41.6. áy̕ŋən ‘want to do’
| ʔíɬən áy̓ŋən cn. | ‘I want to eat.’ |
| t̓úk̓ʷ áy̓ŋən u cxʷ. | ‘Do you want to go home?’ |
| ɬə́məxʷ áy̓ŋən. | ‘It’s threatening to rain.’ |
| ƛ̓ə́kʷt áy̓ŋən cn. | ‘I want to take it.’ |
| ƛ̓ə́kʷtəŋ áy̓ŋən cn. | ‘They want to take me.’ |
| yaʔcúsc áy̓ŋən cn. | ‘I want to tell you.’ |
► 1 This is an unusual particle, but the meaning is certainly clear: to ‘want to do’ or ‘be about to do’ something. The third model is translated as ‘threaten to’ but could also be translated ‘it wants to rain.’ The meaning is consistent with the range of meanings found in the other speech act particles.
► 2 What makes this particle unusual is that it is something like a suffix, something like a particle, and something like an independent word. Particles do not usually take stress. However, this particle does take stress as many suffixes do, but it does not take stress away from the word it follows. When a suffix takes stress, the stem vowel drops or is reduced to schwa. For example, you saw in §40.1 that ʔíɬən ‘eat’ has a reduced vowel (ə) with the causative as ʔəɬənístxʷ because the causative suffix ‑ístxʷ takes the stress. As the models show, the stem has stress and the áy̓ŋən has stress. Other than áy̓ŋən, only independent words or suffixes have stress, and only independent words do not take stress from the word they follow.
► 3 If we consider this a suffix, then it is the only suffix that follows the passive (§31) and object (§7) suffixes. The last two models show it following the passive and the ‘you’ object suffixes. It would also be the only suffix to follow the transitive suffix other than the passive and object suffixes. The fourth model shows this.
► 4 áy̓ŋən is unlike any other independent word in that it cannot stand alone, so something like *áy̓ŋən cn is ungrammatical by itself. Also, no other independent words come between a main verb and the subject and other speech act particles, as áy̓ŋən can be seen to do in the models.
► 5 Like a particle and like some suffixes, it can only follow a verb at the beginning of a sentence. You might think that something like *sqáx̣aʔ áy̓ŋən would mean ‘want a dog,’ but this does not make sense because sqáx̣aʔ is a noun. A sentence like čsqáx̣aʔ áy̓ŋən cn ‘I want to have a dog’ would be okay, since the č- ‘have’ prefix makes a verb from a noun. You can peek ahead to §49 to see how this prefix works.
► 6 Everything else like this in Klallam grammar can be classified as word, particle, or suffix, but áy̓ŋən has features of all three and cannot consistently be classified as any one of these.
► 7 Despite the difficulty of classification, áy̓ŋən is easy to use, say, and understand. We can just consider it an odd speech act particle that takes stress. Note that it comes before all of the other speech act particles, including the yes/no question u, as the second model shows.
 | hiyáʔ áy̓ŋən u cxʷ. | ‘Do you want to go?’ |
 | ʔáa. wáʔ áy̓ŋən cn. | ‘Yes. I want to go along.’ |