Dal'qörian Cases

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Cases are used throughout many languages to indicate the function of words in a clause or sentence. In English, there are three cases, which only apply to pronouns: subjective (nominative), objective (accusative) and possessive (genitive). The subjective case is used for the subject of a sentence:

• He is playing with a ball.

• She will catch the 6 o’clock train.

• Sometimes they come early.

The objective is used for the direct object of a sentence-the thing that suffers the ‘action’ of the verb. There is a change to the pronouns they, we, her and he but you and it remain as the subjective:

• sub: He/she/we/they bought a necklace.

• obj: They bought him/her/us/them a necklace.

• sub: You/it wanted some food.

• obj: I gave you/it some food.

The possessive case shows possession or to whom something belongs. In English, this is rendered by apostrophe s or s apostrophe:

• This is Dayle’s guitar.

• Let’s go to your dad’s house.

• Our neighbour’s garden.

• The dog is in its’ basket.

dal'qörian also has these three cases. The dal'qörian nominative and accusative are more or less the same as English in that, dal'qörian personal pronouns change their spelling in the 'objective', the difference being that you and it also change their spelling plus there is a different word, in both cases, for you in the plural. (see Pronouns)

Possessive

The dal'qörian possessive case is quite different and, apart from those outlined at the end of this section, it is mainly used when there are 'two genitives' or possessives together:

• I saw someone knocking at your dad’s door. (your dad 1st possessive, dad’s door 2nd possessive)

• My parents’ house was sold last week. (My parents 1st poss, parents house 2nd poss)

• I think your mate’s wife is pretty. (your mate 1st poss, mate’s wife 2nd poss)

As we know from the pronoun section, the possessive adjectives your, my, his, her, our, their do not exist in dal'qörian. These are rendered by using the prep qve-of plus the relative accusative pronoun with the noun. (my dad-di parenöj qve binöra lit: the father of me, your dad-di parenöj qve diöra lit: the father of you)

With two possessives: your dad’s door, my parents’ house, qve is never used twice:

• di Þradäj qve di parenöj qve diöra. The door of the father of you.

• di abödä qve di eltaröjel qve binöra. The house of the parents of me.

A genitive form of the definite article di-the is used (there is also a genitive form of the indefinite article covered at the end of this section). di changes to dis in front of nouns that begin with a vowel or any consonant other than s, and disqu with nouns beginning with an s. This equates to of the or belonging to and tells us that the second noun is in ‘possession’ of the first noun. In other words, the noun that it precedes is the noun that is owned. When placed between two nouns (dis/disqu does not qualify or show possession to a pronoun), dis/disqu then gives control of the possession to the noun it follows. Look at these examples carefully:

• dis Þradäj di parenöj diöra. Your dad’s door. (lit: the door of the dad (of) you).

• dis abödä di eltaröjel binöra. My parents’ house. (lit: the house of the parents (of) me).

But you must be careful. Place dis ‘between’ the nouns and the possessive structure of the sentences change:

• di Þradäj dis parenöj diöra. This now translates as: Your doors dad. (lit: The dad of the door (of) you).

• di abödä dis eltaröjel binöra. This now translates as: My house’s parents. (lit: The parents of the house (of) me).

Now look at this example:

• ädiáda, binä gä’visör dis qömerinöj di siaberöj diöra. I saw your sisters boyfriend yesterday.

dis shows us that the boyfriend (qömerinöj) belongs to your sister (siaberöj). dis qömerinöj literally translates as the boyfriend of giving the ‘ownership’ or possession to the sister. di siaberöj diöra literally translates as the sister of you giving the ownership of sister to you, equating your sister. However, misplacing dis here could prove rather embarrassing:

• ädiáda, binä gä’visör di qömerinöj disqu siaberöj diöra.

This now reads:

• I saw your boyfriend’s sister yesterday.

Here, disqu siaberöj is telling us that sister is owned by boyfriend which is in turn owned by you. So the equation is:

ː dis + noun gives possession to the 'following' noun.

ː noun + dis + noun gives possession of the 'second' noun to the first.

Finally, there is no word order rule for dis, but be aware of the ‘possession trap’! In the examples above, you can simply swap the nouns around, but this is very uncommon in dal'qörian speech and you will almost always hear dis in front of both nouns rather than in between.

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The dal'qörian possessive case is sometimes used to equate the English use of whose:

• taÞ disqu sáj di siaparenöj mæöra, taÞ ädiáda gä’estingör. That's the man whose mother died yesterday. (lit: That’s the man of the mother of him, who yesterday died).

• di Tæmes dis glavánion di qapétna Londöni. London is the city whose river is called the Thames. (lit: The Thames is the river of the city London.

As in the last example, the sentence has to be reformulated. Sometimes, its not always possible to literally translate a sentence like this. In fact, it may be better to say something like:

• Londöni ádra di glavánion,, taÞ icaÞr di embelisrämös Tæmes. London has the river called the Thames.

This is a stylistic feature of dal'qörian. However, the use of the possesive case as in the first example should always be translated into English with whose.

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