Re: some Proto-Quendic grammar (was Re: creating words (...))

--- Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>
wrote:

> The common ancestor of IE and Elvish was spoken
> to the north of the lake that existed in the
> Black Sea
> basin before the Black Sea Flood, which is part
> of Elvish
> mythology.  It is a case of mythology confirmed
> by hard linguistic facts.
In the World's case, it is a matter of myth
confirmed by Daine and Elvish histories.

> According to the mythology, the ancestors of
> the Elves
> came from a lush, fertile plain at the shore of
> a big lake
> in the east (you may recognize the Cuiviénen
> story here),
Yep. :)

> which was swallowed by the sea in a disaster
> caused by
> a war between angelic powers.  The refugees
> moved west
> and became the various peoples of Europe, the
> westernmost
> of them being the Elves.
In this case it was a mage war of some sort that
got the whole flood thing going.

> What regards Semitic, I doubt it has much to do
> with the Black Sea Flood.  The languages most
> closely
> related to Semitic are all spoken in Africa.
Well, history doesn't have to be the same! I
suspect some protosemites of some sort had moved
into the Levant and possibly Anatolia in time for
the disaster. I guess their presence isn't a
requirement in the immediate vicinity, though
they did pick up on the big regional flood myth!

> In modern Nur-ellen, the genders are no longer
> marked
> on the noun either, as all the final vowels
> have been lost.
> Plural is marked by umlaut, while the dual has
> gone.
> Anyway, the masc. and fem. genders were only
> used
> for entities of the respective natural gender:
>
> chvana `dog'
> chvano `male dog'
> chvane `female dog'
Talarian has no gender, apart from the
grammatical animate and inanimate. Dog is
"hancas", and is animate. It is of uncertain
etymology, possibly from Ozmandish "hundo" or
perhaps from Daine "harcu".

> The Nur-ellen pronouns have retained their PQ
> forms
> ma `I', tha `thou', so `he', se `she', sa
> `he/she/it',
> etc., until today, simply because a loss of the
> vowel
> would have left behind single consonants.
Talarian personal pronouns:

Active, anaphoric

          s.       d.        p.
1         akâ      wi        mes
          makam    ôsam      mesam
2         tû       pa        yû
          takam    ôram      yesam

[The third person personal pronouns are taken
from the demonstratives.]

Active, cataphoric

          s.       d.        p.
1         anam     osman     anmat
2         anat     paman     anyat
3         amtar              amtar

Stative

          s.       d.        p.
1         has      wi        çam
2         can      pa        vaç
3         ritas              sartas

> [snip some interesting vowel stuff]
I think I shall have to look into Gamkrelidze &
Ivanov.

> > Talarian is also an active language.
>
> I'd like to see some of its grammar.  Do you
> have something to present on the list?
In short, nouns are either animate or inanimate:

     An.                In.

nom  wíros    werás     watar    watan
gen  weráçya  weránâm   watnes   watan
dat  wírây    werámes   watan    watan
acc  wíram    weráms    watar    watan
abl  werâtos            watan
loc  wírel              watani
inst wírâ               watana
voc  wíre               watar

Words like patar will have patrâm for the nom/acc
agent/patient form as well.

> > > Now to verbs.  The tense/aspect/mood system
> is
> > > still quite a mess, and I won't mention it
> > > here.
> >
> > The messier the better! I'm afraid Talarian
> might
> > be a little simplistic.
>
> The PQ verb system will be inspired by the IE
> state
> of affairs as well as the verb inflections in
> Tolkien's
> languages and the screeve system of Georgian,
> though it won't be as forbiddingly complex as
> the latter.
Hm. No Gerogian infulences for me, thank you!!

> I know quite well which categories exist, but I
> am not
> sure yet about the forms.  The
> tense/aspect/mood categories
> are:
>
> present
> imperfect
> future
> conditional
> subjunctive
> aorist
> aorist subjunctive
> imperative
Talarian verbs come in two basic conjugations:
Active and Stative. Many roots can be both, but
there is usually a semantic difference. The
Actives are further divided into Punctual and
Durative. There are differences of accentuation,
ablaut and stem vowel that differentiate these
two subconjugations. Essentially, the Punctual
denotes a momentary action, and comes in Habitual
and Aorist (aspectless) varieties; the Durative
denotes a continuous action and comes in past and
non-past varieties. The Stative conjugation
denotes, as you must suspect, states of
existence.

The basic ending scheme:

ACTIVE
Active               Middle

Primary endings are found in the indicative:

-â, -mi              -ar
-si                  -sar
-ti                  -tar
-ma                  -âr
-sta                 -âr
-omti                -âr, -omtar

Secondary endings are found in the
subjunctive-optative, injunctive and precative:

-â, -m               -a
-s                   -sa
-t                   -ta
-cam                 -âr
-ta                  -âr
-âr, -omt            -âr, -omto

STATIVE

-â
-ta
-a
-ma
-a
-âr

As you can see, -â is the Stative 1s ending and
has become generalised in the Actives as well.

Wárkti (punctual 3s habitual) = he works (at a
task); he does

Wárkati (durative 3s present) = he is working; he
is doing

Wórka (Stative 3s) = it functions

> > > The suffixes are thus:
> > >
> > > [PQ conjugation suffixes]
> >
> > Cool. Related to primary and secondary
> endings in
> > some way?
>
> They are cognate to the IE active
> (present/aorist) and
> stative (perfect) endings, or the Hittite mi-
> and hi-
> conjugations.  PQ *th corresponds regularly to
> PIE *t
> (sort of Germanic/Armenian sound shift, or
> rather
> conservativism if one accepts glottalic theory
> which I do),
> PQ *h matches PIE *h2, while PIE *th2 is
> reflected
> as *ch in PQ.
I liked the -hi conjugation of Hittite, but
decided not to use it in Talarian.

> > How do laryngeals fit in either PQ or modern
> N-E?
>
> The laryngeals have merged into a single
> phoneme *h,
> which is preserved in some positions, but
> deleted with
> compensatory lengthenig of the vowel in
> post-vocalic position.
> The different laryngeals colour vowels
> differently,
> as I have laid out above:
>
> *h1a > *ha, *h2a > *he, *h3a > *ho
>
> In modern Nur-ellen, most PQ *h's are intact.
>
> What happens with the laryngeals in Talarian?
I haven't fully worked out the system yet. I know
they are retained initially; but generally
disappear internally.

I know Talarian has three kinds of H, and they
may be related to the three laryngeals in some
way. I don't know yet.

I found Sihler's _Comparative Grammar of Greek
and Latin_ to offer a good introduction to
laryngeals (they're not something I learned about
in school anyway!); and I'm slowly trying to
integrate them into Talarian.

Padraic.



=====
la cieurgeourea provoer mal trasfu ast meiyoer ke 'l andrext ben trasfu.


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