Senu Yivokuchi Corpus

Moments of transition

"The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain."

Running translation

"Midi guo wauride jhaokhai, yelka, ubam pam kimseke, yivisin ubam pam jefikomo. Lach bire sukhi yighuo me, lach jhaokhai vekomo. Bire uzi mider lidaekeo misinoren."

Interlinear translation

1. Midi guo    wauride            jhaokhai,
   time future ESS+around-DEF.COP GEN+1sI

2. yelka,      ubam       pam    kimseke,
   waiting-NDF ESS-moment moment transition-NDF

3. yivisin   ubam       pam    jefikomo.
   GEN-birth ESS-moment moment revelation

4. Lach   bire     sukhi     yighuo     me,
   nobody know-PRS shape-DEF GEN-future that

5. lach   jhaokhai vekomo.
   nobody GEN+1sI  where-CAU

6. Bire     uzi  mider  lidaekeo misinoren.
   know-PRS only always COM-pain give_birth-PRS-OBJ

Comments

1.a. In truth, guo is enough; midi guo emphasizes the meaning of 'future time' over mere 'tomorrow'.

1.b. Waur is the (irregular) essive case of gaur 'surroundings, the area around something' (a 'locative noun'). The definite mark -i is not necessary except for euphonic purposes; SYV doesn't like diphthong + sonorant syllable endings.

2.a. Obviously pam 'moment' is one of those nouns that show plurality by reduplication.

2.b. The word for 'transition', kimseke, partly mirrors the Latin structure; kim- means 'through, across, diametrically', while seke means 'change'.

3. The causative-inceptive copula komo combines with fi, fit 'seeing' ('cause to be seeing') and then takes the deverbal/nominalizer je-. So the word for 'revelation' means 'the action of making one see'.

4, 5. Inclusive-or coordination is tricky in SYV. In this case, as usual, the alternative is made clear through juxtaposition and parallelism.

5. Strange! Vekomo may as well be verokomo; the causative-inceptive not only applies to states, but to physical locations (same as de and, of course, 'to be'); therefore ve-komo is a perfectly regular form, 'where (will) X cause Y to be' = 'where will X take Y', where the patient (Y) is in the genitive case, jhaokhai, i. e. 'us'.

6.a. Uzi is, strictly speaking, u-zi 'in exclusivity', 'in exclusive-state'.

6.b. You will note that the subclause ('it is always born in pain') appears to be impersonal in SYV. This is intentional, since we don't mean misinor 'give birth' here, but 'be born'. This is achieved by leaving out the subject (the occupation of the front, subject slot by the oblique complement lidaekeo also helps) and resuming the object explicitly, using -n on the verb. SYV does this to mimic a passive phrase with no stated agent.