As we have already seen in
| (1) | a. | * | We watch will that show. |
| b. | We will never watch that show. | ||
| c. | (Will you watch that show?) We will. |
The past tense, on the other hand, is ordinarily expressed by the suffix -ed, which, being a bound morpheme, combines with the verb to form a morphologically complex word.
| (2) | a. | We watch-ed that show. | |
| b. | * | We -ed never watch that show. | |
| c. | * | (Will you watch that show?) We -ed. |
This dual expression of tense is typical of the Germanic language family, to which English belongs. In all of these languages, the future is expressed analytically (as two separate words), and the past is mostly expressed synthetically (as a single morphologically complex word).
The syntactic structure for sentences presented in
In addition to presenting the basic facts of verb raising and tense
lowering, we discuss a closely related topic in the grammar of English: the
do support found in negative sentences like I don't like
okra. We also present crosslinguistic evidence that verb raising is
linked to the richness of subject-verb agreement, and we discuss the
effects of the loss of agreement in a language on the learnability of verb
raising.
As we mentioned, merging tense and the verb can take place in two
directions. We begin with the case in which V moves to I. In this
connection, it is informative to consider the future tense in French,
which is formed by attaching suffixes to a verb's infinitive.
Verb raising: V movement to I
The French future tense
| (3) | Future of chanter 'to sing' | Present of avoir 'to have' | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| je chanter-ai | 'I will sing' | j'ai | 'I have' | |||
| tu chanter-as | 'you.sg will sing' | tu as | 'you.sg have' | |||
| il, elle chanter-a | 'he, she will sing' | il, elle a | 'he, she has' | |||
| nous chanter-ons | 'we will sing' | nous avons | 'we have' | |||
| vous chanter-ez | 'you.pl will sing' | vous avez | 'you.pl have' | |||
| ils, elles chanter-ont | 'they will sing' | ils, elles ont | 'they have' | |||
As is evident from (3), the future tense affixes are nearly identical to the present tense forms of the verb avoir 'to have', the only difference being that the first and second person plural affixes are truncated by comparison to the full two-syllable forms of avoir. This correspondence suggests that the future tense in French developed via a semantic shift from 'I have to V' to 'I will V'. In addition, and more immediately relevant for our present purposes, the originally free forms of avoir were reanalyzed as bound morphemes. The analytic roots of the synthetic French future tense thus indicate that the two ways of expressing tense are not just semantically parallel, but are also not as unrelated morphologically as they seem at first glance. In particular, what the French case suggests is that bound tense morphemes can project syntactic structure on a par with free morphemes. The elementary trees for the future tense affixes in (3) are then as in (4).
| (4) | a. |
| b. |
| c. |
| d. |
| e. |
| f. |
|
Given these elementary trees, a sentence like (5) can be derived as follows.
| (5) | Nous chanterons une chanson. we sing.fut a song 'We will sing a song.' |
We begin with the elementary tree for the verb chanter in (6a) and substitute it as the complement of the elementary tree for the future tense marker to yield the structure in (6b).
| (6) | a. | 
| b. | 
| |||
| Elementary tree for chanter | Substitute (6a) in elementary tree for future tense | ||||||
The synthetic future tense form can then be created by moving the verb and left-adjoining it to the tense morpheme, as the step-by-step derivation in (7) shows. In our previous uses of the adjunction operation, the target of adjunction was the intermediate projection of a head that was being modified, and the constituent being adjoined was a maximal projection. In the present case, the target of adjunction and the constituent being adjoined are both heads, and adjunction is used to create a morphologically complex word. The formal operation, however, is the same in both cases.
| (7) | a. | 
| b. | 
| c. | 
| |||||
| Select target of adjunction | Clone target of adjunction | Attach V as left daughter of clone | |||||||||
The remaining steps of the derivation are identical to the ones that would be required to derive the English sentence We will sing a song and are shown in (8).
| (8) | a. | 
| b. | 
| |||
| Substitute arguments | Move subject | ||||||
| (9) | a. | Elle va à peine travailler trois heures. she goes hardly work three hours 'She is going to hardly work three hours.' | |
| b. | Mon ami va complètement perdre la tête. my friend goes completely lose the head 'My friend is going to completely lose his head.' | ||
| c. | Je vais presque oublier mon nom. I go almost forget my name 'I'm going to almost forget my name.' | ||
| (10) | a. | * | Elle va travailler à peine trois heures. |
| b. | * | Mon ami va perdre complètement la tête. | |
| c. | * | Je vais oublier presque mon nom. | |
| (11) | a. | * | Elle va travailler trois heures à peine. |
| b. | * | Mon ami va perdre la tête complètement. | |
| c. | * | Je vais oublier mon nom presque. |
These word order facts reflect the fact that the adverbs in question obligatorily adjoin to the left of V' rather than to the right, as shown schematically in (12).
| (12) | 
|
The same word order facts and analysis hold for participles as for infinitives.
| (13) | a. | Elle avait à peine travaillé trois heures. she had hardly worked three hours 'She had hardly worked three hours.' | |
| b. | Mon ami a complètement perdu la tête. my friend has completely lost the head 'My friend completely lost his head.' | ||
| c. | J'avais presque oublié mon nom. I had almost forgotten my name 'I had almost forgotten my name.' | ||
| (14) | a. | * | Elle avait travaillé à peine trois heures. |
| b. | * | Mon ami a perdu complètement la tête. | |
| c. | * | J'avais oublié presque mon nom. | |
| (15) | a. | * | Elle avait travaillé trois heures à peine. |
| b. | * | Mon ami a perdu la tête complètement. | |
| c. | * | J'avais oublié mon nom presque. |
As (16) and (17) show, the negative marker pas behaves like an adverb.
| (16) | a. | Nous allons (ne) pas écouter la radio. we go NE not listen the radio 'We are going not to listen to the radio.' | |||||||||||||||||
| b. | * | Nous allons (ne) écouter pas la radio. |
With finite verbs, however, the adverb-verb order that is obligatory with infinitives and participles is ungrammatical.
| (18) | a. | * | Elle à peine travaillera trois heures. she hardly work.fut three hours 'She will hardly work three hours.' |
| b. | * | Mon ami complètement perdra la tête. my friend completely lose.fut the head 'My friend will completely lose his head.' | |
| c. | * | Je presque oublierai mon nom. I almost forget.fut my name 'I will almost forget my name.' | |
| d. | Nous (ne) pas écouterons la radio. we NE not listen.fut the radio 'We won't listen to the radio.' |
Instead, the adverb must follow the verb, although it still cannot follow the entire V'.
| (19) | a. | Elle travaillera à peine trois heures. | |
| b. | Mon ami perdra complètement la tête. | ||
| c. | J' oublierai presque mon nom. | ||
| d. | Nous (n') écouterons pas la radio. | ||
| (20) | a. | * | Elle travaillera trois heures à peine. |
| b. | * | Mon ami perdra la tête complètement. | |
| c. | * | J' oublierai mon nom presque. | |
| d. | * | Nous (n') écouterons la radio pas. |
We can make sense of these facts if we make the reasonable assumption that the adverbs under discussion adjoin to the left of V' regardless of the finiteness of the verb that they modify. This gives the right adverb-verb order for infinitives and participles, and it also immediately explains the ungrammaticality of (20). In addition, if finite verbs move to I to be united with the tense morpheme, as shown in (21), then the verb-adverb order with finite verbs follows straightforwardly as well.
| (21) | a. | 
| b. | 
|
Since it is difficult to see how an analysis under which I lowers to V could handle these facts in a principled way, we conclude that V raises to I in French, rather than that I lowers to V.
As (22) and (23) show, the adverb facts for other simple tenses in French are parallel to those for the future tense.
| (22) | a. | Elle travaillait à peine trois heures. she work.imperf hardly three hours 'She used to hardly work three hours.' | |
| b. | Mon ami perd complètement la tête. my friend lose.pres completely the head 'My friend completely loses his head.' | ||
| c. | J' oublie presque mon nom. I forget.pres almost my name 'I am almost forgetting my name.' | ||
| d. | Nous (n') écoutions pas la radio. we NE listen.imperf not the radio Intended meaning: 'We weren't listening to the radio.' | ||
| (23) | a. | * | Elle à peine travaillait trois heures. |
| b. | * | Mon ami complètement perd la tête. | |
| c. | * | Je presque oublie mon nom. | |
| d. | * | Nous (ne) pas écoutions la radio. |
On the strength of this evidence, we extend the verb raising analysis
to these other tenses as well.
Let us now turn to the English past tense. As the contrast between
(24) and (25) shows, English adverbs, unlike their French counterparts,
precede verbs regardless of their finiteness.
Tense lowering: I movement to V
The order of verbs and adverbs in English
| (24) | a. | They { always, never } applied. | |
| b. | They will { always, never } apply. | ||
| c. | They have { always, never } applied. | ||
| d. | They are { always, never } applying. | ||
| (25) | a. | * | They applied { always, never. } |
| b. | * | They will apply { always, never. } | |
| c. | * | They have applied { always, never. } | |
| d. | * | They are applying { always, never. } |
This means that the verb raising analysis that is successful for French cannot be extended to English. But recall the second option that we mentioned earlier: that tense and the verb might merge in the other direction, by means of I lowering onto V. The simplest way of implementing this idea would be to have -ed project an elementary tree, as in (26a). The past tense marker would then take a VP complement, as shown in (26b), and rightward adjunction of the tense marker to the verb would result in the structure in (26c).
| (26) | a. | 
| b. | 
| c. | 
| |||||
| Elementary tree for bound morpheme | Substitute VP in (26a) | Lower tense morpheme from I to V | |||||||||
| Unsatisfactory analysis | |||||||||||
But although this analysis would allow us to derive regular past tense
verbs, it doesn't extend to irregular past tense forms like brought,
sang, taught, and so on. In order to derive both types of
past tense forms, we will therefore assume a silent past tense morpheme as
in
| (27) | a. | 
| b. | 
| ||||||
| One possibility | ||||||||||
On the other hand, V might dominate the bare form of the verb, as in (28).
| (28) | a. | 
| b. | 
| ||||||
| Another possibility | ||||||||||
The idea would then be that structures like (28b) are passed on to a
morphological component of the grammar, which contains rules for how to
spell out the contents of lexical nodes. According to these rules, the
past tense in English is ordinarily spelled out as -ed. With
irregular verbs, however, it is the entire combination of verb and tense
that is spelled out in more or less idiosyncratic fashion. Thus,
watch-[past] would be spelled out as watched, whereas
sing-[past] would be spelled out as sang. Although the choice
between the approaches in (27) and (28) is not completely straightforward,
we prefer the second approach for the following reason. According to the
first approach, the morphological component generates verb forms bearing
certain properties, or features, including tense. These verb
forms then project elementary trees in the syntax that combine with other
elementary trees, possibly yielding ungrammatical structures. For
instance, a present tense I might take a VP complement headed by a past
tense form. In order to rule out structures with such feature mismatches,
it would be necessary to institute a special checking procedure, either as
part of tense lowering itself or as a sort of quality control on the
structures resulting from it. The second approach avoids the need for such
a procedure. The idea is that the contents of V contain no tense features
of their own, eliminating the possibility for feature mismatches in the
syntax. When the syntactic structures are passed on to the morphological
component, the tense-verb combinations are simply spelled out appropriately
according to the morphological rules of the language.
Do support in English
In vernacular English, never often functions as simple sentence
negation, without its literal meaning of not ever. An example of
this use is given in (29).
| (29) | a. | Did you get a chance to talk to Tom at the party? | ||
| b. | i. | Nope, I never did. | ||
| ii. | Nope, I didn't. |
But despite their functional similarity, the negative elements not and never exhibit a striking syntactic difference: not obligatorily triggers do support, whereas never doesn't. (All forms of do in this section are to be read as unstressed.)
| (30) | a. | * | He not applied. |
| b. | He { did not, didn't } apply. | ||
| (31) | a. | He never applied. | |
| b. | * | He did never apply. |
How can we explain this puzzling fact? Before going any further, we should say that do support raises some of the thorniest problems in English syntax, and no completely satisfactory analysis of it exists as yet. The analysis that we present in what follows accounts for the contrast between (30) and (31), but does not address many other puzzling facts that have been discovered in connection with do support. The analysis relies on two main ideas, which we elaborate in turn: first, that never and not are integrated into the structure of sentences in different ways, and second, that tense lowering (and head movement more generally) is subject to a structural constraint.
A syntactic difference between never and not. As shown in (32), never is intransitive and hence a maximal projection in its own right, whereas not is transitive and hence a head, rather than a phrase.
| (32) | a. | 
| b. | 
|
There are several pieces of evidence for this distinction. The first
comes from negative inversion, a construction reminiscent of the
so am I construction discussed in
| (33) | a. | They would appreciate no present more than another novel by Wodehouse. | |
| b. | No present would they appreciate more than another novel by Wodehouse. |
An important property of this construction is that the material preceding the auxiliary must be a maximal projection. Thus, in contrast to the DP no present in (33b), the head of the DP, the negative determiner no, cannot undergo negative inversion on its own.
| (34) | * | No would they appreciate present more than another novel by Wodehouse. |
Bearing in mind this fact about negative inversion, consider the canonical and negative inversion sentences in (35).
| (35) | a. | They will never tolerate this mess. | |
| b. | Never will they tolerate this mess. |
(36) illustrates the beginning of the derivation of (35a). (36a) is the (simplified) structure for the positive sentence corresponding to (35a). Adjoining never as a verbal modifier then yields (36b).
| (36) | a. | 
| b. | 
|
We discuss the structure for negative inversion sentences in a later chapter, but what is important for now is that never in the canonical variant is a maximal projection, and hence a possible candidate for negative inversion.
Now consider the not variant of (35a) in (37).
| (37) | They will not tolerate this mess. |
Making the reasonable assumption that I can take either NegP or VP complements, the structure for (37) is as in (38).
| (38) | 
|
Given this structure, not on its own is not a maximal projection, and so not, like no but unlike never, should not be able to undergo negative inversion. As (39) shows, this expectation is confirmed.
| (39) | * | Not will they tolerate this mess. |
A second piece of evidence for the status of not (and its variant n't) as a head comes from the fact that it optionally raises and adjoins to I, forming a complex head that can exhibit morphological irregularities. For instance, shall-n't and will-n't are spelled out as shan't and won't, respectively. Such irregularities are typical of what is possible when two heads combine. Although the direction of movement is different, we have seen comparable examples in connection with irregular past tense forms in English, where the combination of two heads like sing and [past] is spelled out as sang. Other well-known examples of the same phenomenon include the idiosyncratic spell-outs for preposition-determiner combinations like those in (40).
| (40) | a. | French | de + le > du; de + les > des; à + le > au; à + les > aux of the.m.sg of the.pl to the.m.sg to the.pl | |
| b. | German | an + dem > am; in + dem > im; zu + dem > zum; zu + der > zur to the.m.dat.sg in the.m.dat.sg to the.m.dat.sg to the.f.dat.sg | ||
| c. | Italian | con + il > col; en + il > nel; su + il > sul with the.m.sg in the.m.sg on the.m.dat.sg |
A constraint on tense lowering. We turn now to the second piece of our solution to the puzzle presented by the contrast between (30) and (31), repeated here as (41) and (42).
| (41) | a. | * | He not applied. |
| b. | He { did not, didn't } apply. | ||
| (42) | a. | He never applied. | |
| b. | * | He did never apply. |
The idea is that tense lowering (though not verb raising) is subject to the locality condition in (43).
| (43) | a. | When a head A lowers onto a head B, A and B must be in a local relation in the sense that no projection of a head distinct from A and B intervenes on the path of branches that connects A and B. | |
| b. | An element C, C distinct from A and B, intervenes between two elements A and B iff A (or some projection of A) dominates C and C (or some projection of C) dominates B. |
It is important to understand that intervention is defined not in terms of linear precedence, but in terms of the structural predicate 'dominate.' This means that the place to look for whether the locality condition in (43) is satisfied or violated is not the string of terminal nodes beginning with A and ending with B, but the path of branches that connects A with B in the tree.
The structure for (42a) is given in (44). In this structure, tense lowering is consistent with the locality condition in (43), since adjoining never at V' results in the adverb being too low in the tree to intervene between I and V.
| (44) | 
|
In the structure in (45a), on the other hand, tense lowering violates the locality condition because the boxed projections of Neg intervene on the path between I and V. As a result, only the do support variant of (45a) is grammatical, which is shown in (45b). Although the intermediate and the maximal projections of Neg intervene between I and V in (45b) as well, the locality constraint in (43) is not violated because forms of do, being free morphemes, don't need to lower onto the verb.
| (45) | a. | 
| b. | 
|
| Note: In this section, +d and +t stand for the Icelandic characters eth and thorn, which represent the voiced and voiceless 'th' sounds in this, eth and thin, thorn, respectively. |
Our discussion so far has treated movement from V to I and from I to V
as two symmetrical parametric options provided by Universal Grammar.
However, the languages in which the two options have been studied in
greatest detail---the
Germanic and Romance
languages---suggest that they are ranked and that it is the V-to-I option
that is preferred, all other things being equal.
Of course, we need to take into account that in this case, as in life
generally, all other things aren't equal. Among the Germanic and Romance
languages, we can distinguish two groups, which have
to do with the expression of subject agreement on finite verbs. All of
these languages resemble English in distinguishing three
grammatical persons and two grammatical numbers (singular
and plural). In principle, therefore, a language might have six
| (46) | Verb paradigms in rich agreement languages | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Italian | Spanish | French | Icelandic | Yiddish | ||||
| 'I speak' | 'I speak' | 'I will speak' | 'I say' | 'I say' | ||||
| 1 sg | parl-o | habl-o | parler-ai | seg-i | zog | |||
| 2 sg | parl-as | habl-as | parler-a[s] | seg-ir | zog-st | |||
| 3 sg | parl-a | habl-a | parler-a | seg-ir | zog-t | |||
| 1 pl | parl-amo | habl-amos | parler-on[s] | segj-um | zog-n | |||
| 2 pl | parl-ate | habl-áis | parler-e[z] | seg-i+d | zog-t | |||
| 3 pl | parl-ano | habl-an | parler-on[t] | segj-a | zog-n | |||
By contrast, the mainland Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish) exhibit no agreement morphology at all, even with a verb like 'be', which in English preserves agreement distinctions that are not expressed elsewhere in the language. For ordinary verbs, English expresses only one distinction in the present tense and none at all in the past tense. (47) gives some paradigms for these poor agreement languages.
| (47) | Verb paradigms in poor agreement languages | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Danish | Swedish | English | |||||||
| 'I throw' | 'I am' | 'I throw' | 'I am' | 'I throw' | 'I am' | ||||
| 1 sg | kaster | er | kaster | är | throw | am | |||
| 2 sg | " | " | " | " | " | are | |||
| 3 sg | " | " | " | " | throw-s | is | |||
| 1 pl | " | " | " | " | throw | are | |||
| 2 pl | " | " | " | " | " | " | |||
| 3 pl | " | " | " | " | " | " | |||
In rich agreement languages, tense merges with the verb in the same way as we have already seen for French; that is, the verb (in boldface) raises to I and hence precedes adverbs and negation (in italics). This is illustrated for Icelandic and Yiddish in (48) and (49). The examples are in the form of subordinate clauses because main clauses introduce a complication---discussed in a later chapter---that potentially eclipses verb movement to I.
| (48) | a. | Icelandic |
a+d Jón keypti { ekki, aldrei, raunverulega } bókina
that Jón bought not never actually book.def
'that Jón { didn't buy, never bought, actually bought } the book'
| |
| b. | Yiddish |
az zey redn ( nit, avade, mistome } mame-loshn
that they speak not certainly probably mother-tongue
'that they { don't, certainly, probably } speak Yiddish'
| ||
| (49) | a. | * | a+d Jón { ekki, aldrei, raunverulega } keypti bókina | |
| b. | * | az zey { nit, avade, mistome } redn mame-loshn |
In poor agreement languages, on the other hand, tense merges with the verb by lowering onto it, just as in English (in those contexts that don't require do support); in this case, the finite verb follows adverbs and negation. (50) and (51) illustrate this for Danish and Swedish.
| (50) | a. | Danish |
at Peter { ikke, ofte } drikker kaffe om morgenen
that Peter not often drinks coffee in morning.def
'that Peter { doesn't drink, often drinks } coffee in the morning'
| |
| b. | Swedish |
att Ulf { inte, faktiskt } köpte boken
that Ulf not actually bought book.def
'that Ulf { didn't buy, actually bought } the book'
| ||
| (51) | a. | * | at Peter drikker { ikke, ofte } kaffe om morgenen | |
| b. | * | att Ulf köpte { inte, faktiskt } boken |
We note in passing that the syntax of sentences containing negation is simpler in mainland Scandinavian than it is in English. Negation patterns like other adverbs, and mainland Scandinavian has no do support. This is consistent with the status of sentence negation in Scandinavian as a maximal projection, as evidenced by its ability to participate in negative inversion.
| (52) | a. | Swedish | Inte vet jag var hon bor. not know I where she lives 'I don't know where she lives.' | |
| b. | Icelandic | Ekki veit ég hver hun byr. not know I where she lives |
We know of no rich agreement languages in which V lowers to I. Related to this is the fact that languages that lose rich agreement also tend to lose verb movement to I over time. Although we do not know why this correlation between richness of agreement and verb raising should hold, it suggests that children acquiring a language prefer the parametric option of verb raising over the tense lowering alternative, but only if they are able to detect sufficient cues for it in the sentences that they hear. In Germanic and Romance, the cues for the verb raising option are twofold: on the one hand, richness of agreement, and on the other, the word order that results from verb raising (finite verb > adverb). If the language being acquired has rich agreement, then the cues for the verb raising option are extremely robust. This is because virtually every sentence that the child hears contains the agreement cue, which is further reinforced by the word order cue in those sentences that contain adverbs. Under these conditions, children acquire the verb raising option without difficulty. On the other hand, in a language with poor agreement and without cues from word order, the idea is that children are unable to acquire the verb raising option.
What happens in a language in which agreement is being lost? In such a
language, agreement first becomes variable (that is, some sentences contain
agreement, whereas other do not) and then is lost entirely. Thus, the cues
from rich agreement become less frequent over time, and children acquiring
the language become increasingly dependent on the word order cue. But
since not every sentence contains adverbs of the relevant sort, the cues
for the verb raising option in a language that is losing rich agreement are
nowhere near as robust as in a language with stable rich agreement. This
means that although it is possible in principle for children to acquire the
verb raising option, at least some children might acquire the tense
lowering option instead (all other things being equal). Since these
speakers then no longer produce sentences in which the finite verb precedes
the adverb, the relative frequency of the word order cue decreases yet
further, in turn decreasing the chance of other children acquiring the verb
raising option. Thus, the overall tendency over time is for the verb
raising option to disappear from the language. During a period of
transition, the old parametric option might continue to be used alongside
the new one---for instance, in formal usage. But for speakers who have
acquired the tense lowering option in early childhood, the verb raising
option can never be as natural as tense lowering, and so the new parametric
option tends to supplant the old one even in formal usage.
It is possible to track these developments in some detail in the
history of the Scandinavian languages. In Swedish, agreement begins to be
lost in the 1400s, and the earliest examples of tense lowering are from the
late part of that century. During a transition period from 1500 to 1700,
both verb raising and tense lowering are attested, sometimes even in the
same text (as in the (b) examples in (53) and (54)).
| (53) | a. | Verb raising | at Gudz ord kan ey vara j honom that God's word can not be in him 'that God's word cannot be in him' | |
| b. | när thet är ey stenoghth when it is not stony 'when it is not stony' | |||
| (54) | a. | Tense lowering | om den dristigheten än skulle wara onågigtt uptagen if that boldness yet would be amiss taken 'if that boldness would yet be taken amiss' | |
| b. | wm annar sywkdom ey krenker nokon if another illness not afflict someone 'if someone isn't afflicted with another illness' |
Finally, after 1700, the verb raising option in Swedish dies out completely.
The geographically more isolated Faroese seems to be at the very tail end of the same change. Agreement has weakened in Faroese, and speakers do not ordinarily produce verb raising sentences. However, when asked to give grammaticality judgments, many speakers accept both word orders in (55), characterizing the verb raising variant in (55b) as archaic.
| (55) | a. | Tense lowering (vernacular) | Hann spur, hvi tad ikki eru fleiri tilikar samkomur. he asks why there not are more such gatherings 'He asks why there aren't more such gatherings.' | |
| b. | Verb raising (archaic) | Hann spur, hvi tad eru ikki fleiri tilikar samkomur. |
Interestingly, there is at least one dialect of Swedish, the dialect
of Älvdalen, that has retained
agreement (the paradigm for kasta 'throw' is:
| (56) | a. | um du for int gar ita ia firi brado if you get not done this before breakfast 'if you don't get this done before breakfast' | |
| b. | fast die uar int ieme if they were not home 'if they weren't home' | ||
| c. | ba fo dye at uir uildum int fy om just becuase that we would not follow him 'just because we wouldn't follow him' |