Chapter 122Siri: Visible Appearance and Ongoing Situations
Appearance and identity, descriptions of the speaker’s conduct, visual inference, aspectual and lexical uses, and Tokachi predication restrictions.
122.1 What is visible
Siri ne relates an assertion to visible appearance. Nakagawa's example of a figure that becomes an eagle makes the distinction between appearance and identity explicit Nakagawa (2024: 397, example 798).
‘I had thought it was a person dancing there, but it became a great eagle and flew away.’
Nakagawa 2024: 397; Saru, Example 798
The narrator describes what the figure had looked like. The subsequent transformation changes the narrator's understanding of its identity.
The ending can also concern a consequence visible in the present situation. In another Saru passage, a person mistreated by relatives finds a sword blade under the bedding and speaks of the extraordinary death they will suffer. The proposition is prospective even though the present circumstances motivate it Nakagawa (2024: 393, example 777).
122.2 The speaker's own conduct
A speaker can explain an action that the addressee can see. Nakagawa gives a Saru apology ending in yayattasa=an siri ne and a Chitose prayer informing the water deity that the speaker and family are travelling by canoe Nakagawa (2024: 397–398, examples 799–800). Neither use requires the speaker to stand apart as an observer of someone else's action.
Related questions concern the addressee's current conduct or perception. Nakagawa's Chitose examples ask what someone is eating and whether a daughter with unusual powers can see something invisible to others Nakagawa (2024: 398, examples 801–802). The choice of siri does not establish that every participant shares the same visual access.
122.4 Tokachi and the kind of predication
Takahashi's Tokachi study finds a further restriction involving what is predicated. In the data from Sawai Tomeno of Honbetsu, sir occurs with ongoing events and temporary states. An observed shivering person provides a straightforward example Takahashi (2013: 132–133, §§4–5).
‘You are trembling.’
Takahashi 2013: 132; Tokachi, Example 18, second sentence
The preceding question asks whether the addressee is cold. The sir construction states the observed situation.
Descriptions of more stable properties instead use ru in his examples, even when those properties are visible: a long neck, a spacious room, and a large mountain. Takahashi analyzes the distinction in terms of temporary situations versus individual properties Takahashi (2013: 132–134, examples 24–27 and §5). The documented restriction concerns this Tokachi material.