I recently finished writing the third paper on Gumawana grammar. This paper focused on how participants are tracked through a text. Believe it or not I started this paper nearly 20 years ago! Every time I started working on it I would make some progress, but something always seem to come up and I would put it aside for another day. When I returned to it, I would spend a week or so trying to figure out what I was doing when I quit. But it is over for the moment. It will be read by a consultant within our organization who will then get back to me for more editing.
This was the third of three papers I had to write. These help us to understand how they put texts or stories together so that we will do a better job on the translation. So now that these are done, I plan on focusing on translation for the next year. I do plan on eventually working more on the language because writing 3 papers does not cover all aspects of the language. Some areas that I would like to explore some more are 1) use of demonstratives, 2) aspect marking, 3) possessive system and most importantly 4) how they organize information in a non-narrative text. These areas are important for producing a translation that is clear and natural in Gumawana.
On the demonstratives it is interesting how the Gumawana system differs from English. We have basically two: this and that. Gumawana has several. Below are listed the demonstratives in Gumawana.
ame - this (in speaker location)
moe - that (in hearer location)
amo - that (away from both hearer and speaker location)
kive - that (located toward ocean from speaker)
tono - that (located down below speaker location)
mae - that (located above speaker location)
Only the first three are used in written texts normally. Each can take a suffix that indicates person and number but also implies the object is unseen. Another suffix (-ko) indicates that it is an adverb and has the idea of "here" and "there". When someone asks you about a particular object and you point to it you use a prefix go-.
They use the first three demonstratives in stories referring back to thing stated earlier. The task is to discover when they use which one. At the moment I get the impression ame points forward and the other two, amo and moe, point backwards but have a different function. The only way to discover this will be to read through all my Gumawana texts to see each context.
After completing the checking of Matthew, Galatians, and 2 Thessalonians, the next book to translate will be 2 Timothy. I am working on preparing a rough draft to leave with them in November to work on. Most likely we will work together on it next year in April. I also need to begin going through Luke, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy and Philippians to prepare them for checking by a consultant. Luke still needs to be village checked with people who had not worked on it. But since Matthew has been checked, it is likely to go well.
My next trip is in November. I will be working on finishing John and 2 Corinthians.
