Time & Place

Najan has four prepositions for characterizing time and place:

  1. lɪ for location at or within a point or region of space or time
  2. we for movement to or into a point or region
  3. xu for movement from, away from, or out of
  4. zi for movement through, throughout, or across

Each of these prepositions is inclusive; i.e. we includes the destination, xu includes the origin, and zi includes the entirety of the path, region, or duration.

The complements of these prepositions may be explicit places or times, but they could also be something else, such as a person or event. In the latter case, the argument refers to the spatio-temporal location of that object; e.g. lɪ ko (literally at me) means at my time and place.

English supplies a plethora of prepositions for describing spatio-temporal relations. For instance, a chair may be at, on, under, or beside a table. In Najan, each of these relations would use the same (locative) preposition: zaza ⟨za⟩ — a; anindefinite determiner lɪ zaza ⟨za⟩ — a; anindefinite determiner cats qa muð dan, a chair at a table.

The preposition alone is often sufficient in context to convey the full relationship, but to add clarity or expressiveness, one can replace the complement of the preposition with a more specific expression. For example, since the preposition we (to) is always inclusive of the specified destination, we gigi ⟨gi⟩ — thedefinite determiner vatθ (to the end) means that the expression holds true up to and including the end. To convey that the expression held true up to (but not necessarily including) some time before the end, one could say we zaza ⟨za⟩ — a; anindefinite determiner qa gigi ⟨gi⟩ — thedefinite determiner vatθ kle, lit. to a past [time] of the end.