SENĆOŦEN: A Grammar of the Saanich Language Main Menu Contents Preface Acknowledgments PART 1 Introduction The organization of this grammar The Place of SENĆOŦEN in the Salishan Language Family Basics of the SENĆOŦEN word Useful phrases PART 2 The SENĆOŦEN Alphabet and Sounds Consonants Vowels and Diphthongs Notes on Pronunciation PART 3 SENĆOŦEN Grammatical Patterns 1 Transitive and Intransitive Verbs 2 Past and Future Tense 3 Basic Speech Acts 4 Nouns and Articles 5 Possessive Pronouns 6 Adjectives 7 Basic Word Order 8 The Preposition 9 Serial Verbs 10 Auxiliaries 11 Conjunction: ‘And/with’ and ‘but/without’ 12 No and Not 13 Self and Each Other 14 More Negative Words 15 Questions: ‘Who?,’ ‘What?,’ ‘Someone,’ ‘Something’ 16 Questions: ‘Do what?,’ ‘Say what?,’ and ‘Which one?’ 17 Subordinate Subjects in Questions 18 Questions: ‘Whose?’ 19 Every, All, Any, and Some 20 Comparison 21 Questions: ‘When?’ 22 Numbers 23 Time Expressions 24 Time Prefixes 25 Questions: ‘Where?’ 26 Location Expressions 27 Paths 28 Questions: ‘How?’ and ‘How much?’ 29 Adverbial Expressions 30 Conditional Clauses 31 Should, Must, Ought to, Want to 32 Object Pronouns 33 Passive 34 Strong, Weak, and Zero Stems 35 Participant Roles and Middle Voice 36 Recipient, Beneficiary, and Other Participants 37 Lexical Suffixes 38 Questions: ‘Why?’ 39 Because 40 Cause 41 Collective Plural 42 The Actual Aspect 43 State, Result, and Duration 44 Activity Suffixes 45 Reflexive, Inchoative, and Noncontrol Middle 46 Ȼ Clauses 47 Relative Clauses 49 Possessed Verbs 50 Summary of Particles with Ȼ 51 So Then ... 52 Reporting Verbs and Direct Quotes 53 Indirect Quotes 54 Verbal Prefixes 55 Nominalizing Prefixes 56 Adverbial Prefixes 57 More Demonstrative Articles 58 Objects of Intent and Emotion 59 More Reduplication Patterns 60 Interjections 61 Politeness Expressions 62 Rare Prefixes and Suffixes 63 A Fully Annotated Text 64 Texts to Annotate Appendix A: Technical Description of SENĆOŦEN Sounds Appendix B: SENĆOŦEN Pronouns Appendix C: Demonstrative Articles Appendix D: SENĆOŦEN Kin Terms Appendix E: Index to Technical Linguistic Topics Appendix F: Vocabulary Bibliography SENĆOŦEN Dictionary Basic SENĆOŦEN Dictionary without root and affix indexes

48 Speech Act Modifiers

43373 4 Nouns and Articles
‘I go’ in SENĆOŦEN is YÁ¸ SEN. This is a sentence. To actually use this sentence in talking to someone is to perform a speech act. A speech act always involves a speaker and an addressee—the person being spoken to.

A sentence contains information about an event. The speech act relates this information to the speaker and the person being spoken to, which we will call the listener. So, for example, if I say to you YÁ¸ SEN, I (SEN) am the speaker and I am simply relating a fact to my listener (you). The type of speech act I am performing is a statement. On the other hand, if I say YÁ¸ E SEN ‘Do I go?,’ I am not simply relating a fact; I am relating my desire at this time that you give me information about an event. The speech act I am performing is a question.

The yes/no question marker E is a speech act modifier. It specifies something about the information in the sentence that relates to the speaker and the listener.

SENĆOŦEN has a number of speech act modifier particles. These little words have several things in common:

1. They all come somewhere after the first word of the clause (main clause or subordinate clause) and before any other verb or article in the clause.
2. They are small and unstressed.
3. They all indicate the speaker’s knowledge or needs in regard to the basic event expressed in the sentence.

There are 32 of these speech act modifier particles in SENĆOŦEN. Many of these have already been described in earlier chapters.

Here is a list of the speech act modifiers that have been introduced so far. You should take some time now to go back and review each of these. Pay special attention to where they occur in the sentence and to how they relate to the speech act:
LE¸             past   §2.1
SE¸             future  §2.2
ĆE              command  §3.1
E                yes/no question §3.2
OĆE           request  §15, §18, §21, §25, §28
ȻEĆÁ         therefore  §16.1, §38, §39, §28.1
Ḵ                hypothetical  §30.3
YEḴLE¸       ought §31

We can also include the first-person and second-person subject markers—SEN ‘I,’  SW̱ ‘you,’ ȽTE ‘we,’ and HÁLE ‘you pluralizer’ in this list, since they also occur in the position following the first word of the sentence, and they also directly relate to the speaker and listener in the speech act.

In this section we review the placement of these particles and learn the placement and use of the others.

Important: In this chapter we use ‘speaker’ to refer to the person speaking or writing the sentence. We use ‘listener’ to refer to the person being spoken to or written to. A ‘speech act’ could be spoken or written.
 

This page has paths:

  1. PART 3 SENĆOŦEN Grammatical Patterns Montler, et al.

Contents of this path:

  1. 48.1. YEḴ ‘hope,’ YEW̱ ‘presume,’ WE¸OĆE ‘guess,’ KE ‘surprise,’ TÁ ‘contrary’
  2. 48.2. ĆEȽ ‘suggest,’ ÁȻE ‘urge,’ ȻE¸E ‘expect,’ ȻE¸Í¸E ‘realize,’ WO¸ ‘wonder’
  3. 48.3. ȻE ‘inform new,’ ȻSI¸ ‘inform shared,’ JE ‘apparently,’ ȻEĆÁ ‘consequence,’ OL¸ ‘limit’
  4. 48.4. I¸E ‘usual,’ ĆTE ‘probably,’ JEȽ ‘typically,’ ȻI¸E ‘unexpectedly,’ O ‘certain,’ EȽ ‘type’
  5. 48.5. Combining speech act modifiers
  6. 48.6. ÁL¸ṈEN ‘want to do,’ STEN¸OM¸ET ‘pretend to do’

This page has tags:

  1. 15.2. Focus pronouns in questions and answers to ‘Who?’ Montler, et al.
  2. 16.1. ‘Do what?’ and ‘Say what?’ Montler, et al.
  3. 28.1. ‘How?’ Montler, et al.
  4. 3 Basic Speech Acts Montler, et al.

Contents of this tag:

  1. 2.1. Past tense: LE¸
  2. 21 Questions: ‘When?’
  3. 3.1. Commands: Ø or ĆE or SW̱
  4. 2.2. Future tense: SE¸
  5. 3.2. Yes/no questions: E
  6. 38 Questions: ‘Why?’
  7. 16.1. ‘Do what?’ and ‘Say what?’
  8. 28.1. ‘How?’
  9. 30.3. Hypothetical: Ḵ
  10. 39 Because
  11. 31 Should, Must, Ought to, Want to
  12. 28 Questions: ‘How?’ and ‘How much?’
  13. 15 Questions: ‘Who?,’ ‘What?,’ ‘Someone,’ ‘Something’
  14. 25 Questions: ‘Where?’
  15. 18 Questions: ‘Whose?’