Grammar, a revision

Hi!

Here is a brief revision to some of the grammar rules I laid out in my last post, as well as some expansion on the grammatical rules.

First: I think I'll can the whole "case-endings" idea. as various linguists, teachers, etc., have pointed out, the idea of "cases" is taken from Latin. Which doesn't make them bad (not by a long shot), but it's ridiculous and silly (and occasionally pointless and futile) to try and force a non-Latin language—with its own internal logic and grammar—into Latin semantic categories.

So why not let a language organize itself, around its own semantic categories and epsitemological distinctions? (This is what is known, in the social sciences, as the "Right to Self-Determination".)

Rather than try to use the old case system, I'll be introducing a system of affixes (mostly suffixes) that I prefer to call "particle markers". Some of them may overlap with Latin's case system, some of them won't. These particles will denote not only "case" but other relationship between words in a sentence as well.

That having been said, I've got my notebook handy today, so I will record a bunch of pronouns I've come up with, along with a couple of particle markers I have for verb tenses, and also some particle markers for nouns. I only wish there was a way to lay this out on a chart—I find a chart so much easier to comprehend, compared to long lists.

Pronouns:
English --> masculine/feminine

I --> ta/ta
you singular --> net/let
you plural ("y'all") --> netan/letan
we two --> nen/len
we all --> nenan/lenan
he --> na/(blank)
she --> (blank)/la
[no neuter "it"]
they --> nana/lala

NOTE: There is no neuter pronoun; unsexed objects use masculine he or they form. When using a plural form in which males and females are both present, the masculine form is used—just like Spanish. :)

Verb tenses: particle markers

distant past --> je-
near past --> zhe-
[no present affix]
near future --> bre-
distant future --> tre-
progressive ("ing") --> -ars
perfect --> -ara
imperative ("must") --> -aradaa

NOTE: The last three are called participles, in English. In Draddrikan, you can create any tense/form by adding the appropriate affix to the verb stem.

Nouns: particle markers
what is marked --> singular/plural

subject --> (blank)/-en
object --> -asht/-ashter
possesive --> -da/-daater
close proximity location --> -ent/-ender
dist. prox. location --> -iri/-irier
close temporal location --> -elta/-elder
dist. temporal location --> -ænt/-ænder

NOTE: Obviously, this is a far-from-complete list of possible (and plausible!) particle markers. This is just a quickie, so to speak, to lay out the most basic framework required for constructing basic sentences.

SENTENCES:

Fun! Let's try out a few basic sentences. Please note that basic sentence form is Subject-Object-Verb in Draddrikan. Let's take an example using the following words:

[to] plow --> cripa (stem form)
field --> nän
John --> Jon
Mary --> Merhi
week --> riuk

He plowed the field. (recently)
Na nänasht zhecripa.

John plowed the field. (a while ago)
Jonna nänasht jecripa.

NOTE: Even though a "proper" subject is used, the he pronoun is attached to John's name to help clarify.

John is plowing Mary's field.
Jonna nänasht-Merhida cripaars.

Here, note that the possesor noun is attached, like a suffix, to the object noun—that is, the noun being possessed. The verb, too, receives a participle marking, indicating (what we call in English) the "present progressive" form of the verb.

John will have plowed Mary's field next week.
Jonna nänasht-Mehrida trecripaara riukænt.
"John field-Mary's will-have-plow-ed week-(distant)."

Here, week receives a temporal marker, since it indicates the time when the action will happen. Notice, too, the verb stem cripa receives both a future-tense prefix AND a participle suffix. Finally, this is not an "exact" translation of the English; as the language currently exists, there is no particle marker that corresponds directly to our word next. To a native speaker, it would simply be assumed that the action being described will happen some time off; the hearer of the above sentence would know from cultural norms and the context of the conversation that "next week" was simply implied.

I should probably mention that I really like archaic letters, like æ, Þ/þ, and Ð/ð, that you find in Old and Middle English texts. So I will be re-introducing them into Draddrikan. Why? Because I can.

That's all for now. More in a few days.