The BG Language Creation Guide

Translation Test Answers

Sentence 1: The child swims.

• First, locate the content words you will need. Make sure each is the proper part of speech. In this case, both are given to you in the data in the proper form.
• Next, put the content words in order. The first sentence has no direct object. Thus, since Liqupa is an OSV language, content words in the first sentence go in this order:
  Liqupa: miciya maqusa
  Gloss: child swim
• Before continuing, ask yourself why the gloss is ,child swim, and not ,child swims,.

  You should note that "swims" is two morphemes: swim-s (swim plus an inflectional 3s agreement suffix. As far as we know so far, there is no 3s agreement marker on the verb maqusa.

• Consulting the list of content words, we see that ,child, contains two morphemes: ,mici, means ,person and ,-ya, meaning "small". We also see that ,swim, contains two morphemes: ,maqu, which means ,fish, and a form ,-sa, which is one of the two identical halves of the verb ,go,. We can then refine the gloss like this:

  Liqupa: mici-ya maqu-sa
  Gloss: person-small fish-go

• Since there are no articles or plurals, the subject of the sentence is now complete.
• The morphosyntactic information provided indicates that verbs agree in person with their subject. The subject of this sentence is 3rd person. Adding the appropriate prefix, we get:
  Liqupa: mici-ya u-maqu-sa
  Gloss: person-small 3-fish-go
• Since present tense is unmarked, the verb can remain as it is, and we are finished with the verb.
• Finally, look at the glosses and construct (if you don't have one already, a nice free translation that sounds like normal English. In this case, since you are translating, the English has been provided for you already. You end up with these three lines:
  Liqupa: mici-ya u-maqu-sa
  Gloss: person-small 3-fish-go
  Translation: The child swims.

Sentence 2: The Bird will Walk.

Liqupa: pipa u-na-mici-sa
Gloss: bird 3-fut-person-go
English translation: The bird will walk.

Sentence 3: The Little Duck Caught the Fish

• Looking at your listof words, you find no word for 'baby'. this need not be a problem. What is the most economical way of constructing the word you need from the morphemes provided?

  You have a morpheme for 'small': -ya. the hyphen tells you this is a bound suffix, so it has to be attached to a noun. We will attach it to 'daq', the word for duck.

  this yields 'daq-ya' duck'small. the problem with this is that it violates Liqupa syllable structure which is strictly CV CV CV until you reach the final syllable which may be CVC. Thus, in accordance with the rules of the language, the /q/ is deleted and the word becomes 'da-ya'.

• Next, by placing the content morphemes that you have in order. Note that, since the word order is OSV, the object (fish) goes first.

  Liqupa: maqu da-ya mama
  Gloss: fish duck-small catch

• We will move from left to right. Since Liqupa has no articles, and ,fish, is not modified in any way, we need do nothing to the object. the subject is also finished since we constructed this word first.
• The last constituent to consider is the verb. We have already seen how to mark agreement with a 3rd person subject. We must also add a tense marker to change the verb ,catch, to its past tense ,caught,. The verb is irregular in English, but it is apparently regular in Liqupa. Just because a verb is irregular in one language does not mean it has to be irregular in another. We see that the agreement marker precedes tense. We add the inflectional morphology and amend the gloss to complete the translation:

  Liqupa: maqu da-ya u-pa-mama
  Gloss: fish duck-small 3-past-catch

• Add the translation, and you are finished.

  Liqupa: maqu da-ya u-pa-mama
  Gloss: fish duck-small 3-past-catch
  Translation: The little duck caught the fish.

Sentence 4: You Touch the Children

• Begin by finding and placing the content morphemes. Use a place marker so you don't forget to come back for the pronoun.

  Liqupa: miciya (you) nini
  Gloss: child (you) touch

• Once again, we begin at the left-most element. The first thing to do is pluralize child. Consulting the list of Liqupa words, we find no plural morpheme listed--a careless oversight by the lexicographer! . However, we do see these forms: ,pipa, (bird), ,pipama, (birds). From them, we deduce that the plural suffix mentioned in the morphosyntactic description must be -ma. We can add this suffix to the noun. We can also insert the morpheme boundary between ,mici, and ,-ya, and adjust the gloss.

  Liqupa: mici-ya-ma (you) nini
  Gloss: person-little-pl (you) touch

• the next element is the pronoun. It is clear from the translation that the subject of this sentence is second person, but the English translation does not indicate if this is singular or plural. Since we can't ask the speaker (or writer) of this sentence what s/he meant and there is no context to use to tell which is meant, we just decide. Let's choose a 2p pronoun. The form is ama. Remember that pronouns are glossed not by their English translations but rather by person and number. If we wrote ,you, here, we would lose the information that this is a plural subject. Glossing should preserve as much of the original meaning as possible.

  We chose the plural form of the second person pronoun, and it's plain that there is a -ma pluralizing suffix here as well. We can insert that morpheme boundary.

  Liqupa: mici-ya-ma a-ma nini
  Gloss: person-small-pl 2-pl touch

• Finally, the verb needs attention. This is something we have done before. The verb agrees in person with the subject. The number of the subject is irrelevant. Choose and insert the proper agreement prefix, and adjust the gloss. Since the verb is once again in the present tense, no further changes are necessary. Here is the final product:

  Liqupa: mici-ya-ma ama a-nini
  Gloss: person-little-pl 2pl 2-touch
  English Translation: You touch the children.

Sentence 5: The birds disagreed

• The interesting part of this task presents itself immediately: there is no verb for 'disagree' in the lexicon provided. We have, however, a noun 'disagreement' (huhu) and a derivational suffix which makes nouns into verbs: '-a'. We can use these together to make the verb we need: 'huhu-a'.
• Place the content words in order.
  Liqupa: pipa huhu-a.
  Gloss: bird disagreement-verbalizer
• Now, move from left to right and add the inflectional morphology. The subject needs a plural marker and the verb needs both tense and agreement.
  Liqupa: pipa-ma u-pa-huh-a
  Gloss: bird-pl 3-past-disagreement-verbalizer
  The birds disagreed.