48 Speech Act Modifiers
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.