Láadan: Difference between revisions

Most Láadan sentences contain three [[grammatical particle|particles]]:

* The ''speech-act'' particle{{spaced ndash}}this occurs at the beginning of the sentence and marks it as either a statement (''bíi''), a question (''báa''), ''et cetera''; in connected speech or writing, this particle is often omitted. They are:

* The [[grammatical tense]] particle{{spaced ndash}}this occurs second in the sentence and marks it as either [[present tense]] (''ril''), [[past tense]] (''eril''), [[future tense]] (''aril'') or hypothetical (''wil''); without the tense particle, the sentence is assumed to have the same tense as the previous sentence.

* The [[evidentiality|evidence]] particle{{spaced ndash}}this occurs at the end of statements and indicates the trustworthiness of the statement. They are:

[[Pronoun]]s in Láadan are built up from a number of constituent parts. The consonant ''l'' marks the [[grammatical person|first person]], ''n'' the second person and ''b'' the third person. Usually, these are followed by the vowel ''e''. However, the vowel ''a'' is used to designate someone who is loved (''lhe-'' is prefixed to describe someone who is despised). The suffix ''-zh'' is used to mark a plural pronoun for numbers up to four, and ''-n'' for numbers beyond that. Therefore, ''lazh'' means "we, several beloved", and ''lheben'' means "they, many despised".

*[[Language and gender]]

*Elgin, Suzette Haden, & Diane Martin. ''A First Dictionary and Grammar of Láadan''. Madison: [[WisCon|Society for the Furtherance and Study of Fantasy and Science Fiction]], 1988.