The Language of the Modhupur Mandi (Garo), Volume 1

Noun Phrases

(B)

pp. 164

Noun phrases form one of the major constituents of Garo clauses and sentences, and many clauses include several noun phrases. Noun phrases, in turn, can include several smaller constituents: demonstratives, possessives, nouns or pronouns, numerals, modifying verbs, and case markers. These were described briefly in Chapter 5 where it was pointed out that no single one of these constituents is found in every noun phrase, but that any one of them except a case marker can constitute a noun phrase all by itself. Case markers, when present, are always suffixed to the final word of the noun phrase, so they are really suffixes of the noun phrase rather than of a particular word. Strictly speaking they should be called "clitics", but I will usually refer to them informally by the more familiar word "suffix". Since any of the constituents of a noun phrase except a case marker can be used without any others, the case marker can be suffixed to any of these words. I will call any word that can have a suffixed case marker a "nominal". The word is meant to suggest that these words are noun-like in some respects but differ from nouns in others.

Prepositions and postpositions are not usually considered to be a part of the noun phrases with which they are used, so English beside the snake pit would be considered a prepositional phrase that consists of a preposition, beside , and a noun phrase the snake pit . In Garo, it is not easy to make a sharp distinction between a case marker and a postposition. Case markers and postpositions work together to show the role of the noun phrase in the sentence and its relation to the verb. It is somewhat odd to considerPage  166the case marker but not the postposition to be a part of the noun phrase. For this reason I will sometimes write as if the postposition, like the case marker, belongs to the noun phrase. Some postpositions can take their own case markers so they can be considered to be nominals like the (other) members of noun phrases.

When a noun phrase includes a noun, the noun can be regarded as the "head" of the noun phrase, and all the other constituents of the noun phrase modify the noun. Along with verbs, nouns form one of the two largest classes of Garo words. Like verbs, nouns can have a variety of suffixes, but the number and complexity of noun suffixes is considerably less than that of verb suffixes. A "noun stem" is the word to which these noun suffixes can be attached. Typical noun stems are jak-si 'finger' and nok 'house'. Noun stems, unlike verb stems, can stand alone with no suffixes at all but, optionally, three kinds of suffixes can be used with them: plurals, case markers, and what I will call "final noun suffixes". Plurals are used only with noun stems. Case markers and final noun suffixes can be suffixed to any type of nominal.

Noun stems, in turn, can be simple or complex. The simple ones are the same as noun bases. This means that they are single morphemes, bits of language that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts. The complex noun stems are compounds that consist of two or more parts, at least one of which has an identifiable meaning of its own. All of this means that we need to recognize a hierarchy of morphemes, words and phrases. A noun phrase may consist of anything from one to many words, one of which is often, though not always, a noun. A noun must have a noun stem, either simple or complex, and it may also have various suffixes. The noun stem in turn may consist of several parts which, together, form a compound. Sometimes one of these parts can be considered the central component of the noun stem and hence the "noun base". Unlike verbs, however, where the first component is often very clearly the verb base, it is not always helpful or possible to select a single component of a noun stem as the base. A single word such as nok 'house' can act as a noun phrase, and this means that the same word can act simultaneously as a noun phrase, a noun, a noun stem and a noun base, but it is still essential to distinguish among these four levels.

Table 8—1 shows as example of a noun phrase and its components. It needs to be understood that the shorter components can simultaneously fill the more inclusive roles. Thus in a sentence such as a-chak sing'-ing-a 'the dog is barking', a-chak is not only a noun base (a single indivisible unit of meaning), but it a noun stem (a unit capable of taking noun suffixes), a noun (a complete word) and an entire noun phrase (a constituent of aPage  167sentence) as well.

Noun	Phrase	ching-ni a-chak-pi'-sa-ba	'Our puppy also'
Noun		a-chak-pi'-sa-ba	'puppy also'
Noun	Stem	a-chak-pi'-sa	'puppy'
Noun	Base	a-chak	'dog'

Nouns are used, first of all, as names for enormous numbers of concrete and not so concrete objects: animals, plants, the sky and the land, manufactured artifacts, body parts and parts of objects, kin terms, social positions, people and places, gods and spirits. Of course Garo also has nouns for abstract concepts, but it has fewer non-borrowed abstract nouns than does, for example, English. In part, this is compensated for by nouns that are derived from verbs, such as neng'-a-ni 'fatigue' from neng'-a 'to be tired'. Of course English also has nouns that are derived from verbs, but derivations in Garo are often more direct and obvious than those in English. In addition, in the present language, abstract nouns have been freely borrowed from both Bengali and English. The many hundreds or thousands of nouns that are needed to talk about modern government, education, religion, and technology are almost all borrowed.

Unlike Garo verb bases, noun bases can easily occur with no suffixes at all. Since many noun bases have just a single syllable, they can be very short: nok 'house', jak 'hand', am 'mat', mi 'rice' etc. The syllable structure of Garo allows fewer than 2,500 phonologically distinct syllables, however, and of course not all of these are used for noun bases, and many are used for nothing at all. Since a language needs many thousands of noun stems, and since these need to be kept distinct from each other, many noun stems in Garo must be longer that one syllable. The language has a good many two syllable noun bases, ( a-chak 'dog', am-bi 'grandmother', bo-bil 'enemy' etc.) but the great bulk of noun stems are compounds. These are words that are constructed from at least two parts, at least one of which has a clearly recognizable meaning of its own. Often, though not always, both parts have a clear meaning. Compounds can, in turn, be joined into still longer compounds. The language has thousands of such compounds.

Noun stems can be used with no suffix at all, but sometimes they have plurals, case markers, and final noun suffixes attached to them. The most characteristic and complex of the noun suffixes are the case markers,Page  168but these can also be suffixed to other nominals such as demonstratives and numerals. Other major word classes, in particular adverbs and verb stems, cannot take case markers. Since adverbs are often derived from verbs it is possible to assign all the major Garo word classes to one of two large categories. On the one hand, the nominals are noun-like, and on the other hand, and adverbs as well as verbs are verb-like. The language has productive suffixes that can be added to verbs to turn them into nouns. It also has several verb bases (laregly empty of meaning) that can be used with nouns in a way that allows the nouns to act almost like verbs. This means that there are ways to convert nouns into verbs and verbs into nouns, but the distinction between the two underlying types of words is sharp.

Category Prefixes

(B)

pp. 168

This and the following two sections will describe the ways in which compound nouns are formed. First, a very large class of compound noun stems are constructed from what I will call a "category prefix" followed by one or more additional syllables. Some of the additional bits have an identifiable meaning of their own, but many do not. The category prefixes give a kind of categorization to many of the objects of the world.

do'- 'bird'. do'- forms the first syllable of dozens of names for birds. Used alone do in Mandi ( do'-o in A'chik) means 'bird', especially 'domestic fowl'. Many compounds formed with do'- refer to particular species of birds. Mandi examples include do'-gep 'duck', do'-gu-gu 'wild pigeon, dove', do'-di 'peacock', do'-ka 'crow', do'-til-eng 'woodpecker', do'-reng 'hawk', and dozens of others. A second level of compounding sometimes occurs when subvarieties are recognized. Within the category of do'-reng various types of hawks are distinguished as do'-reng-chi-jeng, do'-reng-gan-tong, do'-reng-gek, do'-reng-sa-na and do'-reng-wal-ju-si . Do'-bak 'bat' shows that the Garo classification does not always conform to the classification of biologists. The same prefix appears in a number of compounds that are not species names but that relate to birds in some way: do'-bik 'bird's intestines' (important because they are used in divination), do'-gring 'bird basket, a place for keeping birds', do'-bi-ma 'hen', do'-pi'-sa 'chick, baby bird'.

The meaning of do'- in these compounds is perfectly clear, but the meaning of the remaining syllables is often obscure. When the context is clear do or do'-o alone can mean 'domestic fowl' but the meaning can be made explicit by saying do'-man-de where man-de is the ordinary word for 'human being'. Thus do'-man-de means, literally, 'people's bird'. A number of bird names are felt to be onomatopoetic. A bird called do'-pin-chep hasPage  169a call that is regarded as sounding like pin-chep . Do'-gu-gu 'dove' and the do'-ka 'crow' can probably be regarded as having onomatopoetic second portions. I am unable to perceive any independent meaning in -til-eng or -reng which form a part of the words for 'woodpecker' and 'hawk'.

Some compounds that do not name a species have more readily identifiable meanings. Do'-bik 'bird intestines' is clearly related to bi-bik the general word for 'intestines' including those of human beings. -bi-ma is used to identify the female of any species while -bi-pa identifies the male. Even more, -ma and -pa reflect a-ma 'mother' and a-pa 'father'. Used as an independent word, pi'-sa is Mandi for (human) 'child', and when used as the second element of a compound, it identifies the young of an animal species.

Do'- is a good example of a "combining form". It can be regarded as the more basic form of the word, and it is the form from which the "free form" is derived. In Mandi, the free form is made by dropping the raka of the combining form. In A'chik the free form requires an echo vowel to be inserted after the raka. In both dialects, rakas are kept out of the word's final syllables.

With several dozen compounds, do'- is one of the most fertile of the Garo category prefixes, but many others are used as well. Many designate classes of animals and plants. Others refer to body parts, to nonliving natural phenomena, or to human artifacts. The various ways in which category prefixes are used can be seen from the examples which follow.

na'- . As with birds, so with fish. The names for very large number of fish varieties begin with the syllable na'- . Unlike do or do'-o , one of which serves as a general name for 'bird', neither na or na'-a is ever used alone to mean 'fish'. The general name for 'fish' is na'-tok , and the second syllable has no independent meaning that I can identify. Na'-rim-il is a slippery kind of fish ( rim-il-a 'slippery'), na'-cheng-bit 'a small edible fish', na'-su-deng-ga 'a kind of fish with a large mouth', na'-tik 'fresh water shrimp'. There are many others. As with birds, not all the words with na'- as the category prefix refer to species. Na'-kam is 'dried fish of the ordinary kind' ( kam- 'burn'). Na'-gran is 'a special kind of dried fish'.

mat- . This is a much less common category prefix than either do'- or na'- but it occurs in a number of words for mammals: mat-ma 'buffalo' ( -ma 'large'), mat-chok 'deer', mat-chu-ri 'civet cat', mat-ma-chi 'porcupine', mat-cha 'tiger, leopard'. A second level of compounding is possible with mat-cha : mat-cha-am-gip-a 'the largest variety of tiger'; mat-cha-ma'-jang-chi 'middle sized mat-cha ; mat-cha-a-rek 'leopard, smallest sized mat-cha '. Mat-cha-du is a human being who is capable of turning himself into a tiger. Mat-gil is 'hide' ( bi-gil 'skin'). Many other mammals are called by namesPage  170without a mat- prefix. Curiously, mat by itself, means 'squirrel', a much less prepossessing animal than most of those that have mat- as their first syllable. I know of no reason in Garo culture why a squirrel should have such terminological importance.

bol- is a prefix used for dozens of names of tree varieties, and in names for some parts of trees: bol-chek-si 'twig of a tree', bol-dim 'sprouts', bol-gong 'fallen tree', bol-gan-tong 'log, stick'. By itself bol can mean 'wood' as well as 'tree'. To talk about a tree, Mandi speakers often use bi-pang 'trunk, stalk, tree' instead of bol , but when they want to be fully explicit they say bol-bi-pang , achieving complete clarity by forming a compound from the word that can also mean 'wood' with the word that can also mean 'trunk, stalk'.

wa'- is used in names for the considerable number of varieties of bamboo that Garos recognize as distinct, and also for parts of the bamboo plant and for many objects made from bamboo: wa-srep 'a small variety of bamboo', wa'-ja-ting 'bamboo root' ( ja'- 'leg, foot'), wa'-chek-si 'twig of bamboo', wa'-gan-tong 'length of bamboo', wa'-si 'rough split-bamboo matting', wa'-sing 'bamboo cup', and many others.

ta'- is used as a category prefix for a number of tubers: ta'-bol-chu 'cassava, manioc', ta'-ma 'a large edible tuber' ( -ma 'big'), ta'-mil-ang 'sweet potatoes'.

bi- has two barely overlapping meanings. It is used as the prefix for a number of plant parts and also for some body parts of animals, but unlike the plant parts, most of the animal parts that begin with bi- are internal organs. Plant parts with bi- include bi-du or bi-dil 'the long growing part of a vine', bi-gra 'rice husks', bi-jak 'leaf' ( jak 'hand'), bi-bak 'stem of fruit, leaf or flower', bi-bu 'a defective rice grain that has a husk but no seed', bi-sil 'the green outer surface of bamboo', bi-gron 'pit of some fruit, seeds, but not those to be planted', bit-chri 'seed for planting', bit-chi 'juice' ( chi 'water'). The t of the last two examples is the result of a well lexicalized assimilation to the following ch . Whether it is the same prefix or a homophonous one, bi- is also used in bi-bik 'intestines', bi-bil 'afterbirth', bi-ka 'liver', bi-kit 'gall bladder', bi-ba 'breath', bi-jol 'mucus', bi-mang 'body of a person or animal', bi-gil 'skin'. bi-king can mean 'shell' for both plants and animals: 'egg shell', 'turtle shell', 'coconut shell', 'areca nut husk', and 'skull'.

ha'-, a'- . Several category prefixes refer to natural objects or substances. Of these ha'- 'earth, ground, soil' (always pronounced a'- in A'chik and sometimes in Mandi) is probably the most common. In the free form of ha ( a'-a in A'chik) the word can be used without a suffix, but it also occurs in a large number of compounds: ha'-ba 'agricultural land, fields', ha'-kin-te 'lumps of earth', ha'-kin-chi 'dust', ha'-dip-ek 'mud', ha'-rong-ga Page  171'uplands', ha'-dok 'area, region', ha'-gil-sak 'world, earth', ha'-chik 'hill, slope of a hill' from which comes A'chik , literally, 'hill dweller'.

wal'- 'fire' is used alone as wal (A'chik wa'-al ). In its combining form it occurs in many compounds: wal'-ku-a 'smoke', wal'-mi-si 'spark', wal'-jem 'fire brand of lighted sticks', wal'-gu-si 'dark color left by smoke', wal'-ki 'burning coals', wal'-tot 'a device for starting a fire by friction'.

chi- 'water' is used alone, but also in such compounds as chi-bol 'puddle', chi-mik 'spring, water source', chi-dek 'pond, wide place in a stream', chi-git-ok 'narrow place in a stream' ( git-ok 'neck'). Chi also occurs as the second member of other compounds, such as mik-chi 'tears' ( mik- 'eye, face') (see next section).

jak- 'hand, arm',ja'- 'foot, leg'. A number of category prefixes refer to parts of the body. jak and ja'- appear in jak-pa 'palm of the hand', ja'-pa 'sole of the foot', jak-sku 'elbow', ja'-sku 'knee', jak-si 'finger', ja'-si 'toe', jak-skil 'fingernails', ja'-skil 'toenails'. These pairs capitalize on the homologies between the upper and lower limbs, but not all the words for parts of the arms and legs are so well matched. Jak-pong is the 'upper arm' but ja'-ping is 'thigh'. Other words refer to things related to the arms or legs: ja'-kop 'sandal', ja'-gra 'snare, loop to catch an animal's foot', jak-mil-ong 'lacking a bracelet, naked of a bracelet', jak-ra 'right hand', jak-a-si 'left hand'. These two category prefixes are also found in a good many words where the sense is more metaphorical than literal. Ja'-ting 'base of a tree, stubble of rice plants', ja'-pang 'base of a mountain'. Jak- is also used as the first syllable of a number of verbs that refer to the way the hand is used: jak-jip-a 'wave', jak-si-ot-a 'point', jak-rak-a 'quick, fast, especially of working with the hands', jak-wat-a 'let go, drop from the hands'.

mik- is not used alone but it is found in many compounds that refer to the eyes and face: mik-ron or mik-on 'eye', mik-chi 'tears', mik-gil 'eyelid' ( bi-gil 'skin'), mik-sim-ang 'eyebrows', mik-sik-im 'forehead', mik-kang 'face'. The same morpheme is used in a number of verbs that concern the eyes: mik-cha-a 'like, love', literally 'eat with the eyes', mik-chip-a 'close the eyes', mik-dap-a 'get into the eye', mik-dat-a 'dazzled with glare', mik-brok-a 'dull, faded', etc. The postposition mik-kang-o 'in front of' is derived from mik-kang 'face'.

ku'- is not used alone but it is found as the category prefix in many words concerning the mouth: ku'-sik 'mouth, language', ku'-chil 'lip', ku'-chi 'saliva' ( chi 'water'), ku'-dim-bok 'chin', ku'-rang 'voice', ku'-sim-ang 'beard'. The same form is found in a number of verbs that have to do with the mouth: ku'-dim-a 'kiss', ku'-mi-si-a 'whisper', ku'-mong-a 'discuss, consult, agree', ku'-ra-chak-a 'agree', ku'-sim-ok-a 'whistle', ku'-mik-chet-a 'swear, promise'.

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pak- is not used alone and it as far as I am aware it occurs as the initial syllable of only three compounds, but these are enough to make its meaning clear: pak-wal 'arm-pit', pak-krong 'shoulder', pak-sim-ang 'axillary hair'. Of the second portions of these words, -sim-ang appears in several compounds for various kinds of coarse body hair so its meaning is clear, but I am not aware of any other words that have either -krong or -wal in a recognizably related sense. Three words give pak- only the most tenuous claim to being a categorizing prefix, but, somewhat unusually, the same syllable occurs as the second member in a number of other compounds: jak-pak 'inside of the upper arm'; ri-pak 'inside of the upper part of a man's leg" si'-pak 'inside of the upper part of a woman's leg'; gang-pak 'the part of a bird's wing that is close to the body'. In all these words pak refers to the area where a limb connects to the torso,

kok- 'basket'. Kok is the usual word for basket in A'chik and particular types of baskets are named with compounds that have kok- as their first syllable. In the Mandi spoken in Modhupur, the usual independent word for 'basket' is to-ra , but kok- is found in a number of compounds. kok-kreng 'a roughly made openly woven basket', kok-sep 'a small basket generally used to hold small animals such as birds or fish', kok-si 'basket for carrying fish or eels'.

nok- 'house, building' is used in a large number of compounds, some for types of houses, others for parts of houses or spaces around houses, and still others for people or groups associated with houses. nok-chol 'opening in the side wall of a house', nok-di 'small house of a newly married couple', nok-mong 'main building, house of the senior couple of a family', nok-pan-te 'sleeping house for unmarried young men' ( pan-te 'unmarried man, adolescent'), nok-gil 'back end of a house, back door', nok-kap 'house site', nok-king 'roof', nok-krom 'male heir of a household', nok-na 'female heir of a household', nok-ma 'wealthy man, village leader ( -ma 'big'). Nok is also found as the second syllable of some compounds (see the next section).

a- orang- occurs as the first syllable of a considerable number of kinship terms, more in Mandi than in the dialects of A'chik that I am familiar with. The meaning of these prefixes is considerably more obscure than is the meaning of the other categorizing prefixes listed here, and perhaps they should not even be considered as the same sort of prefix. Two terms, a-bi 'older sister', a-da 'older brother', always have an initial a- . In other cases, the forms with a- or ang- alternate with forms that lack such a prefix. Examples include a-wang 'father's younger brother' and a-no 'younger sister', which alternate with wang or wang-gip-a , and no or no-gip-a . Ang- can be used as a part of a considerable number of Mandi kin terms, but it is used less often in some more northern dialects. Even in Mandi ang- forms alwaysPage  173alternate with those without the ang- : ang-jong, jong 'younger brother', ang-jik, jik 'wife', ang-se, se 'husband'. I find it difficult to avoid feeling that ang- has something to do with the first person singular pronoun ang-a , but if it ever meant that in these words, its meaning is slipping away. It is perfectly possible to say nang'-ni ang-jong 'your younger brother'.

In addition to the widely used category prefixes described here, many others have a more restricted scope. Category prefixes vary greatly in the number of compounds into which they enter. Some, such as do'- 'bird' and bol- 'tree' are found in dozens. Others are found in only a few, and as the numbers become smaller it is hard to know at what point to stop calling them prefixes at all. Tam-pi 'fly' occurs as the first part of tam-pi-rong-reng 'dung fly', tam-pi-sim-ik 'gnat', and tam-pi-a-mak 'a small biting fly'. Is this enough to make tam-pi count as a categorizing prefix? Whatever the case, an enormous number of compounds are constructed from a first part with a clear meaning, often but not always, a single syllable. Some second elements also have clear meanings, while many others are entirely obscure. It is much less common to find a compound with a clearly identifiable second element following an obscure first element, but there is one curious exception. Bi-du , a noun meaning 'vine', forms a number of compounds that name particular kinds of vines. Oddly, it is -bi-du that is their second element. The meanings of the first parts of these compounds are more obscure: kim-bal-o-bi-du 'a thorny vine as thick as the thumb; ma-ri-bi-du ' a very large woody vine that can be as thick as a man's leg; pal'-wang-bi-du 'a rather tree like vine, with straight, but not standing, sections'; ro-a-tik-bi-du 'a thin vine with much indented fern-like leaves'. I have no idea why -bi-du should come second in compounds when other words with parallel meanings come first.

Noninitial Morphemes

(C)

pp. 173

Compounds, by definition, are composed of at least two morphemes. The category prefixes that occur first in so many compounds form a clear set of morphemes, and their meanings are transparent. Morphemes that come later in a word are more varied and therefore more difficult to describe in an orderly way, but for convenience I will divide them among several types: 1. Morphemes that can also serve as independent words; 2. Bound forms that cannot be used alone but that can be quite easily used to form new compounds; 3. Bound forms that are never used except in a limited set of compounds, but whose meaning is nevertheless clear; 4. Constituents that have some recognizable derivation, but whose use in the compound is highly conventionalized; 5. Constituents that have no recognizable existence apart from the particular words in which they occur.

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Independent words . Many words that can be used by themselves can also become the second elements of compounds. These compounds are conventionalized expressions with meanings that are reasonably transparent but not always completely so. A few morphemes that are used initially in compounds as category prefixes can also be used as second elements in compounds (e.g. -jak 'hand', -nok 'house', chi- 'water, liquid') but more often the noninitial parts of compounds are distinct. Chi 'water, liquid', is found in mik-chi 'tears', kram-chi 'sweat, perspiration', ku'-chi 'saliva' ( ku'-sik 'mouth'), an'-chi 'blood', bit-chi 'juice', wa-chi 'rainy season' ( wa-a 'rain'), and many others. Ra-ma 'road, path' is found in tik-ra-ma 'part in the hair', (lit. 'louse path'), and in mat-ma-ra-ma 'milky way' (lit. 'buffalo road'). Nok 'house, building' is found in gil-ja-nok 'church building' ( gil-ja 'church as an institution'), skul-nok 'school building', pak-nok 'cook house', dal-an-nok 'brick or masonry house', gan'-sang-nok 'bamboo house built on a gan'-sang "platform"', wa'-si-nok 'house made of split bamboo ( wa'-si )', ma'-nok 'kinsmen on mother's side' (lit. 'mother-house'). Jak 'hand' is found in bi-jak 'leaf, hand of a plant', and bi-jak , in turn, is found in larger compounds: bol-bi-jak 'tree leaves', sam-bi-jak 'leaves of small plants'. Bit-chi 'juice', itself a compound of bit- 'plant parts' and chi 'water', enters into a number of larger compounds: bi-ja-bit-chi 'honey' ( bi-ja 'bee'), do'-bit-chi 'egg' ( do'- 'bird'), ko-mil-a-bit-chi 'orange juice'. Sal 'sun, day' is found in da'-sal 'today'. Bring 'forest' is found in wak-bring 'wild pig'. Sil 'iron' is found in bol-sil 'a tree with very hard wood'. Gi-sim 'black' is found in ha'-gi-sim 'dark colored earth', and so on.

Pi'-sa , the independent Mandi form of the word for 'child' (A'chik bi'-sa ) can be productively added to animal names to mean the young of that kind of animal, and it is also used for a diminutive variety of a number of nonliving things: ma'-su-pi'-sa 'calf', a-chak-pi'-sa 'puppy', me'-chik-pi'-sa 'woman-child, girl', jak-si-pi'-sa 'little finger' ( jak-si 'finger'), pa-ra-pi'-sa 'earthenware dish of a small size'.

If they have any independent existence at all, most constituents of noun compounds are themselves nouns, but there are exceptions. Bo-a is a verb meaning 'to swell up'. A number of compounds for swellings of particular types, have -bo as their second element: dok-bo 'swollen neck, goiter', ri-bo 'swollen testicles'.

Productive and semiproductive constituents of compounds . These are morphemes that can be freely added to nouns that have appropriate meanings, but that are not widely or freely used as independent words.

-bi-ma 'female' and-bi-pa 'male' can be added to the name for any kind of animal to indicate its gender. Villagers in the Garo Hills whom IPage  175knew in the 1950's had no separate lexemes for male or female of animals analogous to English cow, bull, mare, stallion . Mandis in Bangladesh have now borrowed some gender distinctive lexemes from Bengali, but they also continue to use -bi-ma and bi-pa . Only occasionally are these used as independent words. One can ask bi-ma-ma, bi-pa? 'Is (it) male or female?' and receive an answer: bi-ma 'female'. More often, they are suffixed to animal names: a-chak-bi-pa 'male dog', do'-bi-ma 'female bird, hen', mat-cha-bi-pa 'male tiger'.

-mrang or-mrang-mrang can be used with color terms, and a few other words, to mean something much like English '-ish': git-chak-mrang, git-chak-mrang-mrang 'reddish', gi-sim-mrang-mrang 'blackish', mik-ki-mrang-mrang 'with running eyes, with much dirt from the eyes' ( ki 'body dirt, dung').

-ska 'of the same kind' can be used with names for types of people to emphasize the common features of the group: me'-chik-ska 'fellow women'; ba-ju-ska 'own friends'; jat-ska 'of the same ethnic group'; cha-song-ska 'those of the same age, contemporaries'.

-sa-ge 'deceased, former' can be added to the names of deceased persons, or to kinship terms or titles that had once designated people now dead. Am-bi-sa-ge 'deceased grandmother', Sai-jan-sa-ge 'the now deceased Sai-jan', Ni-kol-as ma-star-sa-ge 'the deceased teacher Nikolas'.

Meaningful, but non-productive bound forms . These are constituents whose meaning is clear, or reasonably so, but that are never used as separate words. They cannot be used productively to form new words. Some of these are used in dozens of compounds; others in very few.

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-sim-ang 'coarse body hair' is found in mik-sim-ang 'eyebrows' ( mik-ron 'eye'), ku'-sim-ang 'beard' ( ku'-sik 'mouth'), pak-sim-ang 'under-arm hair' ( pak-krong 'shoulder', pak-wal 'armpit'), ri-sim-ang 'male public hair' ( ri-gong 'penis'), si'-sim-ang 'female pubic hair' ( si 'female genitals'). With the exception of si (A'chik si'-i ) neither part of these words is used except in compounds, but the meanings of all the parts are transparent.

-go-ra 'thicket, place with much growth' can be added to several plant names. Na-ra-go-ra 'place thick with rice stubble', wa'-go-ra 'bamboo thicket', te'-rik-go-ra 'a place with many banana plants', bring-go-ra 'thick forest'.

-ma, -bi-ma or-a-ma is added to a considerable number of words to indicate a large variety of some more general category. The meaning is less transparent than that of -sim-ang or -go-ra . I have asked Mandis to explain the meaning of -ma and found some of them unable to do so, although the examples given just below seem to leave no ambiguity. Most likely -ma is an old element that has been more fully merged into its words than have -sim-ang or -go-ra , although -ma occurs in a larger number of compounds than either of these: ja'-dil-ma 'large root', ta'-ma 'a large variety of edible tuber', mi-ma 'a large grained variety of rice', nok-ma 'village leader', literally 'house-big'. There is some overlap of the meanings 'large' and 'female' in these terms. bi-ma means 'female' of animals and a-ma is a word for 'mother', but both are found in words where they now mean 'big': jak-si-a-ma, or jak-si-bi-ma 'finger-big, thumb', bi-ja-a-ma 'a large type of stinging bee', to-ra-a-ma 'a large rice basket'.

-gip-a can be added to any kinship term to show that it must be understood as a term of reference and not as a term of address. In other words it is used to talk about kinsmen, not as a name by which to address them: ma'-gip-a 'mother', am-bi-gip-a 'grandmother', su-gip-a 'grandchild', etc. This suffix must be related to the identical nominalizing suffix that can productively turn any verb into a noun with the meaning 'the one who' does something. Its use with kinship terms is specialized, however, for they are the only nouns that can be suffixed with -gip-a . -gip-a is otherwise exclusively a verb suffix.

-pa 'male', 'father',-ma 'female', 'mother'. These are found in words such as so-a-pa 'an unwashed man', dal'-am-pa 'a man with a high opinion of himself', ra-song-pa 'proud man'. Each of these words has a partner with -ma that is used for women.

-chok , whose central meaning seems to be 'pointed', is found in gol'-chok 'arrow, pointed stake', do'-chok 'small bird with a pointed back part', ja'-pa-ku'-chok 'heel of the foot', ku'-eng-ku'-chok 'a shape with sharp corners, such as a triangle or diamond'.

Page  177

-gran 'dried, especially in the sun' is used for several kinds of dried meat: na'-tok-gran 'fish that is dried in the sun or by fire', wak-gran 'dried pork', ma'-su-gran 'dried beef'. Usually, but not always, it refers to edible meat. A-chak-gran would mean 'a dog's body that had dried out'. I have had conflicting opinions on whether man-de-gran 'a dried human body' would be a possible word.

Inevitably a few syllables occur in so few compounds that one hesitates to claim a relationship among them, but the following are at least plausible candidates for meaningful elements.

-chik is found in me'-chik 'woman', nam-chik 'niece'

-chil occurs in ku'-chil 'lip', and na'-chil 'ear'. Perhaps it designates a flat piece of flesh.

If they have any independent existence at all, the initial constituents of noun compounds are usually nouns themselves, but a few second elements such as -ram and -dam can form noun compounds by being suffixed to verb verb bases. It would be possible to look upon these as nominalizers, since they turn verb bases into nouns, but their range is so much more restricted than the other nominalizers that this hardly seems useful.

-ram 'place, location' can be attached to verb bases to form compounds that mean 'the place where the action of the verb happens'. at-chi-ram 'birthplace' ( at-chi-a 'be born)', chu-ram 'sleeping place' ( chu-a 'sleep'), gop-ram 'cemetery' ( gop-a 'bury)', ka-ram 'tying place', specifically 'the place where a dead person ties his cow on the way to the afterworld'.

-dam also contributes the meaning of 'place' to a number of compounds that have verbal elements: dong-dam 'living place' ( dong-a 'be at'), cha'-dam 'eating place'. -dam is also used with noun constituents: ha'-dam 'place, location' ( ha'- 'ground, earth').

Conventionalized bound forms. A great many compounds, especially those with categorizing prefixes as their first constituent, have second constituents that are more or less obviously derived from independent words, but these second constituents can be so highly conventionalized that they partially or largely lose their independent meaning. Ha-guk-ging-srok is a grasshopper with a long head. The -ging- in this word surely comes from the word for 'nose'. In ha-guk-mit-im another kind of grasshopper, -mit-im is probably related to the word for 'fat' (the substance), but it is highly conventionalized here. Sin-a-ru means 'centipede' and sin-a-ru-git-chak is a particularly poisonous kind of centipede. This species is colored a warm reddish brown which is within the range of git-chak 'red' and the derivation is obvious, but the compound has been conventionalized to the point where it is simply the name of one kind of centipede. It is difficult for one who is not a native speaker of the language to be sure whether anyPage  178etymological derivation at all can be found for some of these conventionalized second elements. Some have a clear origin, but others must be obscure even to native speakers.

Constituents without recognizable meanings. Very large numbers of compounds have a meaningful first element followed by a second element that has no meaning apart from the particular compound in which it occurs. The first constituent of many of these compounds is a category prefix of the sort described in the previous section. The jak that is found in jak-ra 'right' and jak-a-si 'left' is the word for 'hand, arm', but -ra and -a-si seem to have no meaning or use apart from these words. In chi-ring 'small river', -chi means 'water', but -ring appears to have no independent meaning. In ha'-kong 'low place between hills', ha'-pek 'mud', and ha'-kin-te 'lumps of earth', the ha'- means 'ground, land, soil'. I can detect no independent meaning in the remainder of these words. Wa 'teeth' is found in wa-ring 'gums', wa-gam 'rear teeth, molars', and wa-chu 'front teeth', but the second syllables seem to be meaningless apart from their use in these words.

Ka-ta Jik-Se: Wife-Husband Words

(B)

pp. 178

Compounds of one kind are so well known to Garo speakers that they have received a name: ka-ta jik-se , literally 'wife-husband words'. These are pairs of words, generally with quite concrete meanings, which when used together give a more abstract meaning than either word has by itself. Jik-se is itself an example of a ka-ta jik-se , for jik means 'wife' and se means 'husband', and when paired together the resulting compound means 'married couple' or two other things that belong together as, for example, ka-ta jik-se . Note than when words for male and female members of a pair are used together in Garo, the female one usually comes first. Most wife-husband words are formed from native roots, and there are scores of them, but one of my favorites is sut-kut derived from two borrowed words, 'suit' and 'coat', but carrying the general meaning of 'fine clothes'.

The two members of the pair often share some common phonology. Sometimes they rhyme, as do sut and kut . Some, though by no means all ka-ta jik-se have a partial rhyme and some are alliterative: gan-ding-chin-ding 'clothes, garments', literally 'lower garrets-upper garrets'; an'-tam-pring 'all the time', literally 'evening-morning'; ha'-wal 'property rights', literally 'land-fire'; ha'-ba-song-ba 'property', literally 'fields-also-village-also'; nok-jam 'property', literally 'house-granary'; dok-a-sik-a 'musical instruments', literally 'beat-blow', 'things that are beaten and blown'; han'-jak 'whole body', literally 'body-hand'; sam-bi-jak 'vegetables', literally 'herbs-leaves';Page  179 do'-mat 'animals generally', literally 'birds-squirrels'; mat-cha-mak-bil 'wild animals', literally 'tigers-bears'; sok-me-ja'-ping 'feminine temptations for a man', literally 'breasts-thighs'.

Bengali uses pairs of words to give abstract meanings that are very much like the Garo ka-ta jik-se , and a good many of these are used by Mandis even when speaking Mandi: juk-biuk 'calculation', literally 'addition-subtraction'; lek-ka-po-ra , 'literacy', literally 'writing-reading'.

Plurals etc.

(B)

pp. 179

Most noun suffixes can be used with all types of nominals, not only with nouns. The plurals, however, are limited to nouns. Plurals are never obligatory in Mandi. A noun, by itself, is neither singular nor plural, and in the absence of a numeral or a plural suffix, the number must be inferred from the context. The meaning can be made explicitly singular by using a numeral meaning 'one', and it can be made explicitly plural, either by a higher number or by one of the plural suffixes. A plural suffix and a numeral are never used together with the same noun. Using both together would not merely be redundant but ungrammatical. When I have asked them, speakers have assured me that it is possible to use plurals such as -rang with nouns that refer to substances and that translate English mass nouns. I have challenged them to use such words as chi-rang 'waters' or han'-cheng-rang 'sands', however, and they then have trouble finding convincing examples. Generally, plurals are used only with nouns that translate English count nouns.

The title to this section is "Plurals etc." because these suffixes do not all literally indicate plurality. Their common feature is their exclusive attachment to noun. All of them are suffixed directly to the noun stem, and they come before the case marker, if there is one. If used with a nominalized verb, they follow the nominalizing suffix. This is logical, since it is the nominalizing suffix that creates the noun, and the noun must be created first, before a plural suffix can be attached to it.

-rang, -dang, drang . These three suffixes give the closest equivalents that Garo has to a plural. They are close synonyms and the choice among them is largely dialectal or even idiosyncratic. All three are easily understood by Garo speakers everywhere. They are common suffixes but by no means as common as the English plural, since they are not obligatory, and they are not used unless there is some special reason to make plurality explicit. My impression is that -rang is the most common, particularly in A'chik but -dang and -drang are also common in Mandi: ba-ju-rang 'friends', do'-drang 'birds', nok-drang 'houses'. Plurals can, of course, be attachedPage  180to nominalized verbs as well as to simple nouns, and borrowed words pose no problems: dong-gip-a-dang 'those who are there', dal'-gip-a-drang 'the big ones' ( dal'-a 'big'), chan-chi-a-ni-rang 'thoughts' ( chan-chi-a 'think'), ken-a-rang 'fears' ( ken-a 'be afraid'), pek-to-ri-rang 'factories'.

-ong 'the person named and his or her associates'. This is suffixed only to personal names or to substitutes for names, most often kinship terms. It cannot be used with pronouns. Most often it refers to the family or kinship group of the person named:

-ra-ra 'lots, all over the place, all around'. This is usually suffixed to words for people, animals, and physical objects. Pi'-sa-ra-ra 'children all over the place', bol-bi-jak-ra-ra 'lot of leaves everywhere', nok-ra-ra 'nothing but houses', gang-gu-ra-ra 'lots of mosquitoes', ha'-gin-dil-a-ra-ra 'awfully dusty'. This is usually used as an exclamation, generally with at least mild surprise, and often, though not always with a touch of dismay. It is not so often incorporated into a larger sentence: Ai-ao, bu-ra-bu-ri-ra-ra 'My gosh, there is nobody but old men and old women here'. Most oftenPage  181it is used for concrete objects, but its use with abstract concepts is not impossible: ken-a-ni-ra-ra 'fears everywhere'.

It is only mildly paradoxical that -ra-ra can sometimes be used to mean 'lacking in'. Literally, jak-ra-ra means 'many hands, hands all over the place' but its implication is 'only hands, nothing but hands' i.e. 'empty handed, without anything else'.

-tang 'self, own'. This syllable can be suffixed to nouns denoting objects and people with whom one has close or intimate relations: song-tang 'own village', ang-ni nok-tang 'my own house', pi'-sa-rang-ni am-bi-tang 'children's own grandmother', Ro-si-ni na'-chil-tang 'Ro-si's own nose'. -tang is not used with ordinary physical objects and the idea of * bol-tang 'own tree' strikes people as ludicrous.The syllable is doubled to create a plural distributive meaning: nok-tang-tang 'each (one's) home', song-tang-tang-o dong-bo 'each stay in (your) own village'. Case markers follow the -tang : man-de-tang-ko dong-bo 'marry your own kind'; pi'-sa-tang-ko dok-a-ri-a '(he) just hits his own child'.

This suffixed -tang is obviously related to the reflexive pronouns an'-tang and an'-tang-tang 'myself, yourself, himself' etc. (See the section on "Pronouns" in the next Chapter.)

Case Markers

(B)

pp. 181

Case markers characterize nouns as clearly as principal verb suffixes characterize verbs, and these two classes of suffixes define and distinguish the two largest classes of words in the language. Nominative nouns have no case markers, however, while verbs are hardly ever used without a principal verb suffix, so naked nouns are common but naked verbs very rare. The case marker is suffixed to the noun only if the noun is the last word in the noun phrase. Otherwise it can be attached to a numeral or modifying verb instead. It is also possible for a noun phrase to lack a noun entirely, and when a demonstrative is the only word in a noun phrase, it can easily take a case marker. Even a genitive may have a second case marker suffixed to it, if it is the last or only constituent of a noun phrase.

Case markers provide a way of organizing the noun phrases of a clause or sentence, and of showing how each noun phrase is related to the verb. In particular, some case markers show whether their noun phrases are the subject, the direct object, or the indirect object of the verb, while others have meanings for which prepositions are used in English: location in time and space, direction toward or away, instrument, accompaniment, similarity. Mandi has at least nine cases but they can be counted in different ways, and depending upon the criteria used, the number can reach as highPage  182as thirteen or fourteen. This extensive system of case markers lets Garo have much freer word order than English, where word order is needed to indicate what is the subject and what is the object. Still, not even fourteen case markers are enough to make all the distinctions that a language needs, and Garo uses words that are similar to the prepositions of English to supplement its case markers. These follow the noun phrase in Garo rather than preceding it, so they are called "postpositions" rather than "prepositions", but they do the same job. They follow immediately after the word with the case marker and they are closely related to the case markers. Indeed, the line between case markers and postpositions is not entirely sharp in Mandi, which is one reason why it is not easy to count the number of cases. Nevertheless, most forms can be assigned unambiguously either to the category of case markers or to that of postpositions. Postpositions will be described in the next section, but to the extent that they interact with case markers, that discussion will need to be anticipated here.

For the most part, the meaning of each grammatical case is quite transparent. Mandi cases are somewhat less "grammaticalized" than are those in such languages as German, where the choice among cases often seems to depend as much on the syntax as on the meaning that needs to be conveyed. The forms of the case markers are also very stable. Cases are usually marked by a single form in all circumstances, with none of the irregularities that the varying declensions bring to some European languages. In Mandi, the cases can be chosen by the speaker and understood by the hearer largely on the basis of their meaning, with only a few complications introduced by the linguistic context in which they occur. The nominative is used for the actor, the active agent. With the great majority of verbs this corresponds to the subject in English. The accusative marks the thing acted upon. The dative marks the recipient. Thus, in a very straightforward way, Me'-a-sa boi-ko me'-chik-na ron'-a means 'The man gives the book to the woman'. Boi 'book' is marked with the accusative case marker -ko , me'-chik 'woman' with the dative case marker -na , and me'-a-sa 'man' is left with no explicit marker as the nominative subject. Other case markers include the locative, which shows the time or the place of the action, and the instrumental, which can mark the name of a tool or instrument that is used in performing the action. None of the noun phrases are obligatory, of course, and they may occur in any order because the case markers show their roles in the sentence so clearly.

Of course, there are complications, and case markers are sometimes used in ways that will surprise speakers of other languages. A-chu-na sai-kel nang-a means 'Grandfather needs a bicycle', but 'grandfather', the name of the one who needs the cycle must be in the dative case. This makes the literal meaning something like 'For grandfather, the cycle is needed'.Page  183 Rong'-te-cha do'-ko go-gak-a might be expressed in English as 'Throw a rock at the bird' but the rock is put in the instrumental case ( rong'-te-cha ) and the bird is in the accusative ( do'o-ko ), so it is constructed like 'Hit the bird with a rock, but go-gak-a means 'throw at' rather than 'hit'. The most natural Garo equivalent of 'I am named Raben' is Ang-ko Ra-ben ming-a . Ming-a is a verb meaning 'to name' but its subject is the name, and its object is the person named. A literal back-translation of this sentence into English would be something like 'Raben names me'. Similarly in the next example, which names the appropriate kinship term that someone should use for a particular person, the kinship term is nominative while the personal name is accusative:

'I will cover Mijen with a blanket' is most naturally translated as Ang-a lep-ko Mi-jen-o pin-et-a . As might be expected, ang-a 'I' is the subject and it has the nominative case. Lep-ko 'blanket', however, is the direct object as shown by its accusative case marker, while the person covered has the locative. The sentence can be most literally translated back into English as 'I spread the blanket over Mijen', for the verb is better translated as 'spread over' than as 'cover'. The verb does include the sense of 'over', not merely 'spread', however. A different verb base is used for 'spread under'.

Another example involves adornment. The literal meaning of the following example is something like 'I cause feathers to be inserted (in order to dress or decorate) to her', hopelessly awkward in English, but the right way to say it in Mandi. The objects used for adornment take the accusative, and the person who is adorned takes the dative:

Sometimes two different case markers can be used with little or no difference in meaning. In the next sentence nang'- 'you singular' can be either dative or locative:

In the next example, me'-chik 'woman' can have either -ming 'with' or the accusative -ko :

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Each case now needs to be considered in more detail.

Nominative Zero/-a . The nominative case in Garo corresponds closely to the subject in English. With intransitive verbs the nominative case is used for the thing that is characterized by the verb, for the thing that is 'red' or 'hot', or that 'runs', or 'dies'. With transitives it is used for the agent that performs the action of the verb. Mostly, the nominative case is shown simply by the absence of any case marker. If other cases always had an overt case marker there would never be any ambiguity about which noun phrases are nominative, but a few other nouns, most often accusatives, are sometimes left without case markers, so the absence of a case marker is not a totally unambiguous signal of the nominative. The conditions in which other noun phrases are left without a case marker are limited, however, and ambiguity is rarely a problem.

There is also one exception to the generalization that the nominative case has no case marker. In the absence of any other case marker, pronouns with monosyllabic bases always have an -a added to the base. This -a can be considered to be the marker of the nominative case that is used only with a handful of monosyllabic pronouns: ang-a 'I', na'-a 'you sg.', bi-a 'he, she', ching-a 'we, exclusive', i-a 'this', u-a 'that' and mo-a 'what?' All other personal and demonstrative pronouns are polysyllabic, and they resemble nouns in having no overt case marker in the nominative. It would be possible, of course, to describe nouns and polysyllabic pronouns as having a "zero" case marker in the nominative, but little hangs on this, and I will consider the monosyllabic pronouns to be the only words to have a nominative case marker.

The demonstratives, u-a 'that' and i-a 'this', have a suffixed -a not only when they are nominative, but also when they act as modifiers within a noun phrase. Demonstratives always come first in a noun phrase so unless there are no other words, the case marker is suffixed to a later word. The demonstrative in such phrases has its -a even though it is not a nominative. u-a man-di-ko ' that person (accusative)'; i-a song-o 'this village (locative)'.

Unlike English, Garo does not require every sentence to have a subject, and many clauses and sentences manage comfortably without one. Of course, many other clauses and sentences do have subjects, and in ordinary speech the nominative is probably more frequent than any other case: bi-a kat-ing-a 'he is running', pi'-sa ga'-ak-jok 'the child fell', wak dal'-no-a 'the pig will be big'. Since the case markers show the role of the noun phrasesPage  185so clearly, the subject need not come first. Ang-a bi-ko nik-a and Bi-ko ang-a nik-a both mean 'I see him'. Ang-ko bi-a nik-a means 'He sees me'.

Most of the complications of the nominative arise when alternations between some other case marker and its absence are possible. It is sometimes difficult to know whether the alternative that has no overt case marker should be considered nominative (because there is no case marker) or some other case which has simply had its case marker deleted. Examples will be considered along with the description of the other case markers.

A few postpositions follow the nominative: gin-ang 'with', gri 'without', sa-ra a Bengali borrowing that also means 'without', and sometimes skang 'before'.

Accusative -ko . Garo is a straightforward nominative-accusative language. Direct objects, the recipient of the action of a verb, are generally marked with -ko :

Nominalized verbs can take the accusative -ko like any other noun:

When two verbs are used in a single sentence, each can have its own object:

A locative augmented with -ni-ko (see augmented locatives, below) can easily occur in same clause with a regular accusative:

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Generally there is little problem in knowing which noun phrase should be the object of a verb, but Mandi has enough quirks to show that usage is not simply "natural". Some arbitrary conventions must be learned by anyone who learns the language:

A somewhat more complex example arises with words for telling, teaching, ordering and so forth. These are verbs that can take two objects, one for the person to whom the telling, teaching, or ordering is directed, and the other for what is told, taught or ordered. When a sentence includes both of these, the thing said or taught has the accusative case marker while the receiver has the dative, very much as in English 'John taught English (direct object, accusative) to the students (indirect object, dative):

If, however, the thing said is not mentioned, the person who is the recipient can receive the accusative case marker:

Similarly, in the following two sentences, stu-den-rang 'students' must be dative when the accusative is needed for the subject that is taught, but 'students' can be accusative if the subject taught is omitted:

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It would seem that the accusative is given some priority that allows it to be used when it is not needed for another noun phrase. If the accusative is needed elsewhere, then the dative becomes the only choice.

The case markers are interdependent in some ways, and two noun phrases in the same clause do not ordinarily have the same case marker unless they have the same relationship to the verb. The following two examples have little difference in meaning, but the accusative -ko is used with different nouns, and this forces the other nouns to have different case markers, instrumental in one sentence, locative in the other:

In sentences where the third person imperative suffix -kan or ka-na subordinates one clause to another, the object of the main clause, which is simultaneously the logical subject of the subordinate clause, is marked with -ko :

Two noun phrases can be in the accusative if they are objects of different verbs. In the following sentence bi-skut-ko is the object of cha'-ka-na 'let eat' while Jing-ji-ko is the object of tell, and the logical subject of cha'-ka-na :

Two nouns in the same clause can have -ko if they have identical relations to the verb. These are cases where English would have a conjunction:

Page  188

More often than not, in sentences of this sort, the two accusative nouns (or noun phrases) are tied together by having -ba 'also' suffixed to both of them: Ching-a me'-chik-ko-ba me'-a-sa-ko-ba nik-jok. With the ba 's this sentence is completely natural. Speakers accept it without the -ba 's, but it feels just a bit awkward to me:

There is one important exception to the expectation that the object will be marked with -ko . When the object occurs immediately before the verb and an indefinite meaning is intended, the accusative marker is omitted. If bi-bal 'flower' in the following sentence had the case marker -ko as would be required if it were anywhere except directly before the verb, it would mean 'the flower':

Many indefinite expressions contrast in meaning with similar expressions that have been made definite by -ko : bol-ko den'-a 'chop the wood', bol den'-a 'chop wood'; mi-ko cha'-a 'eat the rice', mi cha'-a 'eat a meal'; kam-ko rim'-a 'do the work', kam rim'-a 'work, do work'; gol-po-ko a-gan-bo 'tell the story', gol-po a-gan-bo 'tell a story, tell stories, do story telling'. The language has many conventionalized object-verb pairs in which the objects do not, when used in the indefinite sense, take a case marker, but these are still the logical objects and no other accusative noun phrase normally occurs in the same clause: a'-bol sot-a 'cut firewood', do ra'-sot-a 'butcher chickens', gro gam-a 'pay a fine to settle a legal case'. As was pointed out in Chapter 6, "Verbs", some logical "objects" are so closely associated with the verb that they really need to be considered a part of the verb itself rather than its independent object: mik-su-a 'wash (one's) face', ( mik-kang 'face'); jak-jip-a 'beckon, wave' (lit. hand-fan); grang-jip-a 'flap wings' ( grang 'wing'); mik-chip-a 'close eyes'; ku'-man-a 'able to speak, speak well' (lit. mouth-able). As these examples suggest, body part terms are especially likely to be incorporated into verbs.

Dative -na 'to, for'. The central use of the dative is to mark the indirect object, especially the recipient of some action:

Page  189

A spirit can be the recipient of a sacrifice:

More broadly, the dative indicates the individual who gains something, either physical or abstract. In a language without a separate benefactive case, the dative marks the one who benefits from some action:

The beneficiary of a blessing is dative:

Even a tree can be a beneficiary:

As pointed out in the previous section, the person ordered, taught, or spoken to can be shown by the dative. That person can be seen asPage  190the recipient of the speech or teaching, or perhaps, he is the person who benefits. The thing that is said or taught takes the accusative -ko :

The person or object toward which emotions are directed is often given the dative case:

Dative -na , a noun suffix, and infinitive -na , a verb suffix, are homophonous. This might seem to be no more than simple coincidence, but in some cases infinitives and datives are used in parallel ways:

With the verb nang-a 'need', the one who needs, and who is the potential beneficiary, always has the dative case. The thing needed is accusative:

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Verbs that have been nominalized by -a can take the dative case marker:

The dative can also be used for the price that is paid for something:

Several postpositions are used with the dative including gan-da 'because', king-king 'until, as long as', skang 'before'.

Genitive -ni . -ni is a straightforward marker of the genitive (possessive). It can be used with words for body parts ( ang-ni jak 'my hand'), kinship terms ( ang-ni no-gip-a 'my younger sister'), abstractions ( ang-ni chan-chi-a-ni 'my idea') as well as with the names of physical objects ( ang-ni nok 'my house'). The possessor, to which the -ni is attached, always precedes what is possessed, i.e. the Garo genitive is constructed like the man's hat rather than like the hat of the man .

A genitive noun can be used alone, without mentioning the thing possessed: ang-ni 'mine', Di-jen-ni 'Dijen's'. In this usage the genitive itself acts as a noun, and it is then able to take an additional case marker. In ang-ni-ko nik-jok-ma? 'have you seen mine' the accusative case marker -ko follows the genitive -ni . In ang-ni-cha chok-bo 'write it with mine' (e.g. 'my pen'), the genitive is followed by the instrumental case marker, -cha . In ang-ni-cha cha'-bo 'eat at mine (e.g. at my house)' the genitive is followed by the locative -cha . In the next example -ming 'along with' follows the genitive:

The genitive is used with names of substances, when these modify the name of an object that is made from that substance: sil-ni ji-nis 'ironPage  192thing' (lit. 'iron's thing, thing of iron'), sil-ni be-ra 'iron fence', bu-su-ni be-ra 'thorn fence', le-ka-ni tang-ka 'paper money, money of paper', ha'-ni nok 'house made of earth, mud house'. The genitive also allows many other nouns to be used as modifiers: Jak-ra-ni mik-ron 'right eye', Pa-ki-stan-ni o-pi-sal 'Pakistani officer', bal-ti-ni chi 'pail's water, water in the pail', chi-ni paip 'water pipe', da'-al-ni po-ra 'today's lesson', do'-ni kim-il 'bird's down', dut-ni cha 'tea with milk', pen-ni ja'-teng 'pant legs', te-bil-ni ja'-teng 'table leg, leg of the table', skul-ni biil-ding 'school building', a'-rong-ga-ni ja'-pang 'the foot of the mountains', poi-la Boi-sak-ni sal-o 'on the first day of Boisak (a Bengali month)', bi-skut-ni tiin 'biscuit tin, tin for biscuits', ma'-su-ni gol-po 'story about cows'.

An important use of the genitive is to mark the subject of many subordinate and relative clauses. This distinguishes the subject of the subordinate clause with -ni as its case marker from the nominative subject of the main clause. (See the discussion of subordination in Chapter 13):

Genitive -ni is the favorite case marker for use with postpositions: man-de-ni mik-kang-o 'at the face of the person, in front of the person'; te-bil-ni ko-sak-o 'on top of the table, on the table's top'. These postpositions will be described in the next chapter.

Most case markers show how a noun or a noun phrase is related to a verb. Alone among the case markers, the genitive shows how two nouns are related to each other. Since postpositions are nominals (they can take case markers, and they resemble nouns in other ways as well), even when an a genitive is followed by a postposition, it still relates two nouns, or at least two nominals. Some postpositions do follow other case markers, however, and in this situation other case markers than the genitive relate two nouns.

Instrumental -cha . This case marker is pronounced -cha in Mandi, but -chi in A'chik. In both dialects the instrumental is homophonous with the spatial locative and this parallel difference makes it tempting to regardPage  193the language as having a single polysemous case marker that is used for both the instrumental and for some spatial locatives. However, the meanings are so different that I find it more natural to consider them to be separate cases and that is how I will treat them.

Instrumental -cha is often used with names for tools, or for any means by which something is accomplished:

The next example might be literally translated as 'see by means of (instrumental) a dream' but it is used where English speakers would say 'have a dream':

A somewhat more elaborate expression is also possible:

In the following example, 'God', to whom the prayer is directed, has the instrumental case marker. Apparently God is being used to accomplish something:

When reporting that someone has been questioned, the thing asked about is marked by the accusative and the person questioned is marked by the instrumental. The person who is questioned seems to be the instrument for finding something out:

When the thing asked about is not mentioned, however, the accusative -ko is available for the person asked. Even then, however, instrumental -cha is an option. Thus either -ko or -cha is possible in the following sentence:

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These options are very much like those with verbs of telling, teaching, and ordering, where the one who is told, taught, or ordered may be marked by the accusative unless the accusative is required for whatever it is that the person is told or ordered to do. In that case, the dative is used to mark the person while the accusative marks the instruction:

The person who is told, taught, or ordered can be conceived of as receiving something—-words, knowledge or a command—-hence the dative. The person who is questioned can be conceived of as being used as an instrument by means of which the questioner learns something—-hence the instrumental.

A choice between accusative and instrumental is also possible for what a bird does with its wings: grang-ko pak-pak-a 'flap the wings (accusative)' or grang-cha pak-pak-a 'flap with the wings (instrumental)'.

Mandi has a rather rare passive. The noun that would be nominative in an active sentence is marked by the instrumental in the corresponding passive sentence. The instrumental -cha is rather like the 'by' of an English passive such as The dog was beaten by the man , where by marks the noun that would be the subject of the corresponding active sentence, The man beat the dog . Cha'-a appears to be derived from the verb meaning 'eat', but its sence here is metaphorical, something like 'swallow a beating':

The passive is described more fully in Chapter 14.

Locative -o . -o can be used either as a spatial or temporal locative with such meanings as 'in, at, by, on, near'. It shares the spatial sense with the other locative case marker -cha , but only -o can have a temporal meaning. -o can be productively suffixed to any noun that refers to something that exists in space or time, and can even be used with more abstract phenomena: song-o 'in, at, near, by the village', Som-bal-o 'on Monday', cher-o 'in, on the chair', ang-ni gi-sik-o 'in my mind'. A number of nouns and postpositions are so regularly used with -o that the affix canPage  195seem almost to have become a part of the word, but most, perhaps all, of these words are occasionally used without the -o : am-bin-o 'tomorrow', da'-o 'now', ja'-man-o 'after', ning'-a-o 'inside of', ki'-sang-o 'in back of'.

An alternative form of this locative is -no , but it can be used only with a handful of pronouns: u-no 'there, in that place' ( u-a 'that'); i-no 'here, in this place' ( i-a 'this'); sa-no 'at whom, with whom, near whom' ( sa 'who'); je-no 'at whichever, wherever' ( je 'relative pronoun'). Even with these pronouns, -o is also possible: u-o, i-o, sa-o, je-o . The -no form of the locative can also be used with the augmented locatives (see below), giving -no-ni, -no-na and -no-ni-ko . Since the demonstrative roots to which these suffixes are attached can have several alternative forms, the locatives are afflicted with a bewildering amount of variation.

Whether a locative -o marks position in space or in time is generally shown clearly by the lexical item to which it is suffixed:

-o is sometimes used where some movement is implied.

It can be used metaphorically:

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Locative -o is regularly suffixed to many spatial postpositions:

Possession can be shown by the genitive, of course, but it can also be shown by the verb dong-a 'to exist, to be at (a place)', together with a possessor that has the locative case marker -o : Ang-o to-ra dong-ja 'I have no basket'. To-ra 'basket' is the subject of this sentence, and hence has the nominative case. The possessor has the locative case: ang-o 'at me'. The literal meaning of the sentence, then, is something like 'A basket is not at me'. This is the closest Garo comes to an English sentence with possessive 'have'.

There is no difficulty about having both a time locative and a spatial locative in the same clause:

The case marker -o is used with nouns or other nominals, but it is also clearly related to several nominalizing suffixes that are used with verbs. When used with verbs, all nominalizers that include an -o are purely temporal in meaning, never spatial, so -o as a verb suffix means 'at the time of, when'. -jok-o combines the perfect -jok with the locative -o to mean 'at the time, when in the past'; -na-jok-o means 'at the time, when in the future':

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Occasionally, the absence of locative -o signals an indefinite meaning, much as the absence of the accusative -ko does. Nok nap-a from nok 'house' and nap-a 'enter' is a conventional phrase meaning the first ceremonial opening of a newly built house. Nok-o nap-a , with the added locative marker. simply means 'enter the house' and it can be used for any ordinary occasion. The first of the next two examples suggests a definite bit of water. The second includes the word for 'water', but in the absence of a case marker, it does not imply any particular water, and the word almost becomes incorporated into the verb with a meaning something like 'they are strong at water-swimming':

Locative -cha . Like -o, -cha is a locative. It is used in a narrower range of circumstances than -o , but within its restricted range it is very common. Unlike -o, -cha is used only spatially, so it leaves -o with a monopoly over the temporal dimension. This means that -cha is used with fewer postpositions than is -o , and even with spatial postpositions it is less common than -o . -cha also differs from -o in more often implying movement, though when used without an additional "augmenting" suffix (see next section), it indicates nothing about the direction of the movement. Be-du-ri-a-cha 'to Beduria, from Beduria'. When used without an augmenting suffix, -o typically suggests a lack of movement, so the two case markers are by no means synonymous although they do overlap in meaning. -cha does not always indicate motion and -o does not always mean its absence: Be-du-ri-a-o, Be-du-ri-a-cha 'at Be-du-ri-a'.

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One postposition is characteristically used with locative cha . Bak means 'on the side of, in the direction of'. Bring-cha bak , 'in the direction of the forest'.

Augmented Locatives: -ni, -na, -ni-ko . The two locative suffixes can both be augmented with one of three additional suffixes. Each of the various forms that result from this augmentation might be regarded as marking a separate case, but that this would result in a peculiar multiplication of cases. Alternatively, one might try to treat the augmentations as postpositions that follow the locative suffixes, but they seem, phonologically, to be a part of the previous word, and they are shorter than most postpositions. Moreover, -o and -cha are augmented in similar, though not quite identical ways, and the augmentations are used together so intimately that generalizations would be missed if they were not treated together.

The simplest augmentations for both -o and -chi are -ni 'from' and -na 'to, toward'. It is an odd fact that in another incarnation these are the genitive and dative case markers, but when following one of the locatives they show that the case marker refers to motion rather than position, and they also show the direction of the motion. Thus we have da'-sal-o-ni am-bin-o-na 'from today until tomorrow'; Jol-oi-cha-ni Mo-min-pur-cha-na 'from Joloi to Mominpur'.

The two locatives are often used together, however, and in this case the suffix with -o marks the closer location and the suffix with -cha marks the more distant one. If I were in Joloi I could say Ang-a Jol-oi-o-ni Gai-ra-cha-na re'-ang-no-a 'I will go from Joloi to Gaira'. Gaira, here, is shown to be farther away, and Joloi closer. Ang-a Jol-oi-cha-ni Gai-ra-o-na re'-ba-a 'I come from Joloi to Gaira' not only describes the direction of movement, but it implies that I am now closer to Gaira than to Joloi, since it is Gaira that has the case marker that shows it to be closer. Joloi has the case marker that means 'further away'. Of course re'-ba-a 'come' also implies that the speaker will be moving toward his present position, so there is an interdependence between the verb and the case markers. Mandis rejectPage  199sentences such as *Ang-a Jo-loi-o-ni Gai-ra-cha-na, re'-ba-a as impossible. The case markers assert that Jo-loi is closer than Gaira, while the verb asserts that I "come". Since I come toward Garia, I must at the time of speaking be in Gaira, or at least closer to Gaira than to Joloi.

With transitive verbs there is an extra complication. Verbs with such meanings as 'bring', 'take', 'send', and 'carry' require -ko to be added as a further augmentation to -o-ni and -cha-ni . Thus -o-ni-ko means 'from a relatively nearby place' for things being moved, and -cha-ni-ko means 'from a more distant place' for things being moved:

As with intransitive verbs, there must be harmony between the direction implied by the verbs and that implied by the augmented case markers.

It is curious that all three augmenting syllables, -ni, -na and -ko can also be used as case markers in their own right. Moreover, the fact that it is precisely the transitive verbs that require -ko makes the connection with the accusative difficult to dismiss as coincidence. Still, nouns with -o-ni-ko or -cha-ni-ko as their case markers are hardly accusative. Nor is there any difficulty in using accusative -ko in the same clause with the augmented locative -o-ni-ko :

-ming 'with, along with' . This is considerably more specialized in meaning than the case markers already described, and it also considerably less common. It counts as a case marker because it is consistently used with the combining form of the monosyllabic pronouns: ang-ming 'along with me', ching-ming 'along with us', etc.

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The postpositions -lo-ge and -grim can follow -ming . Neither adds much to the meaning except to make the sense of 'along with' more forceful.

-git-a 'like, similar, by way of' . -git-a is even more marginal as a case marker than -ming . Not only is its meaning relatively specialized, but the way it is used is variable. It sometimes follows the free form of a pronoun or demonstrative, as in u-a git-a 'like that', where -git-a acts as if it is a postposition. Nevertheless it is used, at least part of the time, with the combining form of monosyllabic pronouns, and if this is taken as the defining feature of case markers, then -git-a can certainly be a case marker: ang-git-a 'like me', ching-git-a 'like us', nok-git-a 'like a house', mong-ma-git-a 'like an elephant'. Like case markers -git-a can follow nominalized verbs as well as nouns and pronouns: ni-ri-a-git-a 'like quarreling, similar to quarreling'. Like other case markers also, -git-a can follow a genitive, and it then means 'like some possessed object': nang'-ni-git-a 'like yours', pan-te-ni-git-a 'like the young man's'. Nouns with -git-a are very often followed by dak-e , a subordinating verb which, in effect, puts the noun into a sort of adverbial use: Ang-git-a dak-e dak-bo 'Do like me, do as I do'; A-chak-git-a dak-e kat-ang-a-ming '(He) ran away like a dog, in a doggy manner'.

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-git-a can sometimes mean 'via', 'by way of':

More than most case markers, git-a has the ability to be suffixed to words that are not nouns or even nominals: kan-sa-git-a 'like one' (numeral) ket-chi-git-a 'sort of between' (postposition) pos-chim-git-a 'more or less east' ba-ro-ba-ji-o-git-a 'about twelve o'clock'

In another, though related, use, git-a can follow infinitives. 'In order to' is one meaning of the infinitive, and this meaning is made entirely explicit by adding git-a :

Case Markers and Postpositions

(B)

pp. 201

As the examples of -git-a and -ming show, the line between case markers and postpositions is not entirely sharp. If all postpositions followed a case marker they would be easy to distinguish. The case marker would bePage  202whatever followed immediately after the noun or other nominal, and the postposition would be whatever came next. If some postpositions followed the nominative case, however, they would follow nouns directly, just as case markers do. Only the monosyllabic pronouns give a decisive way to distinguish between them. Postpositions follow the "-a" or "free" form of the pronoun (which can be regarded as nominative), while case markers follow the "combining" form that lacks the -a . By this criterion, there is no doubt that -ko, -na, -ni, o-, -cha (locative), and -cha (instrumental) are cases. Ang-ko, ang-na, ang-ni and the rest all have the case markers attached to the combining form of the pronoun. By this criterion, -ming 'together with' is also a case marker because it is suffixed directly to ang- to yield ang-ming . When words function like postpositions by consistently following the -a form of monosyllabic pronouns, there is no difficulty about calling them "postpositions".

There are, however, at least three forms that I have heard used inconsistently, sometimes after the -a form of the monosyllabic pronouns and sometimes after the combining form. These blur the line between case markers and postpositions. Speakers have told me that git-a 'like, similar to', gin-ang 'with', and gri 'without' can be used after either form of the pronouns. Both ang-git-a and ang-a git-a 'like me' are possible. Whatever people say in the abstract, however, such consensus as I have been able to observe in actual speech suggests that -git-a is most often used with the combining form, and therefore can best be considered a case marker. For this reason, I have included it in the previous section along with other case markers. Gin-ang and gri , on the other hand, seem more often to be used with the free form of the pronouns: ang-a gin-ang, ang-a gri , so I include them with other prepositions in the next chapter. More interesting than where I have decided to put them, however, is their vascilation. Perhaps we are witness to a historical moment when certain postpositions are in the process of becoming case markers. Whatever historical changes are, or are not, underway, it would be an imposition of excessive linguistic tidiness to insist that each form be either a case marker or a postposition, or to imagine that grammatical cases are the sort of thing that can be definitively counted. Most Garo grammatical categories have fuzzy boundaries.

Final Noun Suffixes

(B)

pp. 202

The last noun suffixes to be considered are also last in the noun phrase, and with singular lack of imagination, I will call these "final noun suffixes". Like case markers they are really clitics since they are suffixed to the final word of the noun phrase, whether that is the noun, a numeral, a modifierPage  203or a demonstrative. Indeed, they come even later than the case markers. They follow the case marker, if there is one, and if there is a postposition following the noun phrase, they even follow the postposition. A case marker is suffixed to the noun before the postposition, and it shows the relation of the noun to the postposition, but a final noun suffix comes still later.

There are four final noun suffixes, and with one marginal exception, no more than one can be used with the same word. With nominative monosyllabic pronouns they are suffixed to the "free form" that has -a . They seem to be especially common with pronouns but they can be easily used with every type of noun. Although they are never obligatory, their absence can sometimes be stylistically awkward.

-ba 'also, too' is easily suffixed to nouns or pronouns: Ang-a-ba nik-jok 'I saw (it) too'; na'-a-ba i'-ang-no-a-ma 'will you go too?' The ambiguity of English 'I saw it too' cannot exist in Garo since there is a clear difference between Ang-a-ba u-ko nik-a-ming 'I also (as well as someone else) saw it' and Ang-a u-ko-ba nik-a-ming 'I saw it also (as well as something else)'. -ba always follows any case marker that is present: Bi-song-ko-ba ni-bo 'Look at them too', Jo-loi-cha-na-ba kat-ang-jok '(He) ran away to Joloi too'. -ba is often used on two successive nouns where English would join them by 'and' or 'both. . .and': me'-a-sa-na-ba me'-chik-sa-na-ba ron'-bo 'Give (it) to both men and women'. Longer phrases and clauses can be joined in the same way:

-de . This suffix signals a mild contrast or change from what had gone before or from what might have been expected. It differs from -ba in about the same way that English 'but' differs from 'and'. The meaning of -de and the way it differs from -ba are illustrated by two pairs of sentences. The first example of the first pair is fine because the pronoun and the verb of the second clause agree in saying something different from the first clause. The second sentence is strange because the -ba 'also', is out of harmony with re'-ang-ja-no-a 'will not go':

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The next pair is similar except that the first clauses are negative and this reverses the acceptability of -ba and -de . Ang-a-de 'but I' is impossible because it suggests that I will do something different than you, but this is contradicted by the verb. Ang-a-ba 'I also', is in harmony with the verb:

Other possibilities would have both clauses positive or only the first one negative:

Mostly, of course, -de and -ba are used in less redundant sentences than these so they add information:

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-de seems to occur rather often with pronouns that are postposed after the verb. This is a highly marked position for a noun phrase, and the -de seems to confirm its markedness. Dong-ja, ang-a-de ' I don't have any' (whatever you might think).

It is difficult to get two -de 's into the same clause, but two can be used in successive clauses as a way of emphasizing a contrast:

-sa, -ha 'only'. -sa is the pronunciation used in A'chik, but both ha- and -sa are used in Mandi. This suffix must be related to -sa 'one' although the word for 'one' is never pronounced -ha , even in Mandi. When suffixed to a noun, and in the absence of a numeral classifier, its meaning is 'only': Bi-a-sa jom-ing-a 'Only he is sick'.

The next two examples not only show the use of -ha , but give additional examples of -de where it marks a contrast to the word marked with -ha . The meaning could be conveyed in English with 'however':

-in . This very common suffix foregrounds, or calls attention to, the noun phrase to which it is suffixed. A good answer to the question Sa bi-ko nik-a-ming? 'Who saw him?' would be Ang-a-in bi-ko nik-a-ming ' I saw him', where the ang-a takes the suffix -in since that is the noun phrase to which attention needs to be drawn. Ang-a bi-ko-in nik-a-ming 'I saw him 'Page  206would be a better answer to Na'-a sa-ko nik-a-ming? 'Who did you see?' The suffix does much the same thing as emphatic stress does in English:

It is unusual for more than one noun phrase in a clause to be marked by -in . The purpose of -in is to call special attention to a noun phrase and the foregrounding of one noun phrase would be undermined by foregrounding another.

When -in follows an open syllable, two vowels face each other across a syllable boundary. In this case, the -i of -in is subject to elision with the preceding vowel (see Chapter 4, "Morphophonemics and Variation"). A good many -in 's, therefore, do little more than lengthen previous vowel, and in fast speech the vowel of -in can even be lost, leaving only a syllable final -n to represent the suffix: [ang-a-in, ang-aan, ang-an] 'I, foregrounded'. This is the closest that Mandi comes to a morpheme that is shorter than one syllable.

There is one marginal exception to the rule that only a single final noun suffix can be used on the same nominal. -san and -han are emphatic alternates of -sa and -ha 'only'. They can be interpreted as consisting of the shorter -sa or -ha to which -in 'foregrounded' has been added. The pronunciations of the pairs, when used together, are -san or -han . These can be readily understood as lexicalizations which conform to the frequent dropping of the vowel from the -in suffix whenever it follows another vowel. The meaning of -san and -han follows naturally from the meanings of their parts: 'emphatically only'. -san and -han are especially frequent with numerals: sak-sa-san, sak-sa-han 'only one (person)'.

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Final Noun Suffixes and Terminal Suffixes

(C)

pp. 207

The final noun suffixes and the terminal suffixes of verbs share two properties. Both come at the very end of their respective words, and perhaps in harmony with their late position, both are attached to their words just a bit less securely than are the earlier suffixes. Terminal suffixes turn up now and then suffixed to nouns, and final noun suffixes occasionally find their way onto verbs.

The terminal suffixes include -ming 'past', -kon 'probably', -ma 'question particle', -na 'quotative', -ro 'contradiction' and -ai 'emphatic'. Even -ming 'past, conditional', which is usually closely coupled with the tense-aspect marker, now and then gets attached to something other than a verb. In ak-git-tam-ming-kon 'there were probably three people', ak-git-tam 'three people' is a numeral consisting of a classifier and a number. Suffixed to it is not only -ming but also -kon 'probably'. There is no verb base in this phrase, but perhaps it can be understood as an abbreviation of ak-git-tam dong-a-ming-kon , where the verb base dong- holds the suffixes.

In Ba-gip-a song-ni-ming? 'from which village were (you)?', the -ming follows the noun phrase ba-gi-pa song-ni that, by itself, means 'of what village?' The -ming adds a component of past time. Equational sentences occasionally have a terminal suffix even in the absence of a verb. I-a ma'-su-ma? '(is) this a cow?' ends with -ma , the question marker for yes-no questions. Usually, -ma is the very last suffix of a verb (and thus of a sentence), but occasionally, as here, it turns up attached to something else. When used with an equational sentence, of course, terminal suffixes come at the end, just as they do with a verbal sentence. More often an empty verb, with little meaning of its own, is added to an equational sentence and it is this empty verb that holds suffixes. It seems odd to dispense with the empty verb.

Examples in which terminal suffixes are suffixed to nominals can often be interpreted as consisting of equational sentences, or fragments of equational sentences:

nok-kon 'probably a house' (as when seeing something dimly through fog)

sak-git-tam-kon 'probably three people'

nok-na 'a house, he says' (quotative)

nok-ma? 'is it a house?' (question particle)

i-a ang-ni ba-ju-ni nok-ming 'this used to be my friend's house'

nok-in-ro 'it is a house' (corrects an earlier statement')

ba-gip-a mas-ming? 'in what month was it?'

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Tense-aspect suffixes more consistently need the support of an empty verb base such as ong'- than do the terminal suffixes. The tense-aspect suffixes are closer to the verb base and seem more securely attached to it. Under enough pressure, however, even tense-aspect suffixes can get attached to nouns or other nominals. Pushed by an inquiring linguist, consultants will attach almost anything to almost anything else. The following sentence has the tense-aspect suffix -jok attached to a nok 'house', a noun, a rare but not quite impossible sequence:

The word ding-tang means 'different'. It is a very frequent nominal modifier and in most respects acts like a noun rather than like a verb. Neverthelss I once persuaded a consultant to say, and to grant that it was allowable, ding-tang-no-a . Here, she suffixed the future tense marker to a word that is, in most respects, a nominal. My consultant intended this to mean 'will be different'. In the course of the discussion that led up to this, however, she offered this fuller example:

Here ding-tang is followed by the verb dak-a 'do, make'. This can act as an empty verb and take tense markers that are difficult to suffix to words that are not verbs. In my consultant's example, dak-a can be understood as coming closer to its literal meaning of 'make': '(the house) will be made differently'. She also offered ding-tang dak-e nik-no-a '(it) will look different'. Here again, she found a way to make ding-tang future without actually suffixing the future tense marker to it. When she finally did say ding-tang-no-a she was, I believe, performing a deletion. She cut out the middle part, making for an abbreviated way of speaking. She accepted this as a possible construction, but she clearly had a strong urge to introduce something else, on which to hang the tense marker.

Another example that I once heard is al-ak-si-ku-ja 'not yet selfish'. Here, -ku-ja 'not yet', consisting of two adverbial affixes, is added to a defective noun. My consultant called this an abbreviation of al-ak-si ong'-ku-ja where the verb base ong'- is used to hold the affixes. Thus it may be necessary to define verbs as those items to which tense-aspect markers can be easily suffixed. Under sufficient pressure (from a linguist or fast speech) affixes seem able to land almost anywhere.

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As if in fair reciprocity for the occasional terminal verb suffix that joins a noun, the final noun suffixes, -ba, -de, -sa and -in occasionally find their way onto verbs, although in the vast majority of their appearances they are suffixed to nouns or other nominals. The -in that foregrounds a word probably appears on verbs more often than the other three final noun suffixes, though even instances of -in with verbs are unusual. In the first example, the -in seems to put the emphasis on the crying. In the second, it emphasizes the accomplishment of eating:

The next example has -ba 'also' suffixed to an infinitive verb. It emphasizes the fact that working comes in addition to eating:

It must be emphasized that final noun suffixes only rarely appear on verbs and they are a bit anomalous. Terminal verb suffixes on nouns are marginally more common.

Homophony Among Suffixes

(C)

pp. 209

Mandi affixes exhibit a surprising amount of homophony. Several noun suffixes have homophones among the verb suffixes, and homophony is also found within both sets of suffixes. In a number of cases there is enough similarity in meaning and use of these homophonous suffixes to suggest that this is not entirely a matter of coincidence.

The case markers of nouns and the principal verb suffixes of verbs have several similarities. They are the most essential suffixes of nouns and verbs respectively, and they occupy equivalent positions in their words. The least marked principal verb suffix is the neutral -a , and even though the nominative -a is used only with monosyllabic pronouns it is also a relativelyPage  210neutral suffix. Both for verbs and for the most common pronouns it seems entirely natural to use the forms suffixed with -a as the citation forms as, for example, the forms used in dictionaries.

Two other case markers, -o 'locative' and -na 'dative' have homophonous principal verb suffixes. -o is used as a nominalizing suffix with verbs where it retains its locative meaning. Less obviously related are the dative with nouns and the infinitive with verbs, both of which are shown by -na . This might be dismissed as a simple coincidence, but examples like the following, suggest some semantic as well as phonological parallels between them:

More problematic is the homophony between the case marker -ming 'with, along with' and the terminal suffix -ming 'past, conditional'. A semantic relation between these is hard to see, but their homophony does add to the parallels between noun suffixes and verb suffixes.

Other homophonies relate several subordinating suffixes of verbs to final noun suffixes. The subordinating suffixes o-ba 'although', -o-de 'if', and -o-sa 'only if' have concluding syllables that are identical in pronunciation to three of the four final noun suffixes, -ba 'also', -de 'but', and -sa 'only'. An obvious semantic parallel unites -o-sa 'only if' and -sa 'if' but nothing so obvious unites the other two pairs. Still, the final noun suffixes can even occur after a locative -o creating even closer homophonies. Cha'-o-ba can mean either 'also when eating' or 'although eating'.

In addition to the similarities between noun and verb suffixes, there are parallels between the locative augmentations and other case markers. All three augmentations, -ni, -na and -ko , are homophonous with simple case markers. Both accusative -ko and the -ko that augments locatives are used with transitive verbs. Like the augmented locative -o-na 'toward', thePage  211dative -na can imply, at least metaphorically, some sort of movement in the direction of a recipient. A semantic connection between genitive -ni and -o-ni 'away from' is not obvious.

I cannot suggest what these parallels mean, or if they mean any thing at all, but they seem to go well beyond what we should reasonably expect by chance.

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