| Compound sentences
can occur with or without connectors. Munda people generally break
a compound sentence into two or more simple sentences, but compound
forms are also not infrequent. Following examples will illustrate
different types of compound sentences in Mundari, with or without
connectors. List of connectors have already been supplied in §
3.2.3., while dealing with co-ordinate clauses. |
| (a) Compound
sentence without connectors: A number of possibilities may arise in
this situation. Two co-ordinate sentences may just be juxtaposed with
only an intonational marker for the transition, as in the following.
The terminal contour occurs towards the end of the whole sequence. |
|
neregei
taina, amge parkanme ‘I stay here, you leave apart’
|
| Simple one word imperative
also may be found in such cases - |
|
de, naado miad kiri-hon omalime!
‘give, now give to us one buffalo calf’
|
| A proverb type sentence
may be used without a connector: |
| sekerage
durum janae, laai pere?akan-re-do
durumgea ‘very soon he fell
into sleep, when the stomach is full sleep comes eventually’. |
| In case of direct
narration, there is no connector between the reporter and reported
speeches: |
ceøe
bike meta?aia
neado ai)a? o a?
‘the bird told the snake "this house is mine". |
| One of the compound
sentences may be elliptical: |
| neta?re aiN
baari-ge, horo-do mena?i)a
‘here I (stay) all alone, it is I who is the human being’. |
| (b) Compound
sentence with connectors: As stated above, there may be a single subject
performing two actions one after another, so that there may be compound
sentence with connector having tow finite verbs to join: |
gan a-garua
biN ke-e sab ki?a ar ud-di?ae
|
|
‘the heron caught hold of the snake and swallowed it’ |
| or: |
|
ini? daru-re-e deakan taikena oo?
keakoa?naten
patar-ehasetan
taikena ‘ |
|
he had been climbing on the tree and had been plucking leaves for
his buffalo-calves’. |
| More than one subject
are used in a compound sentence only when they are different: |
|
mara
haga hiju?kena ar hui
haga senkena |
|
‘the elder brother came and the younger brother went away’ |
| One of the co-ordinating
clauses may be elliptical in such compound sentences with connectors: |
|
saki!
hoio leka nir-dai
ni? mendo lan·ia-te-gem taiom jana
|
|
‘my friend! you (are) a person capable of running like wind, yet,
you wre left behind as a lazy man’. |
|
The indirect speech is embedded in a compound sentence or ‘said so’
: |
|
rajaokai
boroia mente kaji jadae |
|
‘I will not be afraid even of the king, said he like this’. |
| Compound sentences
which are used for so-called metalinguistic purposes, where language
is used to define or describe anything regarding language use itself,
map occur with or without a connector, depending upon whether indirect
or direct speech is used for the prupose: |
|
nea sirma-a mente honko |
|
‘this is called ‘roof’, people say so’ |
| or: |
|
neale sirma-a |
|
‘we call this roof’ |
| In the latter
example /nea-le/ is an elliptical sentence, full form would mean ‘we
call this, ‘it is roof’. |
