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

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

> I assume that by "IH", you mean "Indo-Hittite".
Yes.

> Hence, Talarian would occupy a position similar
> to that of Tocharian.
Yes. Sort of off to the side - it's not exactly
Anatolian, it's not exactly IE either.

> 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).
Out of curiosity, have you worked out any of the
conhistory of how all this came about?

In the World, the premise relies on the Black Sea
Flood to disperse a bunch of related peoples,
known as the Punt, that would become IE and
Semitic speakers (at least, there may be / may
have been some others).

> >      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.
I like that very much.

> 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
So many vowels in Talarian end up as A or O that
any system that may have existed was obliterated.
As it stands, there are only animate and
inanimate nouns.

You can still see a/e ablaut in animate nouns,
and there are some -as/-os variation in the
nominative singular. But otherwise, the animate
stem is in -a-.

> 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.
Of course, a lot of Talarian inanimate nouns are
sensically animate (like patar, father); I've
been knocking around for a way to allow them a
means of being used as agents. An agent stem may
well be the answer; it's a very elegant thing
you've got going there!

I'd already decided that sensically animate
inanimate nouns (like patar) have a
nominative/agent case in -m, which is also a
common areal feature in other languages around.
It would be no big deal to extend the -a- of the
stem to -â-, thus giving patrâm for a
nominative/agent of patar. Since inanimate nouns
always have -m for both nominative and
accusative, I suspect its accusative/patient
would also be in -âm.

This of course would yield interesting times when
patar would still be nominative, as in stative
verbs or any verb that doesn't require an agent;
while patrâm would be usual for verbs requiring
an agent.

Naturally, the accent will shift from PAtar to
p@TRAM.

> 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.
Talarian is also an active language.

> 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.

> 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.
Interesting. Talarian has Active and Stative
conjugations, with different sets of verb endings
and pronouns for each.

> 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
Cool. Related to primary and secondary endings in
some way?

> If the object (or subject of a stative verb) is
> inanimate,
> the singular endings are used regardless of the
> number of the object.
Any reason why?

How do laryngeals fit in either PQ or modern N-E?

Padraic.


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


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