34 Possessed Verbs
Now would be a good time to review §5 on possessive pronouns and §7 on object pronouns.
| nəsƛ̓éʔ cxʷ. | ‘I like you.’ |
| ʔən̓sƛ̓éʔ u cn. | ‘Do you like me?’ |
| sƛ̓éʔɬ. | ‘We like him/her/it/them.’ |
| sƛ̓éʔs. | ‘He/she/it/they likes/like him/her/it/them.’ |
| nəsƛ̓éʔ cə sʔíɬən. | ‘I like the food.’ |
► 2 Notice that these models have the same pattern as possessed nouns. Compare these two sentences:
nəsƛ̓éʔ cxʷ. ‘I like you.’
nəcə́t cxʷ. ‘You are my father.’
These two sentences are not as strange as they seem. The word sƛ̓éʔ is usually translated as ‘like,’ ‘want,’ or ‘love.’ Another way to think about the meaning of this it to think of it as a noun meaning something like ‘what is liked,’ ‘the wanted,’ or ‘that which is loved.’ So then you can think of the literal translation of the first model roughly this way: ‘You are my “what is liked.”’ Now you can see that the pattern is really the same as in sentences like ‘You are my father.’
► 3 English uses a transitive construction for sentences like those in the models. That is, English uses the same basic subject‑verb‑object pattern in ‘I like you’ as it does in ‘I help you’ or ‘I hit you.’ If Klallam were like English, we would expect ‘I like you’ in Klallam to be something like *ƛ̓éʔc cn (with c ‘you’ object and cn ‘I’ subject). But Klallam is definitely not like English in this respect. *ƛ̓éʔc cn is completely ungrammatical in Klallam.
► 4 So why is Klallam different? If you look at it a certain way, it really makes a lot of sense for a language to treat ‘like’ verbs differently from ‘help’ and ‘hit’ verbs.
Think about ‘I like you’ versus ‘I help you’ or ‘I hit you.’ With ‘help’ and ‘hit’ something is actually happening to or for you. When I hit you, you know it. But ‘like’ is different. When I say ‘I like you,’ I’m not talking about something that happens to you; I’m talking about my own feelings. So it makes a lot of sense for a language to use ‘my’ when talking about one’s own feelings or personal mental states.
► 5 There are several such possessed verbs in Klallam. Here is a list of others in addition to sƛ̓éʔ ‘like’ that refer to personal mental states: sxʷaʔtín̓ ‘dislike, hate,’ sx̣éʔc̓i ‘shame,’ sháhək̓ʷ ‘remember,’ and smə́y̓əq ‘forget.’
► 6 Since these verbs refer to personal mental states it is not possible to say things like *ʔən̓sƛ̓éʔ cn ‘You like me’ because you cannot tell what someone else likes or does not like. You cannot tell someone their personal mental state. But you can ask about it, as in the second model sentence.
► 7 It is important to note that not all verbs referring to personal mental states are possessed verbs. For example, x̣čə́t ‘know, figure, think,’ q̓ʷáy̓ ‘believe,’ təŋ̓áʔəŋ̓ ‘craving,’ and šítəŋ ‘covet’ do not regularly use the possessive pronouns.
► 8 There are a few verbs that are possessed verbs that do not refer to personal mental states. These other verbs all have implied objects. For example, the verb qə́čaʔ is usually translated as ‘catch, harvest.’ But it has implied in its meaning specifically ‘catch/harvest game animals, seafood, etc.’ As it happens, it is rare to use these with subjects and objects, but if the need arises, you must use it as a possessed verb as in:
nəsqə́čaʔ cxʷ. ‘I caught you.’
You would actually use this only if you were talking to a game animal, which, as I said, rarely happens except in a sx̣ʷiʔám̓ ‘traditional tale.’ You could literally translate this as ‘You are my catch.’
► 9 To attach the possessive prefixes and suffixes to these possessed verb roots, you must have the s‑ prefix on the verb. You’ve seen this s‑ prefix before in §10.3, §18.1, §20.3 and §22.1.
► 10 Not all combinations of pronouns are possible with possessed nouns. We can say ‘I like you’ and ‘Do you like me?,’ but no combination of ‘you’ with ‘we’ or ‘us’ is possible. So you cannot straightforwardly use possessed verbs to say, for example, ‘We like you’ or ‘Do you like us?’
► 11 To express ‘We like you’ or ‘Do you like us?,’ you must use focus pronouns (see §15.2) instead of the subject pronouns:
nə́kʷ sƛ̓éʔɬ. ‘We like you.’
ɬníŋɬ u ʔən̓sƛ̓éʔ. ‘Do you like us?’
 | nəsƛ̓éʔ či nəsƛ̓aʔtáwn. | ‘I want to go to town.’ |
 | hiyáʔ caʔn. ʔən̓sƛ̓éʔ u či ʔən̓swáʔ. | ‘I’m going. Do you want to go along?’ |
| sqiʔáʔm cn. | ‘I can’t.’ |
| ʔən̓sƛ̓éʔ u či ʔən̓shiyáʔ ʔaʔ či kʷáči. | ‘Do you want to go tomorrow?’ |