Degaspregos: Morphology
2.1 : Nominal Morphology
2.1.1 : Preliminaries
Both nouns and pronouns serve similar functions within all languages :
they both refer to constituent parts of the human
experience: persons, places, things, or concepts. All of this, as already
explained are axiomatically understood by all humans because of the very
nature of language itself (because of the widely accepted concept developed
by Noam Chomsky, Universal Grammar, that grammar which is defined biologically
as the outline of what a human language can be).
Classificatory rules
Partly as a result of Degaspregos's agglutinating
structure, it analyses the different parts of speech
(called lexical categories by syntacticians)
into separate classes which are each marked with separate morphemes to
indicate that class. All nouns in Degaspregos derive their class morpheme
from the Proto-Indo-European form -o-. This could be seen in the
pronoun structure, too, and thus all nouns and pronouns are easily
distinguisable as such by this marker.
2.1.2 : Gender Morphology
"man" : {w- [masculine prefix] -ir- [root,"human, person"] + } --> "wiros"
{-o- [nominal suffix] + -s [case suffix] }
And like pronouns, all nouns may be used with gender, to prevent
possible confusion on the part of the hearer. This gender is not
arbitrary (insofar as it is possible not to be): gender, if used, matches
the actual nature of the object in question semantically, much like English
(though it goes even further than does English in this respect). In addition
to being regular, it is not mandatory that the gender of a noun be used, only
that if used, it is at least metaphorically correct (for example, the feminine
form for "sun" (gwasawelos) wouldn't be used unless one is attributing
metaphorically feminine qualities to the sun).
| s- |
indefinite gender |
seos, "it, something" |
| w- |
masculine |
weos, "he" |
| gw- |
feminine |
gweos, "she" |
| k- |
neuter |
keos, "it" |
| an- |
animate |
anawos, "bird" |
| r- |
inanimate |
rastenos, "stone" |
| dew- |
spiritual gender |
(Dewa)deiwos, "God" |
| mis(a)- |
mutable |
misagnos, "fire" |
| nemis(a)- |
immutable |
nemis(a)sawelos, "sun" |
Note that because some of the above categories may overlap, a given noun
may be referred to by either or both of the pronouns, even within the same sentence.
Gender is used to highlight the aspect of the object which is seen as most
relevant or important with a given situation.
2.1.3 : Numerical Morphology
And also as with pronouns, nouns may show the concept of number.
A rather different aspect of Degaspregos though is that it separates
words which are numbered from those which are not. This means that a word
such as boy in English could imply either the meaning one boy
or merely the concept of boy, in which the number is irrelavent.
So, there is a four fold distinction in gender, so there is also a sixfold
distinction with respect to number: common, and then fractional, singular,
paucal, plural, and unknown but finite numbers. Whether one indicates the
number or not is simply a matter of choice on the part of the speaker or
writer.
Figure GN3: Number paradigm
| Common |
Fractional |
Singular |
Paucal |
Plural |
Indefinite finite |
| - |
-ti |
-ia |
-pai |
-i |
-non |
| wiros |
wirosti |
wirosia |
wirospai |
wirosi |
wirosnon |
* N.B.: linguistically, the common form uses simply the null (+0)
morpheme
Another aspect which may strike many Europeans as unusual is that
Degaspregos draws a distinction between paucal (a few) and
plural (many). Very simply, the singular is an object which is one in
number, the paucal anywhere from two to nine, and the plural anything greater
than that.
(Some might find this
arbitrary, but our system of enumeration being based on the decimal system,
it seems as logical as any might be).
2.1.3.1 : The Lack of Count and Mass Noun Distinctions
Many languages in the world exhibit a peculiar distinction between what
are called count and mass nouns. The difference between the two
groups is simple: count nouns are ones which, in the given language's grammar,
can be numbered, can thought of as individual items, while mass nouns must be
considered only in "masses", in groups, or collection of the substance, rather
than the substance itself.
Now, this is all well and good, but the problem comes in when, as we see,
many languages make this kind of distinction mandatory, as with English: we
can say "two trees", but not something like "two sugars"* (which would more than
likely be interpreted as different kinds of sugar). For many languages, this
must simply be learned rotely; it cannot be simply guessed at.
What Degaspregos does is this: there is no real distinction between
the two. This allows general freedom to do what the speaker needs for a particular
occasion: if he needs to emphasize the individuality of the objects in question,
he would use the plural or singular to indicate this. If, on the other hand, he
wished to highlight the objects as members of a group, he would probably use the
common form.
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