Re: Elvish ideas ...

I said I hoped to give more details on my still unnamed Elvish language's
verbal system this weekend. Unfortunately, I'm finding myself unable to make
up my mind on even very basic questions.

What is certain is that there will be a perfect formation formed with an
infix -u-, creating a diphthong in the stress syllable of the verbal root. Eg,
_coar_ [kwa(;)r] "eat" yields _coaur_ [kwawr] "has eaten".

There'll probably be an inflected present tense too, leaving the basic,
uninflected verb to be typically used as past imperfect. It'll also be used
with auxiliaries indicating mood, and other tense-aspects. I can, however, not
decide on a phonetic form that I like for this present tense affix, so if I
stumble on something that just cries out to be a past tense marker, I might
shuffle things around.

There's an active participial prefix _ma-_, which causes fricativization of a
following stop. It can be added to either an imperfect or a perfect verb stem,
giving distinctions like _machoar_ "eating" and _machoaur_ "having eaten" (the
distinction is nicked straight from Sindarin, altho the phonetic realization
is not). Presumeably there'll also be at least two passive participles
("eaten" and "having been eaten"), but the phonetic shapes aren't fixed yet.

There'll probably not be any agreement in number or person. But clitized
pronouns (à la French) is in danger of getting thrown in. No doubt they'll
wreck phonetic havoc.

Oh, and stress is on the root syllable. For polysyllabic roots, learn to guess.

                                                     Andreas

Replies