Grammar: Rough Sketch (I)

Here is a rudimentary (VERY rudimentary) introduction to my new language, tenatively called "Draddrikan", and its grammar. Sadly, I don't have handy my notebook in which I laid out some of the details, such as the actual prefixes and suffixes for verbs and nouns, so those will have to wait for a later post. :(

So... Ideas behind this language: to make a mild-to-moderately agglutinative language. Verbs in particular agglutinate; however, like English, they have a simplistic conjugational system which relies on nouns and/or pronouns to indicate subject. Nouns agglutinate with case endings based, loosely, on OE case system (locative cases are my own invention). Endings also can be used to transform various words from one part of speech into another (such as a noun into an adjective, verb into an adverb, etc.)


Part I: Grammar

A. Verbs. Prefixes and suffixes attached to verb stems indicate tense and form. There are not different conjugations based on verbs' subject(s); as a result, nouns of pronouns “must” (Ha Ha!) be used for comprehensibility. There are five "tenses" in this language: distant past, recent past, present, near future, and distance future. For fantasy purposes, I may even introduce two more tenses, cosmological/mythical in use: "once upon a time" past, and "happily ever after" future. Common forms exist: simple, progressive, perfect, as well as imperative, interrogative, and probably some others I still need to add. Note: simple present tense has NO prefixes or suffixes. The infinitive/stem form is the same for present simple, much like Japanese.

B. Nouns. Nouns have a basic case system with six forms (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and two different locative for "near" and "distant"); cases are all suffixes. Absent gender system for nouns: all proper nouns are “neuter” in that case endings, etc. don’t change. (Put another way: no yucky declensions.) Verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc. can be made nouns by attachment of a special nominalizer suffix. NOTE: nominative case, like simple present verb tense, has no suffix—just the noun in its purest form.

C. Articles. Only one definite article, no indefinite article. This article would thus variously be translated as "the," "this," "that," depending on context. It also has a plural form.

D. Pronouns. Pronouns have singular and plural forms, as well as masculine and feminine. No neuter pronoun ("it"), however. There are two first-person plural forms: one indicating just two people ("me and you") as well as many people ("we all"). Second person also has singular and plural forms.

E. Prepositions. Few (none?) prepositions, as some of their functions are fulfilled by case endings.

F & G. Adjective and Adverbs. Adjectives and adverbs rules were laid out in rough form, but as I mentioned above, I don't have that notebook handy as I write this.

H. Conjugations. Haven't been addressed yet.

Part II: Vocabulary. Not there quite yet.

Obviously, a lot of work needs to be done. This is still very much a rough draft; "proto-Draddrikan" if you like. I am sure I've left a lot out grammatically; I haven't even begun to consider phonology, and have really only scratched the surface when it comes to morphology. I have started a haphazard lexicon, though; maybe I'll include that in a near-future post.

Comments are welcome! I appreciate feedback.