Thursday, July 23, 2009

Playing with plurals

I want to try something just for aesthetics. Now this may not be completely straightforward, and may detract from the stated goal of making a language that is utilizable, but I'll take some artistic license.

Previously, we discussed producing plurals simply by adding an -s to the end of a word, as in the following:

rosa -> rosas - roses
dono -> donos - gifts
principe -> principes - princes
corde -> cordes - hearts
manu -> manus - hands

Now note that the plural is pretty much the same as the actual Latin plural accusative for most forms except in the case of corde which is a neuter noun and would become corda. It's true that all nouns derived from neuter Latin ones will have artificial plurals, like nomines, crures, genus, or operes instead of nomina, crura, genua, or opera. But that's okay for this conlang.

Now if adjectives are also to agree with nouns based on number, one would have terms like the following:

bono puero
bona filla
bonos pueros
bonas fillas
longos nomines
breves crures

Personally, I don't like the repetition of the -s sound in the plural phrases - I feel it gets in the way of the flow and is clumsy. Also, I personally don't like having to deal with grammatical gender, remembering the gender of ambiguous words like nomine or crure.

What I'm proposing is a way to deal with adjectives that would get rid of the -s repetition and having to worry about gender - by using the singular and plural neuter forms for all adjectives. The singular form often may end in -o or -e; the plurals of adjectives could possibly transforms those endings to -a or -ia respectively. Thus one would get forms like the following:

bono puero
bona pueros
longa nomines
brevia crures

Now for words that are conspicuously feminine-sounding like filla, I would suggest using bona over bono even in the singular for aesthetic purposes. But ambiguously feminine nouns like parte may use the -o scheme:

bona filla
bona fillas
longo parte
longa partes
breve parte
brevia partes

I know I'm not being too clear - I'm writing in a hurry. With the scheme above, there wouldn't be a need for grammatical gender - adjectives would only have to agree in number except if the singular noun ends in -a. These adjectives would all end in vowels for aural purposes.

So to recap my poorly explained rules:

Nouns: form a plural by adding -s

Adjectives: form a plural by the following
-o -> -a for adjectives derived from 1st/2nd declension Latin adjectives.
-a -> -a (no change) when derived from 1st/2nd declension Latin adjectives and when the noun being modified ends in -a or is conspicuously feminine
-e -> -ia for adjectives derived from 3rd declension Latin adjectives.

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