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Carpathian language: Difference between revisions
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==Morphology== | ==Morphology== | ||
Carpathian retained many of the grammatical features present in Proto-Indo-European. Its nominal morphology makes use of seven [[w:Grammatical case|cases]]: | |||
* [[w:Nominative case|Nominative]] – subject | |||
* [[w:Accusative case|Accusative]] – direct object | |||
* [[w:Genitive case|Genitive]] – possession or relation; direct object of negated verbs | |||
* [[w:Locative case|Locative]] – stationary location | |||
* [[w:Dative case|Dative]] – indirect object, recipient | |||
* [[w:Instrumental case|Instrumental]] – tool, means by which, accompanying | |||
* [[w:Vocative case|Vocative]] – direct address | |||
Carpathian nouns have three [[w:Grammatical number|numbers]]: '''singular''' (for one item), '''dual''' (for two items) and '''plural''' (for three or more items). The dual number generally has a more limited use, than the other two, but it remains productive in the standard language. | |||
Carpathian is unique among its neighbouring languages, in the way it distinguishes four genders: masculine, feminine, common and neuter. Many originally masculine nouns in PIE had become common in modern Carpathian. The neuter gender is mostly associated with inanimate or diminutive nouns, while the common gender refers to abstract nouns and animate nouns with no clear gender distinction. The gender of a noun is clear from its nominative case ending: ''-as'' and ''-us'' for masculine, ''-ā'' and ''-ī'' for feminine, ''-is'' for common and ''-a'', ''-i'', ''-ū'' and ''-en'' for neuter. | |||
===Ablaut=== | ===Ablaut=== | ||
''Main article: [[Carpathian ablaut]]'' | ''Main article: [[Carpathian ablaut]]'' | ||
Carpathian has both qualitative and quantitative ablaut, inherited from Proto-Indo-European, but later extended to form new alternations. In most morphemes only two grades were represented, but some could have as many as five. Most of the reasons for the rise of vowel alternations were phonetic, connected to the prosody. On the other hand, the tendency to level out irregular or excess phonetic alternations resulted in simplifying the paradigms and eliminating the previous vowel alternations. In word derivation a certain percentage of words became obsolescent, fossilising some forms and making them obscure for ablaut. Numerous remnants of such former patterns exist in the language, for example: ''skalàndas'' “rod” – ''skōlangā'' “fence” – ''skèliaugas'' “osier” one may establish a pattern "a-ō-e", but there are no ē- or zero-forms, which either never existed or didn't survive. Such disconnected patterns exist solely as independent words, no new forms arise from that pattern. Different dialects may preserve different "parts" of the pattern: ''kalaušītei'' and ''kilūšītei'' “to listen”; ''bèberas'' and ''bàbaras'' “beaver”, ''iskùs'' and ''aiskùs'' “bright”. | Carpathian has both qualitative and quantitative ablaut, inherited from Proto-Indo-European, but later extended to form new alternations. In most morphemes only two grades were represented, but some could have as many as five. Most of the reasons for the rise of vowel alternations were phonetic, connected to the prosody. On the other hand, the tendency to level out irregular or excess phonetic alternations resulted in simplifying the paradigms and eliminating the previous vowel alternations. In word derivation a certain percentage of words became obsolescent, fossilising some forms and making them obscure for ablaut. Numerous remnants of such former patterns exist in the language, for example: ''skalàndas'' “rod” – ''skōlangā'' “fence” – ''skèliaugas'' “osier” one may establish a pattern "a-ō-e", but there are no ē- or zero-forms, which either never existed or didn't survive. Such disconnected patterns exist solely as independent words, no new forms arise from that pattern. Different dialects may preserve different "parts" of the pattern: ''kalaušītei'' and ''kilūšītei'' “to listen”; ''bèberas'' and ''bàbaras'' “beaver”, ''iskùs'' and ''aiskùs'' “bright”. | ||
===Nouns=== | |||
Most of the Proto-Indo-European declensional classes were retained in Carpathian with only the consonant-stem nouns being altered and reduced in number, since they no longer form a productive class. All nouns belong to one of the three accentuation classes, called acute-static ('''AS''') with a fixed acute accent on the first syllable, circumflex-static ('''CS''') with a fixed circumflex accent on the first or second syllable, and mobile ('''M''') with the accent shifting between initial and final syllables. Similar accent types exist for verbs. | |||
====Adjectives==== | |||
A Carpathian innovation to the inflection of adjectives was the creation of a pronominal inflection by affixing forms of the object pronominal clitics to existing adjective forms. The inflection had a function resembling [[Predicate (grammar)|predication]] or definiteness: ''nawas'' “new” — ''nawasis'' “the new one”, “nawasmi” “I am new”. When declining for case, both parts change their forms: ''nawūmei'' “for me being new”. | |||
===Verbs=== | |||
[[Category:Languages]] | [[Category:Languages]] | ||
[[Category:Carpathian]] | [[Category:Carpathian]] | ||