Presenter: Stephanie Evers
Mentors: Scott DeLancey, Linguistics; Joana Janen, Northwest Indian Language Institute
Oral Presentation
Major: Linguistics
Takelma, a silent (not currently spoken but undergoing revitalization) indigenous language of southwest Oregon, employs a verb system that features a close relationship between a verb’s stem and its argument markers. This system includes the choice between two stems for each verb, traditionally referred to as ‘aorist’ and ‘general,’ but described in this paper as ‘realis’ and ‘irrealis.’ The ‘realis’ stem indicates events that occurred in the past, are occurring presently, or are about to immediately occur (see Example 1), while the irrealis indicates events that could happen, that will happen in the future, or that are only known at secondhand—as well as imperative constructions (see Example 2).
Ex. 1
tʼomo-x-imi-th kill.1-SAP-1PLOBJ-2PLSUBJ.II ‘You killed us.’
Ex. 2
honòʼ tóowm-x-pi-n
again kill.2-SAP-2SG.OBJ-1SG ‘again I will kill yours’
The verb system also includes subject markers that indicate transitivity as well as tense and mood, and versatile object markers that can interact with a subject to indicate shifts in valence (changes to number of arguments, such as subject and objects, directly controlled by the verb) or unusual placement of an object noun within a clause.
This presentation explores Takelma verb construction, describing basic morphological ordering of a verb’s stem, argument markers, and valence-shifting affixes (prefixes and suffixes), as well as analyzing stem choices and the use and interaction of subject and object markers on the verb. It is intended to clarify and update portions of the work done by Edward Sapir (1912) by describing the use and formation of Sapir’s tense-moods using modern terminology, reanalyzing morphological markers such as the Speech Act Participant Marker (which are not addressed in the original grammar), and providing a morphological position class diagram. This research contributes to the framework for future syntactic and morphological research in Takelma, particularly to the formation of realis and irrealis verb stems, and also adds to the knowledge necessary for creating pedagogical materials, which will be an invaluable tool in the process of revitalization. All examples provided in this paper are taken from Edward Sapir’s 1912 grammar “The Takelma Language of Southwest Oregon,” his 1909 “Takelma Texts” and his 1907 “Medicine Formulas.” Glosses are this author’s original work.