Tomorrow, Kevin and I are off to the village for a couple nights. It’s been a while since I’ve been there, so I need to greet the people. I’ve prepared the dictionary sections I couldn’t really do here to get them done there with photos (guns, jewelry). Time for some millet beer, some Bug Hut 2, and a whole bunch of greetings.
Things are okay in town. I got some more elicitation done with M. Guindo, who was kind enough to send us a gigantic bag full of peanuts. I’ve been thinking a lot about tone lately, and have discovered some things. First, it seems that to explain the tone classes of verbs, there must be a specified low tone that links to the first mora and the high tone to the second (which then spreads). It would otherwise seem odd to have the H link to the first mora in some cases and the second in others. Then you would have to specify some empty slot that just gets filled in as L on the surface. Seems weird. Also, I’ve noticed that in nouns with a LH tone contour, the H links to the last mora, so if you have a heavy (bimoraic) final syllable, you will get a rising tone on it. For instance: /tòndòó/ ‘water jar’. I used to think the whole final syllable was H, but it’s not.
Besides that, I’m finally sorting out all of these infinitives/verbal nouns that have been plaguing me. It seems that /stem + -dim/ is an infinitive, as in:
/núyɔ́-dìm m̀bɛ́-gó wɔ̀-m/ ‘I like to sing’
sing-Inf like-GO be-1sgS (Still don’t know what the GO is)
And then there are two gerundive forms that can be used in the same context as above, but also can be possessed. These change the final vowel of the stem to /i/ and add either /-lé/ or /-yé/. The prior form changes the tone to all H, while the latter has a LH contour. For instance:
/jòbù jɔ́bí-lé wómɔ̀ síɛ́-ǹ/
running run-Ger his good-Copula
‘his running is good’
or
/jòbù jɔ̀bí-yé wómɔ̀ síɛ́-ǹ/
running run-Ger his good-Copula
‘his running is good’
Here we also see the common pattern in Dogon of having a verb with a cognate noun, so you run a run, sing a song, write a writing, etc. Most of the time, the infinitive and the gerunds can be used in the same contexts. As in English, we can say “To run is good” or “Running is good”, but where the two separate is that the gerund can be used as a noun and thus can be possessed (His running is good) but the infinitive cannot (*His to run is good). Perhaps my two gerund forms will end up being different in the end as well, but for now they seem entirely interchangeable.
We finally met Peace Corps Dave, which was great. We went out and got a few beers on Monday night after running into him at the internet, then he came over to our house for lunch the next day. After eating, we went and checked out the Peace Corps house, and I got to borrow some books, including a Fulfulde textbook, which should be very helpful. It was great to make friends with another American in the area.
In other news, Oumar was apparently arrested for a couple hours for hitting a kid and his mom. That’s the story other people have told me. We went to try to visit him in jail, but apparently he’d been released. I saw him later, he said he’d only been held for a couple hours, and that what really happened was that he was at work plastering a wall and some kid was messing it up, so he kind of flung the kid aside, then his mom got angry and was threatening to beat him with her huge wooden pestle, so he pushed her too. The truth is probably somewhere in between. I was pretty worried for a little while there, since Oumar makes everything run so smoothly for me here, I don’t know what I’d do if he got legitimately arrested. Plus, he’s my friend, so that would suck. But it seems that all’s well that ends well, and everything is back to normal now.
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2 comments:
Ok so first of all, what is a mora? Second, I think the differences in the use of verbs is fascinating. I'm so glad you explained about it in your blog cuz that's really interesting. Third, that would totally suck if your friend was arrested for real. I'm glad that he wasn't, but it does sound like you've sort of figured out how to work things there on your own now which is great for you. I'm glad that your making more friends too. It must be really nice to meet other Americans like peace corp Dave. :)
About the LH nouns, is there also a class of HLH roots, or is there ever any context where you get a H assigned to the first syllable of a LH root so you can tell for sure that you have a phonological rising tone on the final syllable? I was just wondering because in Mixtepec Mixtec, /L.H/ words come out sounding like [L.LH] (regardless of the shape of the second syllable). I have never been sure whether to call it a phonological rule or just a phonetic thing. But either way, you don't have to say that the lexical tone association in Mixtec necessarily goes from right to left (which seems to be what you're suggesting for Tommo-So).
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