Re: Kench declensions (long), was Two YANCs: Para-British

On Fri, 9 Jun 2000 10:49:25 +0200, Christophe Grandsire
<Christophe.Grandsire@...> wrote:

>I suppose also that "day" is an example of a masculine declension, "rerd"
>of feminine declension and "streal" of a neuter declension. Am I right or
>completely out? :))
Sorry, I failed to mark them. Genders are given in the following
order: m., n., f.

>Interesting that plural is not marked on nouns in general (except in a few
>cases). It's quite different from German at least.
Just the regular phonetic development of the Old English forms, plus
analogy...

>That's a nice idea, looks a bit like French again ("un peu DE vin",
>"beaucoup DE gens", for instance). Was French a source of inspiration for
>you or is it plain coincidence?
Yes, in the sense that it's the most widely known language having the
partitive article. And, since I needed to forbid nouns without articles,
(in order to preserve case distinctions), the third article seemed
necessary.

<...>
>>When a substantive has several adjectives with no coordinating
>>connection felt between the latter, only the first adjective can have
>>the ‘strong’ forms, while others follow the ‘weak’ declension, e. g.:
>>
>>om goodom warmen day  ‘for a good warm day’
>>ot vokener zmealen men  ‘some evil mean men’
>>
>
>Quite interesting.
Partly modeled on Middle High German (since I wasn't quite sure about
some details for Old English).

<...>

>Like French "le grand amour" vs. "les grandEs amours"? (amour - "love" -
is
>masculine in singular and feminine in plural.
Didn't know that...

>There are a few very rare
>words like that in French. But generally one of their number is hardly
>used) Or do they only take the feminine endings and keep their masculine
>gender? (I'd think that analogy would tend to make them really feminine in
>plural)
No adjectives or determinatives distinguish the genders in Pl., so I think
it is simply a less regular model of Pl. formation.

<...>
>Strange distinction between two accusatives... Where do they come from
>historically speaking?
<...>
>>Five cases, three genders, three articles - as promised. Historical
>>comments are available upon request.
>
>Yes please! Especially about the evolution of the case system.
Sorry, it will be lengthy again, so I'll post something after the
weekend.

As for phonology, something is posted in another thread.
>
>                                                Christophe Grandsire
>                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.
Basilius