Róaıko chỉetoaı – Lesson 8

Notes

1. We now meet a new tone: the rising-falling tone . This tone will be the main focus for the next seven lessons. The rising-falling tone is used to create content clauses, also known as that-clauses, because they often begin with the word “that” in English. In simple terms, a content clause is a sentence which can be used within another sentence. This is achieved by turning the sentence into a noun, and this is precisely what the rising-falling tone does. shîe súq “that you are awake”, is such a content clause. The rising-falling tone is placed on the verb which begins the content clause: shỉe becomes shîe. Thus, we get from shỉe súq “you are awake” to shîe súq “that you are awake”. We will see many more examples of this pattern, and it will soon become second nature.

2. The word beı is placed before words to emphasize them. In speech, that emphasis can additionally be accompanied with a stress on beı itself, usually with a falling tone. It is beı that takes the stress because the word after beı must retain its original tone. We also see the next example of the rising-falling tone here: pîy jí “that I’m annoyed”, from pỉy jí “I’m annoyed”. Thus, Dủa jí pîy jí “I know that I’m annoyed”.

3. sıa “no”, “zero”, works like sa and tu. sıa rảı means “no thing(s)” or “nothing”.

4. For now, internalize this as a set phrase.

5. The literal meaning of Chỏa bũ ba is “May there not be talking”.

6. Here we see two more examples of the rising-falling tone : sûaq súq sa rảı “that you sing something”, and nûo jí “that I sleep”. In Toaq, instead of “I want you to sing”, we say “I want that you sing”: shảo jí sûaq súq.

7. Here we have a fronted hı question. Recall that hı binding rảı here means that any subsequent occurence of ráı refers to the same thing(s). Therefore, a more literal translation of this sentence would be “what things are such that you want that I sing them”.

Exercises

Translate:

• Tủa hó sôa jí hó da.
  “They make me help them.”

• Mả zảo súq máma moq?
  “Do you know the mother?”

• Mả shảo súq fâ jí hó moq?
  “Do you want me to go to them?”

• Kảqgaı jí tîa kúne sófa da.
  “I see that the dog is behind the sofa.”

• Dủa jí dûa jí sıa rảı da.
  “I know that I know nothing.”

Fill in the blanks:

• “I know that the dog likes you.”
  Dủa jí chô kúne súq da.

• “Nobody wants it to rain.”
  Shảo sıa pỏq rûqshua da.

• “Make the house white.”
  Tủa súq bâo jío ba.

• “There is a person I want you to see.”
  Sa pỏq bı shảo jí kâqgaı súq póq da.

• “Do I know you?”
  Mả zảo jí súq moq?