Chapter 117Ability and Inability
Easkay and eaykap, person-marked lexical uses, compounds, ka, dialect and register limits, and more specific obstacles to action.
117.1 Ability and possibility
Easkay ‘can’ and eaykap ‘cannot’ can follow a person-marked predicate as auxiliaries. The circumstances that make an action possible or impossible are often explicit in the sentence Satō (2008: 80–81)Nakagawa (2024: 315).
Nakagawa gives eaykap a broad range covering both lack of ability and circumstances that prevent an action. The heat in Satō's example is an external circumstance; a definition restricted to an inherent incapacity would be too narrow Nakagawa (2024: 315).
117.2 Auxiliary and lexical uses
In an auxiliary construction, person marking is on the preceding verb. A lexical use instead puts the person index on the ability verb. Satō's literary inawke anak a=easkay concerns being skilled at making prayer sticks; wakkata ka a=eaykap concerns inability to fetch water Satō (2008: 80–81).
The distribution is sensitive to source and register. Satō reports no independent colloquial k=eaykap in his Chitose material, while finding literary a=eaykap ordinary Satō (2008: 90). Tamura's Saru description gives person-marked k=eaykap in a statement about being very poor at sewing Tamura (1960: §20.1, 77 (continuous pagination 353)).
Compounds add another structural possibility. Nakagawa's Chitose hemesu-easkay=an ‘I can climb’ is one word by the placement of its person suffix. He leaves open whether this is auxiliary incorporation or incorporation of nominally used hemesu as the object of transitive easkay Nakagawa (2024: 491, examples 1123–1123′). Compare Chapter 116 (Desire, Rusuy, and Compound Predicates).
117.3 The intervening particle ka
Ka can stand between a verb and an auxiliary of verbal origin, as in the drinking example. Nakagawa says its presence need not create a particular difference in meaning Nakagawa (2024: 314). Refsing describes emphatic Shizunai uses and translates one mist-covered-mountain example with ‘could not even see it’ Refsing (1986: 208, example 323). An English ‘even’ reading should follow the particular context.
117.4 More specific obstacles
Other predicates distinguish kinds of difficulty. Nakagawa's niwkes concerns being unable to complete something: a narrator cannot finish a cup alone. His koyaykus concerns an obstructing situation, while etoranne can concern lacking the inclination or composure to act Nakagawa (2024: 316, examples 493–497).
Satō's Chitose koyayekus has painful or unendurable difficulty among its meanings: a person cannot get up under a carried load. He stresses that examples are few Satō (2008: 83–84). These lexical distinctions are useful without turning the forms into an exhaustive paradigm of internal and external inability.