User:Xiugays/sandbox
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Lushootseed can be considered a relatively agglutinating language, given its high number of morphemes, including a large number of lexical suffixes. Word order is fairly flexible, although it is generally considered to be verb-subject-object (VSO).[1]
Lushootseed is capable of creating grammatically correct sentences that contain only a verb, with no subject or object. All information beyond the action is to be understood by context. This can be demonstrated in ʔuʔəy’dub '[someone] managed to find [someone/something]'.[2] Sentences which contain no verb at all are also common, as Lushootseed has no copula. An example of such a sentence is stab əw̓ə tiʔiɫ 'What [is] that?'.[3]
Despite its general status as VSO, Lushootseed can be rearranged to be subject-verb-object (SVO) and verb-object-subject (VOS). Doing so does not modify the words themselves, but requires the particle ʔə to mark the change. The exact nature of this particle is the subject of some debate.
Prepositions in Lushootseed are almost entirely handled by one word, ʔal, which can mean 'on, above, in, beside, around' among a number of potential other meanings. They come before the object they reference, much like in English. Examples of this can be found in the following sentences:
- stab əw̓ə tiʔiɫ ʔal tə stuləkʷ 'What is that in the river?'
- ʔuyayus ti dbad ʔal tudiʔ 'My father is working over there.'
- šəqabac ʔal ti piit 'On top of the bed.' (this example is interesting as šəqabac actually means 'on top of a large/bulky object' on its own, but still contains the ʔal preposition)
Determiners
Determiners usually come before a noun they belong to, and have two possible genders "masculine" (the default) and "feminine". However, in a sentence reordered to become SVO, such as sqʷəbayʔ ti ʔučalatəb ʔə tiʔiɬ wiw'su 'The dog is what the children chased' the determiner for sqʷəbayʔ 'dog' comes after the noun, instead of before it.
Gender distinction in Lushootseed primarily manifests in the addition of a feminine infix -s- within the determiner, following immediately after the first sound of the word. For example, tiʔiɬ 'that' becomes tsiʔiɬ 'that (feminine)'. The sequence [ts] is not spelled with c in these contexts.
| Masculine (default) | Feminine | Meaning | Usage |
|---|---|---|---|
| tə | tsə | 'the', 'a' | A generic demonstrative. Sometimes pronounced ta/tsa |
| ti | tsi | 'the' | For nouns that have only one possible reference, such as name[citation needed] |
| kʷi | kʷsi | 'a/an', 'some' | Generic or hypothetical |
| tiʔəʔ | tsiʔəʔ | 'this' | Proximal |
| tiʔiɬ | tsiʔiɬ | 'that' | Distal |
| Masculine (default) | Feminine | Meaning | Usage |
|---|---|---|---|
| tə | tsə | 'the', 'a' | A generic demonstrative. Sometimes pronounced ta/tsa |
| šə | sə | 'the' | For nouns that have only one possible reference, such as names[citation needed] |
| kʷi | kʷsi | 'a/an', 'some' | Generic or hypothetical |
| ti | tsi | 'this' | Proximal |
| tiiɬ | tsiiɬ | 'that' | Distal |
Pronouns
Lushootseed has four subject pronouns: čəd 'I' (first-person singular), čəɬ 'we' (first-person plural), čəxʷ 'you' (second-person singular), and čələp 'you' (second-person plural). It does not generally refer to the third person in any way.
| First Person | Second Person | Third Person | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | čəd | čəxʷ | ∅ |
| Plural | čəɬ | čələp | ∅ |
The subject pronoun always comes in the second position in the sentence:
dxʷləbiʔ čəxʷ ʔu 'Are you Lummi?' xʷiʔ čəd lədxʷləbiʔ 'I am not Lummi.'
Here, negation takes the first position, the subject pronoun takes the second, and 'Lummi' is pushed to the end of the sentence.[2]
Negation
Negation in Lushootseed takes the form of an adverb xʷiʔ 'no, none, nothing' which always comes at the beginning of the sentence that is to be negated. It is constructed in two possible ways, one for negatives of existence, and one for negatives of identity. If taking the form of a negative of identity, a proclitic lə- must be added to the sentence on the next adverb. If there are no further adverbs in the sentence, the proclitic attaches to the head word of the predicate, as in the sentence xʷiʔ čəxʷ sixʷ ləbakʷɬ 'Don't get hurt again'.[2]
