Page:Hand-book of Volapük (Sprauge, 1888).djvu/60

 person singular; as ä means &quot;imperfect tense&quot; we know that &quot;he&quot; did something. What he did is to be found out by removing the prefix and the ending which leaves the root sied. Looking in the vocabulary we find that sied, as a noun, means a seat, and the verb siedön, to sit. Therefore äsiedom must express of someone, &quot;he sat.&quot; --- Who sat ? As ,,Abraham&quot; precedes the verb and is in the kimfal, it answers the question, ,,Kim äsiedom?&quot; &quot;Who sat ?&quot; Äsiedom alone would have meant &quot;he sat,&quot; but we omit the &quot;he&quot; in English when the subject is expressed ; therefore, "Abraham äsiedom == Abraham sat." When the kimfal and the verb are known, the rest of the sentence must fall into place to modify these. Vöno is, judging by the ending o, an adverb, and as it follows äsiedom it probably is used to modify that verb. Looking in the vocabulary we find it means, &quot;once, formerly.&quot; &quot;Once,&quot; that is, not as distinguished from &quot;twice,&quot; but &quot;once upon a time. &quot; We now, have, in the English order, "Abraham äsiedom vöno == Abraham    once sat." As len does not show by its form what part of speech it is we must look it up and we find it to be a preposition meaning &quot;at.&quot; The word following it, yan, we find to be a noun ; as it is in the kimfal (not ending in a vowel) and follows the preposition, it is evident that len yan meant either &quot;at a door&quot; or &quot;at the door ; &quot; which or these it will be cannot yet be determined. . Immediately after yan is a word teneda. From its ending in a we know that it is in the kimafal. and answers the question &quot;whose ?&quot; &quot;whose door ?&quot; As tened means tent, ,,yan teneda&quot; must mean &quot;tent's door,&quot; or rather &quot;door of tent,&quot; for we seldom use 's in English except in speaking of living things. "Len yan teneda == at door of tent." In English we should conventionally expand this into one or the following forms : "        at the door of the tent ;         at the door of a tent ;         at a door of the tent ;         at a door of a tent.     "