A Grammar of Miya - UCLA Department of Linguistics

384 A Grammar af Miya
2.4. Couuterfactual and hypothetical conditionals: bd ... [kii]. Counterfactual
and hypothetical conditionals are marked by clause initial bit, which behaves syntactically
like td(n) (§2.1.2) in certain respects: (i) the TAM in a bit clause may be Perfective or
Imperfective, affirmative or negative; (ii) pronominal subjects precede ba but nominal
subjects are postverbal (as with other adverbial subordinate clauses, semantic subjects can
be placed preclausally as topics-§ 1.2); (iii) clause final kd is present only when the clause
is affirmative. ll
The verb in the main clause has a suffix -iy. I have treated this as a distinct
Counterfactual TAM marking of the verbal system (S:§2.1.4), glossed Cfin examples. All
my examples of counterfactual sentences have this TAM in the main clause. I did not check
to see whether other TAM's are possible in this environment.
a 12 ba ba-thjn ka, • kiy-fy s-awihi taatlan-ay
Pf if come-IeP PRM Cf come-Cf Tot-stuff their-Tot
'if they had come, they would have taken their stuff away'
mgn ba zar-tlan ka, • buw-iy-tlan biy tsaga-tlgn-ay
if call-them PRM Cf come-Cf-ICP Prt sit-Iep-Tot
'if I had called them, they would have come and sat down'
b. zar-tlan aa Kasham ka, a buw-iy-tlan biy tsaga-tlgn-ay
if call-them PS Kasham PRM Cf come-Cf-ICP Prt sit-Iep-Tot
'if Kasham had called them, they would have come and sat down'
ba kir ba mar viy aa-gatab ka, daal3 a z-iy-ta s-ay
one who theft if find door state-open PRM "cr' Cf enter-Cf-ICP Tot-Tot
'if the thief had found the door open, he would have entered'
ba daw aa ghansa heevana ka, da. miy mar-iy mara zuw mbamban-na
if fall P S God last year PRM "Cf' we get getting sorghum good-m
'if it had rained last year, we would have gotten good sorghum'
ba na biy daw(a) aa ghansa hawiya muku ka, daa miy mar-fy mara zuw
if Ipf Prt fall PS God this year PRM "cr' we get-Cf getting sorghum
mbamban-na
good-m
'if it were to rain this year, we would get good sorghum'
11 As an explanation for the absence of c1ause final kd in negative and concessive tarn) clauses, I suggest
that the PRM kd would be inconsistent with non-events, i.e. negative clauses (cf. fn. 4), and the
indefiniteness resulting from the implied alternative in concessives. Since the propositions in
counterfactual and hypothetical clauses, by definition, express non-events, use of kd would thus seem
inconsistent with any such clauses, affirmative or negative. However, sentences containing such clauses
propose a hypothetical world, and in that world, the conditions expressed by an affirmative clause are
"definite" in the sense used here.
12Note that the 3rd person Perfective auxiliary precedes the conjunction bd just as pronoun subjects do-ef.
§1.1.
13 Daa in this and several examples below is a counterfactual marker borrowed from Hausa, which typically
repeats the counterfactual marker at the beginning of both the conditional and main clauses. As other
examples here show, this is not an obligatory part of the Miya construction,
14. Adverbial Clauses and Phrases (§3)
bit oahgm ma tgmakwly niywasg, • ram-iy-an rgma zuw-ay
if tie NEG sheep his Cf eat-Cf-to me eating sorghum-Tot
'if he had not tied up his sheep, they would have eaten up my sorghum'
fa ba baruw-wam ma-w, da. mgn mb-iy m(a) aacan-nuwn-uw
you if help-me NEG-NEG "Cf' I finish NEG work-roy-NEG
'if you had not helped me, I would not have finished my work'
mgn b1l san hi }
fa ba san ka
{
iI ba san aa Kasham ka
'had I only known ... ' }
{
'had you only known ... '
'had Kasham only known ... '
Cf. fn. 12 for the Perfective auxiliary a preceding bii in the last example.
3. Cohesion and Seqnence Marking
3.1. Cohesive clauses: daga/dag-ee vs. kwda. A sequence of events in a perfective
narrative (6:§3.1) may be initiated by a clause introduced by daga or dag-ee (sometimes
dag-dy),14 translatable by Hausa da or English 'when'. This conjunction always
introduces an affirmative verbal clause where the verb is in the participle form (4:§2.1.1).
The choice between daga and dag-ee seems to be at least in part speaker preference. I have
narrative texts from four speakers. In clauses with a third person subject, three of the
speakers always used daga, the other always used dag-ee. In elicitation, Vaziya used daga
in clauses with a nominal subject, dag-ee elsewhere. With pronoun subjects, ee is repeated
both after daga and after the pronoun, i.e. dag-ee man-ee ... 'when I ... '. See
6:§2.2.3.4(1) for discussion and a full paradigm.
In terms of restrictions on clause internal verbal TAM as well as function, daga/dag-ee
is the perfective discourse counterpart to kwaa clauses as used in imperfective discourse
(§2. I. 1.2). Although both kwda and daga/dag-ee clauses can be interpreted as introducing
the first event of a (sub)sequence of events in a narrative, they are used in slightly different
ways. Unlike kwda clauses, daga/dag-ee clauses as used by speakers in texts almost
always have a scene setting function rather than an advancing function. Longacre
(1990:2-3), in his scheme of narrative structure, distinguishes between "clauses which
report Backgrounded Events which are considered to be preparatory to or resulting from
those which are reported on the storyline" (his #2 ranked clauses) and "Cohesive clauses
(adverbial) which refer back to previous parts of the storyline, either by reporting a new but
script-predictable event or by an anaphoric reference to the former event" (his #7 ranked
clauses). I here borrow Longacre's term "Cohesive clauses" for daga/dag-ee clauses,
which seem to conflate these two narrative functions. I present examples below under
several functional headings. The first most closely resembles Longacre's definition of
"Cohesive Clauses", the other his "Backgrounded Events":
141 assume that this conjunction is borrowed from the Hausa locative source preposition daga 'from'.
However, its use in Miya syntax is distinct from its use in Hausa, In Hausa, it can take only a nominal or
nominalized complement, whereas in Miya, it can take only a clausal complement. Unlike Hausa, Miya
never uses daga with a locative complement. This function is expressed with a preposition aa'
(11:§1.4.2).
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