Solutions to the Problems

Swahili f. d. e. c. a. b. Strategy: The tricky bit is to figure out which of pili and nne is 2nd and which one is 4th. The numbers do not just show up in the dates but also in the names of the days of the week. For October 5th, we have Monday, Wednesday, and Sunday, and they are called juma-pili, juma-tatu, and juma-tano. How do we figure out which one is which? We know that tano is 5th and tatu is 3rd. If pili was 4th, then we would have 3 adjacent days (3,4,5) which can’t be, since the actual days are not all adjacent (Mon/Wed/Sun). So it must be the case that pili is 2, and that the counting of the days starts with Saturday=1 (jumamosi), Sunday=2 (jumapili), Monday=3 (jumatatu) and Wednesday=5 (jumatano). So pili is 2nd and nne is 4th. Tajik 1. дyycти = friend 2. xaмcoaй = neighbour 3. xyби = good 4. cyмo = your Strategy: 1. Which two words are adjacent in the first two phrases but not in the third? These words, ‘дyycти xyби’ must be the two words ‘good friend’. However, we do not yet know which of them corresponds to ‘good’ and which one to ‘friend’. By elimination, we also know that ‘xaмcoaй cyмo’ must be ‘your neighbor’, but again, we do not know which word is which. 2. However, we can treat ‘дyycти xyби’ as a chunk that means ‘good friend’, which means that our two options for sentence one are:1 1A. [good-‐friend] (of) neighbour your 2B. [good-‐friend] (of) your neighbour 1 Note: We know that ‘of’, despite the fact that it does not correspond to an actual word in Tajik, must be filled in between good-‐friend and neighbour in the English versions, so I have added it here based on that rule. These correspond to the following two options for sentence two. 2A. neighbor (of) [good-‐friend] your 2B. your [good-‐friend] (of) neighbor However, only option 2A makes sense given the English translation that we have for sentence 2, ‘a neighbor of your good friend.’ Since we are assuming that the word order is always consistent, 2B would have to be interpreted ‘your good friend of a neighbour,’ which is not what the question says. Therefore, we can conclude that the A option is correct, and that: xaмcoaй = neighbour cyмo = your 3. Now let’s try to break up the chunk good-‐friend, using sentence 3. Since we’ve established the words for ‘neighbor’ and ‘your’, we can fill those in, and we are therefore left with two possibilities (I have not filled in ‘of’ here, because it not necessary). 3A. neighbour good friend your 3B. neighbour friend good your The translation that we are given for sentence 3 is ‘a good neighbour of your friend’. Since we know that when ‘good’ modifies ‘friend’, these two words are directly beside each other, we want ‘good’ to be beside ‘neighbor’ when we’re talking about a good neighbor. The only option where this happens is 3A. We can thus conclude that: xyби = good дyycти = friend Based on this, we would expect ‘good’ to occur after ‘friend’ in ‘good friend’, and we can see that it does so in sentences 1 and 2. Alternative explanation for part 3: We know that дyycти xyби must be either ‘good friend’ or ‘friend good’, and we know that sentence 3 begins with the word ‘neighbor.’ Since ‘neighbor’ is the first word in sentence 3, we know that the order must be ‘neighbor good’ not ‘good neighbor.’ In order to be consistent, дyycти xyби must be ‘friend good’, not ‘good friend.’ Conclusion: in Tajik, adjectives follow the nouns they modify (friend good) and possessive pronouns do so as well (friend your), which is different from English. The possessor follows what it possesses, which is similar to the English ‘of’ construction as in: A good friend of your neighbor. Luvian 1. Varpalava 2. Kurkuma 3. Tuvarnava 4. Palaa 5. Tarkumuva 6. Khamatu Strategy: There are two regions, two cities, two kings. Among the 6 words, there are three pairs of words that end with the same symbol, so chances are these symbols correspond to the words for ‘region’, ‘city’, and ‘king’ respectively. Looking at the last symbol but one in each word, we see that three of them end in the same symbol (the pipe with two dots). Three of the words we’re looking for end in the syllable ‘va’, so chances are this is the symbol for the syllable ‘va’, and the writing system is syllable based. This is further confirmed that each of these 3 words has 4 symbols, corresponding to the 4 syllables of the words ending in [va]. If that’s correct, we just need to figure out what syllables the other symbols stand for. Word 1 has a very similar symbol in the first syllable as in the last syllable ‘va’. The little extra squiggle might be the symbol for adding an [r] to make the syllable [var], so this might be Varpalava. And then 3 would be Tuvarnava, and consequently 5 (the last word ending in [va]) must be Tarkumuva. The second syllable [ku] is also the second syllable of Kurkuma, so 2 but have to be that—and this example further confirms the idea that the squiggle really stands for [r]. Then Kamatu is easy to find (last syllable of 6 is the same as first syllable of Tuvarnava in 3) and Palaa must be 4. Another hint is that the symbol for ‘region’ looks like two of the symbol for ‘city’ stuck together. This makes sense, since there are probably several cities in a region.

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