South Carpathian grammar

This article discusses the grammar of the South Carpathian language.

Morphophonology

South Carpathian has two main morphophonological processes: the vowel harmony and the consonant gradation.

Vowel harmony is a redundancy feature, meaning that it is uniform within a word, so either only front or only back vowels can be present in a single word. This usually does not apply to new compound words and loanwords.

Unlike in other Carpathian languages, the consonant gradation became non-productive and unpredictable in South Carpathian. Originally a consonant in the strong grade "weakened" when a syllable became closed. However, in the modern laguage those grades were altered significantly, especially after the merging of geminated consonants with plain ones. South Carpathian shows only the qualitative gradation of stops and fricatives. Examples of the gradation are listed in the table below (nouns are shown in the nominative and accusative case):

Gradation	Example	Translation
p : b	holpu : holboda	swan
t : d	partu : pardoda	axe
k : g	pelkĕ : pelgĕg	bridge
c : z	lelcĕ : lelzĕg	alder
č : ž	uču : užoda	question
nk : ∅/j	fenkă : feag	winter
nz : n	kedvenzĕ : kedvenĕg	kindness

Nouns

South Carpathian has the least amount of cases among the Carpathian languages: four grammatical, three directional, and two locative cases (nine in total). The commitative case is obsolete, but it is used dialects of some villages and (seldom) in literature, thus it is listed below. Endings with back and front vowels are used with words having a respecting vowel harmony, so koi "house" uses back vowel endings, while pienkä "wind" uses front vowel endings.

Case	Ending		Example		Translation
	sg	pl	sg	pl
Grammatical
nominative	–	-k	koi	koik	(a) house
accusative	-g/-da/-dä	-ba/-bä	kojug	koibă	house (as an object)
genitive	-gă/-gĕ	-ădă/-ĕdĕ	koigă	kojudă	of (a) house
essive	-p/-ĭp/-ip	-ub/-üb	koip	kojub	as (a) house
Locative
inessive	-t	-tui/-töi	kojut	kojutui	in (a) house
adessive	-go/-gö	-ko/-kö	koigo	kojuko	on (a) house
Directional
elative	-hĭ/-hi	-kĭ/-ki	koihĭ	koikĭ	out of (a) house
lative	-jăb/-jĕb/-ib	-kăb/-kĕb	koijăb	koikăb	to (a) house
ablative	-ci/-s	-i	koici	kojui	from (a) house
Obsolete
commitative	-ĭn/-in	-käin/-koan	kojĭn	koikoan	with (a) house

Article

South Carpathian only has a definite article a which becomes ah before a vowel. The article is invariable (i.e. not marked for number or case). It is thought to form from a Proto-Carpathian demonstrative pronoun *ha, meaning "this thing". Some scholars claim South Carpathian a/ah to be the cognate to the Alpian definite article dà, which is considered unlikely nowadays, since the oldest Carpathian attestations doesn't show traces of any articles. According to another theory, it is a borrowing from Hungarian.

Unlike English "the", the definite article in South Carpathian can be used if the speaker is talking about a specific item without referring to it previously, with the only exception of proper names and nouns with possessive suffixes, where the article is not used. For example, Ăikĭg muib a pardoda "Give me the axe", where a can be translated to both "a" and "the" in English, since the axe hasn't been referred to previously, but "the" is chosen by the context. In negative and quotative statements the word a/ah is usually not used.

Verbs

There are eight main conjugation types in South Carpathian. Some verbs can show some irregularities in their conjugation, though most of those are predictable. As an example a I type verb maed "to speak" and its negative counterpart emaed "not to speak" are given in the table below.

		Tense
		Present		Past		Perfect		*Pluperfect
Mood	Person	Positive	Negative	Positive	Negative	Positive	Negative	Positive	Negative
Indicative
	1st sg	maes	mas	maus	magus	maelĭd	emailĭd	ĭgĭs maen	oais maen
	2nd sg	maeš	maš	mauš	maguš	maešĭg	emaišĭg	ĭgĭš maen	oaiš maen
	3rd sg	maju	mai	majub	maub	majui	emai	ĭagĭ maen	oai maen
	1st pl	malk	emalk	maulok	magulok	malok	emalok	ĭskĭ maen	oaskĭ maen
	2nd pl	mašk	emašk	maušĭk	magušĭk	mašĭk	emašĭk	ĭškĭ maen	oaškĭ maen
	3rd pl	mauk	maguk	maibĭ	magib	mampĭu	emampĭu	ĭkĭ maen	oakĭ maen
Conditional
	1st sg	mačĭs	emačĭs			mačailĭd	emačailĭd
	2nd sg	mačĭš	emačĭš			mačaišĭg	emačaišĭg
	3rd sg	mačĭu	emačĭu			mačajui	emačai
	1st pl	mažălk	emačălk			mačălok	emačălok
	2nd pl	mažăšk	emačăšk			mačăšĭk	emačăšĭk
	3rd pl	mažĭuk	emačĭuk			mažămpĭu	emažămpĭu
Imperative
	1st sg	makon	emakon			ĭgon maen	oagon maen
	2nd sg	makĭg	emakĭg			ĭgĭg maen	oagĭg maen
	3rd sg	makai	emakai			ĭgai maen	oagai maen
	1st pl	makosăk	emakosăk			ĭgosăk maen	oagosăk maen
	2nd pl	makĭvăk	emakĭvăk			ĭgĭvăk maen	oagĭvăk maen
	3rd pl	maenkai	emankai			ĭgănkai maen	oagănkai maen

South Carpathian has three types of infinitives, denoted with Roman numerals. The infinitive I or the i-infinitive is a dictionary form of verbs. Endings of this infinitive are -ĕd, -ăd and -ĭt. This infinitive corresponds to English infinitive (like "to do"). The infinitive II expresses process of action, its endings are -me and -mo. The infinitive III expresses a completed action or manner of action and behaves like a verbal noun. The usual ending of the third infinitive is -n, in older texts -män/-man was also present.

Infinitive	English translation	Infinitive	English translation	Infinitive	English translation
maed	to speak	tobăd	to walk	mergĕd	to move
maemo	(while) speaking	toumo	(while) walking	merĕme	(while) moving
maen	speaking (action)	tobăn	walking (action)	mergĕn	moving (action)