personal enclitics

I'd like to run this aspect of Bulyth grammar by you all.

Kansú had a set of suffixes which could be added to verbs to make the
subject clear (as the verb did not inflect for person in the past and future
tenses). 'Aašesay, a language derived from Kansú generalised these suffixes
as verbal inflections. However, Bulyth used the suffixes a lot more, and
they crop up in all sorts of places. Ironically, they are only rarely used
on verbs!

They are basically enclitic forms of the pronouns:
        pronoun enclitic
Is      su              -s
IIs     thu             -th
IIIs    rho, rha                -r
Ip      neth            -m
IIp     ca              -c
IIIp    ta              -t

They are often added to prepositions, ar "of, from" can be conjugated as
ars, arth, aryr, arm, arc, art; this is the closest Bulyth comes to having
possessive pronouns. However, a different construction is more often used.

The prepostions la, which strictly speaking means "to" is often conjugated
to be the pronominal object, even when the object is not indirect, since
pronouns do not inflect for case: su yngaseu lath "I called you", literally
translated is "I called to you"

This is also used in sentances of the sort "to make X Y", "to make Y to-X"
in Bulyth: thu puleu rechnai lar "you made her queen", lit "you made queen
to her".

The enclitics can also be added to nouns. In this case, they make a
"genitive" construction.
The normal genitive construction expresses "Arhyn's house" as "house-him he
Arhyn", cabor rho Arhyn adding the enclitic to noun and adding the pronoun
afterwards. In less formal speech the pronoun is ommited: cabor Arhyn
"Arhyn's house" or cabos "my house". For statements like "MY house, not
yours" where the owner is emphasised, the enclitic is added to both noun and
pronoun: cabos sus.

They can also be added to verbs, emphasising the subject when there is a
pronoun object: ta theut su "they helped me". However, the construction with
la is more common, even with sentences of this type: ta theu las.

They an even be added to question-words, making it clear who the enquiry is
about. Since the verb to be is not used in the present tense, this is
common. "Pardon?" is math, the conjugated form of ma "what" (cf. British
"you what?") and modoth, the second person form of modo "how" is used for
"how are you?".

Are there any con- or natlang examples of this? And does having conjugated
pronouns make Bulyth a Celticonlang ;o).

Any thoughts are welcomed,

Dan



-------------------------------------------------------------
Lo deu nu preca êl'aisún necoui.  God prays at noone's altar.

Dan Jones: www.geocities.com/yl_ruil/
-------------------------------------------------------------