32 Object Pronouns
A brief digression before we get to the grammar of SENĆOŦEN object pronouns:
Object pronouns are an important part of any grammar. They are usually described and listed early in the written grammar of a language. In the Klallam Grammar, for example, the object pronouns are covered in chapter seven. However, in this SENĆOŦEN grammar we have waited until §32 to discuss them. There are three interconnected reasons for waiting so long to introduce the object suffixes. These issues are true for Klallam as well as SENĆOŦEN.
First, the object suffixes are not often used. The first- and second-person object pronouns were easy to elicit from the oldest L1 (first language) speakers, so we have a great many elicited examples, but they appear naturally in texts only very rarely. We have transcribed thousands of pages of hundreds of narratives and conversations from many native speaking elders; the SENĆOŦEN first and second person objects appear fewer than a dozen times. The main reason for this rarity is the SENĆOŦEN (and the same can be said for Klallam) preference for using intransitive constructions. The passive construction (already introduced in §7, §8, §12, and §14) is particularly important in this regard. The usual way to express an idea like ‘My mother helped me’ is not with the transitive construction and object suffix corresponding to ‘me’ but with a passive construction meaning ‘I was helped by my mother.’ The passive construction has some complications that will be covered in §34.
Second, it seems that as some endangered languages decline—being used less and less by fewer speakers—the object pronouns suffer more than other areas of grammar. While elicitation of object pronouns from the oldest L1 speakers with robust grammatical intuitions was easy, younger L1 speakers falter and forget. This certainly must be due to the natural scarcity of the object pronouns in ordinary discourse combined with the general decline in use of the language. Nevertheless, younger L1 speakers can understand object pronouns without difficulty when they do occasionally appear in natural discourse, and, importantly, they can speak the language fluently with very little or no use of object pronouns.
Third, a lot can be said about the grammar without referring to object pronouns. As this book demonstrates, over 110 pages of the major details of SENĆOŦEN grammar can be described without mention of the object pronouns. This cannot be said about the subject pronouns, possessive pronouns, or the passive construction, all of which have been mentioned repeatedly.
Nevertheless, a thorough understanding of the language requires knowledge of the object pronouns. So study this section carefully.
The digression ends here. It is time to get back to the grammar of SENĆOŦEN.
In SENĆOŦEN, the direct object is indicated as a suffix on the transitive verb. There are several forms of these object suffixes. Which form is used depends on several factors.
The most important factor in SENĆOŦEN is whether the person doing the action (which we will call the actor) is in control of the action or not. For example, in English ‘I look at it,’ the actor, ‘I,’ is in control of the action. When you ‘look at’ something, you do it on purpose. On the other hand, in English ‘I see it,’ the actor, ‘I,’ is not necessarily in control. When you ‘see’ something you may not be doing it on purpose‑it may be accidental.
Where English uses two separate verbs to show this ‘on purpose’ versus ‘accidental’ idea, SENĆOŦEN uses different verb endings and different object pronouns.
The suffix ‑ET (sometimes just ‑T) on a verb indicates that the actor is in control. The ending ‑NEW̱ (sometimes ‑NOW̱) on a verb indicates that the actor is not in control. So, for example, QENET means ‘look at it,’ while QENNEW̱ means ‘see it.’
The words QENET and QENNEW̱ have the same root (QEN‑) but different suffixes (‑ET and ‑NEW̱). In some SENĆOŦEN words, the root may stand alone, but the root in these two words, QEN‑ may not. The hyphen on QEN‑ indicates that something must attach there. Similarly, the hyphens on ‑ET and ‑NEW̱ indicate that they have to attach to something. The root of a word is what is left when all suffixes and prefixes are removed.