Mingo Mini-Lesson (16)


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Lost Arrow :: Part I, Sentence 6

Thsiatháíne' ne haksút kanöta'ke ëöta'tisyútë'.
When Grandfather Thunder walks on the mountain he takes along his stick.


thsiatháíne'  ::  when he takes a walk

This verb starts off with the Simultaneous Prefix thsi-, which means "when".  First, though, let's look at the forms of this verb without the Simultaneous Prefix.

katháíne'  -- I take a walk
satháíne'  -- you take a walk
hatháíne'  -- he takes a walk
yötháíne'  -- she takes a walk
watháíne'  -- it takes a walk

When we look at these forms, we see a new prefix pattern: k-/s-/h-/yö-/w-.  This is called the Agent-A Pattern of prefixes.  The verb stem here is -atháíne' "take a walk".  Note how the -ö- in the prefix yö- replaces the -a- at the beginning of the verb stem, though.  This is similar to the way the -u- in the prefixes hu-, ku- and u- from the Patient-A Pattern replace the -a- the beginning of verb stems, too.

We can now add this pattern to our inventory of Agent prefix patterns:
 
 
Agent-C
Agent-X
Agent-A
I
k-
ke-
k-
you
s-
se-
s-
he
ha-
ha-
h-
she
ye-
ye-
yö-
it
ka-
ka-
w-


haksút  ::  my grandfather

This is our second group of kinterms, this time dealing with grandfathers.

haksút  --  my grandfather
sahsút  --  your grandfather
höwöhsút --  his grandfather
köwöhsút --  her grandfather

You might recognize a couple of these words from earlier lessons.  The word höwöhsút can mean either "his grandmother" or "his grandfather". Likewise, the word köwöhsút can mean either "her grandmother" or "her grandfather".  This looks like it could be really confusing, but in practice, it's actually easy to tell which of the two meanings is the intended one.  For instance, consider the sentence:

Ne' ne höwöhsút hutênút.

We might think that this could mean either: "His grandmother is singing", or "His grandfather is singing".  But, look carefully at the word hutênút. This word only means "he is singing", and never "she is singing".
Therefore, this sentence can only mean His grandfather is singing.  If we wanted the other meaning, "His grandmother is singing", we would have to say:

Ne' ne höwöhsút kutênút.


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