Leropho part 2

Two days ago had part 1, now the continuing story of Leropho,
the team-effort language.

COMPOUND VERBS
Compound verbs are created by prepending other words
(typically direct objects, but possibly also adpositions and
adverbs) to the verb root to make one large, compound root.
Incorporated objects no longer figure in the slot system of the verb.

Example of a compound: "koxot-in" means
   "koxo t-o-n" "it has a pit/seed/stone."

Another example: "asdame-n" means
   "asda me-o-n" "he loves his friend."

Note that with the fusion of words in a compound verb
there is also semantic fusion.  "asdame-" doesn't just mean
"to love a friend," it modifies "asda" to mean the kind of friend
who is specially beloved, or it modifies "me" to mean the kind
of love one has for a friend, or both.

Another example: "kourochianou Katavo" means
"kouro chiotainou Katavo" "God gives us light."

Note here that chi- is a ditransitive verb.
When it incorporated its direct object, "kouro," it became
a merely transitive verb and so its indirect object was promoted
to direct object.  Otherwise it would have been "kourochiainou."

(*note: if we go with the Active structure, this should not happen
-- indirect objects should always be indirect objects regardless
of the number of arguments of the verb.)


TENSE, MOOD, AND ASPECT
Mood and aspect are distinguished in slot 1.
Ed reworked this part and it ended up as follows:

Aspect is "perfective" (a single event) or "imperfective"
(an ongoing process). (Terms borrowed from Ronald Langacker)
Roots have an inherent aspect which may be either emphasized
or overridden by an aspect marker in slot 1.

Mood is 'realis' or 'irrealis.'  The unmarked usage of the
irrealis mood is optative -- it expresses the wish of the speaker.
It can also be used, often in a subordinate clause, to express
that the situation of the verb takes place in a space that is
unreal with respect to the current discourse space; e.g.
with the conjunction "sado" "with the intention that."

In the Irrealis mood, aspect is not marked on the verb.

Tense is not directly distinguished in the verb; however,
explicit marking of perfective aspect can be used as
a shorthand for past, and similarly imperfective for present
and irrealis for future.  But adverbs denoting time, such as
"kea"/"okea", "in the past," "khun"/"okhun", "presently,"
or "sido"/"osido", "in the future," must be used if one is to
mark tense with absolutely no ambiguity.
The initial "o" in these compounds is emphatic, and sometimes
adversative: "naxa a; osido naxa voura"  "I am a man; but
in the future I will not be a man."

NOUNS
Some nouns:

asda: friend
leropho: language
Katavo: God

Personal pronouns
        sg              du              pl
1.      ta              ta:             tan
2.      te              te:             ten
3.      to              to:             ton

Derivation on personal pronouns
s-      object / direct object
p-      possessive: pta "my" pton "their"

ste psaleia ta "I see you"

Note: since personal pronouns are conjugated for
person and number, and nouns are not, if one wishes
 to explicitly indicate person or number on a noun one
 can precede it with a pronoun:
ston leropho: the languages, object case
Deictic words
Adverbs:
evó     here (near speaker)
ethó    there (near adressee)
enó     yonder (away from both)

Sta enó ptalos  "you see him over there"

Pronouns:
evo (s), evo: (d), evon (pl): this one here
object case: sevo, sevo:, sevon:

Similarly, the other two deictic adverbs have corresponding
pronouns:
etho, etho:, ethon, setho, setho:, sethon
eno, eno:, enon, seno, seno:, senon

SYNTAX

Word order is relatively free. OVS (to be more specific,
DO IO V S) is the unmarked order, but any constituent
may be topicalized by placing it first. DO or IO may also
be placed last in order to dualize or pluralize them with
the slot 7/8 markers on the verb.

Conjunctors
me      'and'
phtos   'but'
thikí   'because'
sado    'with the intention that'

Prepositions
phti    'in'
me      'with'
oud   'concerning'
ne      'under'
(in keeping with the free word order of Leropho, prepositions
can also be postposited, in which case they are considered
part of the word for purposes of accentuation.)

ADJECTIVES
Adjectives are mostly indistinguishable from nouns.
When two or more nouns follow in a row, they can
be read as a noun with adjectives.

A deverbal noun can be formed by removing slots 4-8
from a verb, and either leaving it bare (if the root ends
in a vowel) or adding -i.  (Note that this is ambiguous with a
3rd person intransitive ending.)  Deverbal nouns are extremely
ambiguous, and can be read as denoting any of the actants
of the verb, the result of the verb, the activity of the verb
itself considered as an event, and possibly others.  If necessary,
this can be clarified by the following suffixes, but it is usually
left unclarified:

-in: denotes subject
-ou: denotes direct or indirect object
-ix: denotes the activity of the verb considered as an event
-adei: denotes the result of the verb
-avo: something which needs to act or be done (can be added
to other suffixes)


RELATIVE CLAUSES
Deverbal nouns can often be used in place of relative clauses.
Their meanings can be filled out following them with prepositions,
including 'oud', 'concerning,' which can be used to obliquely
specify a direct object, and 'ne,' 'under,' which can be used to
obliquely specify a subject.

However, real relative clauses exist as well.  Relative pronouns
are identical to ordinary personal pronouns but they are prefixed
by e-.  They come first in the relative clause, e.g. :

leropho [esto denon ton].  (brackets here indicate the rel. clause)
leropho e.s.to den.o.n ton
language REL.OBJ.3S ("which") speak.DO3.S3 NOM.3P ("they")

The language which they speak.

Leropho makes liberal use of pronouns to clarify relative clauses:

sevo leropho [esto denon ton] sevo xala
"That language, which they speak, I learn that one."

But this would usually be expressed by a deverbal:
leropho denou (ne ston) xala
"I learn the language spoken (by them)"

or even:
leropho deni xala
"I learn the speaking/spoken/of-speaking language."

Some more relative clauses:

didi [eto tavouron koxi]
cherry REL.3p HAVE.NEG.3pO.3pS stone
"a cherry which does not have a stone."

naxa [eton Katavo meon]
man REL.3p.pl God love.3pO.epS
"men who love God."

But again, it would be more usual to render these using
compound deverbals as:
"didi koxitavour(in)"
"naxa Katavome(in)"

Some sentences:

Me Katavo denon: : "Ethó kouro phan"
me Katavo den-o-n: "Ethó kouro ph-0-an"
and/with God say-3-3: "there light  Opt-be-3"
'And God said: "Let there be light."'

Souedileropho ksaloa phti Oupsala
Souedi-leropho ksal-o-a phti Oupsala
Sweden-language learn-3-1 in Uppsala
'I learned Swedish in Uppsala'


poio thorichitavourin, touachme chari poladei phoron.
poio thori-chi-in-ta-vour-in, touchme chari pol-adei phor-o-n
fly advise-give-S-NEG-S, corpse into dig-R follow-3O-3S



What do you think of it?

Rob