Ne' Hu'nöhtö'ö hayasônö'.
His name was Lost Arrow.

ne'  ::  clause marker particle

Hu'nöhtö'ö  ::  Lost Arrow

This is the name of the main character of our story.  His name is actually a verb, meaning "his arrow is lost".  It is composed of three parts: hu- "he/his", -'nö- "arrow", -htö'ö "be lost".  The basic word for an "arrow" is ka'nö'.  To say something is lost, you say uhtö'ö "it's lost".

As you can see, in Mingo it is often possible to combine a noun and a verb together into a single word (in this case, "arrow" and "be lost").  This process is called Noun Incorporation.  In fact, we have already seen an example of this in the word haksa'aa "boy", which was a combination of the noun -ks- "child" and the verb -a'aa "be small".  Noun incorporation is very common in Mingo, and we'll see many more examples as our lessons continue.  After a while, we'll begin learning the rules for how to put nouns inside verbs; but for now we'll work on just recognizing noun incorporation when we see it.

We can use the new words for today and put them in the following mini-dialogue:

Káwé ne ka'nö'?  Ne' uhtö'ö?  --  Where is the arrow?  Is it lost?
Túkës, ne' uhtö'ö.  --  Yes, it's lost.

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