Definiteness: mv este-mvnettat ‘the young man’
Mvskoke doesn’t have words like the or a, but there are ways to show when a noun is definite.
Here are the first two sentences of a story by Earnest Gouge:
| Este-vcule hvmket |
An old man |
| eppucetake tuccēnen ocē likvtēs. |
lived with his three sons. |
| Momen mv cēpvnvke tuccēnat |
Now the three boys |
| vkerrickv hayakvtēs. |
made some plans. |
- If you’re establishing a character in a story, you can use hvmket ‘one (subject form)’ as a kind of singular indefinite.
|
Cufe hvmket arvtēs. |
A rabbit was once about./There once was a rabbit. |
- Then when you refer back to a character, you can use mv ‘that’. After an adjective, a numeral, or verb, you can also add -at(e) ‘the one that (is/does)’.
|
vccetv catē |
‘red quilt’ |
mv vccetv catat |
‘the red quilt’ |
|
este-mvnette |
‘young man’ |
mv este-mvnettat |
‘the young man’ |
|
este-vcule |
‘old man’ |
mv este-vculat |
‘the old man’ |
|
cēpvnvke tuccēnen |
‘three boys’ |
mv cēpvnvke tuccēnat |
‘the three boys’ |
|
efv wohkē |
‘barking dog’ |
mv efv wohkat |
‘the barking dog’ |
- You can also drop the noun if it’s clear from context.
|
mvnettē |
‘young’ |
mv mvnettat |
‘the young one’ |
|
vculē |
‘old’ |
mv vculat |
‘the old one’ |
- When there is more than one modifier, -at(e) goes after the last one.
|
vccetv catē hvtkē |
‘red and white quilt’ |
mv vccetv catē hvtkat |
‘the red and white quilt’ |
hiyowat tat ‘but now’
- A marker tat is common after noun phrases. It adds slight emphasis or contrast to the noun phrase: as for X, now X, etc.
| Mucv tat naket nokekon hvyatka? |
This time did nothing devour my crops by dawn? |
| Hiyowat tat ēkvnv kerreseko |
But now people go hunting on unfamiliar lands… |
| fakv vpeyephoyat… |
|
- Personal pronouns are shortened before tat. The pronoun vne ‘I’ becomes vntat ‘as for me, myself’. Cēme ‘you’ becomes centat and pome becomes puntat.
|
Vntat fekhonnicvyēs. |
I can stop it. |
mvo ‘that too, that also’
- A marker -u (or -o after v) is used after pronouns to mean ‘also’ or ‘too’.
|
vne |
‘I’ |
vneu |
‘I also, me too‘ |
|
cēme |
‘you’ |
cēmeu |
‘you also, you too’ |
|
pome |
‘we’ |
pomeu |
‘we also, us too’ |
|
mv |
‘that one’ |
mvo |
‘that one also, that one too’ |
tawv ‘maybe’
- You can use tawv after a noun phrase to mean ‘probably, maybe’. If someone asks
you what you want to drink, you could say this.
|
Pepsi tawv. |
Maybe a Pepsi. |
tis ‘even’
- A marker tis is used after different alternatives and can often be translated as ‘even’.
