Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Nouns


Nouns are based around the third person (super special) pronoun that I introduced in the post on syntax and word order: . , as I mentioned in that post, also has a number of other forms which are used to mark the genitive, the reflexive, the passive, the causative and the accusative/ablative/everything else. I have organized the forms in the table below:

Pronoun
Use
(+ noun)
Shows…
The nominative where it is unclear.
The nominative of the 3rd person pronoun (he, she, it, him, her, they, them, one, some, all).
fo (+ noun)
Shows…
Comparatives.
Inalienable possession.
Inalienable possession of the 3p.
fe (+ preposition)
Shows…
The accusative where it is unclear.
The ablative of a noun or a verb (“the cow that’s inside the house ate” vs. “the cow ate inside the house” respectively).
The accusative of the 3p.
fi (+ noun)
Shows…
The causative.
The reflexive (also the intransitive of lexically causative/intransitive verbs).
The passive.

is used very little except as the third person pronoun. Its only real use as the modifier of a noun is when the word order is being changed (perhaps to fit in poetry or other word art, or for emphasis/stress, which I will address later), so that the noun’s identity as the nominative is not lost with the order. is also used to make clear that a gerund is a noun, and not a verb.
fo is the possessive marker, but it only expresses inalienable possession (ðibéþ in a relative clause is used to show alienable possession (I will discuss further what is considered alienable, and what is inalienable later in the post)).
            fe is used for just about everything else related to noun declensions/cases (fi has to do with verbs, but is part of a nominal set of particles, so I’ll talk about it here). It is mostly used as the ablative combined with a preposition, which can modify a noun or a verb. It can also be used as the marker of the accusative. It is not always used, but it is used more than .
fi is not a modifier of nouns, but rather of verbs. It once only showed reflexivity, but verbs that were intransitive lexically became unacceptable, and had to be used with the causative, so one would not say éþ već þe “I walk”; one would say fiéþ veću þe “I cause myself to walk”. -u was added to make the causative, but eventually fi was also necessary, and intransitive verbs kept the -u suffix and it lost its meaning. fi then also came to clarify the passive by analogy that reflexive is somewhat like removing the accusative noun, so it removed the nominative noun when attached to the accusative.

Our next topic of interest is the relative clause. A noun’s relative clause follows the noun unless the modified noun is the subject of the relative clause, in which case the relative clause precedes the noun. Inside the clause the modified noun is replaced with the appropriate pronoun in the clause (not the main sentence). The relative clause should not be confused with the main sentence, and the main sentence with the adverb, because the main sentence does not have a word (i.e. conjunction, preposition) that makes it an adverb, and using deductive reasoning one would conclude that the preceding phrase is a relative clause.
Some examples of relative clauses used in different ways are below.

fĺ rofép þédop   po       robét weboć źĺtu þe!
3   rock   crash_into pas.per fruit     human  kill    pre.per
The fruit that crashed (a vehicle) into a rock is killing the human!

robét rofép fe    þédop     po       weboć źĺtu þe!
            fruit     rock    3.abl crash_into pas.per human   kill    pre.per
The fruit that a rock crashed (a vehicle) into is killing the human!

fo is one way to show possession, but it only shows possession of inalienable things (that is things that cannot be taken away, or alienated from the possessor); the other way of showing possession is for the alienable and is made by modifying the possessed noun with a relative clause of the verb, ðibéþ “to have”, and putting the possessor in the nominative of that clause.
Now is the question of what’s alienable, and what’s inalienable, which is determined mostly arbitrarily, although there is a pattern shown in the table below.

Alienable
Animate
Alienable
Inanimate
Inalienable
Animate
Inalienable
Inanimate
·        Children
·        Tools
·        Material Possessions
·        Parents
·        gloves, hats, jackets
·        One of some
·        Body parts
·        Friends/Spouses
·        Clothes, but not gloves, hats, or jackets
·        Actions
·        Part of one

I realize that my descriptions for Inanimate are not the most descriptive, but that is because I plan to describe them down here. Possession and the collective/partitive distinction are very related. They and their context determine whether a possession is alienable or inalienable. The collective/partitive distinction is easy enough to understand, as it is mostly intuitional. For example, take “The head of the hammer”. Here we have inalienable possession because the head is part of one hammer, but we might also say, “This head of all heads”. Here we are talking about one of some (all) of something, because we have a group (collection) of something.
Some nouns are lexically partitive, and cannot be collective, but some have to be modified with a suffix to show the partitive or collective. The suffix for the partitive is -fo, and the suffix for the collective is -ðib. The similarity/congruency of these two suffixes and the markers of possession is no accident, and in fact is directly related.
Because fewer nouns are lexically partitive, I will give the two entry list of the rules that determine whether a noun is below.
1.      Fluids/liquids, gasses (e.g. we “water”, bef “air”
2.      Nouns modified by a partitive adjective (e.g. tiði “much”)

There are also some other irregular nouns that are lexically partitive, but are neither a fluid nor modified by a partitive adjective.

Adjectives are fairly simple in most respects, but are widely (if not dominantly) irregular when forming the comparative and superlative. However like many irregularities they are somewhat regular. The most regular irregularity has to do with the suffix -o which makes a noun into an adjective. These adjectives undergo a number of changes to make the comparative and superlative. First the regular suffix corresponding to the degree of the adjective is added; for comparative this is -ti, and for superlative this is -śe. Then the final consonant of the suffix is generally removed, (except in more formal speech or writing), if there is one, the penultimate vowel is removed, and applicable sound changes are applied.
An example is below.

roćo                             “same”
roćoti/roćośe                add regular suffix
roćot/roćoś                   remove final vowel
roćt/roćś                       remove penultimate vowel
rośt/roć                        apply derivational changes (make liquid a vowel)
rośt                              more similar (more same)
roć                               exactly the same (most similar)

The “regular” way of forming the degrees of an adjective just involves adding -ti for the comparative and -śe for the superlative.
When the comparative is used, the noun that is being compared to is put after the adjective and before the main noun.

Before the example, we’re going to add “com” and “sup” to the list of gloss abbreviations, and let them mean “comparative” and “superlative” respectively.

þéd           fo weboć diće    þe
hungry.com of  human   animal pre.per
The animal is hungrier than the human.

I think that’s about it for adjectives. Next up we have kinship terms.

Kinship in fĺuðét is expressed with a number of terms. There is a set for each of the personal pronouns, so 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd person. For 1st and 2nd the genitive is unnecessary, as the terms are mostly unique for each one, however for the third person the genitive is used to show whose kinship the speaker is speaking of. Much derivation was used in these terms, and I may try and figure it out and explain it all later, but for now I will just put up the diagrams. They are tree diagrams, and the “|” shows that the word is of the connected one, so ðudéf is not the child of éþ (śpĺ is), but is the child of rej, the aunt or uncle of éþ.

a. 1st Person
Mother - doli    Father - śup  |  Mother - jwéd    Father - źot
Sibling - þuśu  --  Mother - poti  |  Father - ćowĺþ  --  Sibling - rej
Child - ðudéf -|                            1 - éþ  --  Sibling - śwev           |- Child - ðudéf
                   Child -  |  Child - śpĺ
Child - lufo

b. 2nd Person
Mother - śleréś    Father - śleféś  |  Mother - śleréś    Father - śleféś
Sibling - rejbi  --  Mother - réś  |  Father - if  --  Sibling - rejbi
Child - ðubi -|                            2 - pi  --  Sibling - tév           |- Child - ðubi
                   Child - foðépi  |  Child - pipĺ
Child - lufopi
c. 3rd Person
Mother - éþŕt    Father - ivowe  |  Mother - éću    Father - ijŕf
Sibling - toti  --  Mother - éréś  |  Father - iféś  --  Sibling - ðéće
Child - luti -|                        3 - fĺ  --  Sibling - tufĺ           |- Child - luðe
                   Child - lufĺ  |  Child - śŕfu
Child - ćotwep

Here is an example showing the two major kinship terms in action.

Éþ poti         tu   ćowĺþ    ćob þeþe.
1     my.mother and my.father love pre.imp
I love my mother and father.


And now, for numerals. fĺuðét has a base six system, for no reason in particular. Although fĺuðét generally does not show number, it can be implied by describing a noun with a numeral. Below I will list the numbers or the way to form the numbers from 1 to 555,555 (46655). I am presenting them in the format: base-six (base-ten) (I don’t add the extra parentheses with base ten, when the base ten and base six are the same).
0 -                    ðu
1 -                    buź
2 -                   
3 -                    śéþ
4 -                    doź
5 -                    poć
10 (6) -                       źŕð

11 (7) -                        źŕðbuź
12 (8) -                        źŕðŕ
13 (9) -                        źŕźéþ
14 (10 -           źŕðoź
15 (11) -          źŕðboć
20 (12) -          tŕðu
21 (13) -          tŕbuź
22 (14) -          tŕt
23 (15) -          tŕśéþ
24 (16) -          tŕdoź
25 (17) -          tŕpoć
30 (18) -          śéðu
31 (19) -          śéðbuź
32 (20) -          śéþŕ
33 (21) -          śéś
34 (22) -          śéþoź
35 (23) -          śéþpoć
40 (24) -          doźðu
41 (25) -          doźbuź
42 (26) -          doźdŕ
43 (27) -          doźéþ
44 (28) -          doźd
45 (29) -          doźboć
50 (30) -          pojðu
51 (31) -          poćpuź
52 (32) -          pośtŕ
53 (33) -          poćéþ
54 (34) -          pośtoź
55 (35) -          poćpo
100 (36) -        buźŕð
101 (37) -        buźŕð buź
102 (38) -        buźŕð tŕ
200 (72) -        tŕbuźŕð

1,000 (216) -   vĺć
2,000 (432) - tŕwĺć
2,001 (433) - tŕwĺć buź
10,000 (1,296) - źŕðwĺć
100,000 (7776) - riðu
110,000 (9072) - riðu źŕðwĺć

555,555 (46655) - poćriðu pojŕðwĺć pojwĺć poćpuźŕð poćpo
           
And that’s as high as it goes. As it gets higher the base-10 numbers become funkier and funkier, and harder to predict, and—not for this, but related to it—I have made a nice clean way to convert numbers from one base to another (mostly from base-10). It’s all based around powers, because that’s how most numeric systems are based. For base-10 we have 10^0 = 1, 10^1 = 10, 10^2 = 100, 10^3 = 1,000, 10^4 = 10,000, etc. Base-6 in base-10 (if it were in base-6 it would look exactly the same) it would be 6^0 = 1, 6^1 = 6, 6^2 = 36, 6^3 = 216, (and now we use a calculator) 6^4 = 1,296. Now to convert a number from base-10 to base-6 it’s a lot like division; we have to fit our powers of six into our base-10 number and subtract them until we are left with zero. This will be most easily explained in an example. Let’s take base-10 894 and convert it to base-6 and base-14 for the heck of it and a more diverse example.

1          __________________
6          | 8 9 4
36       
216     
1296   

First we put all of the powers of six in base-10 to the side until we find the one that is larger than our number; this is so we can find the number that is one power smaller than our number. We can ignore the larger number.
Now we see how many times 216 can go into 894.

1          __________________
6          | 8 9 4
36         
216      * 1 = 216
            * 2 = 432
            * 3 = 648
            * 4 = 864
            * 5 = 1080

864 is the largest number that can go in, so we subtract it from 894

1          _4_________
6          | 894
36        - 864
216        030

Now we see how many times the next smallest number goes in; it goes in 0 times, then we do the next number and it goes in exactly 5 times, and leaves us with 0, which means we’re done.

1          _40________
6          | 894
36        - 864
216        030
            -     0
                30
 
1          _405_______
6          | 894
36        - 864
216        030
            -     0
                30
            -   30
                00

Thus the base-6 of 894 in base-10 is 405. I hope that made some sense. Now for base-14.

1          _______________
14        | 894
196     
2744   

1          _______________
14        | 894

196      * 1 = 196
            * 2 = 392
            * 3 = 588
            * 4 = 784
            * 5 = 980                      

1          _______________
14        |  894
196      - 784
   110

1          _4_____________
14        |  894
196      - 784
   110

14        * 1 = 14
            * 2 = 28
           
* 7 = 98
* 8 = 112

1          _47____________
14        |  894
196      - 784
   110
-   98
                 12

1          _47C___________
14        |  894
196      - 784
   110
-   98
                 12
            -    12
                   0

            Here C is being used for 12, for base-14, because base-10 does not have a single digit numeral for 12. Thus 47C (four hundred and seventy C) is the base-14 of 894 in base-10.

The numerals given above are used as adjectives, and show the quantity of any given noun. To make ordinal numbers out of these, one treats the number as a noun, puts it in the ablative, and modifies it with jo, “in”, so 32nd (20th) would be fejo śéþŕ.

éþ śŕrĺ   fejo  źŕðbuź śŕþ po
1    chair abl-in eleven    sit   pas.per
I sat in the eleventh (seventh) chair.

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