Week 5 wordlist

Numbers

Numbers have two primary interpretations: as "adjectives" ("four dragons") and as groups ("a group of four (things)"). The adjective sense is found when the number is the second noun in apposition - lamkan khumes "four dragons" - and the group sense otherwise, particularly when the number is the first noun in possession - khumes lamkan "a group of four dragons". The indirect possessive with ne can also be employed: khumes ne lamkan "a group of four dragons". In both apposition and possession, the noun being counted is plural except when used with wun "one".

Multiples of eight (other than yite "16") up to (and including) 64 are formed as the plural of the corresponding unit: hirran "24", plural of hira "three". Note that these are grammatically singular, and have plurals themselves. Multiples of 64 up to (but not including) 512 are formed by using the multiplier as an adjective with yitan "64" as the noun being counted: yitnan hira "192". Multiples of 512 are also formed by using the multiplier as an adjective, but now the multiplier may be any number (and for the construction of general numbers, see below): zhurthan yitnan hira "98304" (192*512). It must, however, be less than 512.
From these multiples of powers of eight, other numbers are constructed by putting them in connection, ordered with units first, then multiples of eight, then multiples of 64, then multiples of 512: cane yite yitnan cane zhurth cane yite yitnan cane "74898" (2 + 16 + 2*64 + (2 + 16 + 2*64)*512). These compound numbers can be used in exactly the same ways as simple numbers: in apposition, alone, and in possession.

Numbers have two derivatives of importance. The first is the suffix -at, creating ordinal numbers, e.g. khumsat "fourth". The second is the suffix -i, which creates words referring to the concept of the numbers themselves, or equivalently the written numeral, e.g. khumsi "the number four". In both cases, when applied to compound numbers, the suffix is applied to each individual term: hirrat yitat "11th", yitniyan hirri "the number 192". This latter example also shows that the suffix is applied after the multiplicative -an, but before the plural -an.
Additionally, wun "one" has an irregular ordinal, qhune "first", and thikhne "seven" displays a rule of adding the suffix -i to class C nouns, namely that a t is added between the stem and suffix, giving thikhnati "7th".

Pronoun Miscellany

Whereas nouns can be freely conjoined, pronouns often cannot - only dependent pronouns (personal and non-personal) can be put in connection. Other types require rephrasing to convert the pronouns into their dependent counterparts. This is done by inserting a "dummy" plural personal pronoun to fill the syntactic slot, which is then followed by the actual pronouns in their dependent form.
The "dummy" pronoun is therefore independent if the pronouns being conjoined would be independent, and a suffix pronoun if the pronouns being conjoined would be suffix pronouns. Additionally, it's first person 'innu or -n if any pronoun being conjoined is first person, second person 'icchinu or -chen if there isn't any first person pronoun but there is a second person pronoun, and third person 'iccjinu in all other cases.
This gives us the following examples: 'innu cu ku lamkan "The dragons are you and me", zjiwanchen cu ḫu "yours and his plants".

Suffix pronouns attached to non-personal pronouns, as in taluk (talu "this" + -k "me, my") or malisjen (mali "what?" + -sjen "them, their") are generally best translated slightly paraphrased, as "this (one) of mine" and "what (thing) of theirs?" for these examples. For tu and talu specifically, we can abbreviate this translation further to just e.g. tuk "mine", tuc "yours", etc.

The indefinite pronoun zyu "some" has very broad semantics, covering much of the useage of Common "nothing" and "anything" as well, as ina zyi im "there's nothing here"/"there isn't anything here" shows. nughu "all" covers the usages of "any" that aren't covered by zyu, which are limited to cases where "all" or "every" could be substituted (e.g. "more than anything" = "more than everything"), and where "any" expresses a free choice (e.g. "try any apple").

The pronoun nughu is interesting to translate, as it depends very heavily on how it's being used. If placed second in apposition, it always has the meaning "any" (the 'free choice' meaning), so lamok nughu "any dragon", lamkan nughan "any dragons". If placed alone, or first in possession (where the second noun is plural), the singular nughu means "each" and the plural nughan means "all" or "every".

Naswiyan/Lessons/5 (last edited 2019-02-02 20:48:10 by Kamare)