Sentences (3)
Elaborations
Tatari Faran, unlike English, does not have embedded clauses. Rather than
constructing complex clauses such as:
The girl who came from the hill spoke to me.
I saw the monkey that was sitting on the tree.
Tatari Faran prefers instead to break such sentences into multiple simple
clauses, with various conjunctions to express the relationship between
them.
The first sentence above would be expressed in Tatari Faran as two separate
clauses:
The girl who came from the hill speaks to me.
The conjunction eta marks the second clause as an elaboration of
the subject NP in the previous clause, as opposed to a statement in the main
discourse.
The second sentence above would be similarly expressed thus:
I see a monkey that is sitting on a tree.
The conjunction ena marks the second clause as an elaboration of an
argument NP in the previous clause.
This distinction between eta and ena is sometimes
important when the referent of the pronoun in the second clause may be
ambiguous.
In more formal speech, the demonstrative noun naras is used in
place of tara':
The girl who came from the hill speaks to me.
I see a monkey that is sitting on a tree.
Tangents and Afterthoughts
When conjunction eta is not accompanied by a pronoun that refers to
some element in the previous clause, it marks an afterthought, side note, or
tangential thought to the main discourse.
He was tired—in the village they work hard.
Purpose Clauses
A similar construction is used to express the purpose an action was
undertaken. For example, I went to the forest to watch birds
would be
expressed in Tatari Faran as two clauses:
I go to the forest to look at the birds.
The adverb utu marks the verb as the purpose of the action in the
previous clause. The verb is fronted in the second clause:
Day after day, Teke urged [his] family to go to the Fara.
Complementary Clauses
A number of verbs take complementary clauses in order to complete their
meaning. These complementary clauses are marked with an adverb of manner, such
as epan (able to
) or beman (not able to
).
For example, the verb sabaa ... aman means to give permission
to
. The action to be permitted is stated in the following clause, marked
with epan or beman:
The chief gave me permission to marry the girl.
Her mother does not give me permission to marry her.
The verb kibas ... ham used with the noun kibeiri
(breath
, strength
) has the idiomatic meaning to have the
strength to (do something)
. The action is given in the following
clause:
He has the strength to push the boulder forward.
In the negative utterance, the verbs in both clauses are negated, and the
adverb beman is used instead of epan:
She does not have the strength to push the boulder forward.
Last updated 24 Mar 2023.
