b. M-andy-n l-a-bo
akharoho. PRIV-arrive-SUB
he-dummy-CONT now
‘Isn’t he arriving now?’ or ‘He isn’t arriving now.’ As can be seen in the above examples, the dummy verb is the main verb of the sentence.
It carries most of the verb affixes, and all other verbs in the sentence receive the subordi- nation suffix -n.
The dummy verb behaves morphologically like an event verb, taking subject pronoun prefixes and event verb suffixes. Semantically, the sentences in which it is found relate
events occurring at some specific time and place. Like other event verbs, it has two stem forms: o basic-stem form, and a a-stem form.
96 M-osy-n th-o-fa
forto-nro mothi.
PRIV-go-SUB she-dummy-FUT
town-to tomorrow
‘She isn’t going to town tomorrow.’ or ‘Isn’t she going to town tomorrow?’
2.4.3.2 The Copula
The second verb that needs to be mentioned is the copular verb to ‘to be’. It is used only in equative constructions connecting two noun phrases.
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97 a. Ama to
to toho?
what is
the this
‘What is this?’ b. Toho
to aba
kakosiro. this
is one
deer ‘This is a deer.’
c. Tora hiaro
to da-retho.
that female
is my-wife
‘That woman is my wife.’ Although the verb to ‘to be’ is identical in form to the definite article to ‘the’, the verb is
not the same as the article. They can co-occur in the same sentence see example 97a, and the verb does not change form according to the gender of the referents in the rest of the
sentence, whereas the article does.
98 a. Lira wadili
to da-rethi.
that man
is my-husband
‘That man is my husband.’ b. Li
da-rethi andy-fa
mothi. the
my-husband arrive-FUT
tomorrow ‘My husband will arrive tomorrow.’
2.4 Verbs 43
48
See also sections on equative sentence structure 3.2.3.1.
The equative verb is sometimes, under as yet unknown circumstances, deleted; and simi- larly, the articles are sometimes deleted. This means that at times it is impossible to know
for sure whether a particular to is an article or a verb. For example, 99 Ama
to toho?
what theis
this ‘What is this?’
2.5 Postpositions
Arawak postpositions represent a large class of words which function in most situations very simi- larly to English prepositions, except that they follow, rather than precede, their object NP.
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100 a. Na-bina-bo to
kasiri sikoa
LOKHODI. they-dance-CONT
the cassava.beer
house in
‘They are dancing in the cassava-beer house.’ b. To
kodibio balyta
ada dyna
DIAKO. the
bird sit
tree arm
on ‘The bird sat on a branch.’
c. Kia BENA
n-osa kaboja
NINRO. that
after they-go
planting.ground to
‘After that, they went to their planting ground.’
2.5.1 The Lexical Status of Postpositions
It is not entirely clear that postpositions should be considered as a separate lexical class apart from nouns or verbs. One possible alternative might be to assume that postpositions
should be considered verbs—that is, locative stative verbs. This proposal is attractive be- cause, in fact, locative postpositions
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can serve as the main verb of a sentence if they are inflected with stative verb suffixes see also sections on stative sentences 3.2.3.
101 a. Ada dyna
diako-ka no,
to kodibio.
tree arm
on-PERF it
the bird
‘It, the bird, is on a branch.’ b. Tho-loko-ka
no. it-in-PERF
it ‘It is in it e.g. the cassava beer is in a gourd.’
However, unlike verbs, postpositions can occur without the subordinating morpheme -n, even when they are not the main verb of a sentence. For example, notice that neither of the postposi-
tions in the following examples is subordinated i.e. receives the suffix -n, whereas the word moroda-n
‘fly’ in the last example is subordinated, thus receiving the suffix -n. 44
Phonology and Morphology
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See also de Goeje 1928, Hickerson 1953, and Taylor 1970a and 1970b.
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This is not to say that only locative postpositions can be used as verbs; however, these are the only ones for which I have clear evidence.
