Request for examples

James Crippen jcrippen at GMAIL.COM
Tue Sep 29 09:11:11 UTC 2009


Can anyone send me an example or two of the verb "people said so" in
their favorite Athabaskan language? According to an article I'm
reading, this verb has the areal prefix as an irregular indefinite
human subject in most or all languages in the family. I'd like to
collect a couple of examples of this for an informal paper I'm writing
for a class. Here's the Tlingit form as a template of what I'd like to
see:

yéi khuyaawakhaa
yéi=khu-ÿa-ÿu-ÿa-khaa
thus=AREAL-VSFC-PFV-CL[−D,0,+I]-say
"people said so"

VSFC = vertical surface (< du yá "his face", a yá "its vertical surface")
CL[−D,0,+I] = classifier, +D, 0-series, positive I component (only
occurs in Tlingit and Eyak)

If you can provide a published reference for where the form occurs,
that's great, but otherwise I'll just say "personal communication".

Thanks,
James



More information about the Athapbasckan-L mailing list