9.2. Transitive and passive verbs in series
Models
| 1) | QENET SEN. | ‘I looked at him/her/it.’ |
| 2) | YÁ¸ SEN. | ‘I went.’ |
| 3) | YÁ¸ SEN QENET. | ‘I went to look at him/her/it.’ |
| 4) | QENETEṈ SEN. | ‘I was looked at.’ / ‘He/she/it looked at me.’ |
| 5) | YÁ¸ SEN QENETEṈ. | ‘He/she/it went to look at me.’ |
‣ 1 The first two model sentences here should look familiar. You saw them in §1. They are basic transitive and intransitive sentences.
‣ 2 Study model 3. You will see that it is a combination of the first two models. In this third model, you can see that SEN is the subject of both verbs taken together. Think of YÁ¸ QENET as a single verb ‘go look at him/her/it’ that takes a single subject.
‣ 3 The fourth model sentence should also look familiar. This is the simple passive: QENET is ‘look at him/her/it’ and QENETEṈ is the passive ‘be looked at.’
‣ 4 Now we get to a really interesting model sentence. Read that last one (model 5) carefully, look at its translation, and compare it to the other models.
‣ 5 Just looking at the first two words of model 5, you might think that ‘I go’ would be part of the meaning. However, just as you think of YÁ¸ QENET as a single verb (as suggested in note 2), you have to think of YÁ¸ QENETEṈ as a single verb with a single subject. SEN is not the subject of YÁ¸ here separate from QENETEṈ.
‣ 6 With YÁ¸ QENET we can come up with a good, direct English translation: ‘go look at him/her/it.’ But the passive in the last model shows how different SENĆOŦEN is from English. It is not easy to do a direct translation of YÁ¸ QENETEṈ as a passive because English does not have real serial verbs as SENĆOŦEN does. The best translation we can give uses an English active sentence instead of a passive.
 | YÁ¸ E SW̱ OX̱ ŦȽO? | ‘Are you going to the beach?’ |
 | EWE. MEQEL¸O¸ SEN ÁȽE O¸MET. | ‘No. I’m waiting here at home.’ |
| EN¸Á E₭O¸STEL¸ ŦȽO I¸ | ‘Come along to the shore and |
| MEQEL¸O¸ SÁSEU¸. | wait on the beach.’ | |
| IY¸ YÁ¸ ȽTE ŦȽO I¸ | ‘Good. We’ll go down and |
| MEQEL¸O¸ ¸E TŦE SÁUṈEN. | wait on the beach.’ |
9.2A. Which of these sentences is ungrammatical? If it is ungrammatical, explain why it is. If it is grammatical, translate the sentence. If you see a word you do not know, look it up in the SENĆOŦEN dictionary.
1. YÁ¸ E SW̱ ȻENÁṈET?
2. YÁ¸ ȻENÁṈET SEN.
3. EN¸Á E SW̱ ȻENÁṈET?
4. EN¸Á SEN ȻENÁṈET.
5. ȻENÁṈETEṈ E SW̱?
6. EN¸Á LE¸ SEN ȻENÁṈETEṈ.
7. EN¸Á ȻENÁṈETEṈ SEN.
8. EN¸Á ȻENÁṈETEṈ ¸E ŦE NE TÁN.
9. EN¸Á SEN ȻENÁṈETEṈ ¸E ŦE NE TÁN.
10. EN¸Á ȻENÁṈETEṈ ŦE NE TÁN.
9.2B. Write four original sentences in SENĆOŦEN using serial verb constructions.