Sunday, December 1, 2013

Ćwarmin: The adjective and a bit about the noun phrase

Despite my almost obsession with congruence between adjectives and nouns in NPs, I have decided not to do that in Ćwarmin. As previously noted, Ćwarmin has about 20 cases. The case suffix normally goes on the head noun, but sometimes a determiner will carry the main case marking of the clause, with the head noun either taking the genitive, the general ablative or the possessed objective (the last of which never goes on the determiner).

On occasion, an adjective may be inflected in some case other than the case of the noun. The only cases that do not appear on adjectives standing as attributes of nouns are the reflexively possessed accusative and the accusative.

Determiners

There are a number of determiners - demonstratives, indefinite determiners (including the negative determiner), amount-related determiners (numbers, 'many', 'a few', 'all', etc). As mentioned, these sometimes carry the whole noun phrase's case, in which case the noun either agrees with it in case (if the whole phrase is nominative, accusative or genitive), or takes either the general ablative or genitive.

Those determiners which can have a singular as well as a plural meaning usually have number congruence with the head noun. 

Some special lexemes

'One' - er - in combination with the nominative complement case or genitive, eramće or erća, roughly works like specific or particular. The genitive is most often used with timespans or with mass nouns, but does occur with other nouns as well.
erəmće seltimgə - a specific fisherman
erćə toŋugul - one particular winter
erćə mehwi - a particular loaf of bread

Ćul - 'few' - combines with the complement cases for a meaning along the lines of 'just a few'
ćulamćo nedim, ćulamćan nedim - just a few bits.
In the genitive it signifies 'too few'.

Cases with Adjectives

The cases can also alter how the adjective interacts with the head noun, both for adjectives in attribute position and in complement position.

Negative - the negative simply negates an adjective, essentially like sticking in- or un- or a- before an adjective in English.

Complement cases - the complement cases tend to mark temporary or clearly subjective qualities. The nominative complement is used with rather objective qualities or qualities an animate noun intentionally acquired or maintains, whereas the accusative complement more often implies that the quality has been caused to the noun without its participation or regardless of his or her wishes.

General ablative - roughly like affixing -ish to an adjective in English when used as an attribute. Also for complements that mark what something appears to be. In situations where this and genitive or instrumental could work, the ablative has priority.

Genitive - generally used to intensify the adjective, but also marks flavors when they're complements.

Instrumental - generally used to intensify the adjective. Also marks various sound qualities when as complements.

Locative cases - sometimes nouns with these cases are used as adjectives.

Dative - for some peculiar reason, this marks first-hand knowledge evidentiality.

Comitative-with and comitative-to mark different levels of evidentiality - basically hearsay and 'anything further off than that'.

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