Classical Arithide grammar

The grammar of Classical Arithide is characterised by a degree of inflection unseen in most modern tongues, and notably absent from its own modern descendant. Due to this inflectionary tendency, Classical Arithide possesses considerably free word order, especially in poetry, but syntax commonly and usually retains the traditional order of Subject Object Verb. Classical Arithide is a topic-prominent language, left-branching, prepositional (on the rare occasions where prepositions are employed), verb-framed, pro-drop and lexically-classed; it does not use articles. While some of these characteristics, such as its pro-drop and genderless character, simplify the learning process, the task is invariably complicated by the complexity of the language's inflection.

The Classical Arithide inflection system involves 8 declension classes of nouns, each inflected for 11 cases and two numbers; two classes of verbs, each conjugated in four voices, three aspects, four sub-aspects and seven moods, and which each produce an assortment of various derivative forms; two classes of adjectives, the nominal behaving like regular nouns, and the verbal behaving like regular verbs; adverbs, the most common of which are generally indeclinable but most of which are derivations of adjectives and hence declined as per their class.

Nouns

Main article: Classical Arithide declension

The use in Classical Arithide of lexical classing in nouns means that each declension class represents a broad group of nouns that share a certain characteristic. Traditional grammatical analysis takes the number of declension classes in Classical Arithide to be six, but the sub-classes that are sometimes sufficiently distinct from their ostensible parent class render the number about double. Factoring in overlapping and coincident declensions, modern grammarians generally accept the existence of 8 discrete groups, numbered declension classes I to VIII respectively. Only 7 classes were lexical: classes I to IV were productive classes due to their nature—they are still productive in Modern Arithide—and the separate but largely coincident declensions of the nouns thence derived were categorised under an eighth class.

Nouns of the first declension end in -os, and are associated lexically with abstractions: actions (vagos, "act of going"), states (stantos, "weight"), qualities (fugirnos, "dangerousness"), among others (sonos, "daily life"). The second declension ends in -as and is associated with places: kitaras "hall". The third (-ir) and fourth (-rir) both indicate a negative denotation or connotation associated with the noun, and were treated traditionally as variants of one declension, but separately nowadays because of the differences in their declension; they are also the only declensions where disyllabic nouns are stressed on the last syllable; vokir "evil", kirir "faux pas". The fifth declension consists of nouns ending in either -er or -a, and the association here is with people, society and culture: ither "person", medier "wife", steima "measurement". The sixth declension consists solely of the agentive derivatives of verbs, and hence all end in -on. The seventh is made up of nouns ending in -i, but no apparent lexical connection has been found that sufficiently encompasses the nouns in the category. The eighth, and last, declension class comprises the derived nouns, ending in any of -os, -as or -ir, and is the most regular declension class due to its character: it is the only class in which no irregularity is observed in any individual noun.

The 11 noun cases of Classical Arithide are:

• Nominative, which marks the subject of a verb
• Topical, which marks the topic of a sentence
• Accusative, which marks the object of a verb
• Genitive, which marks possession by
• Dative, which marks motion towards, and by extension benefaction to etc.
• Locative, which marks location (with places) or indicates shift of grammatical focus (with objects and people)
• Ablative, which marks motion away or existence apart, and by extension is used with prepositions such as parō "about, regarding" or etel "by (agentive)"
• Instrumental, which marks instruments, and by extension accompaniment, using the preposition etel "with"
• Vocative, which marks direct address
• Connective, which is an open-ended stem form to which certain affixes or other nouns are appended, e.g. salumos "heaven" + innos "top" > saluminnum "in heaven" (lit. "on heaven"; innos is in the locative) and allas "city" + dolō "around" (from dolos "surroundings") > alladolō "around the city" ¹

• Essive, which marks existence as

¹

Alladolō (connective + prep.) must be distinguished from the similar dolō allior (prep. + ablative); while both might be translated as "around the city", the former refers to the areas outside and surrounding a certain city, while the latter refers to places all around within the city: alladolō siethē sena "there are flowers around the city" vs. dolō allior siethē sena "there are flowers all about the city".

Of these, the connective and essive cases in all nouns are identical, resulting in 10 effective cases.

Adpositions

Main article: Classical Arithide adpositions

Due to the extensive inflectionary marking in Classical Arithide, the number of adpositions in common use is very few, although for purposes of scansion, some archaic ones can still be seen in poetry, sometimes in redundancy; the adpositions were revived, however, in Modern Arithide, as postpositions. Most adpositions govern a designated case or several designated cases; the latter situation indicates multiple, usually related, meanings canvassed under the adposition concerned.

Besides the standalone adpositions, more common are the appendent adpositions (or postpositions), so called because they are appended to the connective case of nouns, most of the time forming a separate noun on their own, carrying a specific positional or lative meaning.

Verbs

Main article: Classical Arithide conjugation

Classical Arithide verbs are divided into two classes based on their infinitive endings, namely -ān (Class 1) and -ēn (Class 2). Whereas all vowel-stem verbs take -ān in the infinitive, the converse is not true, and the distinction between the two verb classes in terms of semantic and lexical meaning is not entirely clear, although it has been noted that all causative forms take as their infinitive -ēn.

Verbs in each class are conjugated for four voices, three basic aspects, five derivative aspects, seven moods and four tenses:

Voices

• Active John hits the ball.
• Passive The ball is hit by John.
• Causative Jack makes John hit the ball.
• Potentive Jack can hit the ball.

Aspects

• Imperfective, indicating the progression of an action
  • Habitual/Generic I walk to work every day. Mangoes grow on trees.
  • Protractive* I walk on and on; I go on walking.
  • Inceptive* I begin to walk.
  • Frequentative* I walk around.
• Perfective, indicating the completion of an action
  • Habitual I used to walk to work every dat. Mangoes used to grow on trees.
• Perfect I have walked to the cinema (and am now there).

Moods

• Indicative, stating facts, strong beliefs
• Subjunctive*, used with wishes, hopes, doubts, conditions
• Optative* I want to walk.
• Jussive* I want you to walk.
• Imperative Walk!
• Cohortative Let's walk.
• Negative¹

I do not walk.

¹ There are technically two types of the negative mood in Classical Arithide, but traditionally have been conflated into one by the Dethrians, who were not generally able to effectively distinguish between the two (see Classical Arithide conjugation#Negation for more information).

Tenses

• Present
• Past
• Progressive, technically an aspect, derived from the imperfective, but covers the continuous tenses of English
• Future

Of the above, those marked with an asterisk form separate verbs (i.e. take their own infinitives), which usually do not hold the full conjugation range. Additionally, the interrogative mood is marked with the auxiliary particle da. Verbs are conjugated on a cascading hierarchy as above, i.e. to the root form of the verb would first be appended affixes indicating voice, followed by aspect, then mood and subsequently tense. The indicative perfective active is not generally marked, hence the existence of four tense-only forms.

Adjectives & adverbs

Main article: Classical Arithide adjectives and adverbs

In Classical Arithide, adjectives (and consequently adverbs) are divided into two distinct classes: the nominal class and the verbal class. The two classes, somewhat analogously to the Japanese na-type and i-type adjectives, inflect differently from each other.

Verbal class

The verbal class of adjectives, which comprises all primary adjectives as well as the most commonly used ones, takes after verbs: inflecting to distinguish aspect, mood and tense. Semantically, they are equivalent to stative verbs, e.g. rodēn "to be kind", rather than simply "kind"; rodēn may form rode "was kind (i.e. used to be kind)". All adjectives of characteristic (inalienable characteristics such as "green house", "tall man", as opposed to alienable characteristics such as "empty box" etc.) belong in this class; those derived from the corresponding noun of quality carry an infix -n-, which indicates their role as a modifier.

The verbal class does not, hence, inflect for agreement with its arguments. (In certain western dialects, however, adjectival agreement in the verbal class existed as a regional innovation.)

Nominal class

As can be surmised from its name, the nominal class of adjectives inflects like nouns, which means they agree with their arguments, in case as well as number. Most of the adjectives in this class are derivative, whether from nouns, verbs, adverbs or elsewhere, but there do exist a few primary adjectives.

Invariable adverbs

As with every language, there are certain adverbs that are always invariable, e.g. lum "now".

See also

• Classical Arithide
• Classical Arithide declension
• Classical Arithide conjugation
• Classical Arithide adjectives and adverbs
• Classical Arithide determiners
• Classical Arithide adpositions
• Classical Arithide pro-forms