Saturday 22 December 2012

Admonitive mood

The Admonitive is a rare mood I must confess, it is a somewhat cousin to the Imperative but asking for someone to grant permission to do something. In any case it implies the meaning of "letting someone do something", instead of complete commanding of something. As it adds an argument it stands quite differently from the imperative, it does not have a particular transition all to itself, but rather uses a suffix attached to a transition. Let's get a look at it:

If I can say:

tanakas, I speak

You can use the imperative: tananma, speak!

Or the admonitive: tanakabin, let me speak!

You could also add a pronoun, so you would get:

shiran tanakebin, don't let me speak to him!

And you can take it a step further:

yaran tanatebinsi, don't let him speak to me! (Using the factual evidential)

Historically one might argue that the suffix started off as a particle that quickly got fossilized into the verb. This particular mood is mostly used to ask any kind of permission and also in very polite contexts to allow for the recipient to grant a good wish upon the speaker. More on that soon.

Monday 17 December 2012

Numerals, part 2

We've seen numerals in Kareyku before up to the number 10. And this is the important part, because after that numerals become very predictable. To get the number following the 10, you just join 10 + number, so, if we continue with this logic we get:

haru-tiri, haru-kana, haru-hatiri, haru-hakana, haru-soka, haru-nawa, haru-hasoka, haru-hanawa, haru-naka.

The list might make this more simple:

Number
Kareyku
11
haru-tiri
12
haru-kana
13
haru-hatiri
14
haru-hakana
15
haru-soka
16
haru-nawa
17
haru-hasoka
18
haru-hanawa
19
haru-naka
20
kana-haru

From this point forward the numerals will repeat themselves in the same pattern, reverting the order for the tens. Finally we should note that the number 100 is not haru-haru, but qayo.

Wednesday 12 December 2012

Imperative mood

The imperative mood has a particular form in Kareyku. In essence it only works for the second person and it's the same whether it is singular or plural. The form it uses is somewhat strange due to historical changes which I will not discuss here (but may in the future). The form is: -nma, and it is inflected just like any other well-born transition has been inflected up to this point.

ikan tokinma!, protect me!

qappanma shu!, eat up!

You may ask yourself if one can use it in the passive, well yes you can. The form would be then;

tokeyma!, be protected!

I'm imagining it would be used as a kind of farewell or good wish. Note how the -n- drops but the infix remains the same. Now you may be wondering if the detransitive suffix will cause any problems, since it is essentially an -l- and it creates quite a pickle there. The answer is, the -nma applies for both transitive and intransitive verbs alike:

marinma!, come!

tinma!, do it!

tananma!, speak!

And so, the imperative can be used in all the tenses, but this would be very hard for me to explain without resorting to Ancient Greek. I will expand on this delicate item later on.

Saturday 8 December 2012

How to Present a Verb?

After looking at all the different tenses and moods one might justly ask, how then do I enunciate a verb in Kareyku? Or what's the equivalent to an infinitive/gerund in Kareyku? As it happens, there is such a form. In Kareyku the intransitive form in the third person is used to convey what other languages do by way of the infinitive or a noun gerund form.

qappalta, to eat/the eating

tokilta, to defend/the defending

Or to make a sentence;

qappalta pile gade, "eating fish is good"

So in this case it's a general statement that eating fish is something good or healthy. It can also be used as purpose constructions such as English "to eat", example:

marinma tokilta odanu inwa, "come to defend your son"


Saturday 24 November 2012

Numerals, part 1

The Kareyku numeric system is very odd. Not because of the names of the numerals, which are quite regular and in accordance to the language constraints, but because the counting defies any formal explanation, or at least, for all of them but the last too. The system is mainly decimal, and a historical analysis points towards the hands having been used at some point. The numerals are as follows:

Number
Kareyku
1
tiri
2
kana
3
hatiri
4
hakana
5
soka
6
nawa
7
hasoka
8
hanawa
9
naka
10
haru

So, as can be seen here we have a clear sequence of groups of 2 or 4, that is tiri, kana, and then hatiri and hakana, which mean roughly "other 1" and "other 2" respectively. The last two number I have said had explanations in that 9 is clearly the word naka, "close, almost", and number 10 is haru "complete, perfect". One could consider this to be evidence of an older 4-based or 8-based system supplemented with a newer decimal system, but it nonetheless strikes as quite weird.

The numerals are used preceding the noun or object they modify:

naka vineru, nine men

hakana taro, four fathers

hasoka nakem, seven trees

And present no irregularities or variabilities.

Thursday 15 November 2012

Detransitive suffix

You've read right, I meant a suffix that "detransitivizes" the verb if that has any sense at all. Bear with me, what I mean is that all Kareyku verbs are naturally transitive or ditransitive, but what if you need an intransitive verb? Well, you would use this crafty suffix to reduce the arguments to zero. The suffix, of course, takes all evidentials (and it will) and transitions, its form is an -l- inserted before the corresponding transition and we can see some examples:

We have our always useful verb qappa- "eat", normally we would use a transition;

qappata, he eats

But this actually means literally "he eats (something)", it implies that he's eating something, like a fish, meat, vegetables (yeah, right!) or something. When we use this suffix, though, we get;

qappalta, he eats

In this other case I'm just stating that he eats. It can mean "he eats (everyday)" or "he eats" (i.e. "he can eat"), it means all the other uses that are intransitive. So for example;

kolto marilta, he comes here

Of course we can inflect it for time, so one would treat the -ta as a normal transition, thus;

kolto marilten, he didn't come here

pokolto marilteyos, he shall come home

We can even further inflect it for the desiderative form:

taro mariltaltech, "father doesn't want to come"

Let's leave the entry with a final weird sentence:

pole nakem lau lopalkas, "I live on top of a great tree"

Monday 12 November 2012

Familial terms, part 2

Now it's the turn of the parents. We have two main terms for the parents, respectively taro and kami for father and mother. The history of the term "kami" seems to have come from an older root "kam-" of uncertain origins, which has been relegated to other compounds related to the "mother". For instance the word for the maternal grandfather is "kemu"while the maternal grandmother is "hanta". The word for grandmother "hanta" also seems to use some kind of old productive compounding, since the word incorporates a suffix similar to that of the mother-in-law, kata.

The term for both parents is okomi, which means the pair of the mother and father. Again as it so happens in Kareyku the more idiomatic term for the father is "oko" almost as "papa", which in turn might be related to the term "sekko" which is the paternal grandfather.

Another term with which a father may refer to his son is awo, "blood", and many other similar expressions remarking the bond of blood that a father and offspring share.

odan, inwa, ikanu awo
"you, my son, are my blood"