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--- Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@hidden.email>
wrote:
> Dear friends!
>
> After a very short section about the article - not
> present in Wenedyk - here's
> a somewhat more substantial text about Venedian
> nouns.
>
> I've had some difficulty in deciding whether or not
> to introduce a case system
> into Wenedyk. No surviving Romance language has
> cases (except perhaps for some
> traces in Romanian),
Ahem! French kept them for quite a while; and Kerno
still has a case system. It's not as full or healthy
as Wenedyk's case system appears to be, though! It's
declensional system is also quite different. It has
kept the nominative and oblique; singular and plural;
masculine and feminine; and the declensions are based
on a rearranged stem system. So, we have the vowel
declension [a-, and o- stems] and the everything else
declension [r-, l-; p-, t-, c-/k-, b-, d-, g-, w-,
f-/v-; n-, s- stems]. Old u- stems have largely
migrated to the w- declension; i- stems to the y-
declension, and it's not uncommon to see o- stems
declined as y-. Each declension has subdivisions of a
sort. What we've ended up with is a scheme that looks
like this:
I.
a o
la canta y chant il cats y chat
la ncanta y chantes le ncatte y chattes
(song) (cat)
y
il catys y chat il teoerys y theur
le ngatte y chates le ndeoere y theures
(hand) (watchtower)
u
la manus y van
la manus y vannes
(hand)
II.
r l
l' onoers ils onoer il boureols y voureol
l' onoer ils onoeres le mboureol y voureolles
(honour) (breeks)
p/t/k/b/d/g f/v
il prenceps y frencep il breyfs y vreyev
le mbrencep y frenceppes le mbreyfe y vreyves
(prince) (lad)
w
l' olows ils olow la manuw y vanow
l' oloue ils olowes la manue y vanowes
(oil jug) (hand)
n s
la nació y nacién il corpos y chorpuroer
la nación y nacién le ncorpe y chorpuroeres
(nation) (body)
There's a lot of room for irregulars; the oblique
silent -e is often dropped; many words are found in
more than one declension (like man- above); and many
words are suppletive:
la fowea y chavuren
la vowea y chavuren
(cave)
The n or m prefixed to oblique singulars is an older
way of marking the nasal mutation. It's more common
now to mark the nasal on the article: lâ, lê and
leaving the word's initial consonant unaltered.
As for irregular case forms, one occasionally comes
across the dative, possessive plural and the
instrumental. The poss. and dative are only found on
(some) national names:
Nom. y Chernow y Vrenck
pos. lor Chernuór lor Franccór
dat. lis Chernuef lis Franckip
obl. y Chernowes y Vranckes
The instrumental is identical to the nominative,
usually has no article and is also fronted in a
phrase:
liveor bodeor il ferrir-el / with a book he hit him.
> So, there are four cases: nominative, genitive,
> dative, and accusative. The
> Latin ablative disappeared, most of its functions
> adopted by the genitive.
> Furthermore, there are three genders (masculine,
> feminine, neuter), and three
> declensions.
Wow - neuter. Romanian has kept the neuter. I suppose
Slavic still has neuter? What cases do W's Slavic
adstrate have?
> Comments?
The survival of four cases is a (pleasant) surprise.
Is it common in W for words like "dom" to switch
genders (domus was feminine)?
> Jan
=====
il dunar-li c' argeont ayn politig;
celist il pozponer le mbutheor ayn backun gras.
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