Klallam Grammar

11.2. Reciprocal

Grammatical patterns that express the idea of two people acting toward each other are called reciprocal sentences. In English we have the phrases ‘each other’ or ‘one another,’ as in ‘We helped each other’ and ‘We helped one another.’
Just as for the reflexive, in Klallam there are suffixes on the verb that express the idea that the action is happening back and forth between people. There are two ‘each other’ suffixes: one is used if the action is controlled, and the other if the action is not controlled.

Just as with the reflexive, these reciprocal suffixes are not really very common. This is because Klallam has a variety of ways of expressing the notion ‘each other.’ For example, instead of saying ‘We saw each other’ you could say ‘I saw you and you saw me’ or ‘I saw you while you saw me.’  The Klallam equivalents of these two types of sentences are actually more commonly used than these reciprocal suffixes, but they involve more complicated grammar, so these will be covered later in §17 and §27.
 

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