ReConLangMo 4: Noun and Verb Morphology

Published on , 366 words, 2 minutes to read

Last time on ReConLangMo I covered word order and some of the finer points about how sentences work. This time we are covering how nouns and verbs get modified (some languages call this conjugation or declension). This is a response to this prompt.

Other Noun Things

At a high level, noun-phrases can be marked for direct ownership or number. The general pattern is like this:

<article> [pronoun] [negation] [number] <verb>

Pronouns

Here's some of the pronouns:

English L'ewa
me, I mi
My system and I mi'a
you ro
we (all-inclusive) mi'o
your system and you ro'a
This (near me) ti
That (near you) ta
That (far away) tu

Numbers

Numbers are in base six. Here are a few numerals:

Decimal Seximal L'ewa
0 0 zo
1 1 ja
2 2 he
3 3 xu
4 4 ho
5 5 qi
6 10 jazo
36 100 gau

Here are few non-numerals-but-technically-still-numbers-I-guess:

English L'ewa
all to
some ra'o
number-question so

Negation

As L'ewa is more of a logical language, it has several forms of negation. Here are a few:

English L'ewa
contradiction na
total scalar negation na'o
particle negation nai

na can be placed before the sentence's verb too:

ti na spalo
This is something other than an apple

Verb Forms

Verbs have one form in L'ewa. Aspects like tense or the perfective aspect are marked with particles. Here's a table of the common ones:

English L'ewa
past tense qu
present tense qa
future tense qo
perfective aspect qe

Modality

Modality is going to be expressed with emotion words. These words have not been assigned yet, but their grammar will be a lot looser than the normal L'ewa particle grammar. They will allow any two vowels in any combination that might otherwise make them not "legal" for particles.

Explicitly Ending Noun Phrases

In case it is otherwise confusing, ko can be used to end noun phrases grammatically.


I will probably be fleshing this out some more, but for now this is how all of this works.


Facts and circumstances may have changed since publication. Please contact me before jumping to conclusions if something seems wrong or unclear.

Tags: conlang, lewa