Roumán Part II - Nouns, Adjectives,and Pronouns

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> Funny, to my untrained eyes, this looks rather Greekish :) . I like the idea of
> a Romance ergative language. Too bad that I didn't have it... What is the
> evolution?
Absolutive comes from the nominative, while the ergative is derived from
the ablative.  Since ablative was used for agent of passive and
instrumental, I figured it would be likely to become an ergative.

> So, when talking to an equal or an inferior, you use a nom-acc system for 1st
> and 2nd persons? And when your talking to a superior, you use an ergative
> system, but with 3rd person agreement on the verb, for both 1st and 2nd persons?
> Very neat! :)
In essence.  Hadn't thought of it that way.  The 3rd person agreement
was inspired by Spanish _usted(es)_, and the forms by Japanese, which
uses "that direction" for one polite form of "you", and, I think, "this
direction" for a polite form of "I".

> > Definite Articles
> Do they come from ipse or from iste?
Ipse.  If they'd come from _iste_, they'd have {c}, since /st/ -> /ts/
early on, hence, çáu < stare.  Much more interesting way of dealing with
those clusters than simply prefixing e-, I think.  Unique, too, AFAIK.
Initially, those new clusters then assimilated the fricative to the
stop, so that /ks/ -> /kx/ (-> /x/) and /ps/ -> /pf/.  This only occured
word-initially, and later, a different, regressive, assimilation took
place, so that, for example, /tf/ -> /pf/, and /ks/ -> /ts/.  However,
that difference seems kind of unnatural now that I look at it.  I had
that because I didn't want sc-, sp-, and st- all collapsing into ç-

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