Inflectional Advantages : Nouns

Learning Latin entails getting used to its inflected nouns, adjectives and verbs, which takes quite a lot of adjustment. The only two languages I was relatively familiar with were English, which is sparingly inflected, and Chinese which is really not inflected at all. But after a little practice, the inflection system does seem to be quite useful. It frees up syntax and reduces ambiguity for one, and on the other hand, it's just a different way of expressing the same idea. I've decided to adopt a couple of inflections. Once again, I'm going to make them regular since there really isn't any reason not to within the setting of Eldawn.

At the moment, I have a total of 5 cases for nouns. The nominative, ablative, dative, possessive and instrumental cases. The nominative case is used for both subjects and objects within a sentence. For example, 'John' and 'the food' in the sentence : 'John ate the food.' Eldawnian will follow SVO, so the subjects and objects are distinguished by syntax.

The ablative case is used for a noun from which another noun is obtained from or moved away from. For example, 'well' in the phrase : 'water from a well', and 'school' in the phrase : 'John returned from school.'

The dative case is used for nouns that have something given to or moving toward them. For example, 'Jane' in : 'John gave the flowers to Jane', and the 'school' in : 'John was brought to school'. It's more of a merger between the dative and lative cases.

The possessive is quite simple; just the noun that owns the other noun. 'Jane' in 'Those are Jane's flowers.' It also conveys characteristics, for example 'day' in 'light of the day'.

Finally the instrumental case simply indicates what an action was done with. For example, 'spoon' in 'Jane drank the soup with a spoon'.

There are clearly many more ways to relate nouns than these, so I many still add cases or find other ways of expressing them. For now, these are the five standard cases. Nominative nouns end with an [-n] or an [-s]. There are quite a number of genders and classes, but they aren't too hard to follow since they are regular. Nouns ending with an [-n] are material natural nouns, for example, the sun, the mountain, the stream and the sea. These can be masculine [-on], feminine [-un], locative [-in] or neuter [-en]. The next class is the material artificial nouns [-s], relating to humans. For example, the chair, the clothes, the building and the human body. Once again, these have masculine [-os], feminine [-us], locative [-is] and neuter [-es] versions. The third class is that of abstract nouns, noun tangible nouns, for example, love, truth, time, light and force. These nouns end with [-ls] and can be masculine [-ols], feminine [-uls] or neuter [-els].

A last classes are the verbive nouns, which can be either the subject or object. These nouns are based of verbs and could serve as epithets or nouns in their own right. Verbive subject nouns are for example, a fighter, a singer, a writer or a sculptor. These end with [-v_s], where once again the gender of the noun will decide the final vowel of the word. The verbive object nouns are nouns such as the loved, the enlightened or the spoken. These end with [-zh_n].

To decline a noun, simply drop the consonants after the final vowel and add the case endings, regardless of the class and gender of the noun. The endings for the cases are as follows :

Ablative : [-dz], Dative : [-rets], Possessive : [-ach], and Instrumental : [-sij]

If you haven't noticed already, all these endings are affricates. This is simply to tie in with the script that has affricates all ending with a straight downward stroke, without rising upward again to reach the next letter. In Eldawnian, affricates are reserved for these grammatical cases. 

So just to give an example, I'll break down the word 'saton', from the previous post, which means the sun. Saton is a material natural masculine noun, hence the ending [-on]. When it is declined, it will be : satodz (from the sun), satorets (to the sun), satoach (of the sun) and satosij (with the sun). The declined nouns always come after the nouns they modify. Atols is light, [-ols] indicating that it is an abstract masculine noun. Atols satodz would therefore mean (light from the sun) and atols satoach would be (light of the sun). Oh, just to reassure you, genders will be entirely logical, based on either actual gender, or on the mythology. Atols and saton are both masculine because of Eldawn's mythology.

The last thing to note is the lack of a plural. This is something I've decided to incorporate from Chinese. Instead of a plural form, there will just be a numeral before the nouns. This reduces the number of inflections needed, and still works perfectly well. I'll talk about numerals in a future post.