Paremias without sentence particles

Paper read at the 7th International Semito-Hamitic Congress, Berlin, 2004.

In his review of my first book Andrzejewski attracted the attention of linguists to

“archaic grammatical forms which, paradoxically enough, form part of everyday language and are commonly used in conversations and in the mass media. A good example of this are those verbal and verbal-adjectival forms which exclude the occurrence of focus indicators (baa, ayaa, waxaa and waa) in declarative sentences such as for example Ayax teg eelna reeb — Locusts go away but leave damage behind and Tuug wax ka tuhun badan — A thief is more suspicious than anyone else. In Kapchits’ collection 7 per cent of all the items contain such grammatical forms, while normally focus indicators are obligatory in all declarative sentences.”¹

Teg and reeb from the first proverb are the forms of the 3rd person masculine singular of the verbs tag “go” and reeb “leave” in the so-called Past Independent Tense, and badan from the second proverb is the form of the 3rd person masculine singular of the attributive verb badan “be numerous” in the Present Comparative Tense.²

Personal verbal forms in the Past Independent Tense, which remain mainly in folklore texts, differ from the corresponding forms in the Past General Tense either by tone or by a combination of tone and suffixes. This can be clearly seen by the following example of the conjugations of verbs from the three main verbal classes: keen “bring”, samee “make” and qabo “take”.

Past General Tense

Past Independent Tense³

I. Proverbs employing the Past Independent Tense

Proverbs employing the Past Independent Tense constitute a considerable, though not the biggest, part of the paremias without sentence particles:⁴

1. Cad ku ceejiyey xil iyo geeri ku dil — If you choke with a big piece (of food) you will both disgrace yourself and die [lit.: A big piece which stuck in your throat killed you with shame and death]. This means: It is bad to gobble;
2. Laga barayba laga badi — One surpasses [lit.: surpassed] the man from whom one has learnt something;
3. Wax rag kaa galay rako kaa gale — What (lit.: things) you gave a man you will not get back [lit.: they stuck in him].

The set of subjects in the paremias known to us in which the Past Independent Tense is used is, in fact, exhausted by the nouns of the 3rd person singular and plural and the indefinite impersonal pronoun la, and correspondingly only those forms of the regular verbs which we have shown in the examples can be found among them. The personal forms of the attributive verbs are extremely rare in paremias with the usage of the Past Independent Tense. Suffice it to say that in my collection of about ten thousand proverbs there is only one — of the 3rd person feminine singular:

4. Gabadhii xabaal ku asturrayd ama nin ku asturrayd — Only grave or marriage can save a girl (from seduction) [lit.: A girl is preserved in a grave or in a husband].

The paradigm of the verb asturan “to be preserved”, “to be covered” in the Past Independent Tense is as follows:⁵

II. Attributive verbs in the Present Comparative Tense

Attributive verbs appear much more often in paremias without sentence particles in which the Present Comparative Tense is employed. Banti writes that in the Present (Comparative) Tense all the verbs of the class 4⁶ have a simple form⁷ which does not co-occur with focus particles and is used in comparative structures of proverbs and other fixed expressions.⁸

Before setting about the analysis of proverbs with attributive verbs in the Comparative Tense it is necessary to name the regular ways of the formation of the comparative degree used in proverbs. They are three: one syntactical and two lexical.

1) The syntactical pattern presumes the building of a construction which starts with the names of a pair of compared things followed by the name of that one of the pair which is superior in quality and is usually a subject to the verbal predicate which closes the construction:

5. Dhegta iyo isha, dhegta ayaa da’ weyn — An ear is older [i.e. more important] than an eye [lit.: An ear and an eye, an ear is old];
6. Dhurwaa kan ciya iyo kan aammusan, kan ciyaa [ciya + baa] roon — A barking hyena is better [i.e. less dangerous] than one which keeps silent [lit.: A barking hyena and a silent one, a silent one is good].

2) Lexically the comparative degree can be expressed by two modes:

a) with the help of the preverb ka meaning “than” in proximity to attributive verbs:

7. Dhul jid baa ka toosan, dadna kii qaada — A road is straighter than open ground and he who takes it (is straighter) than other people [i.e. he leaves them behind]. It is necessary to note that in the second part of the proverb, which is also a comparative structure, there is no sentence particle, preverb or attributive verb;
8. Nin fiicanba nin baa ka sii fiican — For every good man there is a better man [lit.: One man is good, the other man is still more good]. In this proverb the preverb ka is supplemented by the particle sii which here means “still more” because both comparable “things” possess the same quality.
9. Afar-addinle waxaa ka halis badan laba-addinle

b) with the help of the verb dhaan “be better than”. In the constructions with dhaan “a better thing” becomes a subject, the verb becomes a predicate and the SP baa (ayaa)⁹ is used either with or without short subjective pronouns:

10. Maroodiga iliggiisaa (iliggiisa + baa) dhaama — The tusk of an elephant is better [i.e. more expensive] than he himself;
11. Dameerka ninka wada mar buu dhaamaa — Sometimes a donkey is better than its driver.

In all the paremias without sentence particles in which comparisons are made between elements possessing different degrees of particular qualities, the first lexical pattern of the expression of the comparative degree is used, as in examples (7–9). These paremias belong to two constructive logical types.

1) If one element has a particular quality and another element a different degree of the same quality, one element will exceed, or be preferable to, the other:

12. Carrab dalab leh lug dalab leh laga garan og — It is easier to recognize the crookedness of one’s tongue [i.e. one’s lie] than the crookedness of one’s leg;
13. Gows la qaaday geel la qaaday ka daran — It is worse to eat before someone’s eyes¹⁰ [i.e. without sharing the food] than to steal his camels;
14. Far bukta faraha ka dheer — A sour finger seems to be longer than the others [because it always hits against something].

2) If one element has a particular quality to a greater extent than does another element, it also has some other quality to a greater extent than does that other element:

15. Nin gu’ kaa weyn garaadna kaa weyn — He who is one year older [lit.: bigger] than you has a mind bigger than yours;
16. Nin gu’ kaa weyn il guruxeedna kaa weyn — He who is one year older [lit.: bigger] than you has an eye [lit.: eyeball] bigger than yours [i.e. he sees more];
17. Nin gu’ kaa weyn gu’ baas kaa weyn — He who is one year older [lit.: bigger] than you suffers one year longer [lit.: bigger] than you.

Proverbs (13–17) differ from the similar constructions in (7–9) only by the absence of sentence particles. At first glance they are simply omitted and can be easily “reconstructed” without any damage to their syntactical structure and meaning. However, on closer examination it becomes clear that this operation can be applied in full measure only to two of them:

18. *Gows la qaaday geel la qaaday baa ka daran;
19. *Hubkaa baa kaa war dheer.

It can also be applied in part to proverbs (15–17):

20. *Nin gu’ kaa weyn baa garaadna kaa weyn;
21. *Nin gu’ kaa weyn baa il guruxeedna kaa weyn;
22. *Nin gu’ kaa weyn baa gu’ baas kaa weyn.

But in some variants of these proverbs one can spot the morphological marker -i which is incompatible with the SP baa stressing the subject:

23. Nin gu’ kaa weyni garaadna kaa weyn;
24. Nin gu’ kaa weyni il guruxeedna kaa weyn;
25. Nin gu’ kaa weyni gu’ baas kaa weyn.

The sentence particles waa and waxaa also do not fit within the context of the proverbs concerned. In the case of waa, the predicate would have agreed with the subject according to the “complete” type I, and in the case of waxaa, among other differences the verb could not have occupied the final position.

As for proverb (12), the “clipped” form of the attributive verb (og), when used in the role of the predicate of the indefinite personal pronoun la (the subject), always makes a construction with the verb ahaan (to be) in any of the present tenses, irrespective of the type of sentence particle used in the sentence.

26. *Carrab dalab leh lug dalab leh baa laga garan og yahay.

Hence there are revealed three types of paremias without sentence particles in which the attributive verb-predicate is used in the so-called Present Comparative Tense:

1. Paremias which allow for the reconstruction of the SP baa without any change of their structure and meaning (13–14);
2. Paremias of which some variants allow for the reconstruction of the SP baa (15–16);
3. Paremias which do not allow for the reconstruction of the SP baa (12).

III. The preverb ka in a superlative sense

One of the interesting types of paremias without sentence particles is represented by the proverb mentioned in Andrzejewski’s review.

27. Tuug wax ka tuhun badan — There is nobody more fearful than a thief [lit.: A thief is more fearful than anything].

Here the preverb ka “than”, which usually serves to convey the meaning of the comparative degree, is used to express the superlative degree.

Syntactical structures with this exceptional usage of the preverb ka represent one of the archaic paremiological types. We know of another two proverbs of this kind:

28. Fuley wax ka daymo badan — A coward looks back most frequently;
29. Fuley wax ka qoryo badan — Nobody arms himself better than a coward.

These proverbs allow for the reconstruction of the SP baa:

30. *Tuug baa wax ka tuhun badan.

Some other types of proverbs also make syntactical forms without sentence particles.

IV. Proverbs with the verbal predicate waa “fail”

Proverbs with the verbal predicate waa¹¹ “fail”, which in combination with the indefinite-personal subject la, the short objective pronoun is “self” and the preverbs ku or la (la + is + ku = laysku, la + is + la = laysla) means “One cannot bring together” or “One cannot do two things at the same time”:

31. Calool bukta iyo weji furfuran laysku waa — One cannot smile [lit.: make an amiable face] when one has a stomach-ache;
32. Fadhi iyo fuud yicibeed laysku waa — One cannot sit at home [i.e. idle] and enjoy yicib-nut soup;¹²
33. Laf iyo labo dhagax laysla waa — Where there is a bone you cannot find two stones [which you need for crushing the bone and eating the marrow].

In paremias of this type a phrase particle cannot be reconstructed.

V. Proverbs with the adverbial particle kala

Proverbs with the attributive verbs and the irregular verbs lahaan “to have” and la’aan “not to have” in the role of the predicate in combination with the adverbial particle kala “apart, differently”, which in their turn divide into two subtypes.

a) Proverbs with the indefinite personal subject la:

34. Alle la kala baryi og, erayna la kala dhihi og — (People) pray to Allah differently and speak differently [i.e. some of them do it better, some worse];
35. Dhaan loo kala habboon — Some (people) can go for water and some cannot.¹³

b) Proverbs with nominal subjects:

36. Run iyo beeni kala raad leh — Truth and lies leave different traces;
37. Hadal iyo hilbaba kala qalan — Talk is like different sorts of meat [some is good and some is bad];
38. Kala fog fool iyo lulmo — When in labour one cannot sleep [lit.: childbirth and sleepiness are far from each other]. This means: when someone is in trouble, he cannot rest;
39. Laba kala bariday kala war la’ — If two men have spent a night far away from each other, neither knows how the other one is now.

Paremias which belong to type (a), and some proverbs of type (b), i.e. (36) and (37), do not allow for the reconstruction of sentence particles, while (38) and (39) can perfectly well be used with the SP baa.

VI. Proverbs in the Present Exclamatory Tense

Proverbs with attributive verbs in what Andrzejewski called the Present Exclamatory Tense.¹⁴

40. Aji bakhti la buuranaa! — It seems to an aji¹⁵ that a dead beast was fat! This means: A lost thing seems to have been good;
41. Ayandarro fac-weynaa! — Bad luck lasts a long time!
42. Maba dhalane dhawrsan okaa! — She has not been born yet but is already ashamed (of her nakedness). Said when a young person acts as seriously as if they were adult.

VII. Verbless proverbs

Verbless proverbs resemble structures with the SP waa introducing a compound nominal predicate. These proverbs can be divided, according to their syntactic complexity, into two sub-types: one-part and two-part structures. They both allow for the reconstruction of the SP waa.

a) Verbless proverbs in the form of one-part deep structures:

43. Cunug fiyow, hooyo fiican — A good [lit.: healthy] child (means) a good mother;
44. *Cunug fiyow waa hooyo fiican;
45. Ballan badan, been badan — A lot of promises (means) a lot of lies;
46. *Ballan badan waa been badan.

b) Verbless proverbs in the form of two-part deep structures:

47. Dharaartiina il, habeenkiina dheg — By day (one needs) eyes, by night (one needs) ears;
48. *Dharaartiina waa il, habeenkiina waa dheg;
49. Kismaayo kistaa ama kaskaa — (To live) in Kismayo¹⁶ (one needs) either money or brains;
50. *Kismaayo waa kistaa ama waa kaskaa.

VIII. Coexistence with the usual forms

It is worth mentioning that archaic grammatical forms which exclude the usage of sentence particles co-exist with the usual forms, not only within the framework of the Somali proverbial stock as a whole but also at the level of the variants of individual paremias. This can be exemplified by a proverb taken at random:

51. Caano daatay dabadoodaa (dabadooda + baa) la qabtaa — When milk spills one tries to save at least the last drop [lit.: catches milk by its tail].

Many variants of this proverb were received from informants, the following among them:

52. Caano daatay waa la dabo qabtaa, and
53. Caano daatayba dabadood la qabay.

Read at the 7th International Semito-Hamitic Congress, Berlin, 2004; first published in Akten des 7. Internationalen Semitohamitistenkongresses Berlin 2004 (Semitica et Semitohamitica Berolinensia, Band 5). Aachen, 2007.