Saturday, July 31, 2021

Detail #413: Object Prepositions encoding a bunch of stuff

This system might be incorporated into a conlang of mine in the future. Consider a system where direct objects often take a sort of accusative preposition, but this preposition also is inflected with information about the object and the verb.

To some extent, the inflections can be combined - but not indiscriminately so.

The basic preposition could be a syllable, say ir. Maybe we have some congruence thing going on, so it might be ar for plurals or something like that. It also is not used with pronouns - and not only not with personal pronouns, but not with pronouns in general. (Possibly with the caveat that indefinites and some quantifying pronouns may permit taking them.)

Restrictions on use

All individuated objects that are not pronouns or proper nouns require an object preposition. For perfective verbs, non-individuated objects may also take the preposition.

In subclauses, the object preposition may act as a head of a verb phrase without any actual verb involved.

Prefixes 

s- : bring into existence
w- : change the nature of something gradually
p- : change the nature of something in a way that breaks categorization
n- : destroy


sw- and sn- seem to be used by some speakers for a slow, gradual process of creation or destruction, but is far from accepted by all.

Postfixes

-k : the object in half
-kek :the object into multiple parts
-ta : the object is intrinsic, habitually recurring; the verb could be considered gnomic.
-ba : the object is temporary, accidental, occasional or incidental.

Circumfixes
Circumfixes cannot co-occur with pre- or postfixes.

k- ... -di : an object of strong desire
f- ... -ap : an object of strong hate
kus- ... -a : an action that merges objects or brings them together locally


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