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==Morphology== | ==Morphology== | ||
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===Nouns=== | |||
Core: varso, varso-n | |||
Genitive: varso-s, varso-nis | |||
Obl: varso-n, varso-ne | |||
It looks simple, but the rules for its usage is complicated when it's integrated into a long NP chain. Here's a quote of some of the rules of its usage: | |||
-- | |||
"Varsoncáris" ("In the village") | |||
--> "Varso-n=cár-(i)s" | |||
--> village-OBL=LOC-GEN | |||
At one time the LOC "=car=" was once a relational noun, "*ocarei" (cf "ocairth" = "place"), which degraded to a clitic (so it was originally something like this: "*varso-n ocarei-s" i.e. "the place's village"). Heads are followed by their modifiers in Old and Late Corradi, so "=car=" followed the NP it modified. Modifiers typically take the GEN, which is why you see the "-(i)s" form as seen in the previous two examples ("riélinacár-is" and "varsoncár-is"). Moreover, it is the Genitive of the **head** noun's declension class that is attached to the final element. | |||
The Oblique case is descended from the Construct State affix, which explains the reconstruction, "*varso-n ocarei-s". | |||
The reconstructed relational nouns acted as attributes (i.e. adjectively), so their case inflections mirrored that of the declension class its noun head belonged to, c.f. "varsoncáris" vs "thaenroncáros" (in the hero's person/hand/possession/etc). The clitics retained the GEN affix, a historical reminder that the clitics were once full-fledged nouns. | |||
Note that the noun head must be in the Oblique case before the adpositional clitics can be added. | |||
Things can get complicated if the head is followed by several adjectives, e.g. "varson novroth revu nistralcárins" < "varso-n novroth revu nistral-car-n-s" = "village busy beautiful large-in.the-of"("in the large, beautiful, bustling village"). Notice that the Suffixaufnahme-like process occurs only in the last element of the NP. I.e. it is the last element of the NP that receives adpositional and genitive case marking. | |||
Each element in the NP typically has scope over all elements to its left, up to the head noun. However, if an adjective or other modifier in the NP (e.g. adverbs, comparison particles, etc) has narrow scope (i.e. governs only the element to its immediate left), both elements receive Oblique marking (e.g. "varso-n revu caenridae-an thenoloc-on nistral-car-n-s" = "in the large, dark green, beautiful village" (village beautiful green dark large-in.the-of). To confuse things further, the Oblique endings are the ones that belong to the base form's declension - they do NOT take the Oblique endings of the head noun (varso-n), which is also inflected in the Oblique case. | |||
Here, the elements "caenridae-an thenoloc-on" are two adjectives, with "thenoloc-on" (dark-OBL.5DECL) having narrow scope over "caenridae-an" (green-OBL.1DECL); note that "caenridae-an" has scope over all the other elements to its left in the NP; had the element to its immediate left, "revu", been in the OBL.2DECL case, "caenridae-an" would have scope only over "revu". | |||
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