________________________________________________________5). If your language adds anything in sentence 1 and 2 to show who

the actor is, write what is added:

6). If your language adds anything in sentence 1 and 2 to show who the patient is, write what is added :

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7) If your language adds anything in sentence 3 and 4 to show who the actor is, write what is added:

8) If your language adds anything in sentence 3 and 4 to show who the patient is, write what is added:

9) Does the Patient ever come before the Actor in your language? __________

10) If the Patient does sometimes come before the Actor, when does it do this?

11) If the Patient comes before the Actor, does it change the meaning? _______

12) If putting the Patient before the Actor does change the meaning, how does it change the meaning?

Noun PhrasesSometimes the actor or the patient in a sentence is a single word, like ‘John’ or ‘books’ in the sentence John reads books. However, often several words together make up the actor or the patient. This is called a noun phrase.

Example 1

The big fat man reads very complicated books.

In this example, the actor is the noun phrase ‘the big fat man’ and the patient is the noun phrase ‘very complicated books’. Usually, the words in noun phrases have to come in the correct order. We cannot say in English complicated books very, or big man fat the. However, anoun phrase, as a group of words, can appear in different parts of asentence. Notice that words like ‘to’, ‘by’ and ‘with’ are not part of the noun phrase.

Example 2

Don’t give the big fat man ice cream

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I was squashed by the big fat man

I am going to town with the big fat man

In English, noun phrases can get quite long and have several different parts, as in the next example.

Example 3

These two very large and brightly-dressed Asian men are reading some quite interesting books.

In English, the main noun usually comes at the end of the noun phrase. In Tok Pisin, some words can come after the main noun. Look at the different noun phrases in the following example.

Example 4

Haus i stap long maunten ‘there is a house on the hill’

Wanpela haus i stap long maunten ‘there is a house on the hill’

Wanpela haus kapa i stap long maunten ‘there is a house with a metal roof on the hill’

Wanpela traipela haus kapa i stap long maunten ‘there is a big house with a metal roof on the hill’

Exercise 3

Underline all the noun phrases in the following examples:

The Lord Jesus chose twelve disciples.

The disobedient prophet was swallowed by a great big fish.

A young boy had five small loaves of bread.

Wanpela man nating i singautim Jisas.

Ol disaipel i autim switpela tok

Five thousand hungry men ate all the food

Mary and Martha’s only brother was dead for four long days

Tupela diwai wain i kamap arere long haus bilong Pita

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Parts of Speech 4: AdjectivesSmall is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life (Mat 7:14).

The underlined words are adjectives. Adjectives are often called descriptive words, because they describe nouns. They give information about such things as:

size: big, small, huge, narrow, broad colour: white, black, red, brown age: old, young, mature quality: good, bad, beautiful, ugly, rich, poor weight: light, heavy taste: sweet, sour, bitter temperature: hot, cold, warm, lukewarm sound: quiet, noisy, calm others: interesting, enthusiastic, hungry

In English you can recognise adjectives in the following way: almost all adjectives can be preceded by very: very big, very

quiet. many adjectives can take -er or more when you compare two

nouns:this house is smaller than ours; you are more important than the children.

many adjectives can take -est or most when you compare many nouns:this house is the biggest; this is the most difficult problem.

adjectives can occur between the words a / the and a noun: a big house, the white boat, the old tree, a bitter fruit, a remarkable event.

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Exercise

Underline the adjectives in the following verses.

1. I am the good shepherd. (John 10:11)

2. You wicked, lazy servant! (Mat 25:26)

3. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice,‘Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?’ (Rev 5:2)

4. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time. (Gen 6:9)

5. Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full


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Parts of Speech 5: Numerals‘When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?’ ‘Twelve’, they replied. (Mark 8:19)

The underlined words are numerals. Numerals give you information about the number of objects or people.

There are two kinds of numerals:

1. Cardinal numbers: one, two, three, four, five etc.These are used in counting, and also written as 1, 2, 3

etc.

2. Ordinal numbers: first, second, third, fourthThese are used to specify the order in a group of similar

objects or people(the first day, the second man, the third house). They are also written as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. Many Papua New Guinean languages do not have ordinal numbers.

In addition, there are also words that tell you about the number of objects or people, but that do not give exact numbers: many, much, some, several, a few, all, every. These words are called quantifiers.

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Exercise 1Underline the numerals and quantifiers in the following examples.

1. And a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. (Lk 13:10)

2. I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. (Rev 6:1)

3. For many are invited, but few are chosen. (Mat 22:14)

4. David was thirty years old when he became king. (2 Sam 5:4)


Parts of Speech 6: DemonstrativesThat is my house.This is the day that the Lord has made.When will these things happen?

The underlined words are called demonstratives. They are pointing words. They point to a person, an object, a time or an event. English has four demonstratives: this, that, these, those. They differ in distance and in number.

singular pluralnear this thesefar that those

Many languages in PNG have systems which are far more complex than English. Look at the following demonstrative system from Fore (EHP, data from Scott, quoted in Foley 1986). Fore distinguishes five distances, as well as high and low.

má ‘this, here’ (near speaker)pi ‘that, there’ (near addressee)mí ‘that over there’ (close)máe ‘that up there’ (close)mé ‘that down there’ (close)maré ‘that over there’ (mid)maró ‘that over there’ (far)mayó ‘that up there’ (far)mó ‘that down there’ (far)

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Exercise 2

1. If possible, write down the traditional counting system of your language from 1-10, then 11-20, 30, 40 etc. Notethat some languages in PNG have very few numerals, and use Tok Pisin instead.

2. Write down the quantifiers in your language: all, many, few, some, every….


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Exercise 2Try to list all the demonstratives in your language. Give arough definition and use each of them in an example sentence. Write your examples in your grammar description


Noun Phrase StructureFind a lot of examples of noun phrases in your texts.(1) a. Write down the parts of the noun phrase in the order they usually occur in your language. Give examples.

b. Do some noun phrases have these parts in a different order?If so, write down the order and give examples.

c. When the word order is not the most common one how does themeaning change?

d. How many parts can occur together in the same noun phrase? Write examples to show all the different parts that can occur together.

e. Are there any parts which must always occur together and cannot occur alone just with the noun?

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2. Try translating Genesis 41:26 “The /those seven good cows (are seven years)” Did you use just one noun phrase or more than one to make “those seven good cows” sound natural in yourlanguage?

Write down any other problems you have in translating noun phrases in your grammar description.

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Parts of Speech 7: AdpositionsAn old man lived in a small hut near a river.

The underlined words are called prepositions. They often tellabout the place where an action happens. In other cases theytell about time, direction, instruments and many other things.

Prepositions are normally followed by a noun or a pronoun inEnglish, as in the following examples, where the prepositionis underlined. The pre- at the beginning of the word tells usthese come before a noun. Notice that English is very rich inprepositions!

about this problem in the oceanabove the table near the endacross the road of the cityafter dark off the roadat night on the roofamong the disciples over the bridgebefore two o’clock through many trialsbehind the office to my friendduring the war under the bedfor my wife with the children

Note. In many languages in PNG words that mean ‘on, it, at, under’ etc. come after the noun, not before it. Therefore theyare not called prepositions, but postpositions.

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Exercise 1Underline the prepositions in the following verses:

1. Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lordhas done for you and how he has had mercy on you. (Mark 5:19)

2. He must slaughter it at the north side of the altar before the Lord. (Lev 1:11)

3. Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.


Example (Gadsup): maa' kim ‘in the house’house in

Clauses: Intransitive, Transitive and Di-transitiveA clause expresses ‘a whole thought’. It usually contains one whole verb and other words that are related to it. Besides the verb, the clause often contains elements like the person ‘doing’ the verb (theactor, and often the subject of the clause), the thing or person theaction is happening to (the patient, and often the object of the clause), and sometimes someone who receives something (a recipient, often called an indirect object). The following are examples of clauses in English:

Go!

I killed a pig.

Mother gave food to the visitors.

Clauses make up sentences. A simple sentence contains only one clause, but other sentences have two or more clauses. The following are examples of sentences in English:

John went to the bush. (Simple sentence)

John wanted to go hunting, but because his father was sick he had to stay at home.

Subject, verb and object (Transitive clauses)In your texts, find clauses that have these three parts: subject, verb and object. These clauses are called transitive. (Just for now do not worry about other parts like place or time expressions - onlystudy the main parts.)

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Exercise 2Try to find some prepositions or postpositions in your language. How do you say: in the house; on the roof; to my friend; with my child; for my wife; at night; under the table.


(1) a. Write down in your grammar description (6.1) the order in which these three parts most often occur in your language, and give examples.

b. Do some clauses have these parts in a different order? If they do, write down the order(s) and give examples.

c. When the word order is not the most common one, try to explain when, or why you use one order instead of another.

d. Are there any markers (‘flags’) to show which part is the subjectand which is the object? If there are, underline the markers on the examples.

e. Are there markers on the verb that help you to know what is the subject or the object? Also give examples in your grammar description.

f. Do those markers (on subject, object, or verb) always have to occur, or are they sometimes left out? Give examples in your grammardescription.

g. Study more examples of transitive clauses, you may find clauses that have the same verbs as the transitive clauses, but do not have the subject or the object as a separate word or phrase. If so, give examples. Can the subject or object be left out because the verb marks them? Or can the subject or object be left out even when the verb does not mark them in any way? Give examples.

(2) Look at your translation. If your language uses different word orders, are you making use of them in your translation? Write down

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in your grammar description any other problems that you have in translating transitive clauses.

Intransitive clausesIntransitive clauses contain a verb that usually cannot take an object. In your texts, find clauses that have a subject and a verb, but do not (and cannot) have an object.

(1) a. Is there a marker on the subject? If there is, is it the sameas the subject marker in the transitive clauses? Give examples in your grammar description (6.2).

b. If the marker is not the same as the subject marker in the transitive clauses, is it the same as the object marker in transitive clauses? (In this case your language may have what is called an ergative system - get help from your advisor or a consultant to describe this). Give examples.

c. Can you have intransitive clauses that only have a verb, without a separate word or phrase for a subject? If so, give examples. Also say whether the subject has a marker on the verb itself or not.

d. Do some verbs talking about moving always occur with a word or phrase indicating a place? (For example in English: He went to town.) Describe the structure of clauses with movement verbs and give examples.

e. Is there a difference in the structure of those intransitive clauses where the action is voluntary (for example he shouted) and where it is involuntary (for example he died)? If there is, describe the different structures and give examples.

f. Give examples of intransitive clauses where the verb does not describe an action but a process (for example the bananas ripened). Is

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the structure of these clauses different from the other intransitiveclauses? If so, how are they different?

(2) Look at your translation. Write down any problems that you havein translating intransitive clauses.

Clauses with a Recipient (Di-transitive clauses)In your texts, find examples of clauses that have a recipient, a receiver of the object. Those clauses that have both an object and arecipient are called di-transitive. An English example is: I gave the book to him.

(1) a. What is the usual order of the main parts in a clause that has a recipient? (Only describe the order of subject, object, verb and recipient, and leave other possible parts of the clause out for now.) Also write examples in your grammar description (6.3).

b. If there are different word orders, list them. Give examples in your grammar description.

c. How does the meaning change when the word order changes?

d. Does the recipient have some kind of marker or ‘flag’ attached toit or occurring with it? If so, describe it. (For example, English often uses the marker to for an indirect object, but it can also useword order: I gave the book to him. I gave him the book.)

e. Does the verb have a marker to show the recipient? If it has, is it the same marker that is used for the object, or is it different?

(2) Look at your translation. Write down any problems you have in translating recipients.

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Verb morphology: Subject, Object, Recipient and Benefactive MarkersIn many PNG languages with subject, object, verb (SOV) word order, the markers on the final verb (at the end of a sentence) are different from the markers on medial verbs (in the middle of a sentence). For SOV languages, we will study only those verb forms that can occur at the end of a sentence. If your language has some other basic word order than subject, object, verb, ignore this paragraph and study all your verbs.

In many languages across PNG, verbs can be divided into smaller pieces that each have their own meaning. One of these pieces (or “morphemes”), often shows who or what is the subject. For example, look at the following verbs in Ma Manda (Morobe Province; data from Pennington 2013a:187–190):

kugot ‘I went’ (1sg)

kugong ‘you went’ (2sg)

kugok ‘he/she/it went’ (3sg)

kutaat ‘I will go’ (1sg)

bataang ‘you will come’ (2sg)

bataak ‘he/she/it will come’ (3sg)

taayat ‘I am saying’ (1sg)

taayang ‘you are saying’ (2sg)

Notice that, in Ma Manda, the final letter of each verb marks the subject of the clause. A 1sg subject is always marked with a -t, a 2sg subject is always marked with an -ng, and a 3sg subject is always marked with a -k. Just like the possessive suffixes on nouns, these morphemes can be listed on their own:

-t ‘1sg’

-ng ‘2sg’

-k ‘3sg’

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If your language has subject morphemes like Ma Manda, you may have separate markers for first person singular (I, me), first person plural (we, us), first person dual (we two), third person plural (they, them), third person feminine singular (she, her), etc.

(1) Look at the verbs in your texts.

(2) a. Do verbs in your language have markers to show who or what the subject is? If so, give a chart or list for all the subject markers in your grammar description (section 5.1). If there are different sets of subject markers, give a chart or list for each of the different sets and explain where they are used: As examples, write a few clauses, and underline the subject markers on the verb.

b. When the subject is a plural noun (talking about many people, things or animals), do you use a singular subject marker or a pluralone? Give examples in your grammar description.

c. If your language does not mark the subject on the verb, does the subject always have to occur as a separate noun, noun phrase or pronoun? Give examples in your grammar description.

d. Or do you have subject marking on some verbs and not on others? If so, what verbs do not have subject marking? For example, words like ‘have’ or ‘exist’ often do not have subject marking.

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Many PNG languages have morphemes that mark objects as well. In Ma Manda (Morobe Province; data from Pennington 2013b:6) these morphemes are prefixes that come before the verb:

nalaamgok ‘he shot me’ (1sg)

galaamgok ‘he shot you’ (2sg)

talaamgok ‘he shot him/her/it’ (3sg)

nhlaamgok ‘he shot us’ (1pl)

salaamgok ‘he shot you all’ (2pl)

yalaamgok ‘he shot them’ (3pl)

Again, just like the subject suffixes, these prefixes can be listed on their own:

na- ‘1sg’ nh- ‘1pl’

ga- ‘2sg’ sa- ‘2pl’

ta- ‘3sg’ ya- ‘3pl’

(3) a. Look at sentences like ‘I hit him’ and ‘he hit me’. Do verbs in your language have markers to show who or what is the object? If so, give a chart of the different object markers, and examples.

b. If your language does not mark the object on the verb, does the object of a transitive clause always occur as a noun, noun phrase, or pronoun?

c. Do verbs in your language have markers to show who the recipient is? If these are different from the object markers, list them here. Write examples.

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d. If your language does not mark the recipient on the verb, does the recipient have to occur as a noun, noun phrase or pronoun? Give examples.

e. If something is done for someone, is there a different marker on the verb to show who it is done for? (This is called a benefactive marker.) Give examples.

(4) Is there anything special in the person/number marking in your language that you have to keep in mind when you translate?

Do you have any problems translating person and number marking? If so, write them down in your grammar description.

Verb morphology: TenseTense compares the “when” of a verb to the “when” of another time, usually the time of speech (the moment when the words leave your

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mouth).

Some languages compare times in many ways. Some languages only make simple tense comparisons. Some languages make no tense comparisons at all! Here are some examples from the Ipili language in the Highlands, which has five tenses. The letter ‘l’ at the beginning means the verb ‘say.’ The last letters tell who did whatever the verb says. The underlined letters tell when something happened – thetense.

Far Past Near Past Recent Present Future

long ago a while agoa little while ago now later

I lewa lauwa lalo leyo lolopeyo

You lee lapi lale lele lolopele

he lea lapia lala leya lolopeya

we 2 lepa laipa lalapa leyapa lolopeyapa

you 2 leapi lapiapi lalapi leyapi lolopeyapi

those 2 leapi lapiapi lalapi leyapi lolopeyapi

we lema laima lalama leyama lolopeyama

you (PL) leai lapiai lalai leyai lolopeyai

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they leai lapiai lalai leyai lolopeyai

The framing sentences below help us study the tense system of our language. They pinpoint a particular time using words like “yesterday” and “next month”. These words will help ensure that the verbs are doing what we want them to! However, these words are not the tense system itself.

We are interested in the ways the verbs themselves change, as well as any changes the subject and object markers make.

(1) Translate these sentences into your language in a natural way (if there is not a natural way, leave it blank, and if you can thinkof more than one way write all of them).

a. I am going to Kainantu.

b. This afternoon I will go to Kainantu.

c. Tomorrow I will go to Kainantu.

d. Next week I will go to Kainantu.

e. Next month I will go to Kainantu.

f. Next year I will go to Kainantu.

g. This morning I went to Kainantu.

h. Yesterday I went to Kainantu.

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i. Last week I went to Kainantu.

j. Last month I went to Kainantu.

k. Last year I went to Kainantu.

l. A very long time ago, my ancestors went to Kainantu.

(2) a. Look at these examples and at verbs in other texts. Do verbs in your language have markers to show tense? If so, how many different tenses does your language have? Write a chart or list of the different tense markers in your grammar description (5.2) and give examples.

b. How are the different tenses used? If your language has more thanone past tense, what is the difference between them? Do you use a different tense for something that happened just now / earlier today/ yesterday / a few days ago / in the time of the ancestors? Write your answers and examples in the grammar description.

c. If your language has more than one future tense, what is the difference between them? Write your answers and examples in the grammar description.

d. If the tense is not marked in the verb how do you know when the action took place? Write your answers and examples in the grammar description.

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(3) In translating tense you have to be really careful. Many PNG languages have more tenses than English. If your language is one of those, are you making use of all the different tenses in the right way? Even if your language has the same number of tenses as English,it may use them in a different way. Check your translation and see if you need to change anything in it, or in your description of tense. What other problems do you have in translating tense? Write what you discover in your grammatical description.

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Verb Morphology: AspectAspect has to do with the timing of an action or event itself, for example if it is continuing, completed, repeated etc.

In your texts, try to find examples of verbs that show these kinds of things. English does not show aspect in the verb forms, so the examples below are there just to give you an idea of the meanings, rather than the forms. Tok Pisin has some better examples than English.

Here are some examples of different kinds of aspect in English and Tok Pisin. The pictures might help you understand the concept.

continuous Examples: I am reading a book / mi ritim buk i stap / mi wok long ritim buk

completed Examples: I went home / mi go long haus pinis

habitual Examples: He usually eats bread for breakfast / em i save kaikai bret long moning

repeated Example: He kept hitting the snake / em i paitim snek i go i go / em i paitimpaitim

beginning Example: He started singing / em i stat long singsing

Aspect is different to tense. Aspect refers to the timing of the verb, whether it is in the past, present or future. For example, in Tok Pisin we can use the same continuous aspect sentence with i stap for something in the past, present or future:

Past: Asde, mi ritim buk i stap na wanpela man singautim mi

Present: Mi ritim buk i stap.

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Future: Taim yu lukim mi tumora, sapos mi ritim buk i stap, singaut strong!

(1) a. Does your language have special markers on the verb to show if the action or event is continuous, completed, habitual, repeated or beginning?

b. If your answer is ‘yes’ to any of those above, describe the aspects one by one in your grammar description (section 5.3), and give examples.

c. If your language does not mark aspect on the verb itself, does itmark it somewhere else in the sentence? If so, give examples in yourdescription.

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d. Is the verb or some part of it ever repeated? If it is, what meaning does it add to the verb? Write about this in your grammar description.

e. If your language does not mark aspect on either the verb or the verb phrase, how do you talk about continuous, completed, repeated action etc. in your language? Give examples in your grammar description.

(2) Look at other texts - do you find something to add to your description of aspect? Write it down and give examples.

(3) Look at your Bible translation. Write down any problems you havein translating aspect into your language.

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Verb Morphology: Realis and IrrealisPNG languages often have a difference between realis and irrealis mode. Realis refers to the more real and certain events, while irrealis refers to possible or doubtful events.

Look at your texts and get examples of verbs that express something that did not happen, or something that will or may happen, or something that would happen if…. See if there is some marking on allor some of these that is different from markers on verbs that say something has already happened.

(1) a. Can you find evidence to show that your language makes a distinction between realis and irrealis? If so, describe what marker(s) in the verb or verb phrase show that it is either realis or irrealis. Give examples.

b. Irrealis may also be restricted to expressions that talk about something that ‘almost happened’ or something that ‘would have happened if…’ How does your language say these kinds of sentences?

c. If you do not think that you have realis and irrealis, take a second look at your “future tense” (if you have described it in Section 3.2). Check what you have called ‘future’ – is it really future or is it irrealis? If the marker for ‘future’ can also occur with verbs that do not refer to the future, your language may use irrealis mode to talk about future events.

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(2) If your language makes a difference between realis and irrealis,how do you make use of it in translation? Give examples.

Write any problems you have in translating realis or irrealis in your grammar description.

(Scripture references: Luke 19: 40, 42, 44)

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Verbs: Serial VerbsWhen we talk about serial verbs we mean two or more verbs that go together and that show closely related actions. Often both (or all) the verbs keep at least some of their basic meaning. The whole groupof verbs acts as one unit and often the verbs in the group all have the same subject (and object). For example, the meaning of the English verb bring is expressed in many PNG languages with a serial verb meaning ‘(go) get come’. Mark all the examples of serial verbs that you can find in 2 texts.

(1) a. Describe the structure of serial verbs. How many verbs usually occur in a series? How many can occur? Give examples.

b. Do all the verbs have person and tense markers and other markers?Or does only one of the verbs have those markers? Give examples.

c. Do some of the verbs have no markers at all, so that they are just the verb roots? Give examples.

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d. If the serial verb has an object, where does it go? Before or after the whole group of verbs, or can it go in the middle? Give examples.

e. If a negative word goes with a serial verb, where is its place? Does it make all the verbs in the group negative? Give examples.

f. Does your language also use serial verbs where English uses an instrument or a locative? For example, is the most natural translation for the English expression He chopped it with an axe, something like ‘he axe take chopped’? Or, instead of saying ‘he wentto the bush’, does your language say something like ‘he walked went bush’? Give examples of these or others that you can think of. Do you use the verb give when something is done for someone else, as in: ‘I prayed-gave him’ to express ‘I prayed for him’?

(2) Look at your translation and find examples of serial verbs. If your language has a lot of serial verbs, are you using them in your translation to make it sound more natural?

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Write down in your grammar description any problems that you still have in translating serial verbs, or anything you need to remember.

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Verbs: Medial VerbsMany PNG languages with Actor, Patient, Verb (APV) (also known as subject, object, verb (SOV)) word order have two kinds of verbs. Final verbs almost always come at the end of a sentence and have their own set of markers for person, tense etc. Medial verbs are used earlier in the sentence and have their own markers that do not come on the final verbs. In this section we will discuss medial verbs.

For example, in Ma Manda (Morobe Province; data from Pennington 2013a:20) medial verbs have a suffix -ka which means that the subjectof that clause is the same as the subject of the next clause:

Taamhng baka gebhng moka shbat sengak.woman come inside go down food cooked‘The woman came and went inside and cooked the food.’

So, using the same subject medial verb suffix in the above sentence means that the woman did all of the actions herself. Ma Manda also has some ‘different subject’ suffixes. These mean that the subject of the clause is different from the subject of the next clause. In the following sentence, -ka is the same-subject medial verb suffix, and then -nghlh is the different-subject medial verb suffix:

na baka gebhng monghlh taamhng shbat sengak.man come inside go down woman food cooked‘The man came and went inside and the woman cooked the food.’

So in the above sentence, the man came and went inside, and then a different subject (the woman) actually cooked the food. Often different subject medial verb suffixes also tell us who did the action, whether it is first person, second person, third person, etc.

If you have them, find all examples of medial verbs in at least 1 or2 texts.

(1) a. Is there a marker telling you who the subject of the medial verb is? Give examples in your grammar description.

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b. Can you tell from the verb if the subject of the next clause is going to be the same, or different? Give examples.

c. Can you tell from the verb who the subject of the next clause is going to be? Give examples.

d. Can you tell from the verb if the action is finished, or if it will keep going on during the action of the next verb? Give examples.

e. If your language has many different forms of medial verbs, write a chart or a list of them (with help from your mentor) in your grammar description.

(2) Look at your translation and see how you use medial verbs there.Would it sound more natural if you used more medial verbs?

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Write down in your grammar description anything that you need to remember when translating medial verbs, or any translation problems.

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Parts of Speech 8: ConjunctionsWhen he saw Peter and John, he asked them for money. (Acts 3:3)

The underlined words are conjunctions. Conjunctions are connecting words; they join words and sentences.

Typical conjunctions in English are: and, or, but, so, because, unless, when, whenever, if, since, although, until, as, while.

Each conjunction has its own meaning. Some conjunctions are made up of two or more words: so that, as soon as.

Examples: I can give you bananas or strawberries. (alternative, choice)

We ran home because it was starting to rain. (reason)

If the power goes off, we will have a break. (condition)

We loved the beach, but it was very hot. (contrast)

Writing a grammar is not easy, so do your best. (consequence)

While you finish your work, I will cook a nice meal.(simultaneous time)

Unless we finish today, we will continue tomorrow.(negative condition)

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Exercise 1

Underline the conjunctions in the following verses.

1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Gen 1:1)

2. When you eat of it, you will surely die. (Gen 2:17)

3. May the God who gives endurance and encouragement giveyou a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow ChristJesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify


Note: Some words can function as either preposition or conjunction. A preposition is always followed by a noun phrase; a conjunction normally introduces a whole clause.

after He went home after the game. (preposition)He went home after he had played a game. (conjunction, marks

next event)until He worked here until 2005. (preposition)

He

worked here until he retired. (conjunction, marks end point)

Be aware that many languages in PNG only have a few conjunctions, and that many languages can link clauses withoutlinking words. For example, a literal translation of a sentence in tokples could be: I went to his house, he wasn’t there, I left a message. In natural English we would add conjunctions: I went to his house, but he wasn’t there, so I left a message.

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Exercise 1 (continued)

Underline the conjunctions in the following verses.

4. That day when evening came, he said to his disciples. (Mark 4:35)

5. After the men had gone a long time without food, Paul stood up before them and said... (Acts 27:21)

6. So the exiles did as was proposed. (Ezra 10:16)

7. As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.


Give examples of the conjunctions you find, with sentences, in your grammar description (7.1).

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CommandsCommands are a type of sentence that are used to tell someone what to do, or what not to do.

The most common kind of command is when we tell someone to do something. These are called second person commands, because we wantyou (2nd person) to do it. We can often do this in different ways depending on who is giving the command. How would you say ‘eat a piece of pineapple’ in your language in each of these situations:

A father talking to his child:

A man talking to his elderly father:

A friend passing on good advice from a doctor:

Commands can also be used to tell what we want to do. These are called first person commands, because we (1st person) want to do something.

“Let’s eat pineapple” (Let’s is a shortened form of ‘let us’)

Languages also sometimes have ways of telling that we want someone or something else to do something.

These are called third person commands, because we want someone else(3rd person) to do something.

“Let John eat a piece of pineapple.”

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Copy your examples into your grammar description.

Look at these examples and others in your texts.

a. In the commands that you have found, is there a marker or a word that tells you that the sentence is a command (and not a statement or a question)?

b. If you have found other markers or words that only occur in command sentences and never in statements or questions, write down where they come in the sentence and give examples.

c. In the clauses in a command sentence is there sometimes a word (or phrase) which is subject? Often? Never?

d. If there is no subject, is there a marker in the verb showing whothe speaker wants to carry out the command? Give examples in your grammar description.

e. If there is no subject, and no marker in the verb to say who the speaker wants to carry out the command, then who does the speaker want to do it? How do people know?

f. If verbs (or verb phrases) in your language have different markers for tense (past, present, future etc.) and aspect (completedaction, continuing action etc.), which of these markers cannot occuron verbs in command sentences? Explain this in your grammar description.

g. Is there anything else about a command sentence which makes it different from a statement sentence?

h. Besides the ordinary command sentence, does your language have a ‘weaker’, more polite command sentence? What is it like?

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i. Who can you say a command sentence to? Your children? Other youngpeople? People about the same age as you? People older than you?

j. Look at your translation and write down any problems or issues for translating commands.

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Negation and Negative Clauses(1) Find all the negation words (words with meanings like ‘no’ and ‘not’) in a couple of texts.

(2) a. Does your language have different negation words, or only one?

b. If there is only one negation word, where is its place? Does its place change according to which word you want to make negative? Givesome examples in your grammar description (section 6.7).

c. If your language has many negation words (or markers), write downeach one, describe how it is used and give examples. The questions further down give you help in doing this.

d. Does your language have a negation word (or marker) that only occurs at the beginning or at the end of a sentence? Give examples in your grammar description.

e. Does your language have a negation word (or marker) that only occurs with a certain class of words, for example only with verbs, or with nouns or adjectives? Give examples.

f. Does your language have negation words that are stronger than theordinary negatives? (For example, English never is stronger than not.) If you have them, how are they used? If you don’t have them, how do you make a negation stronger? Give examples in your grammar description.

g. Does your language have a special word (or marker) for negative commands? (For example: Don’t go!) Give examples in your grammar description.

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h. Does your language have some words or expressions that are negative in themselves and do not need a negation word to make them negative? (For example: dislike, unable, useless, impossible) Give examplesin your grammar description.

i. If you have several verbs that belong together in a sentence (especially serial verbs), do you just use one negation word to makeall the verbs negative, or do you need to use a negation word or marker for each one? (For example: I did not come and get it and eatit, or: I did not come and did not get it and did not eat it). Give examples in your grammar description.

(3) Study other texts and see if you can find some negation words ormarkers that you have not described yet. Write down any new things that you find, and give examples. Also write down any problems that you have with the negatives.

(4) Look at your translation and see how you have used negation words or markers there. If your language has several of them, are you making good use of all of them, instead of only one or two?

How are you translating passages where the negative is very strong, like Heb. 13:15?

Do you have some more problems translating negatives?

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QuestionsWhen we ask a question, what do we want to happen? Sometimes we wantinformation and so we want an answer to our question. Other times weask questions to scold people (krosim in Tok Pisin), or make them think, or to get someone to do something, or as a greeting. But in this section we will look at the kinds of questions we ask because we want someone to answer and give us information.

Look at one or two texts that have questions in them and mark all the questions you find where the speaker wants someone to answer andgive information.

Types of information questions Yes-no questions

(1) a. Are there some questions where the speaker just wants ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as an answer? Is there a marker in the sentence that shows it is a question? Where does the marker come in the sentence? Give examples in your grammar description (section 7.3).

b. If the order of parts in the yes-no question is different from the word order in statement sentences, say how it is different and give examples in your grammar description.

c. If you have noticed anything else that helps make a sentence intoa yes-no question, write about it too and give examples in your grammar description.

WH questions

When we want to find out more than just ‘yes’ or ‘no’, in English weask questions using question words such as Who? What? Which? How many? When? Where? How? Why? (People sometimes call these WH questions because most of these English question words start with wh.)

d. Write down the question words you notice in questions in your text, and any others that you can think of. If some of the question

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words are made up of two words, or have markers on them, show what they are.

e. Where do question words come in a sentence - in the same place asthe part that the word is asking about? Or do question words have a special place in the sentence? Give examples in your grammar description.

f. Is the word order in these questions the same as in yes-no questions? (And if there is a question marker in yes-no questions, does the same marker ever occur in questions asking ‘what, where, when’ etc.?) Give examples.

g. In your language:

- Is it polite to ask questions to get information?

- Who can you ask questions so that you can get information?

- Is it polite to ask someone a question about himself or herself?

In English, people often ask ‘why’ questions to find out the reason for something but in some Papua New Guinea languages people nearly always use ‘why’ questions for scolding or accusing. If your language uses ‘why’ questions for scolding or accusing, how can you ask for the reason for something in a polite way? Give an example inyour grammar description.

Study other texts and find more examples of questions that people ask to get information. Write down any new things you find and any problems.

(2) Look at your translation and find examples of questions that people asked to get information. Do they all fit in with the way people ask questions to get information in your language? Write downany problems you have in translating questions that people ask to get information.

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Parts of Speech 9: Adverbs

The man who was miraculously healed was over forty years old. (Acts 4:22)

The underlined word is an adverb. It tells how the man was healed. Adverbs give extra information about the events in a clause, but because there are many kinds of adverbs, it is impossible to give a common meaning that is shared by all adverbs.

The following five categories are the most common kinds of adverbs in English.

1. Adverbs of manner. These adverbs tell you how the action is or was done. They often end in -ly: slowly, quickly, softly, loudly, badly, miraculously.

We walked slowly to the meeting.

She sang softly to the sick child.

He cut his foot badly on a sharp stone.

2. Adverbs of time. These adverbs tell you when something happens, happened or will happen: now, today, yesterday, tomorrow, early, late. Adverbs of time can also tell you how often something happens or happened: always, often, never, sometimes, rarely,again.

Why do you always eat with your hands?

We had to leave early in the morning.

Notice that in the morning is not an adverb, even though it tells you the time. In the morning is not one word, but a phrase consisting of three words: in (preposition), the (article) and morning (noun).

3. Adverbs of place. These adverbs tell you about the place of an event: here, there, everywhere.

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Can you wait for me here?

We saw people everywhere.

4. Adverbs of degree. These adverbs modify adjectives and give information about the degree of the adjective: very, rather, somewhat, too, so, incredibly, completely, enough. In English, most adverbs of degree come before the adjective, but the adverb enough follows the adjective. Adverbs of degree can also modify adverbs of manner.

The weather was very hot and I felt so tired.

I think she is rather smart.

The coffee is too cold.

You are not old enough to drive a car.

The preacher spoke incredibly fast. (Note: fast is an adverb of manner).

5. Sentence adverbs. These adverbs show the speaker’s opinion or attitude.

Sadly, our team lost the match.

Fortunately the power stayed on the whole day.

Perhaps they will not come back.

He probably is not interested in attending this course.

There are other types of adverbs not discussed here: negators (no, not, neither, nor) focussing adverbs (just, only, also, simply)

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Exercise 1

Underline the adverbs in the following verses.

1. We found the jail securely locked. (Acts 5:23)

2. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly. (1Cor 9:26)

3. Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. (2 Peter 3:1)

4. Perhaps He will forgive you. (Acts 8:22)


TimeLook in your texts for expressions that talk about time (these are called temporal expressions)

(1) a. What kinds of time words does your language have? (yesterday, today, later etc.) Do they have some kind of marker to show that they are temporals? Write your examples in your grammar description (section 6.5).

b. How does your language divide time like ‘today’, ‘yesterday’, ‘the day before yesterday’? How many days do you have a special wordfor? What about ‘tomorrow’, ‘the day after tomorrow’ etc.?

c. Notice that your language may have more than one translation for some English time words. For example, English ‘later’ has a very wide meaning. Does your language use different words for ‘later (today)’ and ‘later = some other time’?

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Exercise 1

Underline the adverbs in the following verses.

1. We found the jail securely locked. (Acts 5:23)

2. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly. (1Cor 9:26)

3. Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. (2 Peter 3:1)

4. Perhaps He will forgive you. (Acts 8:22)

Exercise 2

1. Try to find some adverbs of degree in your language: very, rather, somewhat, too…

2. Try to find some adverbs of time in your language: now, then, afterwards, yesterday, tomorrow… Be careful, because some of these words could be nouns.

3. Do you have any adverbs of manner in your language: quickly, slowly, carefully?

4. Try to find some sentence adverbs in your language:


d. What special words does your language have for different parts ofthe day and night? Write up your findings in your grammar description.

e. A temporal phrase is a group of words that expresses the time when something happens. It usually has a temporal word as one of itsparts. In many languages temporal phrases use the same markers as locative phrases do. (The temporals place the event in time.) How does your language make temporal phrases? Give examples in your grammar description.

f. Do some time words or phrases show how long something happened? (For example: He stayed there for three nights.)

g. If your language does not mark tense on the verb, do you need to use temporal expressions quite often, or not?

(2) Now look at your other texts. Can you find some new or differenttime expressions? Write them down with examples, as well as any problems.

(3) Look through temporal expressions in your translation. Do they follow the rules that you have written above?

The New Testament often uses the expression ‘immediately’, ‘at once’. If your language uses medial verbs, does one of the medial verb forms give the meaning ‘immediately’ without your having to addany other word? See for example Luke 8:44.

Write in your grammar description any other problems you have in translating temporal expressions.

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Relationships between clauses: Reason / Purpose / Result

Reason and ResultA reason clause explains why something happened. A RESULT clausetells what happened next.

Example 1 RESULT reason

1)I was afraid, because I was naked. (Gen 3:10)

This sentence has two clauses in it. The second clause begins withthe word “because.” That word shows us that this clause is tellingus the cause or the reason why Adam was afraid, so the second clauseis a reason clause. The word “because” also joins the result andreason clauses together into one sentence. The Pidgin words “longwanem” and “bikos” are also used to show that a clause is a reasonclause.

Whenever there is a reason clause in a sentence, there is usually aresult clause that tells what happened because of what it says inthe reason clause. The first clause in example 1 is a result clausebecause it tells us what happened when Adam saw that he was naked.

Example 2

reason RESULT

2)Because I was naked, I was afraid.

The result clause is often the first clause in English sentences,but the reason clause can be first in a sentence like this. Theword “because” tells us that the first clause is a reason clause, sothe second clause is a result clause.

Example 3

reason RESULT

3) I was naked, so I was afraid. (Gen 3:10)

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In this example, the second clause begins with the word ‘so.’ Thatis a word that is often used to show that a clause is a resultclause. The first clause in that sentence tells us the reason whyAdam was afraid, so it is a reason clause. The word “so” joins thereason and result clauses together into one sentence. The Englishword “therefore,” or the Pidgin words “olsem na” can also be used toshow that a clause is a result clause.

Exercise 1

Write the word "reason" over the reason clause. Write the word"RESULT" over the result clause.

1) Because it rained, I did not work in my garden.

2) Because you have done this…, I will surely bless you.

3) All nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyedme.

4) I know that Jesus is God’s son. Therefore, I believe that hewill save me.

5) Mi laik helpim yu. Long wanem, yu bin helpim mi pastaim.

The reason clause explains something about the result clause, so itis less important than the result clause. The word “RESULT” iscapitalized to show that the result clause is more important thanthe reason clause. In English, the result clause usually comesfirst to show that it is more important than the reason clause.

In Ipili, some letters at the end of the first clause show that itis a reason clause and the reason clause is almost always first inthe sentence. However, in English the word “because” at thebeginning of a clause shows that it is a reason clause and thereason clause is usually last in the sentence.

reason RESULT

Goteto namba moyane okonena, epele eyo.

God me helped because, happy am.I.

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Because God helped me, I am happy.

In Ipili, some letters at the end of the first clause show that thenext clause is a “result” clause. The Ipili letters that means “andso” are at the end of the first clause, but in English, the word“so” is at the beginning of the next clause.

reason RESULT

Balato namba pelea-kola, nambato bala pelewa.

He me hit- and so, I him hit.

He hit me, so I hit him.

Exercise 2

The 2 sentences below are written 2 different ways. The reasonclause comes first in each sentence with an “A” in front of it. Theresult clause comes first in each sentence with a “B” in front ofit. Translate the sentence that is written the way people would saythis in your language. If they can say it both ways, translate both“A” and “B”.

A) Because God helped me, I am happy.

B) I am happy, because God helped me.

A) Because he hit me, I hit him.

B) I hit him, because he hit me.

Is the reason or the result clause usually first in your language?

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In the sentences that you have translated above, put a line underthe letters or word which shows that a clause is a reason clause ora result clause in your language.

Now look for any reason and result clauses in your texts. Copy someexamples into your grammar description and write the word reason orRESULT over them.

See how you have translated reason and result clauses in yourtranslation. Do you need to make any changes? Write in your grammardescription anything to remember or any problems you still have intranslating reason and result clauses.

Purpose and ResultA purpose clause explains what someone wants to do.

A RESULT clause that is joined to a purpose clause tells whatsomeone did because he wanted to do whatever it says in the purposeclause.

Example 1

RESULT purpose

1)I went to town, (because I wanted) to buy food.

The difference between a reason clause and a purpose clause is thata reason clause does not say that anyone wanted what is said in thereason. In the example of reason that we had before: I was afraidbecause I was naked, Adam did not want to be naked, but he was naked, sothat caused him to be afraid.

Example 2

RESULT purpose

2)I went to town to buy food.When the purpose clause comes after the result clause, the words“because I wanted” are often left out to make the sentence shorter.

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The meaning is the same and just as clear in English without thoseextra words.

Example 3

purpose RESULT

3.(Because I wanted) to buy food, I went to town.In English, the purpose clause is usually after the result clause,just like the reason clause is often after the result clause.However, it is also possible to put the purpose clause first inEnglish, but it sounds better to start with the words “because Iwanted.”

Example 4

RESULT purpose

4)Em i brukim sampela paiawut bilong mekim opa. (Gen 22:3)English also often uses other words like, “so” or “so that” or “inorder to” or “for” as a way of showing that a clause is a purposeclause. Pidgin usually uses words like “bilong” and “inap long” toshow that a clause is a purpose clause. Tok Pisin also usually hasthe purpose after the result.

Exercise 1

Draw a line under the purpose clause. Write the word "purpose" overthe purpose clause.

Write the word "RESULT" over the result clause.

1) I went to buy food.

2) God forgives our sins so that we can go to heaven.

3) Because we want people to understand God’s word, we translatethe Bible

4) He went to school so he could get a good job.

5) Em i bin baim wanpela savol inap long em i ken wokim gaden.

6) In order to earn some money, he got a job.

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7) He took the knife to kill his son. (Genesis 22:10)

Sometimes there is more than one purpose clause in a sentence. InEnglish, the result clause is usually first, followed by the purposeclauses.

RESULT immediate purpose intermediate purposeultimate purpose

He went town, so that he could get some money in order to buya truck to carry cargo.

The same purpose-RESULT sentence in Ipili is the other way around:

ultimate purpose intermediate purpose

Pinju mandukale nembo toto, balato katomindi kamboyale

Cargo I.want.to.carry thinking. he vehicle ain.order.to,buy

immediate purpose RESULT

muni minditupa molo tanonga pupia.

money some to.get to.town he.went.

In languages like Ipili, the purpose clause is usually first, andthe result clause is at the end or the sentence.

English translation of this Ipili example: “Thinking, ‘I want tocarry some cargo,’ in order to buy a truck, to get some money, hewent to town.”

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Exercise 2

The purpose clause is first in the sentences that start with “A,”but last in those that start with B. Translate the sentences thatare written the way people would say these things in your language.If they can say it both ways, translate both “A” and “B.”

A) Because I wanted to buy food, I went to town.

B) I went to town because I wanted to buy food.

A) To build a house, he cut down a tree.

B) He cut down a tree to build a house.

Is the purpose or the result clause usually first in your language?

In the sentences that you have translated above, put a line underthe letters or word that shows that a clause is a purpose clause ora result clause in your language.

Now look for purpose and result clauses in your texts. Write someexamples in your grammar description, with purpose and resultwritten over the different clauses.

See how you have translated purpose clauses in your translation. Doyou need to make any changes? Write in your grammar descriptionanything to remember or any problems you still have in translatingpurpose clauses.

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Parts of Speech 10: Articles and particles

The way of a fool seems right to him,but a wise man listens to advice. (Proverbs 12:15)

The underlined words in English are articles. Articles come before nouns and tell you whether the noun is known or unknown. A and an are indefinite articles, and indicate that the noun is unknown; the is the definite article and tells you that the noun is known.Many languages, including most languages in PNG, do not have articles.

Many languages have other short words which by themselves do not have a clear meaning, but they are necessary to make the sentence sound good. Such words do not seem to fit into any ofthe categories that we have looked at. These small words are often called particles. Here are some examples of particles:

noun particles (particles that mark subject, object or possession);

emphatic particles (particles that indicate special emphasis);

question particles; politeness particles. predicate particles, like Tok Pisin i: Em i go pinis.

An example from Tagalog (Philippines, Schachter 1985), illustrating three of these particles:

Mabuti ba ang ani po?good QUESTION SUBJECT harvest POLITENESS‘Is the harvest good, Sir?’

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Exercise 1Underline the articles in the following verses.

1. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel. (John 13:5)

2. At the same time he was hoping that Paul would offer him a bribe. (Acts 24:26)

3. The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air and out of the temple came a loud voice from the


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Exercise 2Can you think of words in your language that do not fit into the parts of speech that we have discussed? Show them to yourmentor and discuss them.


TopicTopic is what a sentence is about. The topic often comes as the first part in the sentence. Very often the subject of a sentence is also its topic, but not always. (For example, in Those boys I had already seen, ‘those boys’ is topic and object, whereas ‘I’ is subject.) If the same topic continues in a number of sentences, the topic may notbe there as a noun phrase, it may only show in the person markers onthe verb.

Print out and look at two stories sentence by sentence answering thequestion, ‘Who, or what, is this sentence about?’ After answering, underline whatever word, or part of a word, refers to the topic.

(2) a. Does the topic always, or often, come first in the sentence? Give examples in your grammar description.

b. Is a new topic always, or sometimes, marked by a special marker? Give examples in your grammar description.

c. If the same topic continues over a number of sentences, is the continuing, ‘old’ topic marked differently from the way it was marked when it was a new topic? Give examples in your grammar description.

d. Can answers to questions occur in the topic position or take a topic marker? Give examples in your grammar description.

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(2) Look through a few more texts and see if you can find something more to say about topics. Also, write down any problems.

If your language has a topic marker, does this same marker have different uses elsewhere, for example as a conjunction or a demonstrative? If it has, write in your grammar description the section number(s) where you have described the other uses.

(3) Look at your translation. If your language marks a new topic differently from a continuing topic, make sure that you also mark these differently in your translation. Also see if you need to add something more to your grammar description.

Write down in your grammar description any other problems that you have in translating topic.

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FocusWhen some part of the sentence gets special stress, or emphasis, we call that focus. Something that is contrasted with something else isusually in focus, but contrasts are not the only things that get focused.

English does not use special markers for focus. In an ordinary English sentence, the last element is usually in focus. If we want to focus on some other element, we stress it more, say it more loudly. (In the example bold type is used for stress.) For example:

I didn’t see the accident. (Someone else did.)

I didn’t see the accident. (Although you think I did.)

I didn’t see the accident. (I only heard about it.)

I didn’t see the accident. (But I saw the cars afterwards.)

Study two of your texts and find words or phrases that are focused, or stressed, because they are important. Underline these words or phrases.

(1) a. Is there a position in the sentence where the focused part usually comes? At the beginning, or end, or before the verb, or in some other place? Give some examples in your grammar description.

b. Is there a special marker on the focused part? What is it like and where does it come? Is there more than one focus marker? Give some examples in your grammar description.

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c. Do some pronouns have the same focus marker? Give examples in your grammar description.

d. If your language does not have focus markers and if the word order does not show focus either, how do you put something into focus? Give examples in your grammar description, if you can.

(2) Study other texts and see if you can find focus marked in some way. Can you add to your description above? Write down in your grammar description any problems that you have with focus.

(3) Look at some of your translation and check if you have put into focus what is in focus in the original. Also check that you do not put into focus in your translation those things that are not so important in the original. Do you need to change your translation insome places, or do you need to add something to your description of focus? Write in your grammar description any more problems that you have in translating focus.

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Participant Reference (How we Refer to Characters in a Text)(1) Choose one of your story texts that is not about the speaker, but is about two or more different characters - people or animals. These are the participants in the story. Decide which one is the main character.

(2) a. The first time the main character comes into the story, does the speaker introduce the character by name, or use a noun phrase, or a pronoun, or a whole clause, or some other way? Give an example in your grammar description, section 8.2, and write your answers to other questions there too.

b. When the speaker talks about the main character again after that first time, does he (or she) say the main character’s name, or use apronoun or a demonstrative, or just the person marker on the verb, or what? Give examples.

c. When another character comes into the story for the first time, how does the speaker introduce that character? Give an example.

d. How does the speaker refer to this other character after the first time? Give examples.

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e. When does the speaker refer to a character by name?

f. When does the speaker use a pronoun? (Some PNG languages use pronouns mainly for emphasis or to answer a question.)

g. If there are two or more people in the story that we would call ‘he’, how do you know which one the speaker is talking about? (If your language has medial verbs, the markers on the verbs probably make it clear who the speaker is talking about.)

(3) Look at some other texts and write down anything more that you find out about how speakers refer to characters in text, and when speakers use pronouns and names in text. Also write down any problems.

(4) Look at a narrative part of your translation and see how you have referred to the characters there. Have you used pronouns and names in the same way as speakers do in natural text? Do you need tomake any changes to make it sound more natural, and so that the readers will know which character is doing what?

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(5) Write down any other problems you have in translating referencesto characters.

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Parts of Speech 11: InterjectionsWow! That was a great goal!

Hurray! We’ve won!

Ouch, that hurt!

Oh no, it is broken again.

Hey, look at this!

O Lord, hear our prayer!

The underlined words are interjections. Interjections express the emotion of the speaker. They are often pronounced on a louder voice than other words and may have distinct intonation(tone of voice). Interjections express emotions such as pain (ouch), joy (hurray), amazement (wow), anger, disappointment (oh no), fear, disgust (yuck), mild irritation etc.

Interjections can also be used to get someone’s attention (hey), or to address someone in combination with the person’s name or title (O John). There are also interjections used in the Bible and in Christian circles: Amen! Halleluya! Hosanna!

Finally, some languages have special interjections to call or to chase away animals.

Here are some examples from Muna:

adede ouch, exclamation of painih yuck, exclamation of disgustaulee oh no, exclamation of sorrow or regretauuuu interjection used to call one’s dogskorokoro interjection used to call chickenssio interjection used to shoo away chickens

Some languages also have ideophones, words expressing the sound of objects or events, e.g. in English splash, flop, bang.

kaa-kaa sound made by crowsbhondu sound made by falling coconuts

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pisi sound of hitting a flat surface (e.g. the cheeks, a table with a ruler)

bheghe sound of hitting clay or dough

Parts of Speech 12: ReviewIn the parts of speech lessons we have looked at the followingparts of speech.

1. Nouns naming words (objects, people, house, brother,places, times, abstract nouns) village, year,

friendship2. Verbs action words go, run, say, think

have, be, can, will3. Adjectives describing words big, small, good,

sweet, red, easy4. Pronouns first/second/third person I, you, he, me, my5. Prepositions (mark place or time) in, at, on, by, under,

through, with6. Numerals numbers one, two, first, many7. Demonstrativespointing words this, that, these, those8. Conjunctions linking words and, or, but, because9. Adverbs (many functions) 1. slowly, softly

2. now, later, then3. here, there4. very, too, somewhat5. sadly, perhaps

10. Interjections calling wordsouch, wow, hey!

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Exercise

Can you think of interjections in your own language?

What do you say when you hurt yourself, when you are amazed, when you want to get someone’s attention?


11. Articles / particles (many functions) a, an, the

Parts of Speech 13: Extra notes

The lessons on parts of speech have of course not exhausted the subject. Here are some additional points that may be helpful.

1. Some words may belong to more than one part of speech:

water There is no water in the village. (noun)She watered the garden. (verb)

head She hurt her head. (noun)Where is she heading? (verb)They were all headed towards the beach.(verb)

after After the match, everyone left. (preposition)After they came home, they had a meal.

(conjunction)

round We all know that the earth is round. (adjective)

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Exercise

As much as possible, give the part of speech for each word in the following verses.

1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Gen 1:1)

2. The earth was formless and empty, and the darkness covered the deep waters. (Gen 1:2)

3. She will be completely consumed by fire. (Rev 18:8)

4. They cried out, “Amen! Praise the Lord!” (Rev 19:4)

5. Always be humble and gentle. (Eph 4:2)

6. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father. (Mat 6:6)


The doctor does his rounds every morning. (noun)He rounded his lips and whistled. (verb)

2. Subdivisions. In many languages, a number of parts of speech can be further subdivided. Here are some examples:

a. Pronouns in English can be split into several distinct categories:

personal pronoun I, me, you, he, him He saw me.possessive pronoun my, mine, your, our Our car is

here.reflexive pronoun myself, himself, ourselves She

hit herself.relative pronoun who, whose, which The man who lives there…reciprocal pronoun each other Love each other!indefinite pronoun anything, something Did you

see something?

b. Nouns in Vitu are divided between alienable and inalienablenouns. Inalienable nouns refer to family terms (brother, sister, child etc.) or body parts (head, eye, foot etc.). All other nouns are alienable, e.g. house, boat, dog. The difference between thesetwo types of nouns is shown in how you say ‘my child’ and ‘my house’.

tu-gu ‘my child’tu-na ‘his/her child’baka-gu ‘my head’baka-na ‘his/her head’

ka-gu ruma ‘my house’ (not: ruma-gu)ka-na ruma ‘his/her house’ka-gu vaga ‘my boat’ (not: vaga-gu)ka-na vaga ‘his/her boat’

c. Transitive and intransitive verbs. Intransitive verbs do not take an object (e.g. run, swim, laugh), while transitive verbsusually have an object (give money, kick a ball, paint the house). In some languages transitive verbs have a special form, as for

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instance in Tok Pisin, where all verbs that end in -im are transitive (brukim, halivim etc.).

hait 1. adj hidden, secret, concealed2. intransitive verb to hide oneself, to remain

hidden

haitim transitive verb to hide something, to put in a safe place, to conceal

3. Question words are usually not a separate part of speech, but instead belong to various word classes. Question words arealso called interrogative words; they share the meaning element that they ask for information. Notice some English examples:

what interrogative pronounwho interrogative pronounwhose interrogative possessive pronounwhich interrogative adjectivewhere interrogative locative adverbwhen interrogative temporal adverbhow interrogative manner adverbwhy interrogative reason adverb

Some languages have interrogative verbs, such as ‘do what?’ or‘what happened’. Others have distinct question words for ‘when(in the past)’ and ‘when (in the future)’.

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Exercise

Write down all the question words in your language.


Parts of Speech 14: Extra practice

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Exercise

Identifity the parts of speech of every word in the following verses.

Use the abbrevations N, V, Adj, Pro, Prep, Dem, Num, Conj, Adv, Intj, Art,Part.

1. One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of

prayer. (Acts 3:1)

2. All your enemies open their mouths wide against you. (Lamentations

2:16)

3. Where, O death, is your victory? (1 Cor 15:55).

4. Your descendants will sit on the thone of Israel to the fourth

generation. (2 Kings 15:12)

5. When Solomon had finished building the temple of the Lord and the

royal palace...,

the Lord appeared to him a second time. (1 Kings 9:1-2)

6. He is like a tree planted by streams of water. (Psalm 1:3)

7. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Rom 3:23)


BibliographyAlbright, Eric and John Hatton, 2007. WeSay, a tool for engaging

communities in dictionary building. In D. Victoria Rau and Margaret Florey (eds), Documenting and Revitalizing Austronesian Languages, 189-201. Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No.1

Bradshaw, Robert, 2001. Papuan Typology. Unpublished typescript. Ukarumpa, SIL.

Bugenhagen, Salme and Bob Bugenhagen, 2007. Ro Ta Ipiyooto Sua Mbula Uuna. Mbula-English dictionary. SIL: Ukarumpa.

Glennon, John and Ariana Glennon (compilers), 2005. Nehan Dictionary. Ukarumpa: SIL.

Draper, Norm and Sheila Draper, 2002. Dictionary of Kyaka Enga, Papua New Guinea. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

Farr, Cinthia, 2001. Idioms: the darnest things people say. In Andrew Pawley, Malcolm Ross and Darryl Tryon (eds), The boy from Bundaberg. Studies in Melanesian linguistics in honour of Tom Dutton, 117-141. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

Foley, William A., 1986. The Papuan languages of New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Franklin, Karl, 2003. Some Kewa Metaphors: Body Parts as Automobile Parts. SIL Electronic Working Papers 2003-005. Available online at: http://www.sil.org/silewp/abstract.asp?ref=2003-005

Henderson, James and Anne Hendersen (compilers), 1987. Nt:uu kópu dyuu u puku dmi. Rossel Dictionary. Dictionaries of Papua New Guinea Volume9. Ukarumpa: SIL.

Hynum, David, 1995. Numanggang Grammar Notes. Unpublished typescript. Ukarumpa: SIL.

Laycock, Donald C., 2003. A Dictionary of Buin, a language of Bougainville. Edited by Masayuki Onishi. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

Mihalic, F. S.V.D, 1971. The Jacaranda Dictionary and Grammar of Melanesian Pidgin. Milton: Jacaranda Press.

Nozawa, Michiyo (compiler), 2006. Mende Tri-glot Dictionary. Mende-English-Tok Pisin. Ukarumpa: SIL.

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Pearson, Greg with René van den Berg, 2007. Lote Grammar Sketch. Data Papers on Papua New Guinea Languages vol. 54. Ukarumpa: SIL.

Pennington, Ryan. 2013a. Ma Manda phonology. Dallas, TX: Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics MA thesis.

--- 2013b. Non-spatial setting in Ma Manda. Paper presented at a workshop entitled Non-spatial Setting in Finisterre-Huon Languages, Language and Culture Research Centre, Cairns Institute, James Cook University, Cairns, Australia.

Schachter, Paul, 1985, Parts-of-speech systems. In Timothy Shopen (ed.) Language typology and syntactic description. Vol.1 Clause structure, 1-61.Cambridge: Cambridge Universty Press.

Tauberschmidt, Gerhard (compiler), 1995. Sinauğoro dictionary. Dictionaries in Papua New Guinea Volume 15. Ukarumpa: SIL.

Toland, Norma R. and Donald F. Toland, 1991. Reference Grammar of the Karo/Rawa Language. Data Papers on Papua New Guinea Languages vol. 38. Ukarumpa: SIL.

van den Berg, René, in collaboration with La Ode Sidu, 1996. Muna-English dictionary. Leiden: KITLV Press.

van den Berg, René and Peter Bachet, 2006. Vitu Grammar Sketch. Data Papers on Papua New Guinea Languages vol. 51. Ukarumpa: SIL.

Wozna, Beata and Theresa Wilson, 2005. Seimat Grammar Essentials. Data Papers on Papua New Guinea Languages vol. 48. Ukarumpa: SIL.

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Answers to Parts of Speech exercises1. Nouns:

1. beast, sea, horns, heads2. sea, brothers, net, lake, fishermen3. teacher, son, spirit, speech4. son, teaching, commands, heart

2. Verbs:1. left, went, prayed2. turned, see, was, speaking3. had, been, flogged, were, thrown, was, commanded, guard4. praise, forget

3. Pronouns:1. I, my, you, your2. he, his, their3. I, my, them4. I, their, they, my5. we, it, it, your

4. Adjectives:1. good2. wicked, lazy3. mighty, loud, worthy4. righteous, blameless5. trustworthy, full

5. Numerals:1. eighteen2. first, seven3. many, few (quantifiers)4. thirty

6. Demonstratives:1. this2. these3. that

7. Prepositions:1. to, for, on

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2. at, of, before3. for, to, with, before, with4. of, from

8. Conjunctions:1. and2. when3. and, as, so that, and4. when5. after, and6. so, as7. as, so

9. Adverbs:1. securely2. (not), aimlessly3. now4. perhaps5. never, again

11. Articles and particles:1. a, the2. the, a3. the, the, the, a, the

12. Review:Notes: names are treated as nouns here. ‘Cried out’ in (4) can also be analysed as a unit, a phrasal verb.

Prep Art N N V Art N ConjArt N1. In the beginning God created the heavens

and the earth.

Art N V Adj ConjAdj ConjArt N V Art Adj N2. The earth was formless and empty, and the darkness

covered the deep waters.

Pro V V Adv V Prep N3. She will be completely consumed by fire.

Pro V Prep Interj V Art N4. They cried out, “Amen! Praise the Lord!”

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Adv V Adj ConjAdj5. Always be humble and gentle.

ConjConjPro V V PrepPro N V Art N ConjV Prep Pro N6. But when you pray, go into your room, close the

door and pray to your Father.

Conj AdvPro V PrepPro Adv PrepArt Adj N PrepArt N7. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the

age.

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Glossaryaccompaniment Accompaniment describes someone who does something

with someone else. E.g. ‘Moses went to Pharaoh with his brother’

actor An actor is the person or thing that did, does or will do something. The actor is the subject in an active clause, because an active clause focuses on what an actor did, does, or will do.

adjective An adjective is a word in a noun phrase that describes a noun. Adjectives might describe the size,shape and colour of something, the age or feelings ofa person, or the appearance of a place. English adjectives include: big, beautiful, short, hot. (However, in some PNG languages, verbs are used to give these descriptions)

adposition Adposition is a general word for prepositions and postpositions. They are words expressing spatial and time relationships, e.g. English in, on, under, over, around, with, from. If those words go in front of the noun, like in English, they are called prepositions, when they follow the noun, as in many PNG languages, they are called postpositions.

adverb Adverbs give extra information about the events in a clause, but because there are many kinds of adverbs, it is impossible to give a common meaning that is shared by all adverbs. Different kinds of adverbs include: adverbs of manner (e.g. quickly in English); adverbs of time (e.g. now in English); adverbs of place (e.g. everywhere in English) and adverbs of degree (e.g. very in English)

agent An agent deliberately makes an action or event happen. Eg. ‘Cain murdered his brother’

alienable Alienable possession describes something that can be separated from the person who it belongs to. Languages often use separate pronouns to show who owns alienable nouns, as in my house.

argument An argument of a verb is one of the participants in the event that the verb describes.

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article Articles are words that come before nouns and tell you whether the noun is known or unknown. A and an are indefinite articles in English, and indicate thatthe noun is unknown; the is the definite article in English and tells you that the noun is known. Many languages, including most languages in PNG, do not have articles.

aspect Aspect has to do with the timing of an action or event itself, for example if it is continuing, completed, repeated, habitual, or just starting.

beneficiary A beneficiary is someone who benefits from an action done by someone else. E.g. ‘Dorcas made clothes for the children’

clause A clause gives all the information about an action, so that we know who or what is involved and what happens, or all the information needed to understand the circumstances or the shape and appearance of things. A clause is made up of one or several phrases. It usually includes a verb and the argumentsof that verb. A clause represents a complete thought.

comparative A comparative is a word or phrase that compares something with something else. For example, in English, the words better, more beautiful and taller are all comparatives.

completed Completed aspect is used for actions that are viewed as having been completed, for example, in Tok Pisin, em i kam pinis ‘he has already come’.

conjunction A conjunction is a joining word, e.g. and, but, therefore,etc. They can join either the parts of a phrase, or clauses in a sentence. Conjunctions show the relations between the joined parts.

continuous Continuous aspect is used for actions or states that are viewed as carrying on or in progress. For example, in Tok Pisin, mi lotu i stap ‘I was in the process of worshipping’

demonstrative A demonstrative is a pointing word, e.g. that house, this chair. They may be used differently in different situations, and there may be more than two in your language. PNG languages often have several

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demonstratives for things that are near or far away.

destination A goal (or destination) is where something moves to. E.g ‘Abraham travelled to Canaan’

ditransitive Clauses that have both an object and a recipient are called di-transitive. An English example is: I gave the book to him.

dual A dual form of a word is used specifically for two people doing something or two things. For example, mitupela is a dual pronoun in Tok Pisin.

exclusive Exclusive means something that does not include the hearer. For example, in Tok Pisin, mipela is an exclusive first person plural pronoun, it does not include the person who is being addressed.

experiencer An experiencer is someone who takes part in an actionbut does not control what happens, and they are not changed by what happens. They feel what happens with their senses or emotions. E.g. ‘Samuel heard the sheep’, ‘Jonah felt angry’

first person First person refers to the speaker or speakers. In English, I, we, me are first person pronouns.

focus When some part of the sentence gets special stress, or emphasis, we call that focus. Something that is contrasted with something else is usually in focus, but contrasts are not the only things that get focused.

force A force makes an action happen but not deliberately. E.g. ‘the wind blew down Job’s house’

gender Gender is a way of dividing objects (nouns) into different categories. Often these categories include male things in one category and female things in another category. But there may be other categories, such as neuter things. Verbs or adjectives may changebecause of the gender of the noun that goes with them.

goal A goal (or destination) is where something moves to. E.g ‘Abraham travelled to Canaan’

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grammar Grammar is the study of patterns in language, including the patterns in the way words are made up (morphology) and the patterns of the ways words can be put together to make sentences (syntax).

habitual Habitual means something that happens regularly, again and again. Many languages have ways of describing habitual aspect, for events that happen regularly. For example, in Tok Pisin em i save lotu ‘he habitually goes to church’

imperative Imperative describes a verb or sentence that gives a command. For example, in English, ‘Go!’ and ‘Let’s eat!’ are both imperatives.

inalienable Something is inalienable if it cannot be separated from the person that it belongs to. For example, in many languages the word for head has to have a possessive suffix showing who it belongs to (like head.my, or head.yours) because heads are considered to be inalienable.

inclusive Inclusive means something that does include the hearer. For example, in Tok Pisin, yumi is an inclusive first person plural pronoun, it includes the speaker and the person(s) he or she is talking to.

instrument An instrument is used by someone to make something happen. E.g. ‘Jael killed Sisera with a tent peg’ ‘Saul attacked David with a spear’

interjection Interjections express the emotion of the speaker or are used to get someone’s attention, for example: hey!,ouch!, wow! in English.

interrogative Interrogative describes a verb or sentence that asks a question. For example, in English, ‘What is your name?’and ‘Do you like grammar?’ are both interrogative sentences.

intransitive Intransitive clauses contain a verb that usually cannot take an object. For example, he walked, he laughed, he jumped in English.

irrealis Irrealis is used to describe verbs that refer to possible or doubtful events.

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location A location is where an action or event takes place. E.g. ‘Eli slept in his bed’, ‘She found the coin under the table’

medial verb Medial verbs often occur in languages with SOV word order, and are used earlier in the sentence than final verbs. They have their own markers that do not come on the final verbs.

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest part of a word that still has a meaning. For example, the word cats in English includes two morphemes, the stem cat and the suffix –swhich shows the word is plural.

morphology Morphology is the study of the different morphemes, or meaningful parts, that fit together to make up words. This includes studying the prefixes and suffixes on different words and how they fit together.

negation Negation means making something negative, for exampleby putting a word like not or no into an English sentence.

noun A noun is a word denoting a thing (house, tree), living being (man, dog), or concept (love, hatred, respect). Names of people, villages, etc. are also nouns, called proper nouns.

noun phrase A noun phrase is a group of words made up of a noun (the head word) and all the helping words that go together with it, like ‘the small red bilum’.

number In linguistics, number describes the study of how many objects (nouns) are involved. Nouns might be singular, dual or plural. All these are examples of number. Sometimes verbs and adjectives change depending on the number of the nouns they are relatedto.

numeral A numeral gives you information about the number of objects or people. For example, in English, one, two, three are numerals (called cardinals) and so are first, second, third (called ordinals)

object An object tells which person or what thing the actionin a clause is focused on. Sometimes this is the patient, but not always. For example, in the clause

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“Peter saw John.” Being seen by Peter may not affect John, so John would not be a patient.

paragraph Paragraphs contain one or many sentences. Usually oneparagraph describes everything that happens at a certain time or place, or all a certain person does.

participant reference

Participant reference describes how characters are referred to in a story, such as whether their name isused, or a pronoun, or just a marker on a verb.

particle Particles are short words which by themselves do not have a clear meaning, but they are necessary to make the sentence sound good. Such words do not seem to fit into any other categories of speech.

patient A patient is someone or something an action happens to. E.g. ‘John ate a locust’

person In linguistics, person describes whether we are talking about the speaker (first person), someone thespeaker is talking to (second person) or somebody else (third person). Verbs and pronouns often change depending on the person of the noun they are related to.

phrase A phrase has a head word and can contain one or many helping words that together make one unit, e.g.: ‘thebig tree’ is a phrase: ‘tree’ is the head word, ‘the’and ‘big’ are words that go together with it.

plural Plural means more than one of something.

possessed noun

A possessed noun is a noun which belongs to someone (or something) else in the sentence. For example, ‘John’s boat’, ‘the word of God’.

possessive pronoun

A possessive pronoun is a pronoun that is used to show who or what something belongs to. For example, my, his, her, their, our are possessive pronouns in English.

possessor A possessor is someone who has something. For example, ‘John’s boat’, ‘Paul owns a scroll’.

postposition Postpositions and prepositions are words expressing spatial and time relationships, e.g. English in, on, under, over, around, with, from. If those words go in front of the noun, like in English, they are called

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prepositions, when they follow the noun, as in many PNG languages, they are called postpositions. Together they are called adpositions.

prefix A prefix is a morpheme that comes at the beginning ofa word, before the stem. E.g. un- is a prefix in the English word unlock.

preposition Prepositions and postpositions are words expressing spatial and time relationships, e.g. English in, on, under, over, around, with, from. If those words go in front of the noun, like in English, they are called prepositions, when they follow the noun, as in many PNG languages, they are called postpositions. Together they are called adpositions.

pronoun A pronoun is a word that stands for a noun, so instead of repeating the noun, one can use a pronoun, e.g. Peter went to Kainantu. He got a new pair of shorts.

proper noun A proper noun is a noun that gives the name of a person, place, or thing. They have a capital letter in English. E.g. John, Ukarumpa, Tuesday.

purpose clause

A purpose clause explains what someone wants to do. Eg. In English, the second clause here is a purpose clause: I went to town to buy some clothes

quantifier A quantifier tells you about the number of objects orpeople, but does not give exact numbers. E.g. in English: many, much, some, several, a few, all, every.

realis Realis is used to describe verbs that refer to real and certain events.

reason clause A reason clause explains why something happened. E.g.in English, I hid because I was afraid.

recipient A recipient is someone who receives something from someone else. E.g. ‘The angel gave food to Elijah’

reflexive Reflexive means when someone does something to themselves. Pronouns like himself, herself, ourselves are called reflexive pronouns.

remote past tense

A remote past tense form of a verb is used to talk about something that happened a very long time ago.

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second person Second person refers to the audience (the listener). In English, you is a second person pronoun.

semantics Semantics is the study of the meanings of words.

sentence A sentences contains one or many clauses. The speakeror author decides how long he wants his sentence to be. Typically, a sentence contains the complete information about one action, including circumstances, and the clauses are joined together insome way.

serial verb Serial verbs are two or more verbs that go together and that show closely related actions. Often both (orall) the verbs keep at least some of their basic meaning. The whole group of verbs acts as one unit and often the verbs in the group all have the same subject (and object).

singular Singular means just one of something. For example, singular pronouns are used when just one person does something, e.g. he, I, she in English.

source A source is where something moves from. E.g. ‘Abrahamleft Ur’

stem The stem of a word is the morpheme that gives the main meaning of that word. Eg. cat is the stem in the English word cats.

subject The subject is the person or thing being focused on in a clause. The subject of an active clause is the actor, because an active clause focused on what the actor does, as in John squashed the ant. In other clausesthe subject may be someone or something that is described in a certain way, such as John in the English sentence John is strong. In passive sentences, the patient is the subject, as John is in this English sentence: John was bitten by the ant.

suffix A suffix is a morpheme that comes at the end of a word, after the stem. Eg. –s is a plural suffix in theEnglish word cats.

syntax Syntax is the study of the way words fit together to make clauses and sentences. It involves looking at what orders of words sound good to speakers of a language, and studying how the meaning changes when

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the order is changed.

tense Tense compares the “when” of a verb to the “when” of another time, usually the time at which the speaker is speaking.

third person Third person refers to other people or things. In English, he, she, it, they are all third person pronouns.

topic Topic is what a sentence is about. The topic often comes as the first part in the sentence. Very often the subject of a sentence is also its topic, but not always. (For example, in Those boys I had already seen, ‘those boys’ is topic and object, whereas ‘I’ is subject.)

transitive Transitive clauses include a subject, a verb and an object.

verb A verb is usually the most important part of a clause, and tells you what is happening in the clause. Verbs often denote actions (sit, sleep, walk, hit) but may also denote thinking (know, realise, see) or speaking (say, talk, tell) or just help the clause fit together (be, is, have, did). In some languages, verbs are also used for descriptions: be big, be sick, be strong.

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Process to Investigate Translation Issues

In every section of your grammar description there will be an area for you to write up any translation issues you have discovered. After we have studied a particular grammatical topic in your language, you will need to think about how it relates to your translation work. These are the steps to use:

1. Look at some of the Bible texts that you have translated into your language and find examples of the grammar topic you have just been studying.

a. Did you follow the natural rules of your language that you have just described?

b. If not, do you need to change your translation?

c. Or, do you need to change or add to your grammar description?

[For example, if we were working on plural nouns in English, and if we had translated Matt. 18:12 into English like this:

If a man has a hundred sheeps

then we should change it to:

a hundred sheep

But in Luke 14:19 I have bought five pairs of oxen reminds us the word oxen isgood English and clearly plural. So we need to add: one ox / many oxen as another example in our description of plural nouns in English.]

2. Write down other problems you have in translating this kind of structure or topic, including examples.

[For example, if you are looking at singular and plural nouns:

I don’t know how to translate 1 Sam 22:19 “He killed even the sheep”Is this singular or plural?]

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Problems, Questions and Areas That Need More StudyThis part of the book has space for you to write down any problems that you discover as you are working on different sections of your grammar description. You can write things down here that you would like to talk to someone else about.

1. Individual Words (Key Words Or Others)

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2. Idioms, Sayings English idioms that are hard to understand and translate or good sayings in your language to remember.

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3. Bible Customs

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4. Grammar Problems with English (where English is hard to understand)

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5. Grammar Problems with Your Own Language

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Discover Your Language Course Notes (2013)

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