Re: Nindic Nominal Morphology

On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 09:17:41PM -0700, Elliott Lash wrote:
> Nindic nouns are inflected for three basic forms:
>  1) plural
>  2) definite
>  3) demonstrative
[...]

Interesting. I should introduce some irregularities to Tatari Faran.
:-)  I still haven't figured out how to handle collectives yet.


[...]
> The definitive form has three means of formation:
>
> 1) ?ad    				     hyger ?rain? > hygrad ?the rain?
>  (with syncope sometimes, especially before "r/l/n")
[...]

Hmm, what encoding are you using? I see a lot of ?'s in your message,
which I'm sure are intended to be something else.


[...]
> The use of the definite form is mostly to mean "the"
> as in English. Some restrictions apply, however. It's
> used after a certain class of prepositions, but not
> another class of prepositions (so called
> s-prepositions, since they end in "s", usually). It's
> used before possessive pronouns, but not if the
> possessive pronoun begins with a consonant. With
> possessive pronouns, it is left untranslated.
Reminds me of Classical Greek, which uses articles with names (e.g.,
literally "the Socrates").


[...]
> Demonstratives can come before or after the noun,
> usually after in speech. The following are the major
> demonstrative
>
> eir(?d) ?that over there, yonder?
> mer(ed) ?that?
> m?r(ed)  ?this?
Nice. I haven't given Tatari Faran "real" demonstratives yet;
currently, for nouns referring to people, the 3rd person pronouns can
be used as demonstratives. E.g.:

	san tara'	- "That person" (lit., "he person")
	san diin	- "Those people" (lit. "them people")
	kiran tara'	- "That young man" (lit. "he young man")
	kiran diin	- "Those young men" ("them young men")

The 2nd person pronouns are similarly used, with a vocative meaning:
	san tse		- "You man", "you person"
	san huna	- "You(pl) people"
	diru huna	- "You girls"
	bata' tse	- "You, chief"


> That's basically it for nominal morphology. I hope you
> enjoyed.
[...]

Yep, it was fascinating. Tatari Faran is way boring compared to
Nindic. Plurals are formed by prefixing _he-_:
	san	- person
	hesan	- people

Even so, the plural is rarely used; _san_ by itself could mean either
singular or plural. When a pronoun is present, the plural prefix is
unnecessary (e.g. _san diin_: "those people", the plural is already
conveyed by the pronoun, making _hesan diin_ redundant). The plural is
usually used only when you wish to emphasize the plurality of the
noun.

The only other noun inflection (so far) is the genitive, which is
formed by suffixing -n (if ending with a vowel) or -an (if ending with
a consonant). E.g.:
	diru	- girl
	dirun	- of the girl
	itsan	- cinder cone
	itsanan - of the cinder cone

Genitives appear between the noun and any case markers:
	buta' kei	- house (originative)
	buta' dirun kei	- house of the girl (originative)

There are some mutations outside of inflections proper. For example,
when the originative case markers (_na_, _nei_, _no_) follow a noun
whose last syllable is almost identical to the marker, a dissimilation
process occurs:
	suna + nei -> sunan dei
	huna + na -> hunan da
	kuana + nei -> kuanan dei

Other mutations include the fusion of feminine case particle with the
interrogative _ta_:
	nei + ta -> nita
	sei + ta -> sita
	kei + ta -> kita


T

--
2+2=4. 2*2=4. 2^2=4. Therefore, +, *, and ^ are the same operation.

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