This week, we met with Harsha in the Linguistics Seminar Room, Pearson 115. We primarily discussed the ordering of modifiers and the behaviors of jei and ʃei, and also elicited the numbers from 80-89 to fill in the gap in the 1-100 set.
Demonstratives
We attempted to uncover the differences between oi, jei, je, ʃei, and ʃe.
First, we took a known sentence from last week and substituted oi for jei
1.* oi lokta tomake ʃurite pece take ami dekʰte paccʰi
"That man you heard I saw"
Next, when referring to a particular drink already in the conversational context,
2. *jei drink cʰai
*I want that drink
3. ʃei drink cʰai
I want that drink
4. ʃe cʰai
That person wants
2 would be valid if there were a clause following, and 3 would only be valid if we had been talking about the drink, not if we had pointed to it. 4 is a little odd but still a valid sentence.
She appears to be used on its own, whereas shei must appear before a noun (that it modifies), but we have a contrastive example:
5. ʃe din
that day
Harsha believed this was a shortening of ʃei din, but it is at least worth considering as it appears to be the only exception to the rule.
Modifier Order
Modifier order in Bengali appears to match that of English for the most part, with the categories given being (based on qualities of chairs) ordering, number, size, age, color, material, subject, proximity, and possession.
book - bɔi
chair - cer (or kuʃi, but no one says that anymore)
1. red book
lal bɔi
2. big red book
bɔɽo lal bɔi
3. big old red book
bɔɽo purono lal bɔi OR purono bɔɽo lal bɔi "No particular order"
4. big red paperback book
bɔɽo lal peperbæk bɔi
5. two big books
duto bɔɽo bɔi
6. two big old books
duto bɔɽo purono bɔi
7. first two big books
proʈʰom duto bɔɽo bɔi
8. big red non-fiction books
bɔɽo lal basʈobik bɔi
9. two big books nearby
kacʰer duto bɔɽo bɔi
10. Michael's first two books
Michael-er protom dui oitihaʃik bɔi
11. Michael's two books nearby
Michael-er duto kacʰer bɔi (Note difference in order between this and 9)
12. paperback non-fiction book
basʈobik peperbæk bɔi (sounds odd)
13. paperback history book
oiti haʃik peperbæk bɔi OR peperbæk oiti haʃik bɔi "No particular order"
(Note: oiti haʃik = historical, iti haʃer = of history
14. big red stolen books
cʰurikɔra bɔɽo lal bɔita (The -ta suffix added because presumably two specific books were stolen)
15. first two stolen red books
protom duʈo cʰurikɔra bɔɽo lal bɔi
80-89
80. aʃi
81. ækaʃi
82. biraʃi
83. tiraʃi
84. curaʃi
85. pɔcaʃi
86. cʰiaʃi
87. ʃataʃi
88. aʈaʃi
89. unonoppoi
Also, note that nobboi becomes nobboita with the -ta suffix, not nobbota, evidence that the final vowel dropping is /not/ caused by the presence of two final vowels.
Age and Birthdays Mollie continued the discussion of numbers with a few phrases relating to birthdays and age:
How old are you?
tomar bɔiʃ kɔtɔ
2-year-old baby
do bɔcer bɔiʃ
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