Narbonósc. Part IX

OK, as I promised, here is a review of the Narbonósc conjunctions, followed by a
small discussion about the way Narbonósc handles indefinite objects in negative
sentences.

THE CONJUNCTIONS:

As the other Romance langs (but unlike my other Romance conlang Reman),
Narbonósc makes a distinction between the conjunctions of coordination, used to
coordinate two words or phrases of the same nature, and the conjunctions of
subordination, used to form subclauses. I'll follow this distinction by
presenting first the conjunctions of coordination and then the conjunctions of
subordination.

The conjunctions of coordination:
The main conjunctions are:
é /e/: and,
ou /u/: or,
mas /ma/: but,
saet... saet /se/: whether... or,
nõ... nõ /nO~/: neither... nor,
sénõ /'senO~/: if not, except,
puis /pHi/: so, then,
porstelì /pOrst@'li/: that's why,
por /pO/: for,
nonostant /nonOs'ta~/: however, nevertheless.

Among them, the only remarquable ones are the pair nõ... nõ. As you may already
know, the negation in Narbonósc is discontinuous, like in French. The first part
is usually the unstressed word ne /n@/ (more rarely the stressed word nõ /nO~/),
the second part an adverb of nominal origin like reim /rE~/, pas /pa/ or
palavre /pa'lavr/. The peculiarity of the negative conjunction pair nõ... nõ is
that it corresponds to the first part of the negation (the ne), not to the
second like in French. So when it is used to connect verb clauses, it must still
be added to the clause a second part of negation of type reim (the nõ replaces
the ne, not the second part in reim or equivalent).

The conjunctions of subordination:
Some of the them trigger the use of the subjunctive mood in the subclause. Those
conjunctions will be marked by a +subj. in this case.

cue /k@/ (cu' /k/ in front of a vowel or h+vowel): that,
cuend /ka~/: when,
come /kom/: as, since,
por cue /pO k@/: because,
pra cue +subj. /pra k@/: in order that,
dià cue /dja k@/: because,
asì come /a'zi kom/: as, like,
pêre cue /pEr k@/: while,
tant come /ta~ kom/: as long as,
ant cue +subj. /a~ k@/: before (literary style),
alant de cue +subj. /a'la~ d@ k@/: before,
pouès cue /pwE k@/: after (literary style),
apouès de cue /a'pwE d@ k@/: after,
dês cue /dE k@/: since,
haste cue +subj. /ast k@/: until,
tantêne cue /ta~'tEn k@/, asì cue /a'zi k@/: as soon as,
mentre /ma~tr/: whereas,
sé /se/: (conditional) if,
nu~ /n9~/: whether, (interrogative) if,
come sé +subj. /kom se/: as if,
biem cue /bjE~ k@/: although,
biem cue +subj.: even if, even though,
com cue +subj. /kO~ k@/: provided that.

The most remarquable in this is the presence of nu~ (by the way, does anyone
know if it's possible to get a u with a tilde over it? Is there any ALT sequence
for that?) meaning "whether" and deriving directly from Latin "num". Unlike its
Latin ancestor it is used only in subclauses though.

Well, if you have any questions or comments about this, feel free to reply. Now
I'll go to another feature of Narbonósc grammar.

THE TREATMENT OF INDEFINITE OBJECTS IN NEGATIVE CLAUSES:

Depending whether a noun is countable or uncountable, it takes when it's
indefinite respectively the indefinite article (um(s), une(s)) or the partitive
article (ne, na, nel'). This is true also with indefinite objects of affirmative
verbs, but not anymore with negative verbs. In this case, the indefinite object
doesn't take an article anymore, but is preceeded with the preposition em
instead. This may look strange, but French uses a parallel construction with the
preposition "de" always put in front of the indefinite object of a negative
verb. One consequence of this construction is the expression reim em + noun
without article which means "no + noun" (in French, there is the expression "pas
de + noun" which corresponds well to the Narbonósc form).
All this concerns only the indefinite object. The definite object bears no
difference whatsoever whether it is the object of an affirmative or negative
verb.

So, I think that will be enough for today (after all, you didn't even have time
to digest my previous post :) ). Next time I may put some more verb paradigms (I
still didn't talk about the verbs in -uîre like conduîre: to drive, or about the
verbs like vivîre: to live. I also haven't talked yet about the irregular verbs
fêre: to do, to make - and not *fâre as I said in a previous post - and dîre: to
say) and talk more about semantical features of Narbonósc, until I'm able to
translate something longer than the Conlang T-shirt sentence :) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr