Horse rig story

[David Robertson]

I didn't have time to turn this story into any kind of language lesson 
yesterday. Here's a note about how to use adverbs in Jargon. You'll also 
learn how some adverb-like words work differently from this in Jargon.

ADVERBS COME FIRST! In good Jargon, adverbs generally stand before the 
subject, before the verb, before everything in the sentence.

I'll quote 3 phrases from the "horse rig" story, capitalizing the adverbs:

>SAIA naika koli kopa ukuk rig
>FAR I travel with this rig
>"I traveled A LONG WAY with this rig."
>
>AIAK iaka pul bak pi iaka suk
>QUICKLY he pull back and he shook
>"He IMMEDIATELY pulled back and shook."
>
>AIAK iaka mimlus
>QUICKLY he die
>"He died RIGHT AWAY."

HELPING WORDS DON'T COME FIRST!

It's important here to point out, the word <ayu> "a lot; much" seems like 
an adverb too. Like <saia> "far" & <aiak> "immediately" above, it modifies 
the force of the verb.

But <ayu> works differently...as Zvjezdana Vrzic speculated in her 
dissertation, it acts more like an auxiliary or helping word. (TMA marker, 
for you creolists.)

<ayu> gives the verb a kind of in-progress feeling, like the "--ing" forms 
in English. And guess what, <ayu> does NOT come first in the sentence! 
Have a look, <ayu> comes after the subject <iaka>:

>Iaka AYU kik kopa ukuk rig.
>he MUCH kick at this rig
>"He KEPT kickING at the rig."
>
>Naika ayu kwash kaksit ukuk rig
>I MUCH fear broken this rig
>"I WAS feelING afraid that the rig was breaking."

--Dave R., who adds:

The apparent grammaticalization of <ayu> in pidgin Jargon as well as at 
Grand Ronde may suggest quite early elaboration of the language...before 
it left the lower Columbia, in fact. In brief, I'll bet you <tlun tubits> 
that this happened by 1830, when we start getting reports of Jargon as a 
family language. An alternative idea is that <ayu> turned into an 
auxiliary independently in interior BC. The missing link that would 
disprove that hypothesis would be any text from a geographically or 
temporally intermediate source that clearly used <ayu> like this. How 
about St. Onge/Demers/Blanchet? 

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