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Re: Wenedyk - Adjectives

From:Padraic Brown <elemtilas@...>
Date:Monday, September 16, 2002, 11:53
--- Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>
wrote:

> Adjectives must agree in number, case, and gender > with the nouns they modify.
Here Kerno is probably about the most divergent of Romance languages; because adjectives have been totally reduced to one form in the spoken language (like English adjectives) so you can't even have them agree for gender or number. In writing, it is possible to distinguish singular and plural only. Technically, they _should_ agree for gender, number and case on account of the mutations that should be there; but anymore, you find that mutations are not used in adjectives.
> They can be placed both before and after it.
Same, except that adjectives placed before are considered emphatic. New, find, beck, send, magnós, matos and amatos mean different things depending on whether they come before or after the noun. New before = new to one's experience; new after = new in general. finn gouenna = fair woman / cats find = white cat beccos varró = mean bastard / varró beck = short man senos maysteors = wise teacher / maystoers send = old teacher Magnós Alexander = Great Alexander / Alexander magnós = large Alexander matos dia = auspicious day / dia math = pleasant day amatos livoers = shoddy book / livoers amath = bad book [The -nos becomes -nn before goue-.] Now, you're probably looking at this and saying: hey, there are _two_ forms, not one! Indeed, it should be obvious that -os forms (of old -a, -o, and -u stem adjectives) preceed the noun, bare roots follow. Old consonant and -i stem adjectives tend to end up with silent -e or plain stems regardless of whether they preceed or follow their nouns.
> For example: > biela dziej "a beautiful day" > a£t jedyficiej "a high building" (£ = l-stroke) > £êgwa wenedyka "the Venedian language" (ê = > e-ogonek) > Empierz Roman "the Roman Empire"
For the most part, Kerno adjectives can either preceed or follow their nouns. Sometimes there are minor changes in semantics; but only in the above list are the meanings really so different.
> masc./neut. sing. fem. sing. MFN > plur. > Nom. brzew "short" brzewa brzewe > Gen. brzewu brzewej brzewu > Dat. brzewi brzewej brzewysz > Acc. brzew brzewã brzewe
1st decl. 2nd decl. s. pl. s. pl. beckos becks dubiós dubióses beck beck dubiós dubiós /bEk bEk duvjos duvjos/ magnós magans rapide rapides magan magan rapid rapid /magnos mag@n rapId rapId/ The first line shows forms that preceed nouns; the second line shows forms that follow nouns. You can see that spoken forms are quite reduced. The "fully declined" form you find in older literature: m.s. m.pl. f.s. f.pl. nom beccos veck vecka veck obl mbeck veck mbecka veck
> The comparative and superlative are built by adding > the suffix > -iór/-iora/-iore, the superlative by adding the > suffix -ym/-yma/-yme to the > root of the adjective:
Kerno can add -oer and -am to form comparative and superlative; or it can have plu (more) and il plu (the more) before the adjective: duls dulsoer il dulsam duls plu duls il plu duls sweet sweeter sweetest A few truly irregular adjectives exist, like boun (good) and mais (more): boun meior il matham mal peior il pessam magnós maior il maxam -- mais il maxam
> Jan
Padraic. ===== Aci ce Kernow le ouygaint mil; et savuriont y pherque! __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! News - Today's headlines http://news.yahoo.com

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Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>