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language:grammar

The language of the Threadwielders has a simple and flexible grammar, in that it imposes few rules about the composition of sentences. In combination with the language's tendency to portmanteau words and shorten them (see below), this has a tendency to cause ambiguities. For situations where clarity is important, or the ambiguity too great, adherence to the recommended sentence structure, without portmanteaus and abbreviations, is expected.

Sentence Structure

NOTE: THIS SECTION IS NOT CANONICAL (yet). REH IS WORKING ON IT.

Declarative sentences have a fairly simple subject-verb-object structure. Most frequently, the subject represents an agent of the verb (i.e., the person or thing doing the action), whereas the object tends to represent the patient of the verb (i.e., that which the action is being done to). Some verbs are intransitive, and will not take any objects; others may take additional indirect objects. (@todo: example sentences)

One exception to the above: The verb 'to be' is elided for present tense sentences, so it is entirely possible to create a sentence entirely out of nouns and adjectives. For example, “He is crazy” would translate as ra khalei.

Aside from the possessive marker '-i' mentioned above, cases do not exist – so sa can be used as either “I” or “me”, e can be used as either “we” or “us”, etc.

Adjectives and adverbs are generally placed in front of the word they modify; they can also be placed after the modified word, but it is a less-common construction and generally calls greater attention to the modification. For example, adaryr'is kas̈ would be “nightmare-filled sleep”, whereas kas̈ adaryr'is would be “sleep that is filled with nightmares”.

To be continued; work in progress

language/grammar.txt · Last modified: 2020/01/19 16:51 by pinkgothic

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