15 Markers after nouns
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 noksekon 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’.
