Tsez language


Tsez, also known as Dido is a Northeast Caucasian language with about 15,354 speakers spoken by the Tsez, a Muslim people in the mountainous Tsunta District of southwestern Dagestan in Russia. The name is said to derive from the Tsez word for "eagle", which is most likely a folk etymology. The name Dido is derived from the Georgian word დიდი, meaning "big".
Tsez lacks a literary tradition and is poorly represented in written form. Avar and Russian are used as literary languages locally, even in schools. However, attempts have been made to develop a stable orthography for the Tsez language as well as its relatives, mainly for the purpose of recording traditional folklore; thus, a Cyrillic script based on that of Avar is often used. Fluency of Avar is usually higher among men than women, and the younger people tend to be more fluent in Russian than in Tsez, which is probably due to the lack of education in and about the language. Tsez is not taught in school and instead Avar is taught for the first five years and Russian afterwards.
The vocabulary shows many traces of influences of Avar, Georgian, Arabic and Russian, mainly through loanwords and, in the case of Russian, even in grammar and style. There are also loanwords of Turkic origin. These factors may eventually lead to the decline of use of the Tsez language, as it is more and more replaced by Avar and Russian, partly due to loss of traditional culture among the people and the adoption of Western clothing, technology and architecture.
Tsez grammar was first analyzed by the Georgian linguist Davit Imnaishvili in 1963. Currently, a collection of Tsez folklore texts is in production..

Dialects

Tsez can be divided into the following dialects, with their Tsez names given in parentheses:
The examples in this article are based on the Tsebari subdialect of Asakh. The Sagada dialect is notable for its divergence from the others.
Hinukh and Khwarshi were also once regarded as dialects of the Tsez language but are now commonly viewed as distinct languages of the same family.

Phonology

Each phoneme is listed with its IPA , Latin, and Cyrillic transcriptions.

Consonants

The syllable structure is generally CV. There are no vowel clusters. It is an agglutinative language with a complex morphology. Suffixes are either C, V, CV, VC or C+CV, depending on the structure of the stem. An example is the superessive suffix -ƛʼ, which attached to the word besuro forms besuro-ƛʼ and together with is forms is-ƛʼo in order to maintain the syllable restriction.

Morphology

Nouns

s are inflected for number and case, and have noun classes assigned to them.

Number

Nouns can either be singular or plural. The plural is formed by adding -bi to the stem in the absolutive case: besuro → besuro-bi. For all other cases, the suffix is -za; thus, "of the fish " becomes besuro-za-s.

Case

There are eight syntactical and a much larger number of locative cases, which distinguish three categories: location, orientation, and direction. Thus, counting the locative and non-locative cases together, there are 64 cases.
Tsez is an ergative–absolutive language, which means that it makes no distinction between the subject of an intransitive sentence and the object of a transitive one. Both are in the unmarked absolutive case; the agent of the transitive sentence is in the ergative case.
According to Ramazan Rajabov, the oblique stem of 42% of the nouns is different from the absolutive stem. Some nouns change their internal structure, but others add one of about 20 so-called "thematic suffixes" to their end, to which the other case suffixes are attached. For example, the word for "language" or "tongue" is mec, but its oblique stem is mecre-, hence its plural is mecrebi, the ergative mecrā and so on. Rajabov says that the choice of the correct thematic suffix is sometimes difficult even for native speakers. It is likely that their origin lies in an application of two different plural forms, in a similar way as in English the word "children" actually has two archaic plural endings: -r and -en. In Tsez it is sometimes even possible to use both the archaic and the regular and more productive -bi plural for a word.
Syntactic case suffixes
Of the two genitive cases, the first is used as attribute to an absolutive head noun and the second to an oblique one. That means, that the Genitive 1 is used for phrases like žekʼu-s is, and the Genitive 2 is used for žekʼu-z is-er.
The Equative 1 is used to make comparisons, like besuro-ce and can also be attached to other cases.
Rajabov suggests 3 more syntactical cases, namely possessive 1, possessive 2 and abessive. However, their status is debatable, as they seem to show both inflectional as well as derivational tendencies.
Locative case suffixes
  1. The allative case is also called 'versative'. In the distal paradigm, it is used in the sense of "behind" or "beyond" and is then called 'posterior'.
Of the forms, the upper one shows the non-distal, the lower one the distal form of the suffix. In the non-distal there are sometimes two equal forms for the allative case. The epenthetic vowel o in parentheses is used after noun stems ending in a consonant; thus, "next to the bull" is is-xo, while "next to the fish" is besuro-x.

Noun classes

Tsez distinguishes four noun classes in the singular and two in the plural. They are prefixes that are attached to verbs, adjectives, adverbs, several postpositions like -oƛƛʼo or -iłe and the emphatic particle -uy to show agreement with the noun. Agreement is only possible on vowel-initial words or words that begin with a pharyngealized vowel, but there are also a few words beginning with a vowel that do not take these prefixes.
ClassSingularPluralAttribution
I∅-b-for male persons only
IIy-r-for female persons and inanimate objects
IIIb-r-for animals and inanimate objects
IVr-r-for inanimate objects only

As inanimate objects cover the classes II, III and IV, it's not transparent into which class an inanimate object belongs. However, there are certain tendencies based on the semantic field of the nouns. Nouns that are able to move usually belong to class III, while products that traditionally have to do with the work of women often belong to class II. Clothes made from leather are—as the word for leather itself—usually assigned to class III, due to their relation to animals.
Class IV originally included abstract words, collective and mass nouns, such as water, salt, sky or wind. Materials also often seem to trigger noun classes: "chair" and "wood" are both class IV nouns. Also shape seems to have an influence. In the same manner, proper names are assigned the classes of the nouns they denote. Thus, Patʼi is assigned class II, because it's a female name, and Asaq belongs to class III, because "village" is also in this group. Likewise, new loan words are assigned the noun class of a semantically similar existing Tsez word.
Experiments have shown that Tsez speakers do not assign any noun classes to new words for objects they do not know or where they do not know what they look like.
Certain derivational endings also require a specific noun class, see the section about derivation below.
Verbs and adverbs always agree with the absolutive argument of the phrase, regardless of the clause's transitivity.
If more than one absolutive argument is linked by the conjunction -n and one of them is of the first noun class, then class I plural triggers the agreement for the clause; otherwise, it is class II/III/IV plural. Compare:
and

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

exist in Tsez only for the first and second person; for the third person the demonstratives že and žedi are used. As the singular personal pronouns have the same form in absolutive and ergative, a sentence like Di mi okʼsi is ambiguous, because it can both mean "I hit you" and "You hit me", due to the rather free word order. However, they have a different form for the oblique cases and an irregular form in the genitive 1 case, the same as the plural pronouns. The singular pronouns also have the same forms for all four noun classes, while the plurals make this distinction, as shown in the chart below.
  1. This form is used before a syllable-final consonant, such as the suffix -r.
  2. This form is used before a syllable-initial consonant, such as the suffix -de.
  3. The special forms of the two genitives is used when the possessor is a close group, typically a family, thus eli eniy is used for "our mother" instead of elus eniy. The plural demonstrative žedi also shows this feature, being žedi in the close group genitive 1 and žediz in the close group genitive 2. For ordinary possessors these forms would be žedus and žeduz, respectively.
are suffixes that are attached to the corresponding noun. They inflect for noun classes, number and case and make a two-way distinction into proximal and distal, the latter of which are also used as third person pronouns.
The oblique forms are used attributively and also as a base to which other case suffixes can be attached.
  1. The -ł forms are used optionally after vowels at the end of words.

    Interrogative pronouns

make a distinction between human and non-human only in the oblique forms, but not in the absolutive. The non-human interrogative pronouns require the class IV affix when triggering agreement.
Interrogative pronouns that are replacing an adjunct usually occur at the beginning of the sentence, while those replacing arguments often stay in the position of the replaced word. However, they can be fronted as well for the purpose of discourse-specific linking. Thus, a fronted šebi might be translated as "Which...?" instead of "What...?".
Other interrogative pronouns include:
Tsez has a rich verbal morphology with many categories. Despite the great variety in conjugation, the only truly irregular verb is "to be" with some forms being yoł, ānu, zow-, etc. There are 4 morphological groups, according to the final phoneme of the stem: The first group ends in a consonant, the second in i, the third in -u and the fourth group contains the verbs with the variable ending -d / -y.

Tense-aspect-mood

There are five tense forms in the indicative mood, shown in the following table with examples for verbs with vocalic and consonantal stem endings. The past forms make an evidentiality distinction.
FormSuffixWith -iš- With -esu-
past unwitnessed-n-iš-no "ate"-esu-n "found"
past witnessed-s-iš-si "ate"-esu-s "found"
present-x-iš-xo "eat"-esu-x "find"
future definite-an-iš-an "will eat"-esʷ-an "will find"
future indefiniteshift of the vowel in
the stem before the last
consonant to ā		-āš "will eat"-āsu "will find"

The basic negation suffix in the indicative is -čʼV with V being a vowel that can be different, depending on the tense/aspect/mood of the verb; it is inserted after the verb stem. With the example verb -ikʼi-, the following forms are possible:
FormNegation SuffixWith -ikʼi-
past unwitnessed negative-čʼey--ikʼi-čʼey "didn't go"
past witnessed negative-čʼu--ikʼi-čʼu-s or -ikʼi-čʼu "didn't go"
present negative-ānu- -ikʼi-x-ānu "doesn't go"
future definite negative-čʼi--ikʼ-ā-čʼi-n "won't go"
future indefinite negative-čʼi--ākʼi-čʼi "won't go"

s behave like adjectives and only vary according to the class agreement, which gets attached to them as prefixes. There are several different kinds of participles in the Tsez language:
FormSuffixWith -iš-
past participle-ru 1-āš-ru "having eaten"
past negative participle-čʼi-ru 1-āš-čʼi-ru "not having eaten"
resultative participle-ā-si-iš-ā-si "in the state of having eaten"
resultative negative participle-ani-iš-ani "in the state of not having eaten"
present participle-xo-si-iš-xo-si "eating"
present negative participle-x-ānu-si-iš-x-ānu-si "not eating"

  1. The stem vowel here is the vowel before the last consonant. Note that stems, different from roots, include causatives; thus -ikʼi- becomes -ākʼi-, but its causative form -ikʼir- becomes -ikʼār-! Sometimes also unarticulated epenthetic vowels can be lengthened to ā, as in: tʼetʼr-, which becomes tʼetʼār-.
Converbs, like gerunds and verbal adverbs, are very numerous in Tsez. The following list gives only an incomplete account. The table illustrates the relationship between the temporal converb and the main verb :
The potential mood receives the suffix -ł, while the causative mood suffix is -r. Again, the epenthetic vowel is dropped when the stem ends in a vowel or if another suffix starting with a vowel is attached. Together with the definite future suffixes -an, for instance, the epenthetic vowel has to be dropped: iš-er, but iš-r-an.

Particles

Tsez has a rich set of particles, most of them occurring as clitics. The particle -tow shows general emphasis while -kin shows general emphasis and focusing. A contrastively topicalized constituent is marked by the particle -gon. Being clitics, they can be attached to any part of speech. There is also a quotation particle that is used in direct reported speech and appears as the suffix -ƛin that always appears at the end of the quoted phrase or sentence. Example: Di žekʼu yołƛin eƛix kʼetʼā. There are also other free particles like hudu or āy.

Word formation

Derivation

Noun-forming suffixes
The following list is a selection of suffixes used to form nouns from other parts of speech as well as other nouns.
e.g. Newo-bi / Newo-zi
e.g. laɣ-łi, učitel-łi, r-igu-łi
e.g. ˤuƛʼno-kʼu, ˤiya-kʼu
e.g. rečʼ-ni, ˤoy-ni
e.g. magala-qu, bocʼ-a-qu, qido-qan
e.g. reƛʼi-qoy
e.g. kotʼu-r-yo
Adjective-forming suffixes
The following suffixes can be used to derive adjectives from other words:
e.g. boryo-mu, atʼi-mu, šakarya-mu
e.g. čakaryo-šay čay
e.g. ciyo-tay
e.g. ciyo-xu raƛʼ
Verb-forming suffixes
Some verb-forming suffixes, like the causative and potential derivatives, have already been mentioned in the section about the verbal morphology. Other examples include:
e.g. atʼi-kʼ-, bito-kʼ-, łicʼo-kʼ-
e.g. atʼi-ł-, ade-x-

Compounding and reduplication

In Tsez it is also possible to create new words from combining existing ones; usually nouns and verbs are derived, but there also exist compound adjectives and adverbs. Only the last component of the compound inflects, as it is the head of the phrase. However, it does not necessarily govern the noun class assignment for compound nouns—if one of the two components belongs to class I, then the whole compound is of this class, otherwise it is automatically assigned to noun class II. Sometimes, the last component is truncated. Suffixation may also occur. The following list is not exhaustive:
Another common way to derive new words is reduplication, which can derive nouns, as well as adjectives and verbs. In reduplicating nouns, the initial syllable can often undergo a change, as in xisi-basi "changes" or bix-mix. It is used to intensify adjectives and verbs but is also used for onomatopoeia.
Another highly productive way of forming verbs is the combination of a word and the Tsez verbs -oq- or -od-, although some combinations can also be formed with other verbs. Note that only the second word is inflected, while the first one remains uninflected. Some examples are:

Noun phrase

s per definition have a nominal head, which can be a noun, a pronoun or a substantivized expression such as a participle with the nominalizer -łi, verbal nouns or substantivized restrictive adjectives —the latter one bears the suffix -ni directly after the adjective stem. They all inflect for case.
As Tsez is a head-last language, all modifiers precede the head noun and agree with it in class. The neutral order of modifiers is usually:
  1. relative clause
  2. unemphatic possessive pronoun
  3. emphatic possessive pronoun
  4. restrictive adjective
  5. demonstrative
  6. numeral / quantifier
  7. non-restrictive adjective
Note that the order of element number 4, 5 and 6 may vary:
Modifiers can also include oblique noun phrases, which then take one of the two genitive suffixes depending on the case of the head noun: -si for absolutive, -zo for oblique head nouns. Compare:
and

Verb phrase

s are phrases whose head is a verb or a copula. Verbs can have different transitivities that directly affect the case distribution for their nominal arguments.

Copulas

s are used in the Tsez language to combine the subject with a noun phrase or with predicative adjectives and can in these cases be translated with the English copula "to be". The subject as well as the predicative noun stands in the absolutive case and is thus unmarked. If an environmental condition is described in form of an adjective, the adjective requires class IV agreement. Compare the following examples:
and

Intransitive verbs

The only argument of intransitive verbs stands in the unmarked absolutive case. The verb agrees with the noun in class.
An example phrase would be: is b-exu-s.

Monotransitive verbs

Monotransitive verbs are verbs that take two arguments. As Tsez is an absolutive–ergative language, the subject, or—to be more precise—the agent, requires the ergative case, while the direct object requires the absolutive case. The direct object of a transitive verb is thus marked in the same way as the subject of an intransitive verb. Again, the verb agrees in class with the absolutive.
Both arguments, the agent as well as the patient, can be omitted if they are clear from the context.

Ditransitive verbs

Ditransitive verbs are verbs that require 3 arguments: a subject, a direct object and an indirect object. In English "to give" and "to lend" are typical ditransitive verbs. In Tsez the agent takes the ergative and the patient takes the absolutive case. The recipient's case depends on the semantic nature of the transfer of possession or information: if it's a permanent transfer, the recipient takes the dative/lative case, if it's a non-permanent transfer or if it's incomplete, the recipient takes any of the locative cases. Two examples illustrate the difference:
Permanent transfer:
Temporary transfer:

Affective clauses

Affective clauses have either verbs of perception or psychological verbs as predicate. Those verbs are for example: "be bored/bother", "become known", "find", "forget", "hate", "hear", "know", "love/like", "miss", "see", etc. The experiencer is usually in the dative case, while the stimulus takes the absolutive case.

Potential clauses

Potential clauses are the equivalent to English clauses involving the words "can" or "be able to". In Tsez this is expressed by the verbal suffix -ł; the subject of the clause then takes the possessive case instead of the ergative, while the object of the verb is in the absolutive.

Causativization

constructions are formed by the causative suffix -r. It increases the valency of any verb by 1. If a ditransitive verb is formed from a transitive one, the causee appears in the possessive case ; see the example below :

Word order

Tsez is a head-final language, which means that - apart from postpositions - modifiers like relative clauses, adjectives, genitives and numerals always precede the main clauses. The neutral order in clauses with more than one modifier is:
Agent/Experiencer—Recipient—Patient—Locative—Instrument
The order can be changed to emphasize single noun phrases.
Although in general, the underlying word order is SOV, the predicate tends to be in the middle of the sentence rather than at the end of it. This word order seems to become increasingly common in daily speech. For narrative use, a VSO word order is sometimes used as well.

Interrogative sentences

The interrogative suffix -ā is used to mark yes/no-questions. It is added to the word focused by the question:

Negation

The negative particle ānu follows the negated constituent; if the entire sentence is to be negated, verb suffixes are used.
For the imperative, prohibitive and optative form, see the same section on verb morphology above.

Coordination

Coordination of clauses is rare in the Tsez language. Noun phrases are coordinated by adding the suffix -n or -no to all items of the enumeration, thus "the hen and the rooster" is onuču-n mamalay-no. In conditional sentences the conjunction "then" may be expressed by the word yołi:

Subordination

Relative clauses

Any argument or adjunct of a sentence can be made the head of a relative clause, even indirect objects and adverbials. The predicate of such a clause is always a participle and the relative construction precedes the head noun. Constituents can also be taken from embedded clauses. However, it is not possible to raise the possessor in a possessive phrase to the head position of a relative construction.
The following examples show how different arguments and an adverbial adjunct are relativized from the underlying sentence in example 1:
Example 1 :
Example 2 :
Example 3 :
Example 4 :
Example 5 :

Adverbial clauses

There are several different kinds of adverbial clauses.
Temporal adverbial clauses describe a chronological sequence of two actions, as in English "Before it started to rain, we were home." or "We talked, while we were going.". In Tsez this relation is marked by verbal suffixes that turn one verb into a converb. See the table for converb suffixes in the "Non-finite forms" part of the verb morphology section.
Local adverbial clauses use locative converbs, which are also formed by adding a suffix to the verb. This suffix is -z-ā- and the vowel before the last consonant of the verb itself is lengthened to ā. This converb forms the head of the local phrase and can thus receive a locative suffix that is normally used on nouns.
Causal adverbial clauses, which in English are usually expressed using "because", "as", "when", "since" or "that", receive the converb suffix -xoy, -za-ƛʼ or -za-q.
There are more kinds of adverbial clauses, see the part "Non-finite forms" in the verb morphology section for more example suffixes.

Infinitival clauses

Modal verbs, phrasal verbs, verbs of motion and psychological verbs can all be accompanied by an infinitive verb. Verbal nouns or "masdars" can be used instead of infinitive verbs; they express purpose more strongly. Those verbal nouns also occur with psychological verbs like "be afraid of" and then usually take the possessive case.

Completement clauses

When a clause is used in place of a noun, as in "The father knew .", the optional nominalizing suffix -łi can be attached to the predicate of the embedded clause. The clause belongs to noun class IV, then:

Reported speech

If a speech act verb like "say", "ask", "shout" introduces reported speech, the reported utterance is followed by the clitical quotation particle ƛin, which is suffixed to verbs and stands alone in all other cases. It is remarkable that the point of view and the tense of the original utterance is maintained, hence the only difference between direct and indirect speech is the particle ƛin. See this example:

Numerals

Numerals come in two different forms: in the absolutive case and as an oblique stem to which other case endings are attached when the numerals are used nonattributively. The oblique form is also used when it refers to a non-absolutive noun, as in sida ˤaƛār. When counting objects, the counted objects always stay in the singular form.
AbsolutiveOblique
1sissida
2qʼˤanoqʼˤuna
3łˤonołˤora
4uynouyra
5łenołera
6iłnoiłłira
7ʕoƛnoʕoƛƛora
8biƛnobiƛƛira
9očʼčʼinoočʼčʼira
10ocʼcʼinoocʼcʼira
11ocʼcʼino sis / siyocʼiocʼcʼira sida
12ocʼcʼino qʼˤano / qʼˤayocʼiocʼcʼira qʼˤuna
13ocʼcʼino łˤono / łˤoyocʼiocʼcʼira łˤora
14ocʼcʼino uyno / uwocʼiocʼcʼira uyra
15ocʼcʼino łeno / łewocʼiocʼcʼira łera
16ocʼcʼino iłno / iłocʼiocʼcʼira iłłira
17ocʼcʼino ʕoƛno / ʕoƛocʼiocʼcʼira ʕoƛƛora
18ocʼcʼino biƛno / biƛocʼiocʼcʼira biƛƛira
19ocʼcʼino očʼčʼino / ečʼocʼiocʼcʼira očʼčʼira
20qunoqura
100bišonbišonra
1,000ʕazarʕazarra

Cardinal numbers precede the nouns, which then do not stand in their plural forms but in the singular instead; e.g.: uyno is.
Ordinal numbers are constructed by combining the cardinal numbers with the word āƛiru. Hence, qʼˤano āƛiru ɣudi means "the second day".
Adverbial numbers are constructed by replacing the suffix -no by -x, thus "twice" becomes the adverb qʼˤa-x in Tsez. Expressions like " the second time" are formed using the adverbial number suffix -x and ordinal forming marker āƛiru, thus resulting in the form qʼˤax āƛiru.

Sample of the Tsez language

This is a Tsez tale written in the Asakh dialect using a Latin-based orthography.

Latin orthography

Kʼetʼus Hunar
Zewnoƛax zewčʼeyƛax bˤeƛon bocʼin zirun qayno. Sidaquł šigoħno sadaqorno boyno ħukmu: yaqułtow begira bocʼi ħonƛʼār miƛʼeł xizāz xizyo rišʷa yoł. Bˤeƛā begirno qay łˤāł xizāz, bocʼin zirun regirno ħonƛʼār miƛʼeł xizāz. Ɣudod, žedi raynosi beƛʼez reqenyoxor, ziru boqno uhi-ehƛada buq boƛāxzāzarno boqno. Zirus uhi-ehi teqxoy, ɣʷaybi kʼoƛin elār, bocʼi buq bātuzāzarno boqno bikʼin reqenyoƛer, besurno ƛʼarayaw miƛʼi. Miƛʼin bisno bocʼin zirun xizor rutin qʼayƛʼār. Rizirno cʼidoƛʼor ƛoħon begirno łāƛʼor qay. Kikxogon zewno bočʼikʼxo kʼetʼu. Qayir zewāčʼey rikʷayxo; nešuruxay nełor rikʷayxo zewčʼey. Kʼetʼu, ełor baynosi qay, boqno kʼekʼbikʼa. Kʼekʼbikʼni teqnosi, qay łikin rixerčʼeytow boxin xizor. Bˤeƛā esirno: "Šidā boxā rayirčʼey łin?" Elo didiyƛa žekʼu yoł-ƛin eƛin qayā. Aħugon rikʼin łāxor zirun qayno. Žedi raynosi kikxor žedā esirno kʼetuq: "Mi šebi?" Di žekʼu yoł-ƛin eƛin kʼetʼā. Šebi že debez ħiroƛʼ esirxo zirā. Tupi ƛin eƛix kʼetʼā. Dicce rˤuƛʼno zirun qayno, amma biyxoy kʼetʼu yāłru, xizyo łˤonon zenzi rikʼin raħira reƛ. Bˤeƛo buqełno bičin ažoz kʼodrexāzay, rołikʼno aħyabin kecno, kʼetʼu tataniłxo zewno cʼidox. Bˤeƛā kʼekʼrikʼerxo zewno aħyabi. Že rikʷayxoy, kʼetʼuz rokʼƛʼor rayno, že elo aw ƛin, hudu betʼtʼun kʼoƛin elor. Dicce bˤuƛʼzāq bˤeƛqo regin ixiytʼatow qˤaƛubin, boxin ciqxār. Bocʼezno qayizno, ziruzno rokʼƛʼor rayno baysi bāsu ixiytow ħaywan šebin, nełoq že riqičʼey kʼiriłno roxin. Cʼikʼiy reƛ miƛes ƛexun kʼetʼur. ʕoƛiran ɣˤudeł kʼetʼu bišno, racʼno baɣʷace dawla bocʼesno zirusno.

Translation

The Cat's Feat
Once upon a time there were a pig, a wolf, a fox and a hare. One day they gathered together and decided that today they would send the wolf into the mountains for a sheep and they would eat. The pig sent the hare for water and sent the wolf and the fox into the mountain for a ram. At night, when they came to the flock of sheep, the fox began to moan from the eastern side. Since they heard the fox's moaning, the dogs ran in that direction and the wolf went towards the flock from the west and found a fat ram. Having taken the ram, the wolf and the fox returned to the camp. They put the pan on the fire and sent the hare for water. At the spring the cat was freezing.
The hare couldn't see; at night the hare couldn't see. When the hare arrived there, the cat began to move. When he heard the movement, the hare ran back without taking any water. The pig asked: "Why did you run away without bringing water?" The hare said that there was some man there. Again the fox and the hare went to the water. When they came to the spring, they asked the cat: "What are you?" — "I am a man", said the cat. "What is that on your shoulder?", asks the fox. "A rifle", says the cat. The fox and the hare were very frightened, but since they knew it was a cat, afterwards the three of them went together to cook meat. The pig hid behind a bunch of trees and, pushing out its ears, slept, and the cat was warming itself by the fire.
The pig was moving its ears. Since the cat saw it, it thought it was a mouse and in a rush jumped there. The pig was very frightened and, emitting loud shouts, ran away to the forest. The wolf, the hare and the fox thought that a great animal or something was coming and, one running faster than the other, they ran away. All the ram's meat was left to the cat. For seven days the cat ate, ate until it was full the spoils of the wolf and the fox.