Payment

There are four participants in a payment:

the payer
the recipient of the payment
the payment
the thing paid for

The recipient may be completely omitted, but the other three are always grammatically marked, albeit possibly in ways that are not very informative.

Here is an example in which all of the participants are specified by full noun phrases.

(1)	Marlene paid the shopkeeper $5 for this cup.
	Malin	ndi lubot	kwulai' dustl'us	be'ooket-un	ba	k'elha	s̲ulhtsi.
	Marlene	this cup	$5	shopkeeper	for	exchange	she made
	subject of make	object of k'elha	object of make	object of ba
	payer	thing paid for	payment	payee

The verb glossed make is the verb “render (st)”.

The thing paid for is the object of “k'elha” If it is not specified, the indefinite prefix “'-” is attached to k'elha.

For example, in

(2)	Mba	'uk'elha	whutisselh.
	for you	exchange	I will make
	I will pay you.

neither the payment nor the thing paid for are mentioned, so we have 'uk'elha rather than k'elha and whutisselh rather than tisselh.

If the payment is specified, as in:

(3)	Kwulai'	dust'us	mba	'uk'elha	tisselh.
	five	dollars	for you	exchange	I will make
	I will pay you five dollars.

no wh-prefix appears on the verb, but the indefinite prefix 'u is still present on k'elha since the reason for the payment is not specified.

The least-specific version is (4), in which the only information specified is who is going to pay.

(4)	'Uk'elha	whutisselh.
	exchange	I will make
	I am going to pay.

Here the postpositional phrase specifying the payee has been omitted, the payment is represented by the areal prefix wh on the verb, and the thing paid for is represented by the unspecified object prefix ' on k'elha.

We can summarize the way in which the various participants are marked as follows:

payer	subject of make	marked on verb - NP optional
payment	object of make	wh-class verb if NP absent
recipient	object of ba	the PP headed by ba is optional
thing paid for	object of k'elha	u.o. on k'elha if NP absent

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