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Adwan: Difference between revisions
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==== Cases ==== | ==== Cases ==== | ||
Nouns in Adwan are inflected for grammatical case. | |||
# Nominative case: marks the agent of a transitive verb and the subject of an intransitive verb | |||
# Accusative case: marks the patient or direct object of a transitive verb | |||
# Genitive case: marks the complement of a noun phrase; marks nouns as relational; marks the subject of an impersonal phrase; used to form adverbs of time | |||
# Dative case: marks the recipient or benefactor of a ditransitive verb; defines an object as the <i>direction</i> or <i>destination</i> of a directed action, motion-related or not | |||
# Locative case: marks the location of an action; marks nouns for which movement has no direction; used to form adverbs of place | |||
# Ablative case: marks the source of an action; defines an object as the <i>antidirection</i> or <i>source</i> of a directed action, motion-related or not | |||
# Instrumental case: marks the instrument or means by which an action is defined or executed; used to form adverbs of manner; | |||
== Syntax == | == Syntax == | ||
Adwan generally has free word order, even in the case of compound clauses, as subordination is nontrivially expressed in general phrases. While Adwan word order is generally free, the standard unmarked word order follows a VOS pattern, though justifications for this are entirely based on the historical cliticization of now extinct personal pronouns, which can be identified by the general pattern of marking grammatical person of a verb agent (or subject) on a <i>noun</i> argument of the verb, rather than on the verb itself. | Adwan generally has free word order, even in the case of compound clauses, as subordination is nontrivially expressed in general phrases. While Adwan word order is generally free, the standard unmarked word order follows a VOS pattern, though justifications for this are entirely based on the historical cliticization of now extinct personal pronouns, which can be identified by the general pattern of marking grammatical person of a verb agent (or subject) on a <i>noun</i> argument of the verb, rather than on the verb itself. | ||