Help with Glossing
Getting Started
Begin by finding two sentences you can compare: sentences that are only very slightly different from one another.
Examples here might be:
- 1 & 11. The difference here is only in the object of the sentence (the baby loves mama/daddy. From this pair we can deduce that 'mama' must mean 'mother' and 'da' must mean 'daddy'. Agai' is what is left. Does that mean 'I love"?
Looks like the object (who is loved) comes before the verb.
- 2 & 9. Here, the only difference between these sentences is that one of them says 'really' in the English translation. The only difference in the Babish is that the one that means 'really' has an extra '-gu' suffix. this might mean 'really'. Two possibilities: it's really a -gu suffix or maybe you just double that last syllable of the word to intensify it.
If the verb comes last, does that mean that 'ba' means 'milk'?
- 4 & 13. We hypothesized that 'da' means daddy. 13 also has a 'really' in the english translation and it looks like part of the verb is doubled to make the 'really' part since there's no '-gu' suffix here.
And we know now that tu means 'toy'.
- 3 and 14. If we say that the 'really' comes from doubling part of the verb, then the only difference between these two that's left unaccounted for is the negative marker. That must be 'gi'.
Moving on from there, you might
- Examine sentences 5 6 8 and 10 to see what happens to the verb when the subject is not first person singular (I).
- Use your knowledge of where the subject and object and verb go in a sentence to work out how to say 'dog', and note that it's a homophone of daddy.
- Compare 15 & 1 to see how past tense is formed,
- and 16 to confirm how the naegation, past tense and emphasis all work together.
1. mama agai
I love mama.
2. ba agu
I want milk
3. aga
I see what you mean.
4. da agiligili
I think Daddy is really funny.
5. da ba igak
Daddy has my milk.
6. da igliu
The doggy is sleeping.
7. gi agliu
I am not sleeping!
8. Mama tu igai
Mama loves my toy.
9. ba agugu
I want milk right now!
10. da gi igliu
Daddy is not sleeping.
11. da agai
I love daddy.
12. da agak
I have the doggy.
13. Tu agili
I think my toy is funny.
14. gi agaga
I really don't understand
15. ba amaimai
I really liked my milk!
16. tu gi amakmak
I really didn't want my toy.
Questions about Babish
- List all the content words you can find.
- What is the basic word order of the babish sentence?
- How is negation expressed?
- How is tense expressed?
- How is emphasis expressed?
- Do you notice any agreement morphology?