Culture lessons: Things Chinuk Wawa doesn’t do (Part 5, “ditransitive verb” behavior)

Have YOU noticed things the Jargon doesn’t do? Leave a comment, I can write an article about your idea!

Image credit: Family of Saint Sharbel

Today I want to point out something Chinook Jargon doesn’t do all of the time:

You don’t have to use kopa for indirect objects.

Indirect objects aren’t all that common in CJ to start with.

There are just a small number of Chinuk Wawa “ditransitive verbs” — those that always express:

• one person (the animate subject, “S”)
• transferring
• a thing (the direct object, “DO”, which can be either information or a physical entity)
• to a different person (the animate indirect object, “IO”).

Here’s a pretty complete list, I think, of those I’ve seen in use:

VERB LIST:

• ‘give (to)’, pá(t)lach
• ‘sell (to)’, mákuk
• ‘bring (to)’, lúlu
• ‘send (to)’, másh / mamuk-ɬátwa {northern dialect} / munk-ɬátwa {southern dialect}
• ‘tell/say (to)’, wáwa / mamuk-kə́mtəks {northern} / munk-kə́mtəks {southern} / syə́tsəm {northern dialect}
• ‘ask (of)’, ásk {northern dialect} is an interesting case if you think about it!

These verbs have a particular word order that other Jargon verbs don’t get to use:

#1

S – Verb – I.O. – D.O.
(e.g. yaka palach nayka məkʰmək,
literally ‘he gave me food’)

This is the only instance in Jargon that I can think of, where we definitely do have Indirect Objects.

Let me say more about this unexpected claim.

With the above VERB LIST, it’s equally okay, and seems to mean about the same thing, to use a more generic word order which many other Jargon verbs use (read on):

#2

S – Verb – D.O. – kopa I.O.
(e.g. yaka palach məkʰmək kʰapa nayka,
literally ‘he gave food to me’)

Besides the above VERB LIST, there are other verbal ideas that many languages are able to treat as ditransitives.

English, for example, can say ‘bake me a cake’; ‘sing me a song’; ‘pay me $30’, etc., using the #1 “ditransitives only” special word order.

Chinuk Wawa, however, doesn’t seem to like allowing such expressions. If a verb doesn’t include in its meaning the need to be ditransitive (‘bake’ doesn’t have to be for anyone, and ‘sing’ doesn’t either), then CW limits you to the #2 word order, using the preposition.

This is to say, ‘bake’ and ‘sing’ and so on aren’t in fact ditransitives in the Jargon. And their “kopa I.O.’s” are grammatically indistinguishable from all other “oblique” or “peripheral arguments” in the language…which span a range of meanings including ‘for’, ‘at’, ‘to’, ‘on’, ‘with’, etc.

So, in terms of the grammar patterns of this language, “kopa I.O.’s” aren’t even Indirect Objects! Therefore, we should probably translate patterns #1 & #2 distinctly in English when we find them — for instance as ‘she gave me a dime’ versus ‘she loaned a dollar to me‘.

How about the “reverse” of ditransitive verbs? — Ones that express a subject receiving information or a thing from someone:

“REVERSE” VERB LIST:

• ‘buy (from)’
• ‘receive (from)’
• ‘get/fetch (from)’
• ‘steal (from)’
• ‘take (from)’
• ‘borrow (from)’ in earlier/southern Jargon

These have a different pattern! The person who would’ve been the subject in the VERB LIST above is instead always signaled as an indirect object-like entity by the preposition kopa, with members of the REVERSE VERB LIST. For example: mayka makuk ukuk tənəs-kʰiyutən kʰapa Mary? (‘Did you buy that puppy from Mary?’)

This is true if that supplier is even mentioned; these verbs do not obligatorily need you to mention that person. (You can say just ‘buy it’, ‘receive wages’, ‘steal horses’, etc.) These verbs are fine with a single object. Again that’s a clue that these verbs’ “kopa I.O.’s” aren’t in fact indirect objects.

Another interesting case is ‘pay’, pʰey(e). This verb really loves to have just a single object, which can be any one of the following: the amount paid; the thing paid for; or the person receiving the payment! So we seldom find ‘pay’ used like a ditransitive in Jargon.

A further wrinkle, particular to this language: what about when the Direct Object of a ditransitive is the inanimate/nonspecific “silent IT”? Do we say palach nayka Ø, or palach Ø kopa nayka? 🤔

Lastly I’d like to bring up relative clauses based on ditransitive verbs. How do we express in Jargon ‘the book that she gave me’ or ‘the story that she told me’? Or ‘the girl I gave flowers to’?

Your thoughts, and any conversational experiences, relevant to all of this are welcome.

ikta mayka chaku-kəmtəks?
What have you learned?