Mingo Mini-Lesson (9)


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Lost Arrow :: Part I, Sentence 3

Ne' nae te'wêtö shô teukwëtææ'ö ne' kaiôni ukwényô hutênút.
He was never lonely because he had a song for company.


teukwëtææ'ö  ::  he's not lonely

This is our first Negative verb form.  We can recognize Negatives by the spotting the Negative prefix at the beginning of the verb.  This prefix can take a number of different forms, but nearly always starts with te-.
Compare with the particle te'wêtö that we just saw in the last lesson.

For now, though, we won't worry about learning all the rules for how to make a verb negative.  Instead, let's look at the regular, positive forms of this verb:

akekwëtææ'ö  --  I'm lonely
sakwëtææ'ö  --  you're lonely
hukwëtææ'ö  --  he's lonely
kukwëtææ'ö  --  she's lonely
ukwëtææ'ö  --  it's lonely

If we look at these words, we can spot the Stative verb stem -kwëtææ'ö, which means "be lonely".  Now, since this stem starts with a cluster of two consonants, -kw-, we would expect it to take the Agent-X prefix pattern. But if we look at the prefixes on these words, we see they don't match the Agent-X prefix pattern.  In fact, this is a different pattern, called the Patient-X prefix pattern.  Let's compare the Agent-X and
Patient-X patterns.
 
 
Agent-X
Patient-X
I
ke-
ake-
you
se-
sa-
he
ha-
hu-
she
ye-
ku-
it
ka-
u-

So, how do we know when to use the Agent-X prefix pattern, and when to use the Patient-X prefix pattern?  Well, as with a lot of things in Mingo, there are definite rules for when to use one pattern and when to use the other, but these rules depend upon knowing more about other parts of the grammar that we haven't seen yet.  So, for the time being at least, as we learn each new verb, we'll also learn which prefix pattern, Agent or Patient, that it uses.

[Some of you might be wondering if there's a Patient-C prefix pattern, to match the Agent-C pattern.  In fact, there is, but we haven't seen any verbs that use that pattern just yet.]

Now, since this is a Stative verb, and it ends in , we already know how to put this verb into the Stative Past.  All we have to do is to change the ending into -ônö'.  [Fortunately, this time, there are no other changes in long vs. short vowels to trip us up, either].

akekwëtææ'ônö'  --  I was lonely
sakwëtææ'ônö'  --  you were lonely
hukwëtææ'ônö'  --  he was lonely
kukwëtææ'ônö'  --  she was lonely
ukwëtææ'ônö'  --  it was lonely

We can practice using our new "lonely" words in sentences like the following:

Ne' sakwëtææ'ö?  --  Are you lonely?
Túkës nae, akekwëtææ'ö.  --  Yes, I'm lonely.
Ne' ne hökwe'ôwe hukwëtææ'ônö'.  --  The Indian man was lonely.
Ne' nae ne yeksa'aa kukwëtææ'ônö'.  --  The girl was lonely.


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