Common (na Xafen): Difference between revisions

Verbs of motion mostly fall into this category, with the destination of the motion as the dative object. If the dative object is omitted, the action is still considered to be purposeful towards an end. To get the sense of no specific end, as in the English expression 'go away', the "disintentive" valence change operation is performed to use the intransitive agreement instead of the semitransitive.

''Realis Conjugation of '''nox'''''

'The woman let her dog eat.'

====Valence Change Operations====

A note on number: Common tends not to use mass nouns. If there is an idiomatic way to use the plural, Common tends to choose it. So a word like "mury," "hair," is treated like a singular hair, and to refer to a head of hair one would use the plural, "naz mury," much like French. Mass nouns tend to be things that are not naturally distinguishable as being composed of individual parts, like fluids. If it is necessary to count portions of a mass noun, like drops of water, a word for the portion is counted in the paucal or referred to in the plural, and then the substance is referred to periphrastically using the null preposition.

The first person pronoun/article is 'we'. It works like any other non-relative determiner in Common in that it is used in a phrase structure with a head term, even though it is very commonly used on its own like the equivalent English words 'I' or 'we'. The most common head terms used with it are a personal name, title or honorific. In this case, it would be the idiomatic way to say what English would set aside with commas, for example, 'I, Tony, see the child' would be 'We Toni nox triju ija pocuk'.

|}

There are two relative pronouns. One is used to modify nouns (su), and the other one is used to modify verbs (si). They inflect for case but not number.

|}

The article su (gloss RELN) is used to introduce a subordinate clause that describes a noun, in effect the entire subordinate clause acting as a modifier to a noun phrase. For that reason, su blurs the line between an article and a modifier. Its placement must always be immediately after the head term after any prepositional phrases and in series with any other relative clauses that modify the noun. The referent of su is the entire noun phrase it modifies. The referent noun is always an actor in relation to the verb of the subordinate clause. The case of su is that of the role of the referent in the relative clause. Phrase order in the relative clause is relatively free, with the caveats that the clause must be introduced by a form of su and that the verb phrase must go last in these causes. A simple example:

The article su is in the absolutive case because the referent, the child, is the experiencer of the verb "triju," to see, in the subordinate clause. The verb goes to the end of the clause, and that signals to the listener that the clause is over and subsequent speech belongs to the main clause. The nominative form of "su," "sun," would be used when the referent is not a core argument of the dependent clause verb, and in that case may be preceded by a preposition clarifying the role.

The article si (gloss RELV) is used to introduce a subordinate clause that as a whole fills an actor role centered around the verb in the main clause. The case of si is the case for the role the clause performs in the main verb. The clause introduced by si may appear anywhere in the sentence that as simple noun phrase introduced by 'a' could go. Word order within the clause is the same as for su. The clause must be introduced by si and the verb phrase must be the last element in the clause. A simple example:

===Modifiers===

#'''''Article'''''

According to this analysis, the reason why the "yn" is mandatory and you can't say "na su se an citit" is because of the trace left behind triggering the "head term required with a modifier" rule.

====Prepositions====

===Conjunctions===

==Example Text==