The Esseintial Enello Thread

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QuantumWraith
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Re: The Esseintial Enello Thread

Post by QuantumWraith »

DesEsseintes wrote:1s      -vınge
2s      -veȷı
3s      -vıů/-ve/-vo
1p.EXCL -vınngu
1p.INCL -vınngına
2p      -veȷına
DesEsseintes wrote:Nıeveȷına. - You are women.


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Click
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Re: The Esseintial Enello Thread

Post by Click »

You beat me to it. [}:(]
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DesEsseintes
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Re: The Esseintial Enello Thread

Post by DesEsseintes »

7. Weak Nouns in -ma, -na

Weak nouns with stems ending in nasal stops display somewhat different behaviour when it comes to forming the weak stem, as the nasal is partly retained.

Nouns in -ma form weak stems in -ůN, -uN. E.g. gema - personal item, prized possession:

gemageůN-, geuN-

Nouns in -na form weak stems in -eN, -ıN. E.g. gımına - star:

gımınagımıeN-, gımeıN-

(*Note also the vowel dissimilation in the sun vowel weak stem of gımına as Enello dislikes two identical vowels in succession. This will hopefully be given its own post at some point.)

The vowels are determined by the PoA just like with other weak nouns. The N represents a nasal that is undefined for PoA and only surfaces under some conditions.

When these nouns form the -vı copula, the Nv cluster results in -ngı. Note that unlike other weak nouns which use the sun vowel when forming the copula, these nouns use the moon vowel because they are followed by a geminate consonant. The sun vowel form of the weak stem is used.

geúngı- to be a personal item, to belong to s.o.
gımeíngı- to be a star

Notice how the vowel alone indicates whether the stem consonant was m or n.

Examples:

Geúnge. - This is (my) prized possession./This is (mine).
(As Enello is pro-drop, the above sentence may well refer to your/his/her/their possession.)

Gımeíngıra. - They are stars.
Edit: The above examples have been edited in accordance with the correction described in the post following post 8.
When I post more postbases, the exact effect of the nasal on each postbase will be dealt with, but put simply, it may either nasalise a following stop or disappear completely.

That's it for now.
Last edited by DesEsseintes on 01 Apr 2014 12:56, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: The Esseintial Enello Thread

Post by DesEsseintes »

I've decided to tackle some verbal postbases before completing the nominal morphology, because there are so many things concerning the latter that I can't make up my mind about yet.

Besides, complex nominal morphology is not essential to expressing many things in basic Enello.

8. Introduction to Enello Postbases

A postbase is just a fancy word for a lexical suffix that makes a new word out of an existing word. Importantly, postbases cannot be used as words on their own, i.e. they are bound lexemes.

In Enello, many things that would be expressed by adjectives, adverbs, auxiliary verbs, modal verbs, or serial verb constructions in other languages can be expressed with postbases.

Postbases frequently change the word class of the word they are appended to, forming nouns from verbs and vice versa with relative ease.

Postbases are recursive, i.e. appending a verbaliser postbase to a word that contains a nominaliser postbase appended to a verbal root results in a new verb, etc.

The Verbaliser Postbase -sor

Let's start with a simple postbase: -sor

-sor is a verbaliser postbase that can only be appended to nouns, and has the basic meaning of using something for its most "natural" purpose. It can thus be translated as use, avail oneself of. If appended to a noun that indicates food or drink, it is best translated as eat/drink/have. With nouns for clothes, it means put on.

Here are some examples. For convenience, I have appended the 3rd person singular ending , but put the English translations in the infinitive.

mase - pot
masesorů - to cook, prepare food
kůno - boat
kůnosorů - to sail in a boat
arı - flour; noodles
arısorů - to eat/have noodles
kůbı - milk
kůbısorů - drink milk

Note that these verbs are intransitive and cannot take a further object. Also, the patient (e.g. noodles) is non-specific and/or indefinite.

Forming the -sor verb

The nouns in the above examples are all strong nouns, and -sor is attached directly to the nominal stem.

In the case of frozen nouns, the initial s is voiced and becomes z:

naů - bow
naůzorů - to practice archery, hunt with a bow

Now comes the fun part: weak nouns! When -sor is appended to a weak noun, the moon vowel weak stem is used and -sor strengthens to -ttsor or -ddzor depending on whether the elided consonant is unvoiced or voiced.

To further clarify this, I've used CV and CU to indicate voiced and unvoiced gemination in the following consonant.

eka - clotheseoCU-
eottsorů - put on clothes, get dressed

oppaga - paperoppaoCV-
oppaoddzorů - (pej.) "eat paper", make a living from writing, work as a scribe/petty official

ıza - pearıeCV-
ıeddzorů - to eat/have (some) pear(s)

seba - fishseůCV-
seůddzorů - to eat fish

In the case of weak nouns in -na, -ma, the s is nasalised resulting in -nnor

na - aireN-
ennorů - to take a breather, come up for air

bama - hatbaůN-
baůnnorů - put on a hat

Conjugation and Usage

Here are the personal endings for verbs of the First Conjugation, to which verbs formed with -sor belong.

Code: Select all

1s      -ange
2s      -oȷı
3s      -ů
1p.EXCL -anngu
1p.INCL -anngına
2p      -oȷına
3p      -ůra
(I'm actually not entirely satisfied with the endings and may change them at some point.)

Verbs formed with -sor are used when the focus is on the activity and not the patient of the sentence. They cannot be used to speak of eating/drinking/putting on a specific fish/glass of milk/hat. There are separate transitive verbs for all these things that take an agent an patient argument. These will be introduced when I deal with transitive verbs.

So that's it, I guess. I would like to know what you think. Do the sound shift patterns "work"?

Another thing: should I continue using colours to highlight the morphophonological patterns? Does it make things clearer, or the contrary?
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Re: The Esseintial Enello Thread [Correction]

Post by DesEsseintes »

I've changed my mind about the form of the -vı copula when attached to weak nouns ending in nasals. The result will be non-geminate -ngı and not -nngı. As a result, the sun vowel will be used and not the moon vowel.

gemageúngı- - to be a personal item

gımınagımeíngı- - to be a star

In the second example, a further morphophonological process kicks in: vowel dissimilation. I'm not going to go into this in detail now, as the as-yet-unready accent system is meant to play a part here, but basically, if two identical vowels are found in succession, one will shift to the other vowel in that sun-moon vowel pair.

I will edit post 7 above in line with this correction.
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Re: The Esseintial Enello Thread

Post by DesEsseintes »

In this post more postbases will be introduced to show some more morphophonological processes at work.

9. More Fun with Denominal Postbases

Two postbases that work identically to -sor are:

-sun - make
-shıar - look for/seek

They follow the same rules as -sor when attached to nouns.

kůno - boat
kůnosunů - to make a boat

nůo - city
nůozunů - to build a city

eka - clotheseoCU-
eottsunů - to make clothes

bůne - wood, material
bůneshıarů - to look for
material, esp. firewood


seba - fishseůCV-
seůddȷıarů - to seek fish, to go fishing

(*hasasa →) hattsa - (manual) work, jobhasaeCU-
hasaecchıarů - to seek work

(*nozoza →) noddza - (of animals) foodnozoeCV-
nozoeddȷıarů - (of animals) look for food, scavenge, prowl

And so on...

n-Postbases

Some postbases start in a nasal obstruent:

-nır - to fetch/go get
-nes - to meet/come across/encounter
-nıeyag - to meet/come across/encounter (sth. bad or unpleasant)

These essentialy follow the same rules when attached to weak nouns except that the resulting geminate consonant is always nn or mm, as there is no voicing contrast in nasals.

sa - (obsolete) watereCU-
můennırů - fetch water

arıpa - foxarıůCV-
arıůnnesů - to meet a fox, come across a fox

nıoppo - incident
nıopponıeyagů - to have an unfortunate incident, to have an accident

r-Postbases

Some postbases start in r. So far, the only such denominal postbase that I've come up with is:

-rıb - to obtain/get/buy

r-postbases attach straight onto strong nouns.

kůno - boat
kůnorıbů - to obtain/buy a boat

The r geminates to ll when attached to a frozen noun:

sao - net
saollıbů - to obtain/buy a net

When attached to a weak noun, the final stem consonant is geminated and the initial r of the postbase is lost.

seba - fish
sebbıbů - to buy fish


I'm not going to go into the details of the usage of the verbs formed with these postbases now, but do note that they are all intransitive. Also note that these cannot really be considered cases of noun incorporation, as the postbases mentioned here are all bound morphemes and cannot occur independently as verbs.
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