Direct-Inverse constructions in Towwu pũ saho

Towwu pũ saho has a fairly interesting syntactical system. It acts much like a direct inverse language, though the information is carried in a particle between the nouns, rather than on the verb.

To understand how this works, you first need to understand its word order. Tps is an SOV language, but there is little necessary relation between subject and agent. Rather, the subject position is ordinarily held by the topic (when the topic is the agent or patient), which in turn is generally the most definite (technically the difference is referring vs non-referring expressions but it's been a while since I've worked on this so I need to brush up on the difference again) or proximate argument. Then there's an animacy hierarchy which determines word order absent an unusual topic or differences in definiteness. The most animate argument comes first followed by less animate arguments. The hierarchy is as follows:

Animacy table from most to least animate
1st person	2nd person	3rd person	4th person	Human	Animal/ Moving Force	Inanimate (natural objects)	Inanimate (Artificial)	Abstract

After the word order is properly established, one of eight particles is chosen. This clarifies the semantic roles and the definiteness (since there are no articles) of the main arguments. A direct particle is used when the more animate (regardless of position in the sentence) argument is the agent and the inverse when the less animate argument is the agent. When the arguments have the same animacy, if the subject position is held by the agent, use the direct and use the inverse when the patient holds that position. The table below shows the role particles.

Grammatical relations in transitive sentences
“Voice”		Direct		Inverse
Agent		Referential	Non-referring	Referential	Non-referring
Patient	Referring	go	mã	i	lu
	Non-referring	e	bo	sa	nẽ

This is probably best shown with a series of examples. The following words are ebe "man", ho'o "hat", caupe "to put on, to wear", tẽmẽ "to see", ũcẽ "woman", uxxale "snake".

Ebe go ho'o caupe "The man puts on the hat". Here both arguments are definite, so the most animate goes first and a direct marker is used.

Ebe e ho'o caupe "The man puts on a hat". Still very straightforward

Ho'o mã ebe caupe "A man puts on the hat". Since the less animate argument is definite while the more animate argument is not, the less animate argument is moved to the beginning of the sentence. It still uses a direct marker though because the agent is the more animate argument. A more natural translation might be "The hat was put on by a man". If you want to make "a man" the topic (for some reason) you could say Rĩ ebe mã ho'o caupe or just Ebe mã ho'o caupe.

Ebe bo ho'o caupe "A man wears a hat". Not a very illuminating sentence, but it works. Since they have the same definiteness regular animacy rules apply.

Now for the inverses.

Ebe i uxxale tẽmẽ "The snake sees the man". Same definiteness, so the more animate argument comes first. But the agent is the less animate argument, so we use the inverse.

Ebe lu uxxale tẽmẽ "A snake sees the man". A very strange sentence that would be more likely translated "The man is seen by the snake". However, this does fall the normal rules for animacy

Uxxale sa ebe tẽmẽ "The snake sees a man". Note that while the agent is in the subject spot, you still use the inverse.

Ebe nẽ uxxale tẽmẽ "A snake sees a man". Pretty straightforward.

When the arguments are on the same level:

Ebe go ũcẽ tẽmẽ "The man sees the woman"

Ũcẽ go ebe tẽmẽ "The woman sees the man"

Ebe i ũcẽ tẽmẽ "The man is seen by the woman" or "The man, the woman sees him"

Ũcẽ i ebe tẽmẽ "The woman is seen by the man" or "The woman, the man sees her"

These are all kind of weird examples, many seeming quite unnatural. So now I'll give one example for each (not necessarily related to each other) with TAM markers and other particles to make the sentences work better.

Hã go ba ngĩ tẽmẽ "I just saw him"

Igea mã uxxale ku ngõnã "A snake ate the egg"

Ba e igea ijji ĩxũ "She might like eggs"

Uxxale bo igea ngĩ ngõnã "Snakes like eggs"

Hã i onã fu fũxã tẽmẽ? "Have you ever seen me before?"

Sei ebe lu uxxale ãxõũ ngõnã ella "(As you know, I wish) a snake would eat that man over there" This sentence has a lot going on. Sei is a distal, visible determiner. Ãxõũ marks the sentence as a desire of the speaker (even though the speaker is never mentioned in the sentence). Ella at the end of a sentence marks the entire sentence as something that should be obvious to the discourse participants.

Hau, uxxale sa be'oi uwẽ vasi ngõnã "Agreed, the snake could be a man-killer" lit. "Agreed, the snake could frequently eat people"

Ebe nẽ uxxale ijji ã ngõnã "A snake could be eating a man"