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Lesson 37: Focus Marker |
bad |
mineral |
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badazh |
metal ?[bad (mineral) + dazh (pliant)]? |
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bosh |
wood |
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hibo |
hill [híya (small) + bo (mountain)] |
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Suffix (any): Focus Marker |
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mari |
island |
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rabo |
plain [ra– (non–) + bo (mountain)] |
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sheshi |
sand |
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sheshihoth |
beach [sheshi (sand) + hoth (place)] |
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yed |
valley |
The question-marks around the etymology of “badazh” indicate that no official etymology has been supplied; I’m guessing at the thought process of the person who coined this word.
In English we use a combination word order and stress to emphasize a certain word in a sentence—to move the “focus” of the sentence onto that word. For example, in a simple declarative sentence like “The book is red,” if we need to emphasize that it’s the book (and not some other thing) that’s red, we can say “The BOOK is red,” or “It’s the BOOK that’s red,” or a number of other things. Similar processes would be employed to emphasize that RED (rather than some other color) is the color of the book, or that the book IS (rather than “was” or “will be” or “ought to be”) red.
Láadan word order is fairly inflexible, and emphatic stress is not employed. So we must find some other mechanism to emphasize one part of a sentence over another. The Focus Marker,
It is added to a word to mean “this particular specific one” or for emphatic stress—the context will indicate which. |
When I questioned Dr. Elgin about the “this particular specific one” use of
English has several kinds of emphatic stress. The one that’s used in “It wasn’t Tuesday morning, it was WEDNESday morning” is called “contrastive stress.” Another is what I call “announcement stress,” as in “That was the PRESIdent on the phone!” And then there’s the emphatic stress a speaker gives to a word or a part of a word simply to indicate that that element is the part of the language sequence that matters most to him or her and is being foregrounded, with stress as the foregrounding mechanism. |
Láadan uses
The book is red. |
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The book is RED. |
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The book is RED, not yellow. |
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The BOOK is red. |
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The BOOK is red, not the writing implement. |
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The book WAS red; now it’s yellow. |
The above illustrates focusing for the purpose of foregrounding as well as contrastive focusing.
Margaret sold me a pearl. |
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MARGaret sold me a pearl! |
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Margaret sold me a PEARL! |
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Margaret sold ME a pearl! |
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Margaret sold a pearl TO me! |
This is meant to be announcement focusing. The final two examples also illustrate another note I received from Suzette Haden Elgin when I inquired whether the focus marker would always be placed at the end of the word, or if it might be placed immediately following the morpheme (meaningful word-part) that the speaker wants to emphasize:
Like placing emphatic stress in spoken English, the focus marker gets placed where it will genuinely indicate what is most important to the speaker of the utterance. Some placements are going to be far more likely than others, certainly, and it may sometimes be a struggle to place it properly, but it’s at the discretion of the user. |
That means that we can place the Focus Marker directly after any part of the word we want to emphasize. In the middle of a word that’s perfectly clear. But when the part that needs emphasis is at the end of the word, the result is ambiguous as to whether it’s the last part or the whole word that we wanted to emphasize.
Is Anna taking/bringing my money to the store? |
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Is Anna, RIGHT NOW, taking my money to the store? |
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Is Anna TAKing/BRINGing my money to the store? |
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Is ANNA taking/bringing my money to the store? |
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Is Anna taking/bringing my MONEY to the store? |
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Is Anna taking/bringing the money belonging to ME to the store? |
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Is Anna taking/bringing the money BELONGING TO me to the store? |
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Is Anna taking/bringing MY money to the store? |
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Is Anna taking/bringing my money to the STORE? |
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Is Anna taking/bringing my money TO the store? |
The ambiguity in the eighth example above is whether the emphasis is on the Object status of “my money” or on the whole word saying that whatever-it-is (the money, in this case) belongs to me and is the Object of the sentence—or, arguably, since this is a Possessive structure and can be perceived as a single unit, the emphasis is on the entire phrase “losh lethoth” (my money as an Object).
The ambiguity in the 10th example above is more straightforward. Does the speaker/writer intend to emphasize the direction the money is being taken/brought (just the Goal Case suffix, “–di”) or the whole word, “wehedi” (to the store)?
1 |
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2 |
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3 |
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4 |
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5 |
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6 |
The new word we see in #5, “belidá” is not so intuitively obvious as many
7 |
island |
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8 |
balm |
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9 |
lost |
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10 |
name |
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11 |
weeping |
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12 |
me |
Notice, in #8, the phrase “hath menedebe” (literally, “many times”). This is the idiom (a phrase in one language that may not have the same meaning—or, indeed, any meaning at all—when translated word-for-word into another language) for the English word “often.” There is a related idiom for “seldom:” “hath nedebe” (literally, “few/several times”).
In #11, did you notice the phrase “olob rawáan?” The structure “ra + Case ending,” when used in place of a noun, means “nothing + Case” (in this instance it would mean “having no cause”), but when it follows a noun (as it does in this exercise), it reverses the meaning of the Case itself (in this instance “not because of” an injury). This same mechanism also can be used with other Cases; for example, we could say “lan raden” to mean “without (not accompanied by)
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My family will go NORTH, not east, and meet you (many) at the plain. |
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14 |
COURTESY, not being right, causes harmony (a lesson). |
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15 |
There’s a GARDEN in the meadow! (celebratory) |
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16 |
The pregnant woman SIGNED, rather than said, “Hello,” to her sibling. |
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17 |
Matthew was ABLE to color the picture of a fish with a writing implement. |
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18 |
Will Marsha ARRIVE at the farm during the evening? |
Regarding #18: in English, we say that someone “arrives at” their destination; this seems like it would translate into a straightforward Place Case formation. In Láadan, however, “to arrive” is “nosháad” [