Klallam Grammar

23.4. ‘Be here,’ ‘be there,’ and ‘be where’

ʔiyá cə nətán. ‘My mother is there.’
ʔáɬaʔ cə nətán.‘My mother is here.’
sxʷʔiyás cə nətán.‘It’s where my mother is.’
sxʷʔáɬaʔɬ.‘It’s where we are.’
► 1  Two very common and useful roots are ʔiyá ‘be there’ and ʔáɬaʔ ‘be here.’ They are two of the many location verbs in Klallam (see Appendix E for an extended list of these). These can be generally used in sentences such as ʔiyá yaʔ cn ‘I was there’ or ʔáɬaʔ cn ‘I’m here’ to indicate the simple known location of something. They can also be used to indicate a specific location, as in:
         ʔiyá    cə   ʔən̓ləklí   ʔaʔ  cə   c̓aʔcítən.        ‘Your key is there on the table.’
         there   the  your key        the  table
         ʔáɬaʔ  cn  ʔaʔ  cə   stúʔwiʔ.                        ‘I’m here at the river.’
         here    I          the  river
► 2  The č‑ prefix described in §23.1 can be used with either ʔiyá or ʔáɬaʔ:
        čʔiyá cn.                 ‘I’m from there.’
        čʔáɬaʔ cn.                ‘I’m from here.’
However, the ƛ̓áʔ‑, čša‑, and ʔaʔ‑ prefixes in §23.1 cannot be used with either of them.
► 3  In §22 we covered how one asks a ‘where’ question in Klallam. Note that there is another use of the word ‘where’ in English that is not used in questions. Examples of this are shown in the last two of the models in this section.
► 4  When the prefix sxʷ‑ is added to ʔiyá or ʔáɬaʔ it creates nouns that can be literally, though clumsily, translated ‘it’s somebody’s place there’ (sxʷʔiyá) and ‘it’s somebody’s place here’ (sxʷʔáɬaʔ). So, for example, the last model can be literally translated as ‘it’s our place here.’  
► 5  Notice that the subject is marked by the possessive suffix. In the last model, ‘we’ is marked by the ‑ɬ ‘our’ suffix on sxʷʔáɬaʔ. In the third model, the ‑s ‘his/her/their’ suffix agrees with the third-person subject, cə nətán ‘my mother.’
► 6  The words sxʷʔáɬaʔ and especially sxʷʔiyá are also used in other situations where English uses ‘where.’ English uses ‘where’ to indicate a location relative clause (also called a ‘locative relative clause’ or more generally an ‘adverbial relative clause’). You will find out a lot about relative clauses in §48, and you will find other, similar uses of the sxʷ‑ prefix in §38.1 and §39.2. But now we won’t worry about it too much–except that you should learn the pattern shown in these sentences:
        ʔúx̣ʷ   cn ʔaʔ cə  sxʷʔiyás či  snə́qəŋs.        ‘I went to where he dove.’
        go to  I               where        his dive
        ʔáɬaʔ yaʔ cn ʔaʔ cə sxʷʔáɬaʔɬ.                   ‘I was here where we are.’
        here  past  I            where we are
        pə́šct  kʷə sxʷʔiyás kʷə  ʔəyáʔyŋɬ    yaʔ.     ‘Pysht is where our houses were.’
        Pysht        where         our houses

ʔəx̣ín ʔuč kʷsə nəx̣ʷúʔŋət.‘Where is my paddle?’
ʔiyá ʔaʔ cə sxʷʔiyás cə snə́xʷɬ.‘It’s there where the canoe is.’
ʔáwə c ʔiyá.‘It isn’t there.’
níɬ sxʷʔiyás či nəsk̓ʷə́nnəxʷ.‘That’s where I saw it.’

 

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