Past Independent Tense[35]
Singular
1st pers. kéenay/ saméeyey/ qábtay
2nd pers. kéentay/ saméysey/ qabátay
3rd pers. masc. kéen/ samée/ qabáy
3rd pers. fem. kéentay/ saméysey/ qabátay
Plural
1st pers. (excl.) kéennay/ saméynay/ qabánnay
1st pers. (incl.) kéennay/ saméynay/ qabánnay
2nd pers. keenté/ sameysé/ qabaté
3rd pers. keené/ sameeyé/ qabté
Proverbs employing the Past Independent Tense constitute a considerable, though not the biggest, part of the paremias without sentence particles:
(384) 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;
(385) Geel laba jir soo wada mar – All the camels were two years old [lit.: passed the two-year age]. This means: Once upon a time everybody was young;
(386) Laga barayba laga badi – One surpasses [lit.: surpassed] the man from whom one has learnt something;
(387) Hadday fooli timaaddo, gudaqarsiimo hartay – When labour pains start, shame must be thrown off [lit.: had to be thrown off];
(388) 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 subjects in each of these examples are as follows: in 384 it is the 3rd person masculine singular noun cad – a piece; in 385 it is the collective masculine noun geel – camels, in which, as in 384, the verbal predicate takes the form of the 3rd person masculine singular; in 386 it is the indefinite personal pronoun la (see 0.3.8), again with a 3rd person masculine singular verb; in 387 it is the 3rd person feminine singular noun gudaqarsiimo – covering of the genitals; and in 388 it is the 3rd person plural noun wax – things. The set of subjects in the paremias known to me in which the Past Independent Tense is used is, in fact, exhausted by the nouns of the 3rd person singular and plural and the pronoun la, and correspondingly only those forms of the regular verbs which I 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 – that of the 3rd person feminine singular:
(389) Gabadhii xabaal ku asturrayd ama nin ku asturrayd – Only grave or marrige can save a girl (from seduction) [lit.: A girl is preserved in a grave or in a husband].
The paradigm of the verb asturan – ‘be preserved’, ‘be covered’ in the Past Independent Tense is as follows[36] (see the corresponding forms of the attributive verbs in the Past General in 2.5.2):
Singular
1st pers. asturnáa (asturráa)
2nd pers. asturnáyd (asturráyd)
3rd pers. masc. asturnáa (asturráa)
3rd pers. fem. asturnáyd (asturráyd)
Plural
1st pers. (excl.) asturnáyn (asturráyn)
1st pers. (incl.) asturnáyn (asturráyn)
2nd pers. asturnaydé (asturraydé)
3rd pers. asturnaayé (asturraayé)
4.7.2. Attributive verbs appear much more often in paremias without sentence particles in which the Present Comparative Tense is employed. Banti (1988, p.209) writes that in the Present (Comparative) Tense all the verbs of the class 4[37] have a simple form[38] which does not co-occur with focus particles and is used in comparative structures of proverbs and other fixed expressions. In a later letter to the author (1990) he drew his attention to the fact that the Present Comparative Tense is not used only in comparative contexts.
Before setting about the analysis of the 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. There is no morphological expression of degrees of comparison in Somali.
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 or an object to the verbal predicate which closes the construction:
(390) 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];
(391) Libaax aammusan iyo libaax ciyaa, libaax ciyaa [ciya + baa] wanaagsan – A growling lion is better [i.e. less dangerous] than one which keeps silent [lit.: A silent lion and a growling lion, a growling lion is good];
(392) Dhurwaa kan ciya iyo kan aammusan, kan ciyaa [ciya + baa] la qaatay – A barking hyena is better [i.e. less dangerous] than one which keeps silent [lit.: A barking hyena and a silent hyena, one has preferred a barking hyena].
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:
(393) 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;
(394) 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.
(395) Afar-addinle waxaa ka halis badan laba-addinle – He who possesses two legs [i.e. a human being] is more dangerous that he who possesses four legs [i.e. an animal].
It is worth paying attention to the fact that in all three proverbs the thing which possesses superior quality is a subject which coincides with the rheme. It is shown by the absence of short subjective pronouns in proximity to the sentence particles.
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) is used either with or without short subjective pronouns:
(396) Maroodiga iliggiisaa (iliggiisa + baa) dhaama – The tusk of an elephant is better [i.e. more expensive] than he himself;
(397) Nin dhintay kabihiisaa [kabihiisa + baa] dhaama – The sandals of a dead man are more valuable than he is [there is no benefit from a dead man];
(398) Dameerka ninka wada mar buu dhaamaa – Sometimes a donkey is better than its driver.
4.7.3. In all the paremias without sentence particles in which comparisons are made between elements possessing different degrees of particular qualities (there are dozens of such paremias in my collection), the first lexical pattern of the expression of the comparative degree is used, as in examples (393-395). 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:
(399) 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;
(400) Gows la qaaday geel la qaaday ka daran – It is worse to eat before someone's eyes[39] [i.e.without sharing the food] than to steal his camels;
(401) 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:
(402) Nin gu’ kaa weyn garaadna kaa weyn – He who is one year older [lit.: bigger] than you has a mind bigger than yours;
(403) 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];
(404) 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 (400-404) differ from the similar constructions in (393-395) only by the absence of sentence particles. At first glance they 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:
(405) *Gows la qaaday geel la qaaday baa ka daran;
(406) *Far bukta baa faraha ka dheer.
It can also be applied in part to proverbs (402-404):
(407) *Nin gu’ kaa weyn baa garaadna kaa weyn;
(408) *Nin gu’ kaa weyn baa il guruxeedna kaa weyn;
(409) *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 (see 2.2):
(410) Nin gu’ kaa weyni garaadna kaa weyn;
(411) Nin gu’ kaa weyni il guruxeedna kaa weyn;
(412) Nin gu’ kaa weyni gu’ baas kaa weyn.
In other words the following are not grammatically correct:
(413) *Nin gu’ kaa weyni baa garaadna kaa weyn;
(414) *Nin gu’ kaa weyni baa il guruxeedna kaa weyn;
(415) *Nin gu’ kaa weyni baa gu’ baas kaa weyn.
If the “dropped out” SP baa had marked not the subject phrase but the object (which would have justified the addition of the morphological marker -i to the last word of the subject phrase) it would, firstly, have been used with a short subjective pronoun and secondly, the attributive verbal predicate would have adjoined the 3rd person masculine singular form of the verb ahaan – to be:
(416) *Nin gu’ kaa weyni garaad baanu (baa + uu + na) kaa weyn yahay;
(417) *Nin gu’ kaa weyni il guruxeed baanu (baa + uu + na) kaa weyn yahay;
(418) *Nin gu’ kaa weyni gu’ baas buu (baa + uu) kaa weyn yahay.
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 the proverb (399), the clipped form of the attributive verb og – ‘aware’, ‘know’, 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 (see 1.5).
(419) *Carrab dalab leh lug dalab leh baa laga garan og yahay.
Hence there have been 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 (400-401);
2) Paremias of which some variants allow for the reconstruction of the SP baa (402-404);
3) Paremias which do not allow for the reconstruction of the SP baa (399).
Proverbs which belong to the third type seem to be the most ancient. It may be assumed that they appeared when the SP baa was not yet used for the topic-comment articulation (see 0.3.5). Paremias which belong to the second (“intermediate”) type may have been created when the SP baa had just emerged as one of the focus particles. Finally, the proverbs of the first type seem to have entered the Somali discourse when the SP baa had already established itself in the language but had not yet driven out the other functionally similar rheme-marking means.
The aforesaid makes more exact the following observation made by Zholkovsky: “…the SP baa can be omitted in the sentences with the preverb ka in the meaning of the comparative degree” (1971, p.194), because, as has been just demonstrated, in some proverbial sentences with the attributive verbs in the role of the predicate, sentence particles are not only absent, but they cannot occur.
4.7.4. One of the interesting types of paremias without sentence particles is represented by the proverb mentioned in Andrzejewski’s review (4.7):
(420) Tuug wax ka tuhun badan – A thief is more suspicious than anyone else [lit.: A thief is more suspicious 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 (instead of the preverb u – most):
(421) Habaar waxaa u daran ‘lixdan jir ku cayrow’, ‘labaatan jir kaa dhimay’, ‘laba jir caano u waa’ – The most terrible curse is ‘May you become poor at sixty’, ‘May you lose your twenty-year-old (son)’, ‘May you fail to get milk for your two-year-old (child)’.
Syntactical structures with this exceptional usage of the preverb ka represent one of the archaic paremiological types. I know of another two proverbs of this kind:
(422) Fuley wax ka daymo badan – A coward looks back most frequently;
(423) Fuley wax ka qoryo badan – Nobody arms himself better than a coward.
These proverbs allow for the reconstruction of the SP baa:
(424) *Tuug baa wax ka tuhun badan.
4.7.5. Some other types of proverbs also make syntactical forms without sentence particles, among them the following in particular:
1) Proverbs with the verbal predicate waa[40] – ‘fail’, which in combination with the indefinite personal subject la, the short objective pronoun is – ‘self’ and the preverbs ku or la[41] (la+is+ku = laysku; la+is+la = laysla) means ‘One cannot bring together’ or ‘One cannot do two things at the same time’:
(425) Calool bukta iyo weji furfuran laysku waa – One cannot smile [lit.: make an amiable face] when one has a stomach-ache;
(426) Fadhi iyo fuud yicibeed laysku waa – One cannot sit at home [i.e. idle] and enjoy yicib-nut soup;[42]
(427) 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 sentence particle cannot be reconstructed.
2) Proverbs with the attributive and 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:
(428) Alle la kala baryi og, erayna la kala dhihi og – (People) pray to Allah differently and speak differently [ie. some of them do it better, some worse);
(429) Dhaan loo kala habboon – Some (people) can go for water and some cannot.[43]
b) proverbs with nominal subjects:
(430) Run iyo beeni kala raad leh – Truth and lies leave different traces;
(431) Hadal iyo hilbaba kala qalan – Talk is like different sorts of meat [some is good and some is bad];
(432) 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.
(433) 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. (430) and (431), do not allow for the reconstruction of sentence particles (see the argumentation in 4.7.3), while (432) and (433) can perfectly well be used with the SP baa. In proverb (432), however, it would then become necessary to cancel the inversion, resulting in the adverbial particle occupying the first place in the sentence, which is an extremely untypical situation in Somali affirmative structures;
3) Proverbs with attributive verbs in what Andrzejewski (1969) called the Present Exclamatory Tense:
(434) Aji bakhti la buuranaa! – (It seems) to an aji[44] (that) a dead beast was fat! This means: A lost thing seems to have been good;
(435) Ayandarro fac-weynaa! – Bad luck lasts a long time!
(436) 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.
4) Verbless proverbs, which resemble structures with the SP waa introducing a compound nominal predicate (see 1.6). 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:
(437) Cunug fiyow, hooyo fiican – A good [lit.: healthy] child (means) a good mother;
(438) *Cunug fiyow waa hooyo fiican.
(439) Ballan badan, been badan – A lot of promises (means) a lot of lies;
(440) *Ballan badan waa been badan.
b) verbless proverbs in the form of two-part deep structures:
(441) Dharaartiina il, habeenkiina dheg – By day (one needs) eyes, by night (one needs) ears;
(442) *Dharaartiina waa il, habeenkiina waa dheg.
(443) Kismaayo kistaa ama kaskaa – (To live) in Kismayo[45] (one needs) either money or brains;
(444) *Kismaayo waa kistaa ama waa kaskaa.
4.7.6. 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:
(445) 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:
(446) Caano daatay waa la dabo qabtaa and
(447) Caano daatayba dabadood la qabay.
Proverbs 445 and 446 represent syntactic structures with the indefinite personal pronoun la, followed by a direct object (in the first example caano daatay dabadood – ‘spilled milk’s tail’, in the second caano daatayba – ‘any spilled milk’) and a verbal predicate in the form of the 3rd person masculine singular in the Present General Tense (qabtaa – ‘catches’ and dabo qabtaa – ‘catches behind’). But whereas in (445) the SP baa makes the object into the rheme, in (446) the SP waa transfers logical accent to the verb.
Proverb (447), which is used along with other variants, belongs to the paremias described in 4.7.1, which have archaic verbal forms in the Past Independent Tense incompatible with any of the sentence particles and seldom used in contemporary Somali.
6. Bibliography
Виноградов, В. А. 1997 “К типологии фокусных конструкций в западно-африканских языках” – Африка в меняющемся мире, 2. Москва.
Жолковский, А. К. 1966 “Последовательность предглагольных частиц в языке сомали” – Языки Африки. Москва.
Жолковский, А. К. 1971 Синтаксис сомали. Москва.
Капчиц, Г. Л. 1983 Сомалийские пословицы и поговорки (составление, перевод с сомали, предисловие и логико-семиотическая классификация) Москва.
Капчиц, Г. Л. 1996 “«Война» и «мир» в сомалийских паремиях” – Африка: общества, культуры, языки. Москва.
Капчиц, Г. Л., Кенадид М. 1996 “Устные формы речи и проблема становления письменности языка сомали” – Литературный язык и устные сферы коммуникации. (Ред. В. Я. Порхомовский, Н. Н. Семенюк). Москва.
Капчиц, Г.Л. 1997 “Логический акцент в языке сомали: фразовая частица waa ” Африка в меняющемся мире, 2. Москва.
Капчиц, Г. Л. 1998 “Логический акцент в языке сомали: фразовая частица baa ” – Африка: общества, культуры, языки. Москва.
Капчиц, Г. Л. 1999 “Логический акцент в языке сомали: фразовая частица waxaa ” – Африка: общества, культуры, языки. Москва.