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	-3þ
Genitive	Attributive	-
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 animate-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'kæ¿aña þassa)

There are no articles in Parseltongue. The Negative Person is a universal negative (gšaa ñaħall xaxæ/No muggle knows magic). The Zero Person is used of non-specific subjects only. Hence, all others persons are both indefinite and definite, yet always specific. For example, in English we have the two very similar sentences

• A wizard was needed, but I could't find one.
• A wizard was needed, but I could't find him.

The latter is specific, while former is not. The former would utilize the Zeroth Person in Parseltongue, while the latter would be in the 3rd or 4th person.

The half persons function to indicate politeness, intimacy or self-deprecation. When a snake meets a human they don't know, they immediately think of the person as a threat and attempt to self-deprecate and kowtow. They will use the half-person to refer to themselves, as if to say "little ol' me". Even after a civil or intimate relationship has been established, a snake will continue to refer to regions of her body other than her head or tail with the half person.

The 1.5 person is the same only opposite. A new or distant relationship with an interlocutor will be expressed with the plain 2nd person, but once intimacy has been achieved, a snake will switch using the inclusive 'we', the first and half person. This can be a confusing turn for the uninitiated, since such a 'we' can refer (objectively) to the interlocutor, the speaker, or them both together.

The 3rd and 4th person can alternate very quickly in dialogue. Consider the English sentences:

1. A man walked into a room.
2. He met a woman.
3. She said to him,
4. "Buy me a drink."

In Parseltongue, the first sentence verb is in the 3rd person, as is the second. But the #3 is in the fourth person, because the object of the preceding sentence is the object. While there are some disadvantages to this system, it functions well when gender distinctions don't help, unlike English.

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-, dš-, dš2-
Prey	ñb-,
Mass	x-, xu-
Collective	dy-, dü-
Magical	¿-, ¿y-, ¿1-

Root words, in the form of stems, may have expressions in multiple classes. For example, *ħal is assumed to be a derogatory term for human beings, from which we get ñaħal/muggle and dyħal/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	ła	256	10,000	ðegli
2	2	hor	512	20,000	ügli
3	3	dhæ	768	30,000	üþegli
4	10	þe	1024	100,000	ñagli
5	11	þeła	1536	120,000	ñügli
6	12	þehor	2048	200,000	ššgli
7	13	þedhæ	3072	300,000	ššñagli
8	20	üü	4096	1,000,000	on
9	21	üła	16384	10,000,000	þeon
10	22	ühor	65536	100,000,000	æhæ
11	23	üdhæ
12	30	üþe
13	31	üþeła
14	32	üþehor
15	33	üþedhæ
16	100	ña
17	101	ñała
24	120	ñü
32	200	šš
48	300	ššña
64	1000	gli

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 þe, 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 üþedhæonæhæ ššñaüþedhægliæhæ ššñaüþedhææhæ üþedhæon ššñaüþedhægli ššñaüþedhæ - 17,179,869,183₁₀