High Eolic word of the day: náravam

nára- (monotransitive verb), imperfective náravam: to eat.

tavunga ca nára-m mbuttácur

yesterday I eat.PERF-TRANS sheep.GEN
“I ate mutton yesterday”

náravam is a monotransitive verb (that is, it can only take one object) which belongs to the class of High Eolic verbs whose objects are in the genitive, unlike normal intransitive verbs, whose objects are in the accusative. This is clear if you compare the following two sentences – the first one using náravam, the second using a more typical monotransitive verb, ngurácacam ‘to devour’. Look especially closely at the case-marking suffixes of the object mbuttác ‘sheep’:

ca náram mbuttác-urvem
“I ate the sheep” (more literally “I ate of the sheep”)

ca ngurácupam mbuttác-alut
“I devoured the sheep”

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