South-North dialect difference: How to express “of/to” in “afraid of/to”
Getting around to writing this long-planned post the day after a “Joe Peter” group transcription session where the point came up…
Here’s a dialect difference, between the syntax of Southern and Northern Chinook Jargon:
Image credit: Tenor
There is no “of” in “be afraid of“, nor is there a “to” in “be afraid to” (i.e. followed by a noun Object), when you’re talking Southern Chinook Jargon. (Grand Ronde style.)
Not necessarily, anyhow. And not frequently.
Instead, Southern Chinuk Wawa’s word k’wás is more equivalent to the English verb “to fear”. In particular, with verbal complements, it works much like English “to fear doing”.
Here are real elder speaker examples from the Grand Ronde Tribes 2012 dictionary:
- yaka nánich wík nay k’wás yáx̣ka
she see not I fear her
‘She saw I wasn’t afraid of her’ - ɬas k’wás-k’was púlakʰli
they fear-fear dark
‘they were scared to death of the dark’
In the Northern Dialect, from the elder speakers’ letters, I can find an example of the same usage:
-
- pi kakwa naika k’wash okok
and so I fear this
‘and so I’m afraid of this’
- pi kakwa naika k’wash okok
But — the huge majority of instances in the North do say k’wash kopa! A couple examples:
- alta naika k’wash kopa sno-ilahi kopa Samon
now I afraid of snow-ground at Salmon
‘right now I’m worried about the snowy ground at Salmon Arm’ - naika heilo k’wash kopa ikta
I not afraid of thing
‘I’m not afraid of anything’
I should have written down the Central Dialect example from Joe Peter that reminded me to make this post! My sense is that the Central (basically the Fort Vancouver) dialect works more like the Southern in this respect.
“afraid lest…”
In all dialects, in my experience, the apprehensive sense of “afraid to…” and “afraid that…” (i.e. followed by a verbal complement) is put as k’was pus… (k’wash poos…).
That’s exactly as we expect.
The tiny word pus (poos) makes the following expression into a Potential / Hypothetical state of affairs, you see?
