60 YOU THINK X
YOU KNOW X YOU WANT X
YOU FEEL X YOU SAY X
YOU DO X
5.7 SOMEONE 5.7.1 Primitive Syntax
SOMEONE shares much of the syntax of YOU and I. Like I and YOU, SOMEONE may serve as subject for the following predicates:
THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, SAY, and DO
5.7.2 HCE candidates
As often the case, the main problem for SOMEONE in HCE, is choosing among the many candidates available: samwan, prsn, sambadi, and gai. As I argued earlier in section 2.7.2.1, I am treating the form
pipo as an allolex of SOMEONE if it is quantified. There may not be a single correct exponent for SOMEONE in HCE which covers everybody.
Nevertheless, I think it is fairly safe to conclude that SOMEONE exists in one form or another in HCE. The two best candidates are either sambadi or gai. Both are basilectal and are apparently
semantically simple. Sambadi is the less frequent of the two with only 136 examples in our entire corpus. The main problem with sambadi is the absence of examples in combination with the NSM determiners,
with the lone exception of sambadi eos which may be regarded as a combination of SOMEONE and ANOTHER.
Gai on the other hand, occurs frequently 512 examples and readily combines with the NSM deter- miners. The main problem with gai is that it appears to be far from gender neutral, and therefore not
semantically primitive. Proof is needed to establish that gai can be used in a gender neutral way and I believe it is possible to make some kind of argument along those lines.
On the onset, I think it is important to point out that the marking of gender does not work the same way in HCE as it does in SE. Consider the following uses of hi:
ER:767 You know you tie the fat, eh, little bit, you throw ’em inside while you stay making all the
thing smell, the crab he eat, he going go eat.
ER:828 Well, you go over there, the cowboys teach you. How to hold the leg,and how to go carry in the back. How to hold and follow the horse, and how to make the shoe. Sometime you hold ’em under
here, and you file it, you no can hold ’em good, the feet bounce, eh, and you file, you no can make ’em level. So they tell you squeeze ’em together and you try push the file. Push ’em. So the more hard you
push, the more he bite, because the thing get big teeth, eh. He bite, he pull more on the feet, then you gotta make little bit light.
In the above sentences, hi does not refer to either crabs or horses of a particular gender. In these contexts, hi is probably best regarded simply as a subject marker.
In the same way, gai may have non-human referents. In the following examples, gai refers to cattle: ER:786 I tell ’em, maybe this one 500 pound, and he tell you how you know if 500 pound. How
you know? Then you tell, “Oh, because he look bigger than this guy.” No. He tell, “No, you wrong. You
61 look by the weight. You figure out how much weight this guy. You no guess.” You gotta come close, eh,
when you figure out. They tell you how the meat look like, in front, the back, the back hip, how the broad for this kind. That’s where get the weight. But you look this guy, he narrow, this guy, they get no
more weight. Now, you keep this one two year.
ER:787 Then you tell him, “Ah, this two about the same.” Bumbai, he look, he tell you no. This guy, you get about 100 pound different from this. This one you make money, this you no make money.
About the same family, you raise ’em up, and this one no make money. This one you make money. And so you like kill the two now, you can leave this one for another six month, this guy weight can bring
inside for double of this. This one you kill ’em, you leave ’em this for another six month. So this two, the weight almost going come even when you kill this other one. Then you no lose, you see. Like us guys we
think, ah, only you kill. But he say no. You have to make profit for the ranch. You pick up this two, if this two no come even, then you lose on this one. But this one you keep another six month, this guy
weight can come back on here.
ER:791 Yeah, bumbai after that, they make chute. They make chute down there. Then the boat
come right on the side, then from on top here, the thing go inside the chute. The guy, he slide right down, eh, because they make ’em down. No make ’em straight. Make ’em go. See, when they come
inside there, they like turn back, but as soon as they go inside there, they slide down. There are even a very few, unambiguous examples of gai referring to both male and female humans:
ER:753 “yeah. Then bumbai, I don’t know, them two guys divorce. And my sister marry one
different guy, and she died. She marry, I don’t know, no more one year, and then she died. Then my second sister stayed Lahaina. Then she went school. I don’t know what school she went. But she wen go
follow my sister little while. She went Konawaena, too. When she died, then they wen come back Lahaina, stay with my uncle. And my uncle take care them. And then when I wen come about sixteen I
came Lana‘i.”
ER:817 Yeah, just like the minister, they judge. Then bumbai they figure out who get the nice song, who sing good, who you see, all this kind. No use paper or all da kine. Then they make you the winner,
and these guys, maybe number two or number three. So, every three months, yeah, they do that. So every three months, you get same group, you like win this guy, win this guy, everybody like go sing eh,
you know what I mean? Before days, that’s how they go. But now days, the young guys, not too much like that. Before the young girls and boys, eh, they figure next three months they like beat you. Then
some church, they come from outside island, too. Maybe from Hawaii, from Maui, they come, then they all sing together. But if you come win, ho, you feel good, eh. The young guys they feel happy eh,
because they study...
SU:1531 Yeah. If you don’t want to pay.... Because those days, no more money. But the guy used to make money. Because everybody come. They used to get one church down there, Christian church. Can
hold about, oh, about a hundred guys, maybe more. Put ’em outside, the yard. Oh, big tent, you know. Da kine tent, when the wind blow, fly away kind tent, eh? We used to do that. And then, on shogatsu,
you get sumo. Kids, eh? And then, what else we get? Tenchosetsu, the birthday of the emperor, eh? Celebrate.
In the first sentence, gaiz clearly refers to both husband and wife. Likewise, in the last two sentences, gaiz is used collectively for a group of people, both male and female.
Despite a concerted effort to find evidence for the contrary position, it must be conceded that gai overwhelmingly leans toward the masculine gender. The rare instances of gai with female referents are
always references to groups of mixed gender. The sheer number of unambiguous masculine references forces us to acknowledge that gai with female referents is unusual at best. My own intuition is that gai
may be used in cases where the gender of the referent is not known, although there is no supporting evidence in the corpus.
Therefore, it seems that our best or at least, most defensible candidate for SOMEONE is sambadi.
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5.7.3 Examples of samwan
