Paiodd Discourse Continued

To continue my discussion of Paiodd discourse, I thought we could examine alternative word orders that are still grammatical. Again, the typical word order is OSV, which means that, generally, the information in the Object slot or complement is the new information. See example (1):

(1)   Rodd lodd az. 'The man sees a woman.'

The chief rule of Paiodd word order is that the S and V must be directly adjacent at all times. This gives the alternative word orders of VSO, OVS, or SVO. As mentioned in the previous post, VSO often occurs in sentence-final clauses. If, however, it were the only clause, the effect is to emphasize the action itself, as in (2):

(2)   Az lodd rodd. 'The man sees a woman.'

A context in which this might occur is shown in (3):

(3)   Fazrir lodd fuian arioé rodd şopía. Oz lodd rodd. Dur sem izío asía xíamir.

'A man was working in the fields when a beautiful woman walked by. The man saw the woman. He felt love rising in his heart.'

OVS and SVO both appear to emphasize the post-verbal element. This can be tricky, as one must rely on context to know which is actually the subject. Sentences (4) and (5) show these two word orders.

(4)   Rodd az lodd. 'A man sees the woman.'

(5)   Lodd az rodd. 'The man sees a woman.'

To provide contexts where (4) might be a plausible sentence, consider (6):

(6)   Fazilía rebir rodd ario. Serss şopía ó alía, ai peað ðaiyo, þunlugér yiap dir ó ðimir. Cemuí, rodd oz lodd.

'A woman was walking near a field. It was a beautiful day, (as) the birds were singing, and butterflies darting to and fro. Suddenly, a man saw the woman.

In (6), the man is highlighted as important new information by being placed at the end of the clause.

            In (7), however, it is the woman who is highlighted as new information, even though she is in fact the object of the sentence. This highlighting takes place by post-posing the woman to the end of the clause.

(7)   Fazrir lodd fuianía. Serss şopía ó alía, ai peað ðaiyo, þunlugér yiap dir ó ðimir. Cemuí, lodd oz rodd.

'A man was working in his fields. It was a beautiful day, (as) the birds were singing and the butterflies darting to and fro. Suddenly, the man saw a woman.'

Now, the same focus on rodd could be accomplished by using the default word order, but perhaps with a slight loss of emphasis. For example, (8)

(8)   Fazrir lodd fuianía. Serss şopía ó alía, ai peað ðaiyo, þunlugér yiap dir ó ðimir. Cemuí, rodd lodd oz.

'A man was working in his fields. It was a beautiful day, (as) the birds were singing and the butterflies darting to and fro. Suddenly, the man saw a woman.'

In this case, the woman is still new information, and even retains a high degree of importance, but the default word order is not as striking or out of the ordinary, thus rendering the woman slightly less emphatic. Perhaps the author will elaborate on her importance later, or perhaps the woman was not particularly noticeable in this case. For instance, perhaps the woman was the worker's mother or someone else that would not attract particular notice. On the other hand, post-posing the object to final position in (7) implies that the woman stood out in some way, likely by being especially attractive, and probably someone the worker does not know.

Promoting Focus

One use of the deictic suffix -en 'this' is to promote a just introduced focus to the topic of the next sentence. For example:

(9)   Cemuí, rodd lodd oz. Roten vişopía cíazzené íasem. 'Suddenly, the man saw a woman. This woman was the most beautiful he had ever seen.'

In contrast, the suffix -an 'that' can be used to bring an item back into focus, as in (10), or to make a statement about a general category, as in (11).

(10)                       [continuing from (8) and (9)] Sersan visenía siepé. 'That day was the greatest in his life.'

Sentence (10) is recalling the 'day' introduced in (8), in order to make a further comment on it.

(11)                       Ladan az şopía rodd, filan sem ía. 'That man who sees a beautiful woman knows desire.'

In (11), ladan 'that man' refers to any man who finds himself in the stated situation, and thus does not have a particular referent, but merely states a category.