Negated declarative 1.person, answer to 13.79 or to 13.80 13.81 mit-
ɖo. NEG-go[NPST]
‘I do not go to Kathmandu.’ There is no morpheme in this clause that marks it as negated 1.person nonpast. The anticipated
negated answer mit- ɖo-ken is not acceptable as a finite verb but is acceptable as negated headless
subject relative clause, ‘one who does not go’ see more about relative clauses in section 17.2. Just for the sake of interest I give an example of this same conjunct marker used with a non-
agentive verb: 13
.82 raŋ pakka-la mit-thøn-na ŋa okma-la thakpa taa-na 2SG outside-DAT NEG-come.out-NFNT1 1SG neck-DAT rope tie.up-NFNT1
ɕi ɖo-ken sin-na uu thakpa taa-pa bet. die go-NMLZ;CONJ say-NFNT1 frustr. rope tie.up-NMLZ;Q AUX
okma di-la. TE21 neck DEF-DAT
‘“If you do not come outside, I am going to tie a rope around my neck and die.”’ Or: ‘… “I am going to commit suicide by tying a rope around my neck.”’
Of course, ‘to die’ is not an intentional verb. However, it is not difficult to realize that in this example the reference is to suicide, an intentional act. The character of this story did not have real
intention to die but this was a threat to force the princess to tell her story. If someone yields to the idea that he is not going to recover but is going to have a natural death he
would say, 13.83 jak
hariŋ ŋa ɕi-ken pet. SAP today 1SG die-NMLZ;CONJ AUX
‘I have accepted that I will die today.’ Note that the conjunct verb form is not used. Speaker is terminally sick.
13.6.4 An alternative way to analyze conjunct marker -ken
The marker -ken which marks the conjunct for agentive verbs in examples 13.78–13.80 also nominalizes verbs of almost any type. I have called it subject nominalization. There is more about that in chapter 17
on relative clauses. Actually the fact that -ken is a verb nominalizer would give another way to analyze the examples
which I have given to illustrate conjunctdisjunct patterns, 13.64–65, 78–80. I repeat a couple of them here to illustrate what I mean.
Declarative 1.person nonpast, clause type ST1 13.84
ŋa jampu-la ɖo-ken. repeated from 13.78 1SG Kathmandu-DAT go-NMLZ;CONJ
‘I’ll go to Kathmandu.’ Or: ‘I go to Kathmandu.’ If we interpret the morpheme -ken as a verb nominalizer only, then this example would translate
like ‘I am the one going to Kathmandu.’ Or: ‘I am the one who goes to Kathmandu.’
Interrogative 2.person nonpast 13.85 khøt jampu-la
ɖo-ken? repeated from 13.79 2SG Kathmandu-DAT go-NMLZ;CONJ.Q
‘Will you go to Kathmandu?’ Or: ‘Do you go to Kathmandu?’ The new gloss for this would be simply ‘Are you the one going to Kathmandu?’
13 .86 ŋa [nitɕa-raŋ-la tɕham-sim khur-ken] hin.
1SG 2SG[HON]-self-DAT love-mind carry-NMLZ COP.EXP ‘I love you.’ Lit. ‘I am the one who has internal love towards you.’
This illustration comes from the Lhomi Bible and the addressee is God. The verb is agentive though the content is internal attitude. First person is coded in the equative copular verb hin. Square brackets
indicate the nominalized clause which is headless relative clause and the predicate nominal of the copular verb. It is obvious that the shorter form khur-ken which I have interpreted as conjunct has come
from the longer VP khur- ken hin. To use the latter one is to highlight the speaker. There is another
handicap in this new interpretation. If ɖo-ken is a nominalized verb then where is the main verb of the
clause? There is none. The grammatically fully developed clause like 13.86 is very rare compared to an ellipsis like 13.84 which is extremely common. There are more examples of copular clauses in section
17.2.2 which talks about headless relative clauses. In the new interpretation, example 13.67 would structurally also be an equative copular clause that
has bet as the main verb. The rest of the clause would be a predicate nominal and the new translation
would be: ‘Uncle Chiring is the one who sells or will sell a goat to my elder brother.’ Semantically this analysis seems to be OK because the copular verb
bet refers to generally known facts see section 14.2.5. This kind of analysis would do away completely with the sub-category conjunctdisjunct or egophoricity
in Lhomi grammar. In conclusion I argue that Lhomi does not have fully developed conjunctdisjunct patterns like
many other related languages do. Some linguists, such as Erika Sandman from the University of Helsinki, call it egophoricity or egoevidentiality and make it a sub-category of evidentiality Jalava and Sandman
2012. In Lhomi only agentive verbs in nonpast tense have this grammatical sub-system. In chapter 14. on evidentials, I will show conjunctdisjunct type patternings in relation to direct experience but that
does not meet the criteria of the definition I have quoted at the beginning of the current section.
13.7 Verb phrase and auxiliaries
