Re: How much data in your conlang nouns?

Hallo!

On Sat, 3 Jan 2004 21:28:58 -0800,
Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:

> I was thinking about natlangs and conlangs and how
> nouns are used and it occured to me to tabulate the
> kinds of information embodied in a noun beyond the
> proverbial person, place or thing that it names.  In
> other words, what information do you need before you
> can write down a noun in a sentence in your conlang?
>
> For example, many languages give nouns gender, so you
> would need to know its gender.  Languages of the Bantu
> family may have as many as 10 or 15 noun classes so
> you need to know which family it belongs to.  With
> Latin nouns you have to know what declension they
> belong to, and with any inflected language you need to
> know the case of the noun in that particular sentence.
>
> So here's my starter list.  What does your language
> need that I haven't listed?
There is one category that is often marked on nouns which
you have left out: definiteness.

I'll give data for Old Hesperic and Germanech.

> 1. Number (such as singular, dual, plural)
Old Hesperic: singular and plural; a few nouns denoting things
usually coming in pairs (e.g. eyes, shoes) also have a dual
which is only used for matching pairs.

Germanech: singular and plural.

> 2. Gender (such as masc., fem., neut.)
Old Hesperic: animate and inanimate, with animate being subdivided
into masculine, feminine and common.  Gender derivations are very
productive in the animate class (e.g. _chvana_ `dog',
_chvano_ `male dog', _chvane_ `female dog'), with some exceptions
that have fixed genders (e.g. _ndero_ `man', or collective entities
such as _tamba_ `family')

Germanech: masculine and feminine.

> 3. Class or Declension (Varies with language)
Old Hesperic: all nouns of a given gender are declined according
to the same paradigm.

Germanech: most nouns form their plural regularly with the suffix
-s (-es after sibilants).  There are a few irregular plurals
(e.g. _corfres_, pl. of _corfs_ `body').

> 4. Case (nom., dat., gen., etc. varies with language)
Old Hesperic: animate nouns have eight cases (agentive, genitive,
dative, objective, instrumental, locative, allative, ablative);
inanimate nouns have only five cases (objective, instrumental,
locative, allative, ablative).

Germanech: no case system.

> 5. Social mode (formal, informal, royal, sacred, who
> knows)
Neither Old Hesperic nor Germanech have such distinctions.

6. Definiteness

Old Hesperic: there's a definite article, but no indefinite article.

Germanech: there are definite and indefinite articles, the latter
only in the singular (as in English and German).

Greetings,

Jörg.

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