Keeping track of what has been mentioned, the -michu suffix
Because Timucua doesn’t use many pronouns, it needs some other ways to keep track of different people in stories. One way (mentioned in Lesson 3) is the use of -ta and -qe suffixes to show when the subject stays the same or changes. Another way of keeping track of people is a suffix -michu, which lets the reader know that the preceding noun has already been mentioned :
Here are some simple sentences that use the -michu suffix.:
Pedromichu nenatila
| Pedro | -michu | n- | ene- | ati- | -la |
| Pedro | -prev:mention | 1:sg | -see | -neg | -dec |
‘I did not see Pedro (who was mentioned earlier).’
Pedromichu ninutela.
| Pedro | -michu | ni | -nu | -te | -la |
| Pedro | -prev:mention | 1:sg | -not:know | -tns | -dec |
‘I don’t know Pedro (who was mentioned earlier).’
We often see the –michu suffix in stories. Let’s return to the story of the woman who ate dirt, this time looking at this sentence from line 25:
We have translated this sentence as “When the devil took his (own) food, he gave it to the noblewoman and now she did (=ate) it.”
Many of the elements of this sentence may be familiar to you at this point:
- We see the –mano suffix after the mention of the devil, showing us that he is the topic of the sentence. (The topic is the person or thing that the sentence is primarily about.)
- We see final –la showing that this is a declarative sentence.
- We see the suffix –qe showing a change of subject between the first clause and the second clause. The first clause has ‘the demon’ as its subject and the second clause has ‘the noblewoman’ as its subject. Since the subject changes from the demon to the noble woman, we use –qe to mark the change.
But what is the suffix –michu doing in the sentence? Linguists call it a ‘previous mention’ suffix, which means that –michu lets the reader or listener know that this person is someone previously discussed in the story. Because the story of the woman who ate dirt shifts attention from one thing to another, the reader or listener needs to be able to keep track (mentally) of who the text is referring to. So nubotamichu means ‘the noblewoman (that we mentioned earlier)’.
–michu is often followed by a topic suffix –no. (This is very similar to the -mano we have discussed earlier.) Anytime that –no follows –michu, it will change to –nu through a process linguists call vowel harmony.
Consider the following example:
Niamichunu iqiboqe…
Nia-michu-nu iqibo-qe
Woman-prev:mention-top laugh-and:ds
‘The (previously mentioned) woman laughed, and ..’
One important thing is to remember about –michu is that it comes at the end of a whole noun phrase, not just after a noun. If the noun is followed by some other words that modify it, –michu will normally come after these words. For example, in the following passage, we see ano inemi michunu ‘all the (previously mentioned) people’
‘All the (previously mentioned) people saw this marvel and were happy and were saved by belief and…’.
In this example, the subject is ano inemi ‘all the people’. Since they have been mentioned before and because they are the topic of the sentence, the writer wants to add the suffix –michu, so s/he puts -michu and –nu at the end of the phrase. So ano inemimichunu is correct, but it would not be correct to say *anomichunu inemi, since that doesn’t put the suffix at the end of the noun phrase.