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

At 16:34 15.11.2003, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>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.

/BP 8^)
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
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