Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Paiwan Every Day 185: maruqu a qaciljai

naminseganga azua maruqu a qaciljai. 

In English: 
That rolling stone has stopped.

Glossary: 
  1. naminseganga: has stopped. Perfective na- + root minseg 'to stop, become still' + anga (change of state, also known as perfective). 
  2. azua: that, nominative demonstrative pronoun
  3. maruqu: rolling. ma- '' + root ruqu 'roll'. 
  4. a: ligature
  5. qaciljai: stone, stones
Reading: 


From Wei-chen Huang's MA thesis "A Study of Verbal Morphology in Puljetji Paiwan" (2012), p. 35. 

I am reading this thesis now, and I quite appreciate the way this author shares his Paiwan knowledge in such a responsible manner, well structured and soundly founded. His exmaple sentences are also more interesting than those of most other books of the field. Is this Rolling Stone sentence perhaps one of his inside jokes?

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Paiwan Every Day 668: pai

pai, kinemnemanga tiamadju tu kemacu tua ljigim nua kakinan.   Free translation : Now, they decided to take their mother's sewing needle...