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/mérí à hú ìnhnù, án n:?/
(mary)(she)(come)(late) (did not she)
‘Mary came late, did n’t she?’
 
In recent times, there are tendencies for lengthening tag questions by addition of /a/ or /m/
/mérí a hú ìnhnu, ánnh á?/
    ánnm:?/
/Mary came late, did n’t she?’
Such interrogative sentences only intend to confirm an impression already formed by the speaker about a particular thing, person or occation.
 
4.5.2.4
 Counter Echo Questions
Hmar forms another type of questions which consists of two coordinate clauses, the first one being an affirmative question and the second one a negative question both being connected by a question indicator /am/. In other words, the second clause is a counter echo or the first clause and it carries interrogative intonation. Such questions could thus be subscribed as counter echo equations. Unlike English, there is no grapping in such interrogative sentences consisting of two coordinate clauses. Given below are a few sentences.
 
/ì hú ám ì hú n?/
(you)(come) (will) (or) (you)(come)(not) (will)
‘will you come or (you will) not?’
 
/á hrìl dí ám á hrìl n?/
(he)(tell) (will) (or) (he) (tell) (not) (will)
‘will he tell or (he will) not?’
 
/ín ùm dì ám úm lu dì?/
 
ín ùm n?/
(you)(pl)(stay)(will)(or)(you)(stay)(not)(will)
‘you will stay or (you will) not?’
 
/à hú tàh ám à hú tàh n:/
(he)(come)(+past)(or)(he)(come)(+past)(not)
‘did he come or (he did) not?’
In such constructions the negative element /nh/ changes to /n/ and the clause-connector function is peformed by /am/ meaning ‘or’ or /s/.
 
4.5.2.5
Important Feature or Interrogative Sentences
What is more significant in the use of interrogative transformation in Hmar is the use of interrogative intonation. Neither word order nor the use of any interrogative particle is a signaling factor of any interrogative sentence. In wh- type questions, the wh- element, of course, gives a hint that the sentence could be interrogative; but here too, the presence of an interrogative intonation is essential. The highly flexible word-order or Hmar sentences makes the interrogative transformation highly dependent on intonation.
4.5.3
 Passive Transformation
4.5.3.1
Hmar, in the strict sense, does not manifest passive proper. This is precisely because there is no change in the verb forms for the realisation of active as well as passive. Whether the sentence is an actor-action sentence or undergoer-action between an active sentence and its corresponding passive could be realised only from the context.
An active (= actor-action) sentence could be transformed into a passive one first by treating the object as subject and then restructuring the sentence by preferably adding a statement marker /a nìh/ ‘it is’, and secondly by suffixing /-tu/ ‘by’ to the the element representing ‘by’ in English is attached to the agent-turned-object noun.
4.5.3.2
It may be noted that Hmar manifests two alternate types of passive transformations for each active sentence. It still remains an

 

 

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