Re: Zelandish (was: 2nd pers. pron. for God)

En réponse à andrew <hobbit@...>:

>
> Yes.  It's native name is Zelandisch (pronounced the same).  In my
> journal-keeping it is spoken in the province south of Woepie river,
> mainly in Land-in-Siet and Leewell, as well as a few outlying towns.
>
I'd be interested in some phonological explanations :)) .

>
> The third person pronouns, a bit more complicated, are hy, sy, hit,
> and
> hylie (subject), him, hir, hit/him, him (object), his, hir, his,
> hir/hirn (possessive).  Hit is used as the direct object, normally
> reduced to 't.  The oldest form of the third person plural subject
> pronoun was hie.  When I started codifying the language I decided that
> it needed to be distinct from hy.  I experimented with hai for a while
> but now I'm trying out hylie, from hie leed, them guys.  (Any Dutch
> dialects have hulle without julle over there?)
>
It's |jullie|. And Dutch uses |zij/ze| for the third person plural, which is
identical to the third person singular feminine (like in German). Luckily, they
use other forms for the object and possessive forms (|hen/hun| and |hun|
respectively for the third person plural. The feminine has the unique form
|haar|).

I guess a plural form parallel to |jullie| would be something like *|zullie|,
but I don't remember seeing anything like that ever...

>
> Grammatical gender has been dropped in favour of natural gender.  The
> definite article is det, 't (subject or direct object), dom (indirect
> object), des (possessive article).  The plural forms are da, dom and
> der.  The indefinite pronouns are an (singular) and sum (collective),
Funny that here |sum| is an article, after our discussion about articles and
the status of "some" ;))) .

> they are declined like adjectives.
You mean indefinite articles are declined like adjectives?

  Prepositions can optionally
> combine
> with the definite article: on+dom=om, toe+dom=toe'm, in+dom=im,
> et+dom=ettom. (I have caught myself nearly writing them in English so
> many times...!)
>
Funny, I don't know of any Germanic language that combines prepositions and
articles :)) .

> Nouns are not declined for case if this is indicated in the article or
> adjectives.  Strong nouns are declined for number with the historic
> endings -s, -e or -0.  Weak nouns take the ending -e or -n in the
> oblique or plural cases.
So weak nouns have no ending in the subject singular form, an -e in any other
singular form, and -n in the plural? (with or without -e?)

>  Not all nouns have a possessive -s.
Which ones do then? :))

> Generally
> Strong nouns with -e and all weak nouns indicate possession with the
> preposition |of| or the possessive pronouns, which can be reduced to
> -'s
> and -'r.
Like the Dutch construction "Jan z'n bril": "John his glasses" for "John's
glasses"? What I like is that in reduced form it makes it look like the
English -'s possessive form :)) (and behaves in the same way, as a clitic).

>
> Adjectives have two paradigms, weak and strong.  Weak is more common,
> used after articles and possessive pronouns.  The weak adjective
> nearly
> always takes the ending -e (or -n).
Like weak nouns, or is the distribution different?

  The strong adjective is rarer.

When is it used then? I suppose it can be used when the adjective is used
alone. Is there any case a noun wouldn't take an article in front of it? (since
you have singular and plural forms for both definite and indefinite articles, I
guess nouns without an article are rare, maybe mass nouns only...)

>
> Zelandish has strong verbs with ablaut in the past tense and weak
> verbs
> with a dental ending.  There are a lot of irregularities that remain
> unrecorded.  There are two simple tenses: present and past; indicative
> and subjunctive.  There are two past auxilliaries: |hebbe|, to have,
> for most verbs; and been, to be, for verbs of motion and intransitive
> verbs.  The future auxiiliary is |schie|, shall, will.
>
> tell, to tell
>
> ik tell  wy telt     ik heb teld  wy het teld
> du telst jy telt     du hest teld jy het teld
> hy telt  hylie telt  hy het teld  hylie het teld
>
If the past tense can only be formed using an auxiliary, you cannot call it
a "simple" tense. It is a compound tense (like the French "passé composé"). Or
do verbs also have a preterite or simple past conjugation, uncompounded?

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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