Time for a spring TAM overhaul?

I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that, despite the fact that Koa is supposed to be an IAL and was structurally inspired partly by Tok Pisin example sentences, I didn't actually read a reference grammar of a creole until about 10 years into the design process.

My obsession with Bislama over the past few years started me on the road to rectifying this, and I've started poring over actual linguistic surveys of pidgins and creoles to try to really understand what's likely to make a language easy to learn.

Of course, at this point Koa has its own identity/structure/momentum and it's likely that there are going to end up being some irreconcilable areas. I've worked to smooth out or reduce some of them, but the fact is that the basic idea behind Koa is quite philosophical, and as such unlikely to be reflected in, for example, real-world Creoles.

Nonetheless, it may occasionally be necessary to sacrifice particular parts of the Koa identity in favor of clear optima that would otherwise be unreachable. One of these possible situations has very recently become apparent in the area of tense/aspect/mood.

To bring us up to speed, as of this moment Koa officially has the following categories:

Ø  =  aorist/timeless/stative
ma  =  imperfective
si  =  perfective
lu  =  future/volitive
io  =  "translative"
va  =  habitual
mi  =  inchoative
su  =  cessative
ha  =  irrealis
vi  =  imperative/jussive

There's been a certain amount of wiggling here in the irrealis department (principally with lu and ha), but on the whole I've been very happy with this system, the core of which has been intact since the early 2000's at latest. The thing is that, for better or for worse, creoles are fairly unified in the TAM categories they mark, and this is not how they do it.

This article gives a sense of what you would expect to see, at least based on the body of creoles we have at our disposal to examine. Of course, with very few exceptions these creoles are based on Indo-European languages, and it's hard to know how many of these similarities are due to this rather than some kind of cognitive universal. For the moment, let's assume for the sake of argument that the TAM system of the existing creoles does represent an ideal of some kind, especially since they did end up with this regardless of substrate.

To sum up the article, and incorporating one category from my own research, a typical TAM spread would look something like this:

• unmarked (aorist for statives, often past tense for actives)
• imperfect/nonpunctual/habitual
• anterior
• completive
• irrealis (future/conditional)

...plus combinations. It happens that we could potentially map these right onto our existing Koa particles:

Ø  =  aorist (statives), past etc. (actives)
ma  =  imperfect/nonpunctual
si  =  anterior
io  =  completive
lu  =  irrealis (future/conditional)

I would like to reserve the right to maintain the distinction between imperfect and habitual, and there's no reason to abandon the other telic aspect markers or jussive, so we'd also throw in:

mi  =  inchoative
su  =  cessative
vi  =  imperative/jussive

Note that the unmarked form for active (non-stative) verbs tends most neutrally to indicate completed past tense, but could also be present/future/etc. given the right context. The point is that, unlike traditional Koa, this form refers to a real event that happened (or is happening), and where that occurs temporally depends on what's most likely for a narrative involving that verb, and/or context.

So what would this mean for Koa? Mainly just a different distribution of TAM particles:

ni na ipo sahi
1SG NEG drink wine
trad "I don't drink wine"
new "I didn't drink wine" or "I'm not drinking wine," depending

ni na si ipo sahi
1SG NEG PERF/ANT drink wine
trad "I didn't drink wine"
new "I hadn't drunk wine"

ni na va ipo sahi
1SG NEG HAB drink wine
trad "I don't usually drink wine"
new "I don't drink wine" or "I don't usually drink wine"

ni na ma ipo sahi
1SG NEG IMP drink wine
trad "I'm not / I wasn't drinking wine"
new "I'm not / I wasn't drinking wine" or possibly "I don't go around drinking wine"

With stative verbs, in other words verbs for which there's no change of state in any participants, things lay out a bit differently:

ni nae ka kohúla
1SG see DEF dance
trad "I'm a person who goes to see the dance" or "I see the dance"
new "I see the dance"

ni si nae ka kohúla
1SG PERF/ANT see DEF dance
trad "I saw the dance"
new "I saw/had seen the dance"

ni va nae ka kohúla
1SG HAB see DEF dance
trad "I make a habit of seeing the dance"
new "I see the dance sometimes" or "I make a habit of seeing the dance"

ni ma nae ka kohúla
1SG IMP see DEF dance
trad "I'm looking at the dance"
new "I'm looking at the dance" or "I always see the dance"

It makes sense: why not make the formally unmarked form the one whose meaning is also least marked? This becomes particularly, even indispensably useful, with verbs involving a process. These posed a major dilemma for traditional Koa in an effort to avoid Esperanto-style arbitrariness.

Take the concept of waking up. Should the root morpheme be an adjective describing the state of awakeness? Or should it be verbal, describing the process of waking up? In other words, should ta vene mean "she's awake" or "she wakes up?" I tried to come up with a decision-making flow chart along the lines of cultural importance of the process versus the completed state, but in the end it was going to be a largely arbitrary choice.

If we take change-of-state verbs as basically past-tense by default -- in other words, the unmarked form denotes a completed process -- this problem completely goes away: for example, we have ta vene "he is awake" or "he woke up," which are after all approximately the same thing, ta io vene "he already woke up / is already awake" to emphasize the completedness of the process, and ta ma vene "he's waking up" to emphasize the imperfectiveness of the process.

This works with the whole conceptual family, and obviates the need to make any decrees from on high.  Check out how nicely these verbs lay out when used adjectivally, without needing aspect particles:

vene "awake"
nuku "asleep"
ela "alive"

mua "dead"
lopu "finished, over"
eki "seated"
maka "prone"

Furthermore, we could also say that this kind of verb is hermaphroditic with respect to transitivity: in other words, we could allow ta vene ni "he woke me up" and avoid a whole other hornet's nest of deciding which valence should be neutral. Suddenly the language is much, much easier to learn, not to mention design...

It also helps tidy up the difference between e.g. "see" and "look." Context will still play an important role, but rather than the meaning being inferred completely from context, there will also be a different relationship of particle structure to aspect which will help resolve the intent:

ni nae ka hapi
1SG see DEF ant
"I see the ants" OR "I looked at the ants"

ni ma nae ka hapi
1SG IMP see DEF ant
"I'm looking at the ants" OR "I'm always seeing ants"

ni si nae ka hapi
1SG ANT see DEF ant
"I saw the ants" OR "I had looked at the ants"

In sum, it seems like this is a really good idea: it both helps me out of all kinds of aspectual binds, and makes the system more creole-like in keeping with the aims of the design. The question, though, is whether this will integrate with the foundational modular systems of the language: however great it seems, I can't keep it if it would wreak havoc with everything else.

The main area of concern is with the unmarked forms. A lalu would now no longer refer to one who can/might/will sing, but rather one who really did or does sing. I don't think this is a problem, though:

ta lalu
3SG sing
"he sang" OR "he is a singer"

...in the sense that he can be called that because of some singing which he has done, is doing, or will do. So VP's are okay; how about adjectives?

a mola lalu
INDEF bear sing
"a singing bear, a bear singer, a bear who sings/sang"

Seems totally fine. And the nominal form is unproblematic as well.

Well, then, there we have it: looks like there's no reason not to make this change. The biggest thing to get used to will be using si a whole lot less (and actually, I'll need to devote a post to the question of when to use it -- my current creole research will help with this). I'm not completely sure what all the repercussions may be, so stay tuned for future agonizing...

Follow-up thoughts about pronominal objects

Okay, I might have gotten a bit overzealous in the previous post. This ka talo ne instead of ne ka talo business isn't winning any aesthetic awards in my neck of the woods, and I'm not sure it even really makes sense. Let's hold off on that while we think things through.

Vis-à-vis preposed objects, Nahuatl has me thinking that another reading might be desirable:

le Motekusoma ni puhu
NAME Moteuczoma 1SG greet 2SG
"It is I, Montezuma, who spoke"

Here ni is taking the pronoun position that i would usually fill in a clause like this. I suppose there isn't any reason why I can't do both, other than the risk of ambiguity; but actually, thinking it over, genuine ambiguity seems to be hard to come by. For one thing, the subject and object pronouns are in different places, thus

le Motekusoma ni na se kanu
NAME Moteuczoma 1SG NEG 2SG injure
"It was not I, Montezuma, who injured you"

le Motekusoma i se nae
NAME Moteuczoma FIN 2SG see
"Montezuma sees you"

le Motekusoma se nae
NAME Moteuczoma 2SG see
"You, Montezuma, do see"

In fact, I'm having trouble coming up with a single ambiguous example. I really wasn't expecting that.

So what's the difference between these?

le Keoni i si tule
NAME John FIN PERF come
"John has come"

le Keoni ta si tule
NAME John 3SG PERF come
"It is he, John, who has come"
"He, John, has come"

I'm pretty sure the answer is clear, but I'm getting sleepy and having trouble articulating it. Hopefully I'll remember to address this again later...

One further remark before I go to bed. I still haven't solved exactly what the "pronoun" pa ought to mean, if it really does function just like hi, but I think the difference between these two clauses:

hi si hou ka sumo ni
INDEF PERF squash DEF squash 1SG
"someone squished my squash"

pa si hou ka sumo ni
PASS PERF squash DEF squash 1SG
"my squash got squished"

...is one of overtly implied agency. In the first example, I'm intimating that a volitional agent, and probably a human, did the squashing. In the second, it's not impossible that a volitional agent was involved, but the speaker does not wish to assert this, for whatever reason. It might have been an act of nature, or an animal; or the speaker might not want to draw attention to agency.

On the other hand, the difference between

pa si hou ka sumo ni
PASS PERF squash DEF squash 1SG
"my squash got squished"

and

ka sumo ni i si pa hou
DEF squash 1SG FIN PERF PASS squash
"my squash got squished"

...is something that we're going to have to flesh out the pragmatics of. New/given information, communicative intent and all that.

Okay, bedtime.

Preverbal object pronouns and the ramifications thereof

I've long understood Koa direct objects to be formally equivalent to possessors. This is clear from parallelisms like

ka veli ni
DEF sibling 1SG
"my brother"

ka mata i veli ni
DEF short FIN sibling 1SG
"the short one is my brother"

vs

ka mata i loha ni
DEF short FIN love 1SG
"the short one loves me"

ka loha ni
DEF love 1SG
"the one who loves me"

As such, since nouns admit an alternative possessive ordering (theoretically primarily for inalienable possession according to A PREVIOUS POST): ka mama ni or ni mama for "my mom," there's no particular reason why pronominal objects couldn't be placed preverbally as well.

I first noticed this (at the very bottom) back when I was making the final decisions on genitive phrase structure, and it worried me a bit. I later announced that "pronoun objects will certainly not be acceptable preverbally." I didn't ever make an effort to motivate this decision, or really explore it in any way, and that's how it's stood for a couple years.

When trying to solve the problem of indefinite agency that came up at the bottom of the previous post, though, I realized that (A) there's no logical reason to forbid this structure, and (B) there are actually a number of very good reasons to allow it, not least the basic internal consistency of the language.

The problem that prompted this consideration was this:

OLD
hi si iune ka kala ni
INDEF PERF steal DEF fish 1SG
"someone has stolen my fish"

NEW
si hi iune ka kala ni
PERF REFL steal DEF fish 1SG
"someone has stolen my fish"

This new version, necessitated by the decision that hi would be a reflexive marker and not a pronoun, was so completely offensive to me that I had to give it some serious thought. There seemed to be complete overlap with parallel forms with pa, which made it seem like the two might actually potentially be collapsed; except that I knew that the reason I had made them separate in the first place was that they are supposed to have different meanings. Furthermore, hi "worked" in the old version precisely because it was a pronoun.

What I realized, then, was that there's no need to make a decision: I can have it both ways, as long as preverbal pronoun objects are allowed, as they should be anyway. Voilà:

ni nae hi

1SG see REFL

"I see myself" (hi = "pronoun")

ni hi nae

1SG REFL see

"I see myself" (hi = "verb marker")

This being so, there's no reason why the "old" way of doing things would need to change, and we would have two possible orderings with hi and TAM markers: in one situation, hi would precede, being a bona fide pronoun:

hi si iune ka kala ni
REFL PERF steal DEF fish 1SG
"someone has stolen my fish"

In the other, hi would follow TAM markers, looking like a verbal valence particle, but formally actually being a preposed object pronoun:

ka kala i si hi nae e mi-páto

DEF fish FIN PERF REFL see FIN INCH-fear

"the fish saw themselves and got scared"

This discovery, though, actually goes quite a bit deeper. We've been using the word "particle" in Koa to refer, basically, to monosyllables, without any attempt at a taxonomy. What this interchangeability shows is that there is at least a chunk of these particles that fall into natural classes, and which can be used more flexibly than previously understood.

That is to say, keeping the above two examples in mind: given that we have this...

ka vatu i si pa luta

DEF money FIN PERF PASS find

"the money was found"

...one begins to wonder what pa "means" if we take it out of its preverbal position, as we apparently might be able to. Is it a pronoun of some kind?

?pa si luta ka vatu

PASS PERF find DEF money

"???"

If it's a pronoun, structures should be possible like

ni si nae pa

but what would they mean? This actually gets weirder when we consider the oblique particles: ne, la, o, me, mo, pe, etc. I've been thinking of these as somewhere between case markers and prepositions, but what we see here is that they should be more accurately thought of as locative (or relational) pronouns. Or something. In other words,

la koto

ALL home

"homewards"

should theoretically have the same meaning as

ka koto la

DEF home ALL

...and furthermore, la should be usable on its own to mean something like "to it," thus

ni si mene la he leo

1SG PERF go ALL TIME today

"I went there today"

BUT THEN, if this works, then so should

ni si la mene he leo

1SG PERF ALL go TIME today

"I went there today"

and hey presto, we have a new verb laméne meaning "go to(wards)." Out of the blue, we appear to be able to do quasi-preposition-verb compounding à la Esperanto: pepúhu "talk about," otálu "push out," etc.

So the palace of Koa will have to add another wing or two after today. On the one hand we've discovered that the particles can be almost as flexible as the predicates, and we'll need to do some serious thinking about the meaning and boundaries of this; and on the other, we have a whole new species of constructions to flesh out and integrate.

Two final thoughts:

1) I really need to talk about la, o and ne as free-standing post-verbal particles as inspired by Nahuatl. I think this is compatible with all the above, but we'll want to be sure.

2) Regarding ka koto la for "to the home," I just realized something. In the same way that we can say ni talo or ka talo ni "my house," but not *ni ka talo, if we're going to go down this road then apparently we will be able to say ne masa or ka masa ne "on the table" but NOT ne ka masa. This would be a pretty big change, and we'd better be sure about it before going any further.

Co-indexed arguments

This week I finally decided to tackle reflexive verbs for some reason. It ended up being much less of a hassle than I had feared, and a surprise discovery made the whole thing much more elegant.

There are two ways of doing this, one analytical and one synthetic. For the former, we just use the same pronoun corresponding to the subject:

ni nae ni
1SG see 1SG
"I see myself"

If desired, the modifier oma "self, one's own, etc." can be added to make the co-indexing clearer:

le Kéoni i si kusu ta (oma)
NAME John FIN PERF ask 3SG (self)
"John asked himself"

A reciprocal relationship, on the other hand, can optionally be clarified by mutu "other":

nu suso nu mutu
1PL kiss 1PL other
"we kiss each other"

So far so good for the analytical strategy. I was going to be satisfied with this, but because reflexivity basically amounts to a valence-decreasing structure, I was irked by not having a particle for it like all my other valence operations. At this point I realized that hi, previously defined as "indefinite pronoun," could be admirably pressed into use here without changing its original meaning -- it's the same widespread extension that letst the Spanish (and Polish, Turkish, etc.) reflexive marker/structure also code unspecified agents (e.g. se habla español aquí), even with intransitive verbs.

As such, then, those three clauses above could also be phrased as:

ni hi nae
1SG REFL see
"I see myself"

le Kéoni i si hi kusu
NAME John FIN PERF REFL ask
"John asked himself"

nu hi suso
1PL REFL kiss
"we kiss each other/ourselves"

There's a lot more that could be said here, but I'm a little short on time so will limit myself to a brief excursion into the Koa translation of "I washed my hands." At this point I've found somewhere between six and eight ways to do it, all theoretically equally valid. For clarity in the examples below, I'll put brackets around the major phrases.

The first three all use object incorporation ("hand-wash"):

[ ni ] [ si mie molo ]
1SG PERF wash hand
"I handwashed" = "I washed my hands"

[ ni ] [ si mie molo ] [ ni ]
1SG PERF wash hand 1SG
"I handwashed myself" = "I washed my hands"

[ ni ] [ si hi mie molo ]
1SG PERF REFL wash hand
"I handwashed myself" = "I washed my hands"

Next, we could make the hands a referential object:

[ ni ] [ si mie ] [ ka molo ]
1SG PERF wash DEF hand
"I washed the hands" = "I washed my hands"

[ ni ] [ si mie ] [ ka molo ni ]
1SG PERF wash DEF hand 1SG
"I washed my hands"

or


[ ni ] [ si mie ] [ ni molo ]
1 SG PERF wash 1SG hand
"I washed my hands" (inalienable possession: controversial)

We could also make the verb bitransitive, or applicative, or whatever: in other words, express the hands' owner as an additional object:

[ ni ] [ si mie ] [ ni ] [ ka molo ]
1SG PERF wash 1SG DEF hand
"~I washed myself some hands" = "I washed my hands"

Or, if we decide to allow this sort of thing, about which the jury is definitely still out, we could reduce the indirect object to hi:

[ ni ] [ si hi mie ] [ ka molo ]
1SG PERF REFL wash DEF hand
"~I washed myself some hands"
or "~I washed myself with respect to the hands" =
"I washed my hands"

I'm not sure about this last one, but I'm rather happy about the fact that there are so many ways of theoretically accomplishing this. I suppose in a use context some of these would end up being preferred for one reason or another.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Previously, I was considering hi to be a pronoun. What's clearly happening here is that it's switching to a verbal particle like pa or mu. This does have consequences in terms of where e.g. aspectual particles fall:

OLD
hi si iune ka kala ni
INDEF PERF steal DEF fish 1SG
"someone has stolen my fish"

NEW
si hi iune ka kala ni
PERF REFL steal DEF fish 1SG
"someone has stolen my fish"

I'm actually not a huge fan of this, because it was the pronoun-ness of hi that made it work so well for me in this kind of structure. I notice, furthermore, that what this really means is that this kind of clause is an inverted form of the unmarked

ka kala ni i si hi iune
DEF fish 1SG FIN PERF REFL steal
lit. "my fish has stolen itself"

If we're going to be okay with this, it will be important to define the difference in sense between this sentence and a straight passive:

ka kala ni i si pa iune
DEF fish 1SG FIN PERF PASS steal
"my fish has been stolen"

I think I know what it is, and it's probably okay, but there is still an important question of whether this is actually want we want. More thought required.

Varying degrees

I believe I now have a complete suite of degree markers for Koa. I'll sketch them out below with both a noun and an adjective for reference:

vaha pi anu "a small amount of water, very little water"
neso pi anu "a little water, some water"
nai pi anu "some (unspecified amount of) water"
aiva pi anu "quite a bit of water"
poli pi anu "a lot of water"

kuma vaha "not very hot, a little hot"
kuma neso "slightly hot, sort of hot"
kuma nai "somewhat (neutrally) hot"
kuma aiva "quite hot"
kuma poli "very hot"

English doesn't do a very good job of distinguishing between 1 and 2, or 2 and 3, but I think the semantics are pretty straightforward:

vaha - near the lowest end of the expected spectrum of degree/quantity
neso - indefinite between low and middle
nai - completely indefinite/neutral
aiva - indefinite on the higher side
poli - near the highest end of the expected spectrum

So there you have it. I notice this set of examples owes a particularly large debt to Finnish...

Marking indefinite NPs

I've been aware for a month or so that the specifier flowchart I had been using for a couple years is getting increasingly out of date with respect to indefinite nouns. I'm not sure whether I'm quite ready to rigorously define areas of usage along pragmatic lines, which I will need to do soon, but I would at least like to discuss some of the basic facts.

A note: for non-referential NPs, that is, NPs that do not refer to a real, identifiable entity in the world, the flowchart is basically still correct. Ko is used for abstractions, po for general classes, and po may optionally be deleted in object position as a form of object incorporation. It's the difference between a and hu that requires a revision.

For easy reference, I had defined this difference primarily in terms of discourse stage importance:

[If] the amount/quantity of the referent [is] indefinite, unknown, or irrelevant to the discourse [or it is] a mass noun that is not specifically bounded in some way [or it is] being mentioned without the intention of raising it to the discourse stage, [then use hu. Otherwise, use a for indefinite NP's].

Though some of the above might yield correct results by accident, I don't believe this is the best possible characterization of the difference between these particles. The partitive analogues in particular aren't particularly accurate or useful. We need to start, instead, from the understanding that hu is the closest natural-language equivalent of the existential quantifier (∃) used in logic. As such, clauses containing hu can be glossed like this:

hu hili i ne ka talo

EXIST mouse FIN LOC DEF house

"there is a mouse such that is the case that this mouse is in the house"

...in other words,

"there's a mouse in the house"

Or as an object,

ni si nae hu mina ia kali he amu leo

1SG PERF see EXIST woman AFF beautiful TIME morning today

"there is a very beautiful woman such that it is the case that I saw her this morning"

...or more naturally,

"there's a really beautiful woman I saw this morning"

Sentences that often need to be expressed with a cleft construction in English, as above, show up in Koa with just hu:

ni halu ko sano se hua

1SG want ABSTR say 2SG EXIST-INDEF

"there is something such that I want to say this thing to you"

...that is,

"there's something I want to say to you"

Or with a negated verb,

ni na halu ko sano se hua

1SG NEG want ABSTR say 2SG EXIST-INDEF

"there is not anything such that I want to say this thing to you"

...or,

"there's nothing I want to say to you"

So what's the difference between this and the same sentences with a? It's subtle, and I'm pretty sure it's pragmatic rather than semantic. What's the difference in English between "there's a mouse in the house" and "a mouse is in the house?" Not to say that Koa usage will exactly mirror that of English, but the comparison might be instructive.

I need Robin Lakoff's brain to help me through this. My initial feeling about it is that it comes down to a question of existence versus discourse relevance. A clause with hu at base answers the question of whether the specified referent exists in the capacity indicated. A clause with a is asserting the same information, but simultaneously saying that there's some reason to care: perhaps, among other possible, reasons, because the NP is going to figure in the discourse later.

For example, returning to a frequently used sample sentence, suppose one is at a party and returns to one's glass of wine to find it empty. How do we express "Someone drank my wine!"?

Well, actually, I would probably cheat from the standpoint of this discussion and say

hi si ipo ka sahi ni

3P.INDEF PERF drink DEF wine 1SG

"someone/they drank my wine!"

But if I really want to use a structure parallel to that of English, I have two choices:

huka i si ipo ka sahi ni

EXIST.one FIN PERF drink DEF wine 1SG

"there's someone/one of them who drank my wine"

and

aka i si ipo ka sahi ni

INDEF.one FIN PERF drink DEF wine 1SG

"someone/one of them drank my wine"

The two involve rather different mental states. With hu, what we're primarily pointing out is that there, among the sea of party-goers, is some nefarious character who would stoop to drinking someone else's wine. One would expect the next step to be some kind of campaign of detection and/or persecution of the offender(s). With a, on the other hand, though the statement still identifies the existence of a culprit among those present, the sentence has a different purpose: perhaps to account for the utterer's emotional state of surprise, disappointment and/or disillusionment, or to comment on the nature of the world. One would expect his next step to be to go in search of replacement victuals.

(I would like to mention that it had never occurred to me before this morning that a word like aka should exist: I only ever had huka before. I'll have to figure out what the a counterpart of hua is: aa? Maybe aha?)

In terms of deciding which to choose on the fly in real usage situations, I think I'm going to need more specific examples in order to start distilling the guidelines. In the mean time, let's hang onto the previous definition in terms of discourse permanence, but throw out all the references to quantity and distinction between count/non-count nouns.

Ka Tuli

A first-draft Koa translation of the first verse of The Wind by Cat Stevens, courtesy of the shower this morning. The original lyrics:

I listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul
Where I'll end up, well, I think only God really knows
I sat upon the setting sun
But never never never never
I never wanted water once
No, never never never

And the Koa:

Ni kulu ka tuli, ka tuli ni aso

La kea sa ni lu tule, li ilo ka vala mono

Si eki ne nomu ka sua ma pahu

He nahua, he nahua

Ni na si ohi anu he hua

Na, he nahua, he nahua

With interlinear:

Ni kulu ka tuli, ka kuli ni aso

1SG listen DEF wind, DEF wind 1SG mind

"I listen to the wind, to the wind of my mind"

La kea sa ni lu tule, li ilo ka vala mono

ALL what FOC 1SG VOL come, INF know DEF god only

"Where it is that I will come to, I imagine only God knows"

Si eki ne nomu ka sua ma pahu

PERF sit LOC head DEF sun IMPF fall

"Having sat on top of the falling sun"

He nahua, he nahua

TIME none, TIME none

"Never, never"

Ni na si ohi anu he hua

1SG NEG PERF lack water TIME once

"I never lacked water"

Na, he nahua, he nahua

no, TIME none, TIME none

"No, never, never"

There are a couple areas where things could be better: the meter gets kind of overburdened with syllables in places, not unexpectedly; I used aso as my best possible translation of "soul," but that's not really what it means; and the first instance of "never, never" would be most easily interpreted as applying to the previous line, which is not what we want. Working on it. The boundaries of Koa poetics have yet to be explored...