A quick guide to abbreviations: 1 = first person, 3 = third person, P = Participant case, F = Frame case, SP = SPecific, INAN = INANimate, ANIM = ANIMate, * = ungrammatical, ? = questionable
Basic sentence structure
A-Uttes sentences require a predicate, and any number of arguments. The default word order is:
Argument1 ... ArgumentN
Predicate
- ninnes
- planet
- a-
- of
- Terra
- earth
- assi
- blue
'Planet Earth is blue'
- Ilden-tu
- Ilden-F
- ninnes
- planet
- sin
- see
Ilden sees the planet.
- Ilden-i
- Ilden-P
- dall-arr
- soup-P
- unni
- eat
.
Ilden eats soup.
- see
- 3.INAN.SP
- dalli
- soup
This is soup.
- se
- 3.INAN
- assi
- blue
These are blue.
- ad
- 3.ANIM.SP
- Ilden
- Ilden
That person is Ilden.
Predicates will accept any number of arguments.
Contrast:
Earth is blue.
*Earth Neptune is blue.
*Earth orange blue.
With:
- Terra
- Earth
- assi
- blue
Earth is blue
- Terra
- Earth
- Neptun
- Neptune
- assi
- blue
Earth and Neptune are both blue.
- Terra
- Earth
- olossak
- orange
- assi
- blue
Earth is blue like an orange.
There's no such thing as transitivity.
Arguments can be freely added or omitted.
A few examples to consider; the predicate is underlined in the a-Uttes samples.
Ilden eats soup
Ilden eats
?
eats soup
With:
- Ilden-i
- Ilden-P
- dall-arr
- soup-P
- unni
- eat
.
- Ilden-i
- Ilden-P
- unni
- eat
.
- dall-arr
- soup-P
- unni
- eat
.
English is noticeably lenient respect to transitivity too! But consider:
I grow oranges.
?
I grow
- nin
- 1-P
- olossa-wo
- orange-P
- on
- grow
I grow oranges.
- nin
- 1-P
- on
- grow
I grow crops.
Ilden laughs
(*)
Ilden laughs the joke
(*)
Ilden laughs me
(*)
laughs the joke
- Ilden-i
- Ilden-P
- ali
- laugh
Ilden laughs.
- Ilden-i
- Ilden-P
- sinn-at
- joke-SP.P
- ali
- laugh
Ilden laughs at the joke.
- Ilden-i
- Ilden-P
- nin
- 1.P
- ali
- laugh
Ilden laughs with me.
- sinn-at
- joke-SP.P
- ali
- laugh
The joke is funny.
Object and Participant
Content words inflect for four cases: Object, Participant, Result and Frame which are mapped to the semantic roles I talked about earlier.
The Object case.
I don't mark the object case in the glosses as it is the less marked form.
The general meaning is Argument IS Predicate
- Terra
- Earth
- ninnos.
- planet
Earth is a planet.
- Ilden
- Ilden
- da
- human
.
Ilden is a human being.
More difficult, perhaps:
- dalli
- soup
- unni
- eat
Soup is a meal.
The Participant case
I mark this with the abbreviation P in the glosses.
One possible meaning is Argument IS INVOLVED IN Predicate
- Ilden-i
- Ilden-P
- ali
- laugh
Ilden laughs.
- dall-arr
- soup-P
- unni
- eat
The soup is eaten.
An animate Participant will be translated as a subject (more precisely, as an Agent) and an inanimate Participant as a direct object (Patient.)
- nin
- 1-P
- olossa-wo
- orange-P
- on
- grow
I grow oranges.
(What about inanimate direct objects? Stay tuned. It's a bit more complex.)
The other possible meaning is Argument IS CURRENTLY Predicate
- ninneos
- planet-SP.P
- assi
- blue
The planet looks blue.
A good test:
Will Argument IS Predicate still be true tomorrow? If so, use the Object case. If not, use the Participant case.
Predicate animacy.
Most languages have valency or transitivity. A-Uttes, as we've seen, doesn't use these categories.
But that doesn't mean it doesn't have categories of its own.
To recap a bit: a) content words are either animate or inanimate and b) any content word can be used as a predicate.
This means that predicate are animate or inanimate too!
Which leads us to the rule of animacy agreement:
- Object arguments of an inanimate predicate must be inanimate
- Object argument of an animate predicate must be animate.
This is grammatical, as we've seen:
- dalli
- soup
- unni
- eat
The soup is a meal.
But this isn't:
(*)
- Ilden
- Ilden
- unni
- eat
(*)
Ilden is a meal.
An animate can be the Object or the Participant of an animate predicate:
- Ilden
- Ilden
- da
- human
Ilden is a human being
- deen-es
- cat-SP
- da
- human
The cat is a human being. (A bit weird, but grammatical!)
- deen-eos
- cat-SP.P
- da
- human
The cat is acting like a human being
Epicene words
Some content words can be either animate or inanimate -- these tend to be translated as adjectives:
- Terra
- earth
- assi
- blue
Earth is blue.
- lue-wo
- shirt-SP
- a-ni
- of-me
- assi
- blue
My shirt is blue.