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Issytra, my translator, says she is uncertain what this passage means, although she was able to secure a pretty good sense of the Rokbeigalmki. She prefers to translate its "wilderness," málreb, with the Teonaht abstraction goale rather than the more concrete gohhea, "wilderness" (uninhabited region). As she understood from one of the notes provided by Steg Belsky, "wilderness" in Rokbeigalmki is a symbol of freedom and chaos.
The Teonaht interpretation of this strange little text is that water, a calm entity in the beginning when it was by itself, only became momentous and dangerous when it entered into conflict with the land. The winds blew upon it, the land enclosed it, water welled up and created both danger and beauty. There is no Teonaht equivalent for Rokbeigalmki ngiirau, "beauty-danger," of which the Teonaht here gives a literal translation. It is probably echoed in Teonaht words meaning "awesome" or "tremendous," and its lexicographers may borrow it with Mr. Belsky's permission. Issytra has also modified the R. oolu-chãk ("yelling, screaming") to "surging up," as being more in keeping with the nature of dangerous water. So what we have here are two elements: the stable and the unstable one, which acquire their natures of stability and instability only in conflict with the other. This is much like the philosophic notion of Mykwa and Dohhdakra in Teonaht - stability and change - which cannot be defined except by the other, and which organize every principle of life on earth.
Word order in Teonaht is OSV, often SOV. If the latter, then there must be a resumptive pronoun before the verb: "The boy the ball he hit." In subordinate clauses, the word order is often reversed: VSO.
The copula, which would in an SOV language fall at the end, is often omitted.
Indefiniteness is usually unmarked in Teonaht, and definiteness given an article. But this is an unstable rule. Sometimes the article is just there to indicate volition or non-volition.
Very few. Case is expressed mostly in the article, as in German. Occasionally, the Nenddeylyt words express the object and oblique cases with a final labial stop: p or b.
Suffixes can become prefixes. The most common form of detachable suffix is the preterite tense suffix -el, which detaches from the verb and reattaches as a prefix to the preceding pronoun. The same goes for the aspectual suffix -om, which also detaches and prefixes the preceding pronouns.
Likewise, plural suffixes can become plural prefixes: nemralen "hearts" goes to ninnemral "hearts." This is completely idiomatic. Some nouns do this, others don't.
Teonaht divides its subject up into two forms: agent and experiencer, which in this case refer to a subject that enacts something willfully and a subject that experiences an action or enacts it without will. Teonaht reflects this difference in both the article and the verb (never the noun itself, oddly). The definite article before agentive or volitional subjects is le; before experiential or non-volitional subjects it is li. In the verb, volitionality is unmarked, whereas non-volitionality is marked with a final n, which, when a tense or aspectual prefix is attached to the pronoun, prefixes as n-. So: ykke "I look" becomes ykken "I see" and elry ke "I looked" becomes nelry ke "I saw." Likewise with nomry ke "I usually see."
The gerund or verb/noun, or "infinitive" if you will, is expressed by suffixing -rem or -ned to the absolute form of the verb (the volitional and non-volitional gerund suffixes). The absolute form is what is used with pronouns: ykke "I look/watch" as opposed to kerem "watch, watching."
Just like the plural suffixes and tense particles, -rem can also detach - especially in pompous, aureate diction - and precede its possessive pronoun: rem al ennyve (note that the possessive pronoun becomes "infixed") especially with long verbs like ennyverem. The use of the possessive with a gerund/verb-noun in many cases indicates a subjective genitive: Of my breakfast my eating mother wants ("Mom wants me to eat my breakfast"). In other cases it indicates an objective genitive, especially in the use of the passive with lisned: My beating by my father I get, i.e., "I am beaten by my father."
This simply means that some prepositions serve double duty by expressing a state or a direction. Cel means "in," cely "into." Ar means "at, upon, in," but ary means "to, towards." It goes on.
These are foreign words of unknown origin adopted into Teonaht that obey different rules. Plurals are different; the common plurals in Teonaht are ni- or -n, or mim-; plurals in some Nenddeylyt words are s- or se-. Nenddeylyt words will indicate object or oblique case with a final labial or with final -z. Takrem is such a word, but the final -p (takremp) disappeared because the case was indicated in the preceding article. Teonaht hates too much redundancy.
These terms were suggested to me by our friend Ray Brown. There is no European "voice" in Teonaht; the "passive" is often expressed with the verb lisned, as explained above. One "gets one's beating." As for the "progressive," this is expressed with a modified form of the word pom "with": one is "with singing," bom htindelrem. That ornery Law of Detachability will often come in and suffix the modified -rem to the preposition: bomrev htindl (or, in analogy with rev al ennyve and the infixed possessive: revbom htindl). Why? To distribute the stress, to cut a long word down to size. in vernacular Teonaht, the -rem is just left out: bom htindl "singing." But not in this stiff little composition.
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