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

From:Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>
Date:Saturday, November 15, 2003, 15:20
Hallo!

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 16:11:37 -0800,
Costentin Cornomorus <elemtilas@...> wrote:

> --- Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> > wrote: > > > And to make things even more complex, I fancy > > that Proto-Elvish > > is remotely related to Indo-European, and > > explore the common > > ancestor of both, which involves some rather > > speculative internal reconstruction work on > > Proto-Indo-European! > > Interesting! I didn't know that. Talarian is in a > similar boat, being placed somewhere between IE > and IH.
I assume that by "IH", you mean "Indo-Hittite". Hence, Talarian would occupy a position similar to that of Tocharian. Quendic (to use the provisional name of the family) is even farther from the main IE stock than Anatolian, though closer than Uralic (if the latter is related to IE at all).
> Do you have any sketch of these endings > or anything you can show us?
Yes! The PQ noun had eight cases: agentive AS-0 genitive AS-s dative AS-na objective OS-0 instumental OS-i locative OS-as allative OS-ana ablative OS-ada Herein, the abbreviations "AS" and "OS" mean "agentive stem" and "objective stem", respectively. The agentive stem always ended in a vowel, which indicated gender and number: masculine singular -o feminine singular -e epicene singular -a dual, all genders -u plural, all genders -i Only animate nouns had an agentive stem, which also means that inanimate nouns have no agentive, genitive and dative cases! The objective stem always ended in a consonant; the OS of an animate noun was AS + -m. OK, you might ask what "agentive" and "objective" mean. PQ was an active language (as are its daughters), and the agentive denoted the agent of the verb, and the objective the patient. Now to verbs. The tense/aspect/mood system is still quite a mess, and I won't mention it here. Transitive verbs agree with both subject and direct object in person and number. There are two sets of conjugation suffixes, one for agentive and one for objective conjugation. (Again, the language follows the active type.) In the transitive case, the objective ending comes first, and the agentive ending follows. The suffixes are thus: Objective conjugation Agentive conjugation Sg. Du. Pl. Sg. Du. Pl. 1st -ha -hu -hi -ma -mu -mi 2nd -cha -chu -chi -tha -thu -thi 3rd -a -u -i -sa -su -si If the object (or subject of a stative verb) is inanimate, the singular endings are used regardless of the number of the object. (The digraphs |th| and |ch| represent dental and velar aspirated stops, which have become fricatives in the daughter languages.) For example, "I love you" is _melachama_. In Nur-ellen, the dual no longer exists, and the final vowels have fallen off, but as /i/ causes umlaut, plural can still be distinguished from singular. Greetings, Jörg.

Replies

Costentin Cornomorus <elemtilas@...>
Richard Wordingham <richard.wordingham@...>
Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>