Re: More on the Hermetic Language

3/12/03 3:19:12 PM, Christophe Grandsire
<christophe.grandsire@...> wrote:

>En réponse à Paul Burgess <paul@...>:
>> Gender in Hermetic is not grammatical gender as in
>> French. A noun referring to a male is, in Hermetic,
>> *often* (but not always) put in the masculine gender.
>> And an adjective referring to a female would be
>> *usually* (but not absolutely always) inflected as a
>> feminine adjective. Et cetera. With the adjectives,
>> there are narrow (and fairly idiomatic) bounds within
>> which gender is optional. For instance, in describing
>> myself, I would probably put an adjective in the
>> masculine gender, but not 100% of the time.
>
>And in which cases wouldn't you? Because you want to
keep your gender secret,
>or it's irrelevant to the conversation, or it's
impolite?

It would just tend on occasion to drop out-- moreso in
informal conversation, and I should think moreso if I
were using a large number of adjectives to describe
myself. Somewhat idiomatic! However, once a noun or
pronoun is explicitly engendered, then the adjectives
that modify it *have to* be explicitly engendered as
well.

I *want* to say it could also sometimes happen due to a
Hermetic grammatical phenomenon I call "syncope"-- but
I'd want to think that one over more carefully when I'm
not sitting around with an early morning cup of coffee,
not yet wide awake.

>Your pronouns look rather regular :) .
Yes, the personal pronouns were among the very first
words I came up with, back in 1970. The only
irregularity I can think of is that the initial vowel is
dropped in masculine and feminine 2nd and 3rd person
pronouns. For instance, "ocho," "he or she"; "chano,"
"he"; "chino," "she." However in the native script (mna
Thiposo), this initial vowel is still indicated in
writing, though not pronounced.

>> Here are a few examples [of subordinate verbs]:
>>
>> Mna yaldo chocilias, "The young person was sitting
>> down."
>>
>> Mna yaldo schociliiso nthaas yo mna sipiroth, "The
young
>> person who was sitting down gave me the book."
>>
>> Somchociliisw'omnthaas yaldo mna sipiroth, "I who was
>> sitting down [or, as I was sitting down, I] gave the
>> young person a book."
>>
>> Omnthaas yaldo chociliiso mna sipiroth, "I gave the
>> young person who was sitting down the book."
>>
>
>I think I understand a bit of the system now. I found
the third example most
>striking: the subclause verb becomes one with the 1st
person pronoun!! That's
>neat! Does it do it at all persons? Are there
limitations for that?

That combining of the two verbs is a phonetic and not a
grammatical phenomenon. In Hermetic, when a word ends in
/o/ and the following word begins with a vowel, the /o/
changes to /w/ and becomes the first sound in the
syllable following:

"Mna thsipo nathis," "The songbird sings":
 mnah THSEE-poh NAH-thees   (pardon my non-IPA! :)
"Mna thsipw'adis," "The songbird comes":
 mnah THSEEP WAH-dees

Likewise under the same circumstances, /i/ --> /y/

>> In Hermetic, an adjective is completed by another
>> adjective, and an adverb is completed by another
adverb.
>>
>
>How do you differentiate the situation when two
adjectives complete the same
>noun from the one when one adjective completes a noun
and the second completes
>the adjective? Or cannot that situation happen?
In some instances, where there is no ambiguity, the
adjectives can simply follow one another:

"mna diaco zantha raca," "the yellow sphere overhead"--
it is clear that the adjective "raca," "upper" or
"located above," cannot be completing the adjective
"zantha," "yellow."

However, adjectives can be related by conjunctions, and
it is always possible to form a compound adjective using
"-g-" (adjoining a consonsant, "-gh-"), meaning "and."

"mna diaco zanthaghraca," "the yellow sphere overhead"--
in this instance, it is made explicit that both
adjectives are completing the same noun.

One can form very long compound adjectives of many
elements in this manner-- also compound verbs, etc. When
I was a youngster and first came up with this
construction, somehow it made me think of long words as
in Sanskrit.  :)


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     E-mail   paul@paulburgess.org
     Website  http://www.paulburgess.org
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