Naeso/Grammar

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This page describes the grammar of Naeso.

As with all other pages with votes on them, please keep checking back often! Your vote counts!

Basics

• Naeso is fusional.
• Naeso uses VSO word order.
• Word types:
  • Nouns: Naeso has nouns.
    • Verbal nouns: Naeso has verbal nouns.
  • Verbs: Naeso has verbs, including sou "to be" .
    • However, Naeso does not have the verb "to have". "To own", "to carry", "to possess", "to keep", etc, and also an existential structure can replace it.
  • Adjectives: Naeso has adjectives.
  • Adverbs: Adjectives/adverbs are a single class of modifiers.
    • I think that we should consider making adverbs a different class from adjectives, created by inflecting adjectives, to resolve the ambiguity with multiple descriptors discussed below. We could maybe even make things that describe adverbs another class, created by using the same inflection on adverbs. —MJ

Nouns

Nouns in Naeso are most commonly found as part of a prepositional phrase. They inflect for the genitive and various plural forms. The following table uses the words anka "duck" and ian "cat" as examples:

	nominative	genitive
singular	anka / ian	ankabi / ianbi
additive plural	ankan / ianun	ankabin / ianbin
associative plural	ankadun / iandun	ankabin / ianbin
collective plural	ankati / ianti	ankabin / ianbin

Verbs

A vote on this page had the outcome of "verbs inflect for tense", but results of another vote on the Suffixes page contradict this. We're re-voting below.

• Decided:
  • Verbs do not conjugate according to subject or object.
  • Verbs inflect for Mood/modality and Aspect.
• Undecided:

Verbs may or may not inflect for the following categories - a "no" vote on any of these means it could be marked by anything other than verb inflection (e.g. adverbs, prepositional phrases, separate particles, inflection of some word other than the main verb), specifics to be decided after this vote is over:

2011-4-19

Tense — 2/3 (BF,RJ,/JH,FH,BL,)

• We have the temporal preposition fui, so I do not see the need for this. —FH

2011-4-19

Validationality — 2/3 (RJ,FH,/JH,BL,BF,)

2011-4-19

Plural — 0/3 (0/FH,JH,MJ,)

• I suggest we wait a bit and see how the votes on tense, aspect and validationality go before making up a lot of mood affixes. If we vote in one or more of the other categories, we might want to fuse some of them, e.g. have indicative mood intersect with various kinds of validationalities or all the moods intersect with some or all of the tenses & aspects. —JH
  • Since Naeso is fusional I'd argue that we will need many combinations of mood and whatever else gets voted in, so we will just say that the modality suffixes we create now are in the default tense (e.g. present), aspect (e.g. not progressive or whatever), and validationality (e.g. "almost sure"). When we vote something else in, we can create suffixes that combine two or more of these categories. —FH

What moods will be marked by inflection?

1. 2011-4-19

   Indicative — 0/3 (0/JH,FH,RJ,)
2. Interrogative — voted in
3. Imperative/hortative/jussive
   • First and third persons — voted in
   • 2011-4-19

     Also for second person. — 2/2 (FH,MJ,/JH,RJ,)
4. Abilitative, i.e. equivalent of English "can/may" auxiliary verbs — voted in
5. Desiderative, i.e. equivalent of English "want/wish" auxiliary verbs — voted in

• I suggest that a bare verb with no subject mentioned could be interpreted as second-person imperative, and needn't get a mood affix. Similarly a bare verb with an explicit subject can be assumed to be indicative without any explicit marking; that would make words on average shorter. —JH
• I think it would be cool to be able to leave off subjects though. I think we should allow indicative sentences with no subject, perhaps with an indicative inflection to distinguish from imperative. —micahjohnston
• So are you suggesting we mark verbs as indicative only when we want to omit the subject, thinking it's obvious from context? If so, what about add a vote tag for that? —Jim Henry 17:55, 20 October 2010 (PDT)
• I think only marking the verb if leaving out the subject is odd at best and feels to me quite unnatural. —Sel messitihildi 02:45, 24 October 2010 (PDT)

Modifiers

This section is about adjectives and adverbs, which are a single class of modifiers.

How will multiple modifiers applied to the same noun be handled?

2011-4-19

Just string them together after the noun: noun mod1 mod2 mod3... — 2/1 (FH,MJ,/JH,)

2011-4-19

Use an "and" word between them: noun mod1 and mod2 and mod3... — 1/2 (RJ,/FH,JH,)

2011-4-19

Use an "and" between them when ambiguity seems likely, i.e. when it might be uncertain whether mod2 modifies mod1 or the noun — 1/2 (RJ,/FH,JH,)

2011-5-11

Use a comma when ambiguity seems likely, i.e. when it might be uncertain whether mod2 modifies mod1 or the noun — 1/0 (FH,/0)

2011-4-19

Any modifiers after the first are marked with a relative clause: noun mod1 which is mod2 and mod3... — 2/2 (JH,BL,/FH,RJ,)

• Note that "and" will not necessarily be infixed, depending on the outcome of this vote. —FH

Comparison

How will comparison and similar things be formed? E.g. "more", "most", "less", "least", "very".

2011-5-11

Use a suffix on the modifier — 1/0 (FH,/0)

2011-5-11

Use a particle — 0/1 (0/FH,)

2011-5-11

True comparisons have the modifier (with the comparison suffix or particle), followed by a "than" particle and the element to compare to — 1/0 (FH,/0)

• For example, "better than the book" would be good-more than book if a suffix on the modifier is used. There could also be a second "than" particle for constructs like "this tastes better than it looks": taste good-more than look bu ke, bu ua.

2011-05-11

Use a term like 'exceed' — 1/1 (RJ,/FH,)

• I do not see how this could work with Naeso's existing syntax. Could you maybe provide an example? —FH

Pronouns

This is the complete table of personal pronouns in Naeso.

I	si
you (singular, someone who recently joined the IRC channel)	pae
you (singular, someone who's been part of the conversation for a while)	tha
you (sing.)	y
he	the
she	je
it	ke
3SG current IRC participant	ipu
3SG sometime IRC participant not online at the moment	yl
3SG someone who's never on IRC	tyma
third-person singular undefined for gender or IRC status, 'one'	ze
we (inclusive)	lynh
we (exclusive)	sim
you (pl.)	ym
they	bel

Naeso also has other pronouns including:

• ua and inna — this and that
• poynh — the interrogative pronoun
• soa — the pronoun for the last (most recent) line of chat posted by the speaker
• ky — the pronoun for the last (most recent) line of chat in general

Gendered singular pronouns

Naeso has optional gender-marking in its third-person singular pronouns. The pronoun "ze" can be used for a specific person whose gender is unknown or which the speaker doesn't wish to specify (the equivalent of Esperanto "ri"), or for a nonspecific person (the equivalent of French "on", Esperanto "oni", formal English "one").

IRC-oriented singular pronouns

Naeso has distinctions in its second-person pronouns depending on whether the addresse is a regular on IRC or is only occasionally on the current channel.

Naeso has optional distinctions in its third-person pronouns depending on whether the mentioned person is a participant in the current chat, someone on IRC at times but offline (or possibly away) at the moment, or someone who's never on IRC. The pronoun "ze" can be used for a specific person whose IRC status is unknown or which the speaker doesn't wish to specify, as well as for a nonspecific person.

How, if at all, those will be used outside of IRC, will be detemined by actual usage.

Plural pronouns

It's not yet decided what categories, if any, are marked on second and third-person plural pronouns.

2011-5-11

Do not mark anything — 1/0 (FH,/0)

Nonhuman pronouns

It's not yet decided what whether Naeso has a single third-person pronoun for all nonhumans, or perhaps one for animals and one for everything else, or one for domestic animals & human artifacts and another for everything else, or...

2011-5-11

Use a single pronoun — 1/0 (FH,/0)

Prepositions

It's been decided that Naeso has prepositions, and that it will use prepositions for marking cases/thematic roles. A fair number of prepositions have been voted in on the Dictionary pages and others are currently being voted on. Another question about prepositions is yet to be voted on:

Definiteness

Will some or all prepositions inflect for definiteness (i.e., equivalent of "the/a" in English)?

• The most animate or topical preposition (i.e., roughly the "subject") in a given sentence will inflect for definiteness. Typically this will be "ku", "jen", or "bu" (see the Dictionary page). — voted in

2011-4-19

Only prepositions for core grammatical relations (agent, patient, experiencer, and similar) will inflect for definiteness, not peripheral ones like "at", "during", "with", etc. — 1/2 (MJ,/FH,JH,)

2011-4-19

All prepositions inflect for definiteness. — 0/2 (0/FH,JH,)

2011-4-19

No prepositions inflect for definiteness. — VOTED OUT

How are prepositions that are not required to inflect handled?

2011-4-19

Other prepositions can be marked for definiteness for clearing up ambiguity or artistic reasons. — 3/0 (FH,MJ,RJ,/0)

2011-4-19

Other prepositions must not be marked for definiteness. — 2/2 (JH,BL,/FH,MJ,)