A Grammar of Miya - UCLA Department of Linguistics

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A Grammar oj Miya
The last three examples have an additional clitic nd- preceding the stative. This may be
a clitic ndi 'just, only' (e.g. ndi dzdJa banda t;)Vam 'just men without women'), though it
is not clear how this meaning fits here. The last example shows that it is not a pronominal
form because a pronoun subject, til, co-occurs with it. The first five examples show that it
is not obligatory, and in the frame min mar ... '1 found .. .', nd- does not show up even
with the verbs here, i.e. min mar tamdku aa-ayahydhyiin 'I found the sheep tied up' , min
mar kab da-ra6aki '1 found the gown soaked', min mar tllwiy da-kawaka '1 found the
meat fried' .
Stative constructions of the form here can only be used as predicates of full clauses, not
as attributives ('seated woman', 'fried meat', etc.). The sense of an attributive stative is
achieved using a structure similar to a relative clause, e.g. 'am rna (saga 'seated woman'
('woman who [is] seated'). Though this construction uses a Deverbal Noun (cf. the table
above), it does not use the stative form with the ee- prefix. See 1O:§5.1.3 for discussion
of attributive statives.
4.7. Presentative sentences ("here is ... ", "there is ... "). Presentative sentences
corresponding to French void Of voila, Hausa gaa, etc. use a form of the verb nay38 'see'
(usually pronounced [nee]-2:§2.2.3.2) plus the Previous Reference deictics kiln, kd
(10:§2.1) in the following frames:
filiy' ... bn 'here ... is'
nay' ... ka 'there ... is'
The floating L tone following nay' replaces the initial tone of the next word (3:§4).
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
(f)
(g)
nay goor60 k'lll
nay ndiiwulalaw
nay yawun yika ka 39
nay yawunanaw yika ka 39
nay kan-wan 'iyk"n kgn
nay kan niy hhn ka
nay hilm hi mar-wan
here-is thing that get-me
'here are some kola nuts'
'here are some pots'
'there's an elephant (over there)'
'there are some elephants ( over there),
'here's my house (here),
'there's your (fs) family's house'
ka 'here's what happened to me'
PRM
(h) nee a kafg-m(a) aa baa wun k;\n aadUkun-:ifg
here-is Pf send-us PS father girl PRM place-your (ms)
'here it is, the girl's father has sent us to you' (Hausa: ga shi, uban yarinyli ... )
To stress spatial distance, a presentative sentence may incorporate the locative adverbs
yikal'iyka 'there' (as in c, d) or yikiln/'iykiln 'here' (as in e). Unlike the phrase final kiln/kd,
38Ndy looks like the singular imperative fonn of the verb 'see', but in this construction, it is best
considered an unanalyzable word. Semantically, it frequently has nothing to do with "seeing". More
important, real imperatives are inflected for plural (5:§2.1.1), but nay in presentatives is invariable, e.g.
example (g) below is addressed to a group in the text from which it is drawn. Finally, phrase final k;mlkd
are an obligatory part of presentative phrases whereas the verb in the meaning 'see' has no such restriction.
As in the case of Miya nay, Rausa gita is an invariant word derived from ganii 'to see'.
39The L tone on kit here may be a mistranscription. I collected these examples early in my research.
Elsewhere, including all the examples that I have found in texts, kd has R tone.
11. The Syntax oj Simplex Clauses (§4) 325
they are not obligatory. Kiln generally indicates physical proximity, kd indicates physical
distance or a non-physical referent, as in (g, h). Note that in (h) the presentative object is
an entire proposition.
Another form of presentative occurs in narrative to bring a referent onto the scene,
similar to Hausa sai gila ... in sentences like sunaa tafiyiia sai gaa GizD 'they were walking
along when here [comes] Gizo'. This has the following form:
{ SUBJECT suw kiJn(-dy) }
suw kiln(-dy) aa SUBJECT
This construction differs from that using ndy not only pragmatically, hut also
grammatically. Whereas the ndy' construction is formally an imperative verb, with the
presentee being the object of the verb, in the narrative presentative, the presentee is the
subject of a clause with kiln as the predicate (kd is not used with this form), translatable as
"here". Suw ... (-dy) is the Totality construction (see 7:§2 and §§4.1.2., 4.2, 4.3 for use
in non-verhal sentences). The presentee (= subject) of this construction may be either
preverbal or postverhal (cf. § 1.2.1). This construction may also have the subject clitic dil,
seen in the last example below (see 5:§2.2.9, §4.1.2, and other sections above).
daga makaw mbgrgu suw k"n-ay 'after a while here [comes] a ram (mbilrgu)'
dagee milkaw Mamman suw k"m 'after a while here [comes] Mamman'
d" kiya tivay d-aa bay-t1(a)-ay suw k"n-ay ita niy b-itaza
Sjn take walking d;}"Ipf carry-her-Tot Tot here-Tot PS &Co. father-her
'he started walking carrying her when here [comes] her father and the others'
daga baa-WIn cfgmaa ghacfuw jiy d" suw bn-a ita lakumiy t-aatsikgm
when go-ICP make wood "then" da Tot here-pIn PS camel of-bush
'when they had gone to gather wood, then here [comes] a giraffe'