Stilio/Concepts

Parseltongue uses a system of grammatical cases similar to Latin or Estonian. Person, in Parseltongue, is conflated with demonstrativity, deixis, and honor. Nouns and verbs are not marked for number or gender, but there are four noun-classes. Independent verbs must be marked for evidentiality, although it is often taken metaphorically.

Cases

There are four "core" cases - Nominative, Accusative, Agentive and Patientive - and five "oblique" cases - Dative, Possessive, Partitive, Genitive, and Ablative. The core cases interact with lexical aspects of the verb to distinguish the subject and object. A few verbs take Dative, Partitive, or Ablative objects.

Core

All verbs have a lexically contained expectation for which case the subject will be in. Hence, all verbs are active or passive and volitional or non-volitional by default, which will also indicate which paradigm it follows. When given an unexpected case, intentionality or casuality is signified:

	Active Non-Volitional	Passive Non-Volitional	Active Volitional	Passive Volitional
Nominative	Involuntary Agent	Involuntary Cause	Unintentional Agent	Unintentional Cause	-♊
Accusative	Direct Object	Descriptive	Unintentional Patient	Pseudo-Passive Object	-æ
Agentive	Agent!	Cause!	Ergative Subject	Intentional Cause	-♊i
Patientive	Intentional Direct Object	Pseudo-Passive Agent	Absolutive Object	Stative	-♊b

Oblique

Case	Genitive
Dative	Absolute	-as
Partitive	Wholative	-22
Possessive	Subjective	-3d
Genitive	Attributive	-1x
Ablative	Objective	-♊wa

The oblique cases function generally like Indo-European cases, but with some notable exceptions.

Dative

Some linguistics prefer to call this the "topico-dative" because it can function similarly to the Japanese は/wa, or the Korean 는/은. These instances are typically best translated as "in regards to" or "as for". Like the Latin Ablative Absolute or the Greek Genitive Absolute, entire clauses may be in the Dative, which expresses "attendant circumstances". However, unlike Greek or Latin, these phrases are the focus, not peripheral.

The Dative is often equivalent to the English prepositions "to, for, by, with, from" and/or indicates the Indirect Object. The other four cases fall under the 'genitive' rubric in many languages

Partitive

Like the Uralic languages, the partitive means "some of" or "part of" or "any". It can also be used for the object of an atelic actions or sensing/perceiving verbs. 'Half of my possessions’; ‘some of the branches’; ‘the poor among of the people’, 'partake of my meal', 'I saw some of him'.

Possessor

Like the English 's. This is the subjective genitive. "Love of God" would have to mean (in this case) "God's love", not "my love for God"

Genitive

This can be Epexegetical or Attributive/Descriptive. e.g. "the horcrux of his body", "words of wisdom (i.e. wise words)"

Ablative

Objective Genitive, "concerning, against, about, on, from", separation, adverbial

Persons

Parseltongue has an astronomical eight persons. We account for this remarkable fact by remembering that it is magical language bridge between sentient and non-sentient species. A species that is not self-aware will not have a strong sense of "I", but the cognizant interlocutor addressing them will. Hence, "me" and the "space near me" are conflated, as well as "you" and the "space near you". Other analyses, different than the one given below, are of course possible, but this number seems to reflect animated snake psychology.

Despite not being self-aware, snakes are very conscious of respect and honor. When a snake wishes to be self-depricating, she will use the half-person. 1½st person functions both as an inclusive 'we' and as an equivalent to the German 'du'.

#	Name	Person	Demon.	Time	Discourse
-1	Negative	No one	None	Never	Nothing
0	Indefinite	Someone/anyone	Some	Some time	Something
½	Dim. Proximal	"Royal We"	This (dim)	Any second now	This (already mentioned, dim)
1	Proximal	I	This	Now	This (already mentioned)
1½	Mesioproximal	We (you and I)	This*	"Just now"	This (forthcoming)
2	Mesiodistal	You	That	Then	That
3	Distal	He/She/It	Yon	"That time"	That (previously mentioned)
4	Obviative	Him	Other	"That other time"	That (other previously mentioned)

Note, however, that "token-reflexive" deixis is not possible in Parseltongue. A snake could not say, "This is my apology," but would have to say, "I apologize (illoc.)" (i.e. /æ'qæ\amadassa)

Articles

There are no articles in Parseltongue. "The door is open" would be use the regular 3rd person, as would "A snack would be great right about now". "Someone stole my hat" and "Anyone can dance" are both in the 0th person

Classes

Similar to the Bantu language, there are noun-classes in Parseltongue. These are labeled non-prey, prey, mass nouns, and collective.

Class	Prefix
Non-prey	Ø-
Prey	mb-,
Mass	w-, wu-
Collective	ty-, tv-
Magical	~-, ~y-, ~1-

Root words, in the form of stems, may have expressions in multiple classes. For example, *gal is assumed to be a derogatory term for human beings, from which we get magal/muggle and tygal/crowd.

Evidentiality

All indicative/independent verbs in Parseltongue must be marked for evidentiality. Snakes senses are not like human sense: they are different and valued differently. They are - in decreasing order of assuredness - smell, heat, hearing, and sight.

Smell

Snakes extend their forked tongues out into the air and pull "smells" into their mouths. Their "noses" (Jacobson's organs) are on the roof of their mouth and retain which direct on the tongue the "smells" came from. This gives them a very refined and directional sense, as or more definite that most human's seeing. Knowledge obtained this way is the most certain and so is most analogous to human's "I see" or "I know". When a snake conjugates a verb in this evidential, she is indicating information immediately experienced. Such information cannot be doubted without insulting the snake.

Heat

Main article: Wikipedia:Infrared sensing in snakes

Snakes have special sensors where other animals' "noses" would be which detect heat or Infra-red radiation. Snakes report not "seeing" a field - as humans do with sight - but "feeling" the nearness and/or warmth of things. This is most akin to a human saying "I feel like you are ..." or "I sense not everyone in the room agrees with ...". Information given in this evidential may not have been directly observed, simply inferred.

Hearing

Many snakes are "deaf" as humans measure hearing. A snake's entire body functions like an "ear", sensing vibrations. This knowledge is very accurate, but because it comes from their whole body (not just their head) it is more like "gut knowledge". Information given in this evidential is believed to be true, but come by indirectly. Tenuous conclusions may be given in this form.

Magic causes snakes internal ear to hear external speech. Only a Parselmouth magician may speak to a snake and be heard. For the rest of us (Muggles and non-Parselmouth magicians) Parseltongue may be learned and spoken amongst ourselves only.

Sight

Most snakes have poor vision, with a majority not being binocular. This mood is used metaphorically as a person would say, "I suppose" or "I guess". A snake is indicating that they are very doubtful of information given in this form.

Numbers

Parseltongue uses a base-4, or quaternary numeral system. Octals have unique (ancient?) names, functioning like '20' does in many human languages (see vigesimal). The other major exception is æahæ, which means 100,000,000₄ (cp. Korean 억 or Chinese/Japanese 億).

Snakes count by moving their heads counterclockwise, starting in the top left.

Decimal10	Quaternary4	Parseltongue	Decimal10	Quaternary4	Parseltongue
1	1	za	256	10,000	dekli
2	2	hor	512	20,000	vkli
3	3	thæ	768	30,000	vdekli
4	10	de	1024	100,000	makli
5	11	deza	1536	120,000	mvkli
6	12	dehor	2048	200,000	cckli
7	13	dethæ	3072	300,000	ccmakli
8	20	vv	4096	1,000,000	on
9	21	vza	16384	10,000,000	deon
10	22	vhor	65536	100,000,000	æhæ
11	23	vthæ
12	30	vde
13	31	vdeza
14	32	vdehor
15	33	vdethæ
16	100	ma
17	101	maza
24	120	mv
32	200	cc
48	300	ccma
64	1000	kli

Æhæ is used metaphorically, in the same way we say "not in a million years". Non-sentient snakes don't seem to care about numbers bigger than de, which is synonymous with a full field of vision. Parselmouths speaking to each other in Parseltongue, discussing large numbers resort to scientific notation long before getting to the biggest number one can say in Parseltongue - 33,333,333,333,333,333₄ vdethæonæhæ ccmavdethækliæhæ ccmavdethææhæ vdethæon ccmavdethækli ccmavdethæ - 17,179,869,183₁₀