Lecture 5: Word Order and Articles

[Hooligan]

Hello again students --

We took a week off from lectures, and well, I'm not sure very many of you noticed. Although twenty students are enrolled in (or auditing) the class, I am sorry to report that the number of students who seem to be paying attention is fewer than a handful of fingers. I apologize if the class is not stimulating, and I guess this has affected my own enthusiasm somewhat, leading to the week's delay that, like I say, may even have been unnoticed. I'm sure one or two students noticed, but certainly no one even mentioned it, so well, anyway, I'll press on.

Given that so many of the twenty students have not engaged themselves in the course at all, I am tempted to reduce the class roster to just those few who have.

I will do what I can with my lectures (which probably isn't much -- I just read this one over, and it's pretty dull) to hope to re-spark the interest of the student body.

PART 1: WORD ORDER

As discussed, Talossan is a Romance language, and therefore the rules of constructing a sentence in Talossan are very similar to those in other Romance languages (like Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian). These rules are, of course, slightly different from the rules of constructing a sentence in a Germanic language (such as English, German, and the Scandahuvian languages).

Here are the key differences that an English speaker should keep in mind when creating a sentence in Talossan:

Adjective Position

Adjectives often, if not usually, follow nouns. This is different from English, in which adjectives almost always precede nouns. For example, where English would say red house, Talossan would say casa roxh (which, literally, reads as house red).

There are some common-sense exceptions -- numerical adjectives, for example, precede the noun: doua casas (= two houses). Also, if an adjective is to be stressed, or considered more important to convey than the noun, it can then precede the noun, but in general, you will be safest if you remember to position all adjectives after the noun that they describe.

One way to help remember this, I have found, is that you can imagine the words "which is" or "that is" between a noun and its describing adjective. This makes the sentence seem more properly constructed in English -- for example, la casa roxh (= the house [that is] red). This can also be made explicit in Talossan: la casa qi'st roxh is literally the house that is red. When this trick (sticking "which is" or something between the noun and an adjective) is used, the adjective becomes something called a "predicate adjective", which leads to the next point.

Adverbial Position in Predicates

Some other word placements are surprising to an English speaker. Before imagining it as a predicate construction (with "which is" or "that is" or simply "is" helping out), the "noun-then-adjective" order can seem "weirdly" backwards to an English speaker. Once you are constructing a predicate phrase, though (such as which is red), you can find that you encounter other differences from English.

This, though, is the fault of English, not Talossan. Consider the English sentences she is very wise and she is wise enough. Here, very and enough are both adverbs that are modifying the adjective wise in predicate phrases. And yet English has one of them positioned before wise and the other positioned after wise. In Talossan, the words follow the rules of sentence order much better than in English, and these sentences would be a isch trei saxha (= she is very wise) and a isch aßei saxha (literally = she is enough wise).

"Noise" Words

English has a lot of "noise" words. These must be avoided in Talossan. What do I mean by "noise words"? Well, take the word "do". English uses this word a lot when it really isn't needed. For example, Do you have any apples? can be said much simpler as Have you any apples? Similarly, "I do not know" can be "I know not." When you really step back and think about it, modern English inserts "do"s and "don't"s into sentences that really have nothing to do with "doing". When creating a Talossan sentence, leave all such things out.

Yes, this means that where an English speaker would say Do you eat apples?, a Talossan speaker would say ¿Menxhás't dels apais? (which is literally Eat you some apples?). Again, this is simply an extension of the Have you any wool? form of English sentences. Use this form for all Talossan sentences, eschewing the unnecessary do you.

In addition to using the forms of to do as unnecessary noise (do you X, I don't X, Please don't X, etc.), English also uses to be as unnecessary noise. For example, in the English phrase she is going, we have two active verbs butted up against each other -- to be and to go. Even in English this could be said as simply she goes, and this is how Talossan would handle this phrase. (Over)using to be and its forms, as is done in English, must be avoided in Talossan.

As another example, consider the English sentence The hamburgers are being cooked now. The word are and the word being are both constructions of the same verb to be, and so, when you think about it, that single verb is being repeated back-to-back in the sentence. That is a very English construction that would never happen in a Romance language. Be sure you do not repeat a verb right after itself. Think about another way to say the same thing, and then do that in Talossan.

Use of Present Participles

The word being is the worst offender in the category of noise words just discussed (The hamburgers are being cooked). And this brings me to the general case of all English -ing words -- the present participles.

In English, the present participle is used quite a bit. It is used to help indicate a progressive sense of ongoing action (are being cooked, she is going), it is used as a gerund (which means that it is a verb being used as a noun, as in reading is wonderful), and it is used as an adjective (as in the swirling wind). In Talossan, it is only used as an adjective.

In other words, whenever you are thinking of using the equivalent of an English -ing word (in Talossan, the word-ending is -ind), stop and think. Are you using it as an adjective (as in the frustrating problem)? If not, you are thinking too "Englishly" -- do not use the Talossan present participle at all in these cases. Find another way to construct your sentence, so that the present participle is not used. This is usually done by finding the "noise word" (often to be or to do) and getting rid of it, then changing your present participle to another form of the verb (thus she is going becomes she goes). The sentence you come up with will be shorter, simpler, and, well, Talossan, not English.

Subject-and-Verb Positioning

Without the "noise words", then, let's go back to the way we are left with to ask questions. Do you have any wool? becomes Have you any wool? and, as we discussed, this is the model that all questions should use. This does indeed mean that a direct English translation would seem awkward to an English speaker -- for example, Eat you any eggs? and Read you any books?, but yes, awkward-seeming or not, this is how Talossan questions should always be formed, on the have you any model.

If you think just a bit on that, we soon realize that we can draw a key distinction in Talossan between the way a question is formed and the way a non-question is formed. This, again, can be seen in English. Notice the position of the subject pronoun "you" in the following two example phrases:

• Are you sick?
• You are sick.

Here we see that when creating a question, even in English, the subject (in this case, you) comes after the verb (in this case, are) and when creating a positive statement of fact, the subject (you) comes before the verb (are).

This should be a very solid general rule in Talossan, and one that might help you remember to follow the Have you any wool? model of noiseless question-phrasing. While there are things you can do to a positive-sentence to turn it into a question without changing the word order (for example, is it true that you have any wool?), in general, questions are phrased with the verb first, and the subject second, and positive statements are phrased with the subject first and the verb second.

Negation

One common use of do "noise" in English is to negate a sentence -- I don't know, You don't say, etc. If you follow the rule to eliminate the to do noise word and go straight to the verb in question here (know and say in those two examples), you may be wondering how to negate the sentence.

The answer is easy. The Talossan word non (= no or not) is what you use for this, and it is placed immediately before the verb. If you like English noise, you can think of non in these cases as identical to English don't or doesn't, etc.

For example, éu säp means I know, and éu non säp means I know not (or, for fans of English "noise", I don't know).

Combination of the Verb with the Subject

One thing we haven't discussed yet is verb conjugation. We will get into this subject in much more depth later in the course, but for those of you who might not be aware of the term, "conjugation" means the way in which a verb changes when used for specific subjects and tenses. For example, in English, the verb to be "conjugates" as am when used for the present tense and a subject of I (as in I am afraid), and it conjugates as was when used for that same subject in the past tense (I was afraid).

English has some rules of conjugation (for example, the present participle conjugation is typically formed by adding -ing, and the past participle is formed by adding -ed), but really, English has a great many irregular verbs (such as to be) whose conjugations don't follow any rules common to other English verbs.

Talossan has its own small set of irregularly conjugated verbs -- we will get to them in a later lesson -- but not nearly as many as English has. The point I am trying to make here is that quite often, the form of the verb is enough to convey also the subject of the verb.

Let's use the conjugations of the English verb to be for another example here. Although the forms are, is, was, and were are used for multiple different subjects (for example, you are here, we are here, she is happy, he is happy, it is good, I was proud, it was awesome, you were wrong, they were right), the word am is only used for the subject I. Which means that, really, every time you see the English word am, you know -- you absolutely know -- that the subject of the sentence is I. In English, the subject is almost always given, though if you think about it, it need not be. For example, although you never would hear someone say Am wrong? instead of Am I wrong?, nor would you hear an English speaker say (except in very casual speech) Am going to the store instead of I am going to the store, the fact is that you could do so, without any loss of information. (The prototypical example of this omission of the subject is the childish argument --Am not! --Are too!)

In Talossan, almost all verbs are like am in this case. Anytime you see any Talossan verb in a form that ends in -éu, you are seeing a word, like English am, that is built exclusively for use with the subject I.

And I is not the only subject like this. For example, if you see a verb in Talossan in a form ending with -ás, you have a word that is built exclusively for use with the subject you.

That said, although you can omit unnecessary subjects in Talossan -- and construct sentences such as Am not! and Are too! whenever the subject is definitely known by the form of the verb, in point of fact, this is not done as often in Talossan as you might think, and not as often as is done in other Romance languages with this feature. That is, although both éu menxhéu and simply menxhéu both unambiguously mean I eat, it is more usual in Talossan to see the subject made explicit. That is, you see éu menxhéu more often than simply menxhéu. This could be one of English's many influences on Talossan, in the same way that you see I am much more often than simply Am.

As I say, we will discuss conjugation much more later in the course, but the issue here (which it seems I am taking literally forever to get to) concerns how this affects the order of words in questions and non-questions.

As we said, questions and statements are modeled on the --Have you no clue? --I have no clue. model, such that the position of the subject of the sentence (either before or after the verb) helps to indicate whether the sentence is a question or a statement. (The question-mark also helps too, sure.)

Cutting (at long last) to the chase, then, what I've been working up to is the fact that if the subject of your sentence is a pronoun (such as I, you, etc.) instead of a noun (such as John, the teacher, Talossa, etc.), then the pronoun, when used in a question (so that it is following the verb), gets "smushed up against the verb". We have seen this in action already, and here are a couple examples to refresh your memory.

Take the sentences You are crazy and Are you crazy? The Talossan translation of the first one is straightforward: tu isch fol (= you are crazy). But when creating the second one, the question, the word tu (= you), not only gets moved to behind the verb, but then gets "smushed into it", and we get ¿Isch-tu fol? (= are you crazy?).

What you just saw is the simplest form of "smushing" the subject pronoun -- simply hyphenating it to the verb. However, this only happens when the conjugated verb is irregular, such as isch -- it is much like the English is, which (since you can't tell from looking at it) only an English speaker would know is a form of the verb to be.

The vast majority of Talossan verbs are regularly conjugated, though, unlike estarh (= to be), which has that rather unexpected form isch. But estarh isn't irregular for all subjects -- we can simply change the tense of our example sentences and see the other, more common, form of smushing in action. The English sentence You were crazy is translated to Talossan as tu estevás fol, and the English question Were you crazy? becomes ¿Estevás't fol? Notice here that the pronoun tu got "smushed" into the verb by becoming 't right up against it.

We will cover pronouns and their forms in an upcoming lecture, but I thought that here, while covering word order, would be a good time to discuss the rule concerning placement of the subject relative to a verb, and to explain where the 't that you have seen has been coming from.

Position of the Object Pronoun

Just as adjectives being positioned after nouns seems "backwards" to an English speaker, the other area of a Talossan sentence that an English speaker sees as being "backwards" is the position of the object of a verb. In English, the object is positioned after the verb -- as in I love it. But in Talossan, the object is moved before the verb, and we have éu en améu (which, when read literally, is I it like).

This rule applies only to pronouns, and not to fully-specified nouns. While it is less improper in Talossan than in English to say éu la cervieþa améu (literally, I the beer love), it is much more common to phrase such a sentence as it is phrased in English: éu améu la cervieþa (= I love the beer).

But when it comes to pronouns (like it and me and them, etc.), your first thought when constructing a Talossan sentence should be to put them before the verb (but after the subject). Thus éu lor améu (= I love them) and os noi ament (= they love us).

A few of the object pronouns will "elide" with -- that is, drop their final letter and then "smush" to the front of -- a verb that they accompany, if and only if that verb starts with a vowel. The ones that do so are me (= me), te (= you), both lo and la (= him and her), and se (= myself/yourself/himself/etc./etc.). For example, noi t'ament (= we love you), instead of noi te ament. Similarly, tu m'amás (= you love me) and tu s'amás (= you love yourself).

However, object pronouns do not always precede the noun. In two specific cases, they can appear after the noun, and "smushed" up against it using hyphenation. These cases are when the verb is in the infinitive form or the imperative form. The infinitive form is the English to X form of the verb, and the imperative form is the form used for ordering someone to do something. For example, éu volt menxharh-en (= I want to eat it) and ¡Menxhetz-en! (= Eat it!)

Introduction of the Noun

Finally, one important thing to remember when constructing a Talossan sentence is that nouns (with the sole exception of proper names) are lonely without an article or some other part of speech introducing them.

Articles (words like the English a, an, and the) are the subject of the second part of this lecture, so I will leave much of the discussion until then, but the important thing to note here is that when you are constructing a Talossan sentence, and you're about to use a noun, and it is not preceded by an adjective, then your first thought should be to choose an article to accompany it, and use that article.

English omits articles almost as a rule. In English, you see a great many nouns out and about without any article to chaperone them. This is simply not done (much) in Talossan.

In general, do not ever use a Talossan noun unless the word before it is an article (like a or the), or a non-predicate adjective (for example, a possessive adjective like my or their, or a demonstrative adjective like this, that, these, or those).

For example, the English sentence I collect bottles and cans would be translated into Talossan as éu colectéu dals boteglhas es dels biduns (literally = I collect [some] bottles and [some] cans). Here we see that each Talossan noun (both bottles and cans) gets an accompanying article (dals or dels which both mean "some amount/number of").

Although proper nouns do not need such introduction, when they are described by an adjective, they are typically introduced (just as in English). For example, while el Patritz isch aicì (= the Patrick is here) is not proper (and would reflect a hyperadherence to the rule of noun introduction), you would say el Patritz sloþ isch aicì (= the lazy Patrick is here). And in Talossan, placenames also often are accompanied by articles where they are not in English. Where English would say I live in Japan, Talossan would say éu vivéu in el Cipangu (= I live in the [country of] Japan).

Conclusion

Those are only a few high-level rules concerning how to construct sentences in Talossan. Certainly there are others, but if you just keep these rules given above in mind, you will almost always be constructing good Talossan sentences.

PART 2: ARTICLES

Now that you have heard that articles are used more often in Talossan than in English, and even been told that every single noun pretty much needs to be introduced by an article (or a possessive or demonstrative adjective), you are probably wondering just exactly what Talossan's articles are, what they mean, and how to know which one to use. We'll cover all of that now.

Talossan has four types of articles -- indefinite articles, definite articles, partitive articles, and the universal article. We will discuss these one at a time.

Singular Indefinite Articles (equivalent to the English a and an)

First, let's give you the easy way out. When you want to say a or an, you can (almost) always just use the Talossan word 'n. This word is pronounced kind of like the English word an would be pronounced in a quickly spoken sentence like on an island. Except when the article appears immediately after seven specific words (which use the form iens, discussed below), 'n is always proper and never wrong; you can use it with any noun and it will always mean a or an.

If you want to be more formal than 'n, there is a longer form of that indefinite article. This form is ün (for masculine nouns) and üna (for feminine nouns). We have not yet discussed "masculine" and "feminine" forms -- so-called "grammatical gender" -- but now it seems we have run up against the time when it is necessary to say a few words about this aspect of the language.

Grammatical Gender Grammatical gender is a foreign concept to English. English words do not have "gender" and the very idea of words being either "masculine" or "feminine" seems extremely strange and almost comical to an English speaker. But this feature of language is found in all Romance languages, and is definitely important to know about when learning Talossan. Essentially, every single Talossan noun has a specific "gender" -- either masculine or feminine. Even inanimate objects, such as desk and computer have gender. That's just the way it is, and to know Talossan, you have to know what the gender of every single noun is, so that you can surround it with the appropriate (masculine or feminine) forms of other words. Luckily, Talossan has a very easy way to determine the gender of any noun. There are a small number of exceptions, of course (Talossan wouldn't be a believable and real language without those!), but essentially: if a word ends in -a or -à, it is feminine (well, unless it ends in -istà) if a word ends in -iun, it is feminine if a word ends in -ù (or if it is a single-syllable word ending in u, meaning that the u is stressed even though it is not marked as such), it is feminine otherwise, the word is masculine.

So if you want to say a desk, you could use üna pupitra, and if you want to say a computer, you could use ün computex. It would be wrong to use ün for a feminine noun, and just as wrong to use üna for a masculine noun.

NOTE: A specific set of words, when introducing the indefinite article, cause the article to take a different grammatical case (that is, a word different from ün, üna, or 'n). These specific words are à (= at, to), come (= like, as), contra (= against), da (= of, from), intra (= within), ja (= there is, ago), per (= for), and the definite articles el and la. When following any of these words, the indefinite article has its historic (pre-advent of the ün) form, iens (a word that formed from the elided form of viens, which is now used only for the number 'one'), and the article always elides and contracts with the preceding word, giving à'iens (= at a, to a), com'iens (= like a, as a), contr'iens (= against a), d'iens (= of a, from a), intr'iens (= within a), ja'iens (= there is a, a [time] ago), pr'iens (= for a), and l'iens (= the one [who, which]). This form of the article has the feminine form 'iensa and the shared plural form 'iensas.

Notice that the form of this indefinite article is now iens, although its original derivation was the word viens. Use of viens gives the phrase a numeric meaning -- compare ja'iens anneu (= a year ago) to ja viens anneu (= one year ago). While the form iens is almost always seen contracted to the preceding word, it is acceptable to separate it when emphasis in speech on a specific constituent word in such a construction must be communicated: ¿zirevas't qe votarhás CONTRA iensa traþità? (= did you say you will vote AGAINST a treaty?!).

The 'iens form of the indefinite article is also seen in a contraction exhibited with third-person singular past-tense verb forms (ending with -va). For example, o xhetev'iensa bola (= he threw a ball). The survival of the use of this case for the article in only one specific verb conjugation is unique; some consider it unsupportable and now prefer o xheteva üna (or 'n) bola (= he threw a ball), which is also proper.

Talossan has another indefinite article, quálsevol, which is used with countable nouns and has the meaning "some unknown or unfamiliar". It can be considered an "emphatic indefinite" article. Note the difference between 'n caciun txaupa (= a dog is barking) and quálsevol caciun txaupa (= some dog is barking). This is a subtle semantic difference but is also represented in the English translations. In the second case, the speaker is communicating that the dog is one that is most likely unknown to him.

Plural Indefinite Articles

What if you have a plural noun, though? You can't say a sandwiches in English. Instead, what do you do? You either leave out the article altogether and let the noun go alone (I like sandwiches) or you use a word like some to introduce it (Do you want some sandwiches?).

In these cases in Talossan, though, you use either dels (for masculine nouns) or dals (for feminine nouns). Both of these are contractions of da (= of) with the plural definite article (the; whose Talossan equivalents are discussed in the next part of the lecture), so that a literal reading of both dels and dals is of the.

For example, éu améu dels sändwitschen (= I love sandwiches) and ¿Volt-tu dels sändwitschen? (= Do you want some sandwiches?).

Note that both of dels and dals could be replaced by the word dallas. However, this is only done in extremely formal or poetic contexts. The word dallas, though, is seen used (in preference to dels and dals) in one specific circumstance, and that is the introduction of the year when providing a date. For example, Listopäts dallas 2009 (= October, 2009).

The "some" article quálsevol has an irregular plural form quáisevois. For example, quáisevois cician txaupent (= some [unknown] dogs are barking). Again, the choice of this article indicates something semantically about the speaker; in the case of this example, perhaps the fact that he or she does not care about nor care to know any more about the particular barking dogs. Compare to dels caciun txuapent (= dogs are barking), which indicates more interest in the subject group than does quáisevois.

Definite Articles (equivalent to the English the)

If you want to introduce a noun with the, then in Talossan, you use el if the noun is masculine, and la if the noun is feminine. For example, la pupitra (= the desk) and el computex (= the computer).

However, if the noun (no matter what its gender might be) begins with a vowel, then you should dump el or la and just smush l' up against the noun. For example, l'espagnour (= the spaniel) and l'abeglha (= the bee). In other words, l' is used for both masculine and feminine nouns, but only if they begin with a vowel.

In English, the word the is used for both singular and plural nouns. For example, the spaniel, the spaniels, the bee, the bees. In Talossan, however, if a noun is plural, the article (whichever is appropriate for the gender of the noun) becomes plural too, by the addition of the letter -s to it. For example, els espagnours (= the spaniels) and las abeglhas (= the bees).

Notice that when a plural noun is involved, you cannot use the l' trick. That is, l'espagnours is improper for the spaniels; you need to spell out the entire definite article -- els espagnours.

The one other thing to note about definite articles is that there is one other definite article with a special and limited use. The word li (which can be thought of as meaning the date of) is used exclusively and only in the construction of dates. For example, li 10. Listopäts (= the tenth of October). Do not use li anywhere else, and do not use el or la in this circumstance.

Partitive Articles

If you think about it, there are some nouns in Talossan (and English) that just plain don't work with an indefinite article. These are called "uncountable nouns". For example, although you can say the garbage (using the definite article), it is wrong to say a garbage (that is, the indefinite article just doesn't work with this word). To indicate a single piece of garbage, you have to say, well, a piece of garbage.

These words are not at all uncommon. When ordering at a cafeteria, you might say I will have a milk, but this is not a common phrasing, and what you are really saying is I will have a glass (or carton) of milk. When offering your glass for a refill, you might say I will have a red, what you are really saying is I will have some (of the) red wine.

In all of these cases, you are doing what you can to deal with uncountable nouns in English. When you encounter a situation in Talossan that is like any of those described here, you will want to use the partitive article. As we've seen English typically uses no article at all (grammarians actually call this the "no article" construction), so there is no direct equivalent to Talossan; however, you might think of Talossan's "partitive article" as some/any of the or some/any amount of the, and luckily, the Talossan partitive article is pretty much just that -- of the.

When introducing an uncountable noun in Talossan, use del (if the noun is masculine) or dal (if it is feminine). For example, dal ispeça xhenera del garbatx (= [any amount of] shopping generates [some amount of] garbage) and va cätsilor alufient dal lapta (= my cats drink [some] milk).

Note that this correspondence to English "some" is not to be confused with that of the indefinite article quálsevol, discussed above, which is used for countable nouns and can also be translated as English "some".

The Universal Article (equivalent to the English all of the)

Talossan has a special form for indicating every single instance of something, anywhere and everywhere. If you want to say all of the, then you can use the universal article toct i. For example, toct i aics (= all horses).

Notice that the word toct, by itself, means all. So you can also say toct dels aics (= all of the horses), which is nearly equivalent. But toct i is used when the intent is to include every single horse everywhere, while toct dels is preferable when indicating every single horse in a specific referenced group of horses, but not any of the horses, say, on the other side of the earth.

Of course, toct i is also useful for purposes of exaggeration, and in fact, one common idiom, toct i tzara (literally = all the earth, and having the meaning everyone) is an example of that. For instance, toct i tzara t'ament (= everyone loves you). [Spanish has a similar idiom, todo el mundo.]

Well, that lecture was way longer than I thought it would be, and also went into topics that I hadn't necessarily planned for this lecture, but what's done is done.

As always, I am available for (and would welcome) questions about this lecture or any of the earlier ones. If anything is unclear, please let me know.

I will be posting your assignments for this week in the next few days.