Re: Some more Madzhi grammar

#
# On Sun, 17 Mar 2002, Patrick Dunn wrote:
# > >
# > > Adjectives are not declined, They precede the nouns they modify.
# > > Comparison:
# > >         Positive
# > >         Comparative: Ablative of noun + positive
# > >         Superlative: -nuv
# >
# > Interesting.  With fifteen cases (thirty, if you count plurals) I'd expect
# > adjectives to agree in case and number.
#
# Both Mansi, the language which Madzhi is descended from, and Hungarian,
# the closest language to Mansi, are like this (and Hungarian has 24 cases,
# 48 if you count plurals). For example:
#
# Kilenc nagy kutya'tol elloptam   a    csontokat.
# nine   big  dog-ABL   stole-1sg  the  bones-ACC
# I stole the bones from nine big dogs.
#

On a related note, I've read some articles proposing that Hungarian
has not 24, but only 2 (Nom and Acc)... the rest are just post-positions
which happen to be written attached to the noun. As a native speaker, what
is your opinion?

There seem to be good arguments for each side. For example in pronouns,
only Nom and Acc are attached to the pronoun (diacritics not marked):

en - engem
te - teged
ok - oket

but postpositions take the possessive suffixes

-vel  - velem, veled, vele
-nek  - nekem, neked, neke

Also, post-positions which are considered seperate words can be subject
to vowel harmony... like 'felul/folul'


# > > Verbs hav an indefinite and a definite conjugation.
# >
# > What's the difference?  Why would someone use indefinite instead of
# > definite conjugation?  I've heard of definite and indefinite nouns, but
# > not verbs.
# >
#
# This exists in all the Ugric languages. In a sentence like "Tommorrow I
# will buy a dog", one would use the indefinite conjugation, whereas if the
# sentence is "Tommorow I will buy the dog (that I spoke of earlier)", one
# would use the definite conjugation. Since Madzhi, Mansi and Ostyak do not
# have articles (and Hungarian has them due to influence from other
# languages), this is a way to distinguish between definite and indefinite,
# "a dog" vs. "the dog".

I was under the impression that Hungarian is the only Uralic language
to have developed this way. The definite/indefinite tenses having evolved
from a subjective (indefinite, focus on subject) and objective (definite,
focus on object) verb system.

I can't remember much about the Ob-Ugric (khanty and mansi) verb systems, but
I thought they all lacked a definite/indefinite distinction.

If you have any links to online resources for mansi (and/or khanty), i'd
definitely be interested in seeing them.

-tim

http://www.zece.com/conlang/

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