Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Some Ćwarmin Interrogative and Indefinite Pronouns (and some clitics)

Since new readers probably drop by every now and then, I guess the time to remind everyone of Ye Merrye Conlangre's treatment of indefinite pronoun typology has come around again.

And then we get the time for looking at Ćwarmin's interrogative and indefinite pronouns.

nomkarter
nom complkar(ca)ter(cə)
acckaracter
acc complkarcoterce
genkartośterəś
datkarna

terne
ablkarar
terer
instrkarapterəp
com-tokorkuterki
com-withkortuterki
negativekurstateśtə
interrogative pronouns lack a reciprocally possessed case
Kar corresponds to 'who', 'ter' to what. As for specific meanings, 'terəp' sometimes means something like 'how', whereas 'terce' means something like 'like what' or 'how (of manner of appearance)'. Terce is sometimes used as a complement to subjects as well. The locative forms are formed along the description given here, i.e. from the dat, abl and accusative forms.

'Tercə' is exclusively used when asking what something consists of - in other positions that syntactically correspond to the nominative complement case, 'ter' is used.

-(e|a)st is a fairly common suffix that denotes 'even, too, also, and'. However, with the interrogative pronouns above, it means 'someone, anyone' and corresponds to 1,2,3,4,5,8,9 in the typology linked to. The addition of -(e|a)st does however further conflate acc compl with acc, nom with nom compl (for kar), and genitive with accusative for both.

Direct negation and indirect negation is obtained by inserting a suffix after kar/ter, viz. '-mo|-mə-', thus giving:
karmo, karmoca, karmoc, karmoc, karmoś, karmona, karmor, karmowap, karmoku, karmotu, karmosta
termə, termə, termə, termə, terəməś, terməne, terməər, terməəp, terməki, terməki, terməśtə
 -ma|-mə also are used on adjectives to convey negation of a quality, and can attach to verbs to negate them as well.

-ada|-ədə is another common clitic that indicates 'however, but, so, albeit, ...'. It goes after the first word of a clause or the verb. However, it can also go on an interrogative pronoun and then indicates an indefinite pronoun of type 3,5,8,9 in the typology of the link. It is suffixed like -(e|a)st.

-sak|-sək further indicates 2,3 and is otherwise used to mark 'maybe, potentially, hopefully'.

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