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Medyestani: Difference between revisions
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<!--==Grammar==--> | <!--==Grammar==--> | ||
==Morphology | ==Morphology and Grammar== | ||
<!-- How do the words in your language look? How do you derive words from others? Do you have cases? Are verbs inflected? Do nouns differ from adjectives? Do adjectives differ from verbs? Etc. --> | <!-- How do the words in your language look? How do you derive words from others? Do you have cases? Are verbs inflected? Do nouns differ from adjectives? Do adjectives differ from verbs? Etc. --> | ||
When on paper, Medyestani is rather agglutinative, speakers tend to avoid using it too much for clarity's sake. | When on paper, Medyestani is rather agglutinative, speakers tend to avoid using it too much for clarity's sake. | ||
===Nouns=== | ===Nouns=== | ||
Nouns are not modified for case, which is unfortunate, since the common-most word order is SOV. In addition, people may refer to persons as nouns instead of pronouns, while still using the appropriate person endings in verb conjugation. In light of this, speakers occasionally use dative-style prepositional constructions to get around ambiguous cases. | |||
For example: | |||
Da lizar en vedir duvim | |||
''da-lizar en-vedir duv-im'' | |||
<small>DAT</small>-spoon <small>LOC</small>-water dip-<small>1PERS</small> | |||
''I/We are dipping the spoon in the water'' | |||
====Plural==== | ====Plural==== | ||
Nominal plurals take -i, unless they end in -a, in which case it becomes either -ae, or -ai, with -ai becoming more common due to regularisation. | Nominal plurals take -i, unless they end in -a, in which case it becomes either -ae, or -ai, with -ai becoming more common due to regularisation. | ||
====Affixes==== | |||
Various affixes can be added to nouns to create new vocabulary. One common one is ''-ar'', which is usually used for agents of actions. Things are made slightly complicated by some non-productive uses of otherwise normally productive affixes, such as in ''kshedar'' (power), and ''kshederiya'' (warrior). | |||
There are also various diminutives used for names of ethnic groups or objects, such as ''-ak''. Occasionally identifying these can be difficult if vowels have blended together, like in ''yezuk'' (language/dialect). It's important to remember that -a- (/-e-) is not a stable vowel in such cases. | |||
Abstraction can be achieved by ''-iya'', which represents a merger of both Proto-Indo-European *-i-eh2 and Medyestani ''-i'' with a dummy vowel at the end. | |||
===Adjectives=== | |||
The common-most adjective suffix is ''-i'' from Proto-Indo-European *-ikos. Occasionally, the diminutive is used alongside ''-ikos'' to create a suffix like ''-chi''. | |||
===Verbs=== | |||
====Person suffixes==== | |||
{| class="wikitable" | |||
|- | |||
! Person !! Singular !! Plural | |||
|- | |||
| 1st (I/We) || -im || -im | |||
|- | |||
| 2nd (You) || -i || -i | |||
|- | |||
| 3rd (They) || -i || -in | |||
|} | |||
Not only is the system much more simplified compared to Proto-Indo-European, but even the remaining ''-i/-in'' distinction is not strictly enforced. In addition, ''-in'' may sometimes be used regardless of person to emphasise that the subject is plural. | |||
In increasingly rare cases, a special formal 2nd person suffix ''-ish'' or ''-esh'' is used, but its usage is still common enough to make worth noting, lest the learning speaker be caught unaware. | |||
====Tense==== | |||
The past tense uses the suffix ''-t'', which occasionally can trigger sound shifts. For example, another ''d'' or ''t'' before it may change to ''s'', a ''v'' derived from prior ''b'' may shift to ''f'' while a ''v'' from ''w'' may cause a vowel change while changing the ''-t'' to ''-d-''. | |||
{| class="wikitable" | |||
|- | |||
! Input before -t !! Combined output | |||
|- | |||
| b, p, f, v || -ft- | |||
|- | |||
| t, d, s || -st- | |||
|- | |||
| z || -zd- | |||
|- | |||
| k, g, h || -ht- | |||
|- | |||
| ch, sh || -sht- | |||
|- | |||
| zh || -zhd- | |||
|- | |||
| v (w) || ''-od-, -ud-'' | |||
|} | |||
====Participles==== | |||
Below is a list of participles commonly used: | |||
* -ad (passive) | |||
* -and (active/continuous) | |||
* -an (ambiguous voice, akin to Japanese noun nominalisation) | |||
Technically speaking, ''-an'' is the infinitive ending, however it can be used like a participle, although whether it is active or passive is inferred from context. For disambiguation between the infinitive and use of the infinitive as a verb noun, ''-eni'' is sometimes preferred (and similarly, ''-edi'' and ''-endi'' also exist, although they are used less often, although the -i helps with abstraction of the adjectival meaning). | |||
Participles are commonly used with the copula, although there exists some modal verb constructions for things such as the perfect or continuous, which is achieved by using the verb ''dan'' (to do, to place). | |||
For example: | |||
Shirsand as | |||
''shirs-and a-s'' | |||
run-<small>CONT</small> <small>COP</small>-<small>2PERS</small> | |||
''You are running'' | |||
Yedad devin | |||
''yed-ad dev-in'' | |||
eat-<small>PASS</small> do-<small>3P</small> | |||
"They have eaten" | |||
<!-- Here are some example subcategories: | <!-- Here are some example subcategories: | ||