The Digital Polyglot - Morphosyntax

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Even More on Bicycles . . . and Other Syntactic Curiosities

F. Even More on Bicycles . . . and Other Syntactic Curiosities. The data sets in this section are designed to show how passive and causative sentences are formed in our featured languages. Students can work through the data sets to do morpheme identification and to make typological comparisons. Click on the underlined sentences to hear audio clips.

1a Velosiped ukrali.
1a "(They) stole the bicycle" = The bicycle was stolen

1b Velosiped bil ukrazhen.
1b The bicycle was stolen.

2 Velosiped bil ukrazhen devushkoj.
2 The bicycle was stolen by the girl.

3 Velosiped bil ukrazhen ej.
3 The bicycle was stolen by her.

4 On zastavil menja smejat'sja.
4 He made me laugh.

5 Mne nravjatsja jabloka.
5 I like apples.

1 Incinga yaaciibwa.
1 The bicycle was stolen

2 Incinga yaaciibwa ku mwanakashi.
2 The bicycle was stolen by the girl.

3 Incinga yaaciibwa kuli eena.
3 The bicycle was stolen by her.

4 Aacinsekesha saana.
4 He made me laugh a lot.

5 Naalitemwa imbalala.
5 I like groundnuts (peanuts).

1 Sa gaoia le uila.
1 The bicycle was stolen

2 Sa gaoi e le teine le uila.
2 The bicycle was stolen by the girl.

3 Sa gaoi e ia le uila.
2 The bicycle was stolen by her.

See Other Syntactic Curiosities study sheet (handed out in class) for instructions.

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