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. Anyway we will not talk about particles again. But if you come across a word that can not be equated with any of the other word classes ... well then you know that you 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" ... 1) first you delete the final vowel. 2) then you add "a" meaning first person singular subject. 3) then you add "r" meaning that the mood is indicative ?? (as opposed to imperative or subjunctive). 4) then you add "i" meaning simple past tense. 5) then 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).

solbai is called an part verb ???

..... Some linguistic terms in béu

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

nandau = word ... this has been given already

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

semoza = a sentence

gomuaza = a verb phrase or verb complex ... commonly called a "predicate" by my favourite linguistic writers

feŋgi = a particle ... given above

plova = a participle (P) ... there are 3 participles in béu, also there is a thing called a plovaza

The verb complex or verb phrase

Also often called the predicate. Called the jaudauza in béu

The predicate is made up of ...

1) one of two particles that show likelihood which are optional.

In the béu linguistic tradition they are called mazeba. The mazeba are a subgroup of feŋgi (the particles)

2) one of five particles that show modality. These are also optional.

In the béu linguistic tradition they are called seŋgeba. The seŋgeba are a subgroup of feŋgi (the particles)

3) a gomua (a full verb)

mazebai

These appear first in the predicate.

These particles show the probability of the verb occurring.

1) màs solbori = maybe he drank

2) lói solbori = probably he drank

You could say that the first one indicates about 50% certainty while the second indicates around 90 % certainty

seŋgeba

These appear next in the predicate.

These particles correspond to what is called the "modal" words in English. The five seŋgeba are ...

1) meski which codes for strong obligation or duty. It is equivalent to "should" in English. (Note ... in English certain instances of the word "must" also carries this meaning)

2) seŋga which codes for weak obligation. It is equivalent to "ought to" in English. (Note ... in certain dialects of English "ought to" is dying out, and "should" is coding weak obligation also)

3) olda which codes for ability. It is equivalent to "can" in English. As in English it means that subject has the strength or the skill to perform the action. Also as in English it codes for possibilities/situations which are not dependent on the subject. For example ... udua olda solbur => "the camels can drink" in the context of "the caravan finally reached Farafra Oasis"

4) hempi which codes for permission. It is equivalent to "may" or "to be allowed to" in English. (Note ... in certain dialects of English "may" is dying out, and "can" is coding for permission also)

5) hentai means knowledge. It is equivalent to "know how to" in English. (Note ... in English certain instances of the word "can" also carries this meaning)

The form that these seŋgeba and the main verb take appears strange. Where as, logically, you would expect the suffixes for person, number, tense, aspect and evidential to be attached to the seŋgeba and the main verb maybe in its infinitive form, the seŋgeba do not change their form and the suffixes appear on the main verb as normal. This is one oddity that marks the seŋgeba off as a separate word class.^*

Examples ...

1)

a) meski -er => you should visit your brother

b) meski -eri => you should have visited your brother

c) meski -erko => you should not feed the animals

d) meski -erki => you shouldn't have fed the animals

Note these are the tenses allowed in a jaudauza meskua

2)

a) seŋga -er => you ought to eat a little

b) seŋga -eri => you ought to have eaten a little

c) seŋga -erko => you ought to not drink brandy

d) seŋga -erki => you ought to have not drank

Note these are the tenses allowed in a jaudauza seŋgua

3)

a) olda -or => he can swim across the river

b) olda -ori => he could swim across the river

c) olda -oru => he will be able swim across the river

d) olda solborko => he can stop drinking

e) olda solborki => he could stop drinking

f) olda solboru => he will be able to stop drinking

Note these are the tenses allowed in a jaudauza oldua

4)

a) hempi -or => "she may go to the party" or "she can go to the party" or "she is allowed to go to the party"

b) hempi -ori => she was allowed to go to the party

c) hempi -oru => she will be allowed to go to the party

d) hempi -orko => he is allowed to stop attending school

e) hempi -ori => he was allowed to stop attending school

f) hempi -oru => he will be allowed to stop attending school

Note these are the tenses allowed in a jaudauza hempua

5)

a) hentai driveor => "she can drive a car" or "she knows how to drive a car"

b) hentai driveori => she knew how to drive a car

c) hentai driveoru => "she will know how to drive a car" or "she will be able to drive a car"

d) hentai crashorko car => He has the ability not to crash the car

e) hentai crashorki car => He had the ability not to crash the car

f) hentai crashorku car => He will have the ability not to crash the car

Note these are the tenses allowed in a jaudauza hentua

^*Two other oddities also marks off the seŋgeba as a separate word class. These are ...

1) When you want to question a jaudauza containing a seŋgeba you change the position of the main verb and the seŋgeba. For example ...

goor hempi -or festaye => "may she go to the party" ... shades of English here.

2) All 5 seŋgeba can be negativized by deleting the final vowel and adding aiya. For example ...

oldaiya -or ??? => he can't swim across the river

This is a lot better from the way English does things. In fact the way English handles negating modal words is a confusing mess. Consider "She can not talk". Since the modal is negated by putting "not" after it and the main verb is negated by putting "not" in front of it, this could either mean ...

a) She doesn't have the ability to talk

or

b) She has the ability to not talk

Note only when the meaning is a) can the proposition be contracted to "she can't talk". In fact, when the meaning is b), usually extra emphasis would be put on the "not". a) is the usual interpretation of "She can not talk" and if you wanted to express b) you would rephrase it to "She can keep silent". This rephrasing is quite often necessary in English when you have a modal and a negative main verb to express.

Note ... sometimes the negative marker on the seŋgeba can occur along with the normal negative marker on the main verb to give an emphatic positive. Sometimes it produces a quirky effect. For example ...

jene oldaiya humpor cokolate => Jane can't eat chocolates (Jane lacks the ability to eat chocolates) ... for example she is a diabetic and can not eat anything sweet.

jene olda humporko cokolate => Jane can not eat chocolates (Jane have the ability not to eat chocolates)... meaning she has the willpower to resist them.

jene oldaiya humporko cokolate => Jane can not not eat chocolates (Jane lacks the ability, not to eat chocolates) ... meaning she can't resist them.

There are 5 nouns that correspond to the 5 seŋgeba

mesko = duty

seŋgo = obligation

oldo = ability

hempo = permission or leave

hento = knowledge

wepua ^**

We have already mentioned the two mazeba at the beginning of this section.

Actually there is another particle that occurs in the same slot as the mazeba and it also codes for likelihood. This is wepua^* and it constitutes a subgroup of feŋgi (the particles) all by itself.

1) más solbori = maybe he drank

2) lói solbori = probably he drank

3) wepua solbori = he must have drank

You could say that while the first one indicates about 50% certainty while the second indicates around 90 % certainty, the third shows 100% certainty.

3) Indicates that some "evidence" or "background information" exists to allow the speaker to assert what he is saying. It also carries the meaning "there is no other conclusion given the evidence".This obviously has some functional similarities to the -s evidential. However the -s evidential carries less than 100 % certainty ...

solboris = I guess/suppose he drunk

Note ... maybe you have noticed before that the first two seŋgeba take only 4 tense forms while the rest take six. Another difference of the first two from the rest is that they can not follow wepua

^**this word is derived from pè meaning "to need". pòi means necessities.wepua can be thought of as meaning something like "being necessary" or "of necessity".

6) ʔoko means boldness

7) makoi means desire

8) foi is a verb meaning "to do".

And I should mention how to put these in the interrogative mood ???

The negative => meski => meskaiya

NOTE ... the negator -ya is also used with gaza. Also ta? means that, while taya means "lest".

..... Pronouns and what is meant by S, A and O

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	nús
it	ʃís	they	ʃís

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

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.

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	hái	low, short	ʔàu
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 géu 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 géu. 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.

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.

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.

And so ends chapter 2 ...

Béu : Chapter 2

Contents

..... The parts of speech of béu

..... Some linguistic terms in béu

The verb complex or verb phrase

..... Pronouns and what is meant by S, A and O

..... 64 Adjectives

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

Index

Navigation menu

Page actions

Page actions

Personal tools

Navigation

Search

Tools