Wednesday, 19 May 2010

Sentence 1.2

The next sentence is A ítí ta chomú?, Who is there?

A is the normal word to introduce a question.

ítí means 'is'. It is only used when 'is' points out where something is, so it means 'is (at a location)'.

Ta is a pronoun. In this case it is used to mean 'there' and is the subject of the verb ítí.

Chomú means 'who?' It is the object of the verb ítí.

Unlike English chomú is not moved to the beginning of the sentence. Literally the sentence is translated 'Is there who?' which is a different order to English.

The stranger outside the door replies Ei'm, 'it is me'. Ei is the topic marker discussed previously used again. After the topic marker the pronoun in this case is reduced to 'm, 'me'. Note that in this dialogue the 'me' pronoun is only used by people in charge when they are talking to servants. There is another pronoun 'me' used for talking to friends which will be introduced in a later sentence.

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