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Grayis: Difference between revisions
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|align=left valign=top| third person plural inanimate, ‘they, those things’<ref>As with the third person singular, there is an animacy distinction in the third person plural (both rendered as ‘they’ in English). No registers are used with inanimate pronouns.</ref> | |align=left valign=top| third person plural inanimate, ‘they, those things’<ref>As with the third person singular, there is an animacy distinction in the third person plural (both rendered as ‘they’ in English). No registers are used with inanimate pronouns.</ref> | ||
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==Nouns== | |||
Grayis nouns do not inflect for case or number, but depending on how they are analyzed, they can be said to have six possible cases. The “inflection” is actually simply the addition of grammatical particles which clarify the role of the noun in a sentence. (The “conjugation” of verbs works in the same way.) | |||
Grayis can also be analyzed as having no cases at all, and simply has five postpositions in addition to various prepositions. They are presented here as cases simply to help clarify the tripartite morphosyntactic alignment, but the learner should feel free to think of them in whatever manner is easiest to remember. | |||
===Absolutive=== | |||
The absolutive particle '''ū''' is placed after a subject noun which does not take a direct object. This is always the case with intransitive verbs, and can also be the case with optionally transitive verbs with no object. | |||
===Ergative=== | |||
The counterpart to absolutive is ergative. Any noun which takes a direct object must be marked with the particle '''ī'''. (This particle is always paired with another noun phrase containing the particle '''ā''', and vice versa.) | |||
===Accusative=== | |||
The accusative (or direct object) of any verb is marked with the particle '''ā'''. (This particle is always paired with another noun phrase containing the particle '''ī''', and vice versa.) | |||
===Genitive=== | |||
The genitive particle '''au''' indicates that the noun belongs to, is a part of, or is related to another noun. The genitive particle can be thought of as equivalent to the English clitic '''’s''', though it has a few different uses as well, such as forming the possessive pronouns (‘my’, ‘her’, ‘their’, &c), or translating the words ‘of’ or ‘from’. | |||
===Dative=== | |||
The dative particle '''ai''' indicates that the noun is an indirect object of some kind. The dative case is a bit ambiguous in most languages, and can often be replaced by various prepositions (such as ‘to’, ‘for’, or ‘towards’). | |||
===Oblique=== | |||
Finally, the oblique case (also called the prepositional case) is used when a noun is preceded by a preposition, or is otherwise not followed by any of the above adpositions. | |||
==Swadesh List== | ==Swadesh List== | ||