Béu : Chapter 2

..... The parts of speech of béu

"Parts of speech" is linguistic jargon, which is referring to the different "classes" of words a language might have. For example "nouns", "verbs", etc. etc.

In fact nouns (N), verbs (V) and adjectives (A) are the big three, and after some debate over the last 30 years, it has been agreed that every language has these three word classes.

In béu a noun is called cwidau (cwì meaning a physical object), a verb is called jaudau (jàu meaning "to move"), and an adjective is called saidau (sái meaning "a colour").

There are other classes of words in béu as there are in other languages. béu has adverbs (wedau) but these don't really come into their own, being more a form an adjective takes in certain situations. Also a lot of words that are called adverbs in English are called particles (feŋgia) (F) in béu. Particles are a type of hold-all category for a word that doesn't fit into any of the other classes. Under the term "particle" many subclasses can be defined, and in fact some subclasses have a class membership of one. If you come across a word that can not easily be equated with any of the major word classes ... well then you probably have a feŋgi.

It is necessary to talk about another part of speech which i will refer to by the béu term gomia^* (G). It is a form of the verb which is called the "infinitive" in the Western linguistic tradition.

^* goma means "tail" and gomia means "tail-less". The reason for this is that a verb in a sentence functioning as verbs commonly do, has person, number, tense, aspect and evidentiality expressed on the verb as series of suffixes, hence the "tail". These items are not expressed on the gomia.

In contradistinction to gomia we have gomua (jaudau gomua to give the concept its full title) which is a verb in a sentence functioning as verbs typically do.

For example solbarin (I drank, so they say) is a gomua.

solbarin is built up from the gomia "solbe" ... first you delete the final vowel => then you add "a" meaning first person singular subject => then you add "r" meaning that the mood is indicative (as opposed to imperative or subjunctive) => then you add "i" meaning simple past tense => and finally you add "n" which is an evidential, meaning that the utterance is based on what other people have said.

solbarin is gomua pomo or "a full tail verb".

The three evidential markers are all optional, so they can quite easily be dropped. solbari (I drank) is what is called gomua yàu or "a long tail verb".

solbis (you lot drink) and solbon (let him drink) are gomua wái or "a short tail verbs" ... the first is an example of the imperative and the second is an example of the subjunctive (more linguistic jargon ... sorry).

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solbai is called an part verb ???

..... Some linguistic terms in béu

By the way, while we are at it (defining linguistic terms)

nandau = word

semo = a clause ... from the verb "to say" sema

semoza = a sentence

jaudauza = a verb phrase or verb complex (commonly called a "predicate" by linguists). This is the verb together with the five modals.

feŋgi = a particle ... given above

plofa = a participle (P) ... there are 3 participles in béu

ʔasemo = a relative clause

kalope = a complement clause. There are three types of these ... kalope jù, kalope tà and kalope tavoi

A kalope jù is a gomiaza if it is more than one word long, if only one word long it is simply a gomia

A gomiaza can comprise of subject ... gomia ... object ... adverb ... other peripheral terms

The term gomuaza is not used. You would use the word semo meaning clause.

taifi (that which is to be tied ??? check participles) = copular subject

taifo = copular complement

taifau = to tie

taifana = a copula

..... How to focus on a particular element

Well we can "front" the element using a relative clause (as we do in English).

ʃi (ro/ri) glà tà báus timpori = "It is/was it a/the woman that the man hit" .... statement

Another method is to speak a slower (clearer) and a bit louder when you come to the element that you want to focus. This is represented in the orthography by making the font of the emphasised word 150%.

pás JENE timpari = It was Jane that I hit (it wasn't Mary)

pás JENE timparki = It wasn't Jane that I hit (it was Mary)

..... How to ask a YES/NO question

To turn a normal statement into a polar question (i.e. a question that requires a YES/NO answer), we stick the particle ʔái on the end of the sentence.

ʔái is neutral as to the response you are expecting. If you are expecting a positive reply, you would use the particle ʔaiwa instead of ʔái.

If you were expecting a negative response, I suppose you could change the polarity of the underlying sentence, then use ʔaiwa as above.

To answer a positive question, merely YES or NO ( ʔaiwa àu aiya ) is needed.

To answer a negative question, in the merely YES or NO ( ʔaiwa àu aiya ) is needed

glà hauʔe ʔái = Is the woman beautiful ?

glà hauʔe ʔáiwa = The woman is beautiful, isn't she ? .......... If she is beautiful, answer YES ... and vice versa.

glà kà hauʔe ʔáiwa = The woman isn't beautiful, is she ? ....... if she isn't beautiful, answer YES .... but if she is beautiful, you can can answer YES or NO. You must say ò rà hauʔe (notice that the copula must be used in this case)

( in a later section we will see that it is not always necessary to use ʔái. When you have a clause with a modal, you simply change the word order to ask a polar question. )

In the last section we saw how to focus on a particular element in a normal declarative statement. There is a special way to focus on a particular element in a YES/NO question..

If you want to query a particular element in the clause and not the clause as a whole, you stick ʔói on to the element that you want to query. For example ...

1) glà timpori ʔói báus = Did a man hit the woman ? (I thought that he had kicked her)

2) glà timpori baus ʔói = Was it a man that hit the woman ? (I thought it was a boy)

3) glà ʔói timpori baus = Was it a woman that the man hit ? (I thought it was a ladyboy)

And indeed a whole noun phrases can be brought into interrogative focus this way. For example ...

sá báu jutu dè ʔói timpori jene = was it the big guy that hit Jane. .... (notice the inclusion of dè when you do this, an item that would not normally to included)

But it is not possible to focus on an element within a noun phrase.

..... Pronouns

In this section we discuss pronouns and also introduce the S, A and O arguments.

béu is what is called an ergative language. About a quarter of the world languages are ergative or partly ergative. So let us explain what ergative means. Well in English we have 2 forms of the first person singular pronoun ... namely "I" and "me". Also we have 2 forms of the third person singular male pronoun ... namely "he" and "him". These two forms help determine who does what to whom. For example "I hit him" and "He hit me" have obviously different meanings (in English there is a fixed word order, which also helps. In béu the word order is free).

timpa = to hit ... timpa is a verb that takes two nouns (LINGUISTIC JARGON ... a transitive verb).

pás ò timpari = I hit him pà ós timpori = He hit me ... OK in this case the protagonist marking in the verb also helps to make things disambiguous. But this will not always help, for example when both protagonists are third person singular.

So far so good. And we see that English and béu behave in the same way so far. But what happens when we take a verb that takes only one noun (LINGUISTIC JARGON ... a transitive verb). For example doika = "to walk". In English we have "he walked". However in béu we don't have *ós doikori but ò doikori (equivalent to saying "*him walked" in English). So this in a nutshell is what an ergative language is.

It is the convention to call the doer in a intransitive clause the S argument. For example ò_S flomporta = She has tripped

It is the convention to call the doer in a transitive clause the A argument. For example ós_A timpori jene = He hit Jane

It is the convention to call the "done to" in a transitive clause the O argument. For example ós timpori jene_O = He hit Jane

The S was historically from the word "Subject" and the O historically from the word "Object", but it is best just to forget about that. In fact when I use the word "subject" I am talking about either the S argument or the A argument.

If you like you can say ;-

In English "him" is the "done to"(O argument) : "he" is the "doer"(S argument) and the "doer to"(A argument).

In béu ò is the "done to"(O argument) and the "doer"(S argument) : ós is the "doer to"(A argument).

Below are two tables showing the two forms of the béu pronouns.

I	pás	we (includes "you")	yúas
		we (doesn't include "you")	wías
you	gís	you (plural)	jés
he, she	ós	they	ús
it	ʃís	they	ʃís

However these pronouns are hardly ever written out as above. There is a recognized "shorthand" method of writing them. This is shown below.

This method is based on the fact that all the pronouns have a different vowel sound (the ones that refer to humans anyway). A look at a béu vowel chart might let you work out what is happening here.

me	pà	us	yùa
		us	wìa
you	gì	you (plural)	jè
him, her	ò	them	ù
it	ʃì	them	ʃì

The table above shows the shorthand form for these non-ergative pronouns.

There could be another member it the above table. When a action is performed by somebody on themselves, a special particle tí is used.

Just as in English, we do not say "*I hit me", but "I hit myself" ... in béu we do not say *pás pà timpari, but pás tí timpari.

Actually the tí does not have to follow the ergative pronoun but it usually does. There is a recognised way to write the ergative pronoun plus the reflexive particle (i.e. we have one symbol to represent two words). These are shown below.

LINGUISTIC JARGON ... "myself" is what is called a "reflexive pronoun". In English there are many reflexive pronouns (i.e. "myself", "yourself", "herself", etc. etc.) : in béu only one.

One other point ... béu has generally a pretty free word order. But in a sentence such as jene tí laudori (Jane washed herself) it would be pretty unusual to have the tí before jene

There is an emphatic pronouns based on the possessed form of bùa "body". The emphatic forms are given below ;-

me myself	bapua	we ourselves	bayua
		we ourselves	bawua
you yourself	bigua	you yourselves	bejua
him himself, her herself	bonua	them themselves	bunua
it itself	bisua	them themselves	bisua

The above forms come just after the normal pronouns and the two words stand in apposition. If a pilana is applied to one, it must be applied to the other as well. For example ;-

pás bapuas ò timparu => I myself will hit her

..... 64 Adjectives

good	bòi*	bad	kéu
long	yàu	short	wái
high, tall	hài	low, short	ʔáu
right, positive	lugu	left, negative	liʒi
white	ái	black	àu
young	sài	old (of a living thing)	gáu
clever, smart	jini	stupid, thick	tumu
near	nìa	far	múa
new	yaipe	old, former, previous	waufo
big	jutu	small	tiji
hot	fema	cold	pona
open	nava	close	mapa
simple, easy	baga	complex, difficult, hard	kaza
sharp	naike	blunt	maubo
wet	nuco	dry	mide
empty	fene	full	pomo
fast	saco	slow	gade
strong	yubu	weak	wiki
heavy	wobua	light	yekia
beautiful	hauʔe	ugly	ʔaiho
contiguous, touching	yotia	apart, separate	wejua
fat	somua	thin, skinny	genia
bright	selia	dull, dim	golua
thin	pilia	thick	fulua
east, dawn, sunrise	cúa	west, dusk, sundown	dìa
tight	taitu	slack, loose	jauji
neat	ilia	untidy	ulua
soft	fuje	hard	pito
wide/broad	juga	narrow	tisa
rough	gaʔu	smooth	sahi
deep	gubu	shallow	siki
right	sèu	wrong	gói

In the above list, it can be seen that each pair of adjectives have pretty much the exact opposite meaning. However in béu there is ALSO a relationship between the sounds that make up these words.

In fact every element of a word is a mirror image (about the L-A axis in the chart below) of the corresponding element in the word with the opposite meaning.

ʔ
m
y
j		au
f		o
b		oi
g		i
d		ia		high tone
l	===========================	a	============================	neutral
c		ua		low tone
s/ʃ		u
k		eu
p		e
t		ai
w
n
h

^* Note that the adverb version of this word is slightly irregular. Instead of boiwe it is bowe. People often shout this when impressed with some athletic feat or sentiment voiced ... bowe bowe => well done => bravo bravo

Also instead of keuwe we have kewe. People often shout kewe kewe kewe if they are unimpressed with some athletic feat or disagree with a sentiment expressed. Equivalent to "Booo boo".

..... Adjectives and how they pervade other parts of speech

Earlier on in this chapter we discussed parts of speech. In béu, sometimes, an unmodified word can belong to 2 or 3 different parts of speech at once.

Also earlier on I introduced the gomua (G) or the infinitive, as a part of speech. This is the "base form" of the verb and it resembles a noun in many respects. It is being treated as a seperate part of speech ... just for convenience really. I do not want to get into an argument about linguistic theories etc. etc. This is just to make things easy to discuss.

Let us start of with a single-syllable adjective. Let us see what forms a single-syllable adjective can take and what "parts of speech" these forms can belong to. Consider the word gèu "green" ;-

Along the top of the above chart you can see N, A, V and G (noun, adjective, verb and gomua).

The form under these 4 headings, shows the form gèu takes when it is one of these 4 parts of speech. gèu is fundamentally an adjective (that is what the thicker border around the "A" means).

You can see that we have two nouns forms in the above chart. One has its original form, I call this one "the substansive noun" (meaning "the green one"). The other changes its form by taking the affix -n. I call this one "the qualitative noun" (meaning "greenness").

We can see that we can derive a verb from gèu. By affixing -s we get an transitive verb meaning "to make green". You can see that the V-forms and the G-forms are the same.

Actually the V-form is not gèus. The V-form is actually a myriad of forms. But they are all built up from the gèus foundations. As an example let us build up one of the myriad of forms that the V-form can take. First we add a vowel, either a, i, o, u, e, au or ai, that represents the subject ... then we add, either r, n or s (depending on if we want the indicative mood, the subjunctive nood or the imperative) ... then we add a vowel (or consonant + vowel) as a tense/aspect marker, either ??? ... then we possibly add an evidential marker, either n, s or a. So we could get geus + i + r + i +a => geuʃiria = "you became green, I saw it" ... one of the many forms considered as a V-form.

OK. We have seen how a single-syllable adjective works. Now for a 2-syllable adjective. Consider the word naike "sharp" ;-

We can see that in this case it is possible to have 3 parts of speech from only one form. However in this case the "finite" verb (V) is built up directly from naike and not from the G-form. So, for example, we have naikiria = "you sharpened (it), I saw you do it". Rather than *naikeʃiria.

Notice that all the derived verbs are transitive. There are three ways that we can make an intransitive clause.

1) pintu tí mapori = The door closed itself ... this form strongly implies that there was no human agent. Possibly the wind closed the door (or a supernatural element when it comes to that).

2) pintu bwori mapau = The door was closed ... this is the standard passive form. It strongly implies a human agent but the agent is either unknown or unimportant.

3) pintu lí mapa = The door became closed ... this uses the adjective form of mapa and the "copula of becoming" láu. This form has no implication as to the humanness of the agent.

By the way, the G-form of nava "open" is navai

Let us go back to gèu and consider gèu in an intransitive clause. As above we have 3 ways.

1) báu tí geusori = The man made himself green ... this form implies that there was some effort involved.

2) báu bwori gèus = The man was made green ... this is the standard passive form. It strongly implies a human agent but the agent is either unknown or unimportant.

3) báu lí gèu = The man became green ... this uses the adjective form of gèu and the "copula of becoming" láu. This form has no implication as to the humanness of the agent.

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Notice that naikes means the same as kyé sau naike (to give to be sharp) ... but why say this mouthful when you can simply say naikes.

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Any single syllable adjective, must have the suffix du in all its verbal forms. For example ;-

àus = to blacken, maŋkeu = faces

ausuri maŋkiteu = they blackened their faces ... interesting construction ... we use the transitive form even tho' they perform the action on themselves.

..... Simple arithmetic

noiga = arithmetic

Above right you can see the numbers 1 -> 11 displayed. Notice that the forms of 1, 3, 6, 7 and 9 have been modified slightly before the "number bar" has been added.

In the bottom right you can see 7 interesting symbols. These are used to extend the range of the béu number system (remember the basic system only covers 1-> 1727). Their meanings are given in the table below.

elephant	huŋgu
rhino	nàin
water buffalo	wúa
circle	omba
hare	yanfa
beetle	mulu
bacterium, bug	ʔiwetu

To give you an idea of how they are used, I have given you a very big number below.

Which is => 1,206,8E3,051.58T,630,559,62 ... E represents eleven and T represents ten ... remember the number is in base 12.

O.K. this number has a ridiculous dynamic range. But this is for demonstration purposes only: if you can handle this number you can handle any number.

This monster would be pronounced aja huŋgu ufaila nàin ezaitauba wúa idauja omba idaizaupa yanfa elaibau mulu idaidauka ʔiwetu elaifau dó

Now the 7 "placeholders" are not really thought of as real numbers, they are markers only. Used in the same way that we would say "point"/"decimal" when reeling off a number.

When first introduced to this system, many people think that the béu culture must be untenable, however strangely enough the béu culture has lasted many thousands of year, despite the obvious confusion that must arise when they attempt to count elephants.

One further point of note ...

If you wanted to express a number represented by digits 2->4 from the LHS of the monster, you would say aufaidaula nàin .... the same way as we have in the Western European tradition. However if you wanted to express a number represented digits 6 ->8 from the RHS of the monster, you would say yanfa elaibau .... not the way we do it. This is like saying "milli 630" instead of "630 micro".

To make a number negative the "number bar" is placed on the left. See below ;-

Also a number can be made imaginary by adding a further stroke that touches the "number bar". See below ;-

As you can see above, there is no special sign for the "addition operation". The numbers are simply written one beneath the other. Similarly with subtraction but one number would be negative this time.

There is a special sign to indicate multiplication (+), and there is an equals sign (-).

Division is the same as multiplication except that one of the numbers is in "fractional form".

There is an alternative multiplication/division notation : instead of using the + sign, the two quantities can instead be written side by side (see the example above).

-6 is pronounced ela liʒi ... liʒi means left or "negative

By the way lugu means right (as in right-hand-side) or positive.

4i is pronounced uga haspia ... and what does haspia mean, well it is the name of the little squiggle that touches the number bar, for one thing.

-4i is pronounced uga haspia liʒi

-1/10 is pronounced diapa liʒi

i/4 is pronounced duga haspia

And so ends chapter 2 ...

..... Index

1. Introduction to Béu
2. Béu : Chapter 1 : The Sounds
3. Béu : Chapter 2 : The Noun
4. Béu : Chapter 3 : The Verb
5. Béu : Chapter 4 : Adjective
6. Béu : Chapter 5 : Questions
7. Béu : Chapter 6 : Derivations
8. Béu : Chapter 7 : Way of Life 1
9. Béu : Chapter 8 : Way of life 2
10. Béu : Chapter 9 : Word Building
11. Béu : Chapter 10 : Gerund Phrase
12. Béu : Discarded Stuff
13. A statistical explanation for the counter-factual/past-tense conflation in conditional sentences