Transitional Grammar

the secret discourse : linguistics : conlangs : cepperjoleddicg : transitional grammar

A Transitional Cepperjoleddicg Grammar

Cepperjoleddicg's grammar is what I like to call "conservative Germanic." What does that mean? It means that it falls the strict V2 positioning that is apparent in German and Dutch and the noun - modifier relationships in the Scandinavian languages. The fun thing about conlanging is the spontaneity. Very infrequently do conlangers sit down and decide on what they want their finished product to look like. It is usually a surprise. Of course, there are exceptions - Esperanto, for example. But for the most part, what I just said holds true. At the moment, Cepperjoleddicg has 11 parts of speech: nouns (hja Naffanur), pro- and auxiliary verbs (þasse Jøbhendcrucger), lexical verbs (þæssį Jøbhendworða), determiners (þasse Afftaller), adjectives (þasse Namsafftaller), adverbs (þasse Jøbhendafftaller), numerals (þassan Radannam), pronouns (þassan Arførnam), conjunctions (þæssį Lįngendworða), prepositions (þassan Wørðsgangtaewsan), and interjections (þasse Œydjelper). It is very possible this number may change (consider my language Regonese - nouns, adjectives, and particles), but I doubt the number will get larger.

Cepperjoleddicg's grammar is a very dense puzzle intended to denote what the language's limited vocabulary cannot by itself. What it lacks in semantics, it makes up in strict grammar. To add to the confusion usually experienced by outsiders the language relies heavily on a group of common - and every esoteric - idioms. It is not uncommon for Kepper school teachers to tell an antsy student to sit down and put out his eye. They're only telling their students to read a book. Most of the idioms, like the example I just gave, have old religious ties and are hard to understand unless one is very well-versed in Teutonic mythology (Oðinn willingly sacrificed one of his eyes to drink from Mimír's well of knowledge). A child learning the alphabet is hanging on a tree. Insight is said to be delivered by ravens. Charlatans tug at their short beards. Such references to old religious works abound.
This grammar is by no means exhaustive. It only exists to serve the neophyte who desires to string a few Kepper words together into intelligible utterances. The grammar will expand though as I, er, invent it. Someday this grammar will be indispensable to the Kepper student.
I've talked long enough. Without further ado, the grammar.

A note: When I said the grammar was mostly "consverative Germanic" I did not mean it was exclusively Germanic. I say this out of anticipation for the e-mails I will receive - "No living Germanic language has an instrumental case." "You use your supine incorrectly." "Your language relies far too much on its genetive case." (...Okay, I'm sure no one will write such an e-mail, but it made me feel good to say :) ) I will say, I took some artistic liberties. Would art be art if we all followed templates? Cepperjoleddicg is made out of traditional Germanic features that have been mutated, transmogrified, and reinvented to fit my æsthetics. Consider it the mother language of a whole new family: Fordsmendrian Germanic!

Lexical, Pro-, and Auxiliary Verbs

Imagine German's strict V2 grammar. Now, introduce a strong preterite tense, like English has. The simple conjugation looks a bit like Icelandic. Lastly, complicate the participle system more complex by making both pariticiples - present and past - strictly adjectives and adding a supine, like Swedish. This, with some personal touches by yours truly, is the verb system employed by Cepperjoleddicgg.
The verb conjugation is not difficult and it should be fairly familiar for anyone who speaks German or Icelandic. The simple present tense conjugation table is as follows:

	Singular	Plural
1^st	-a	-um
2^nd	-sd	-d*
3^rd	-þ	-s

* Note: The second person plural conjugation is used for both the second person plural familiar (iybh) as well as the second person plural polite (Ubhan) and the second person singular polite (U).

As in English, verbs conjugated for the simple present take on an habitual meaning, e.g. ech cwemma, "I come" and not "I am coming." In order to relate an independent experience an intransitive verb is conjugated with the verb which provides the semantic meaning. Ech lauffa og cwemma, "I am coming," literally, "I leave and come." Ech besedda og vridda, "I am writing," literally, "I sit and write." Sometimes a prepositional phrase can take the place of the intransitive verb. Inn sįsn mynner vridda ech, "I write in my chair." The problem arises when one encounters a verb for which there is just no intransitive verb that can be matched. In these cases, the adverb nog can be used. Nog sto ech, "I'm staying."
The present tense is incredibly important because it is used much more frequently in Cepperjoleddicg than it is used in English. If an adverbial or prepositional phrase is used that states the time, the tense needn't be changed. In fact, changing the tense would be incorrect unless one is refering to the distant past, in which case the pluperfect is used. Jestraieru bæra ech œgfilman, "Last year I wore contact lenses," ech frį þich før enn dsįðða, "I will love you forever," but Þæssį Markovoer Mennerfolgrįch gaþ ga'n fuøn inn 1906, "The Markovo Republic fell in 1906." We'll discuss the perfect, the past imperfect, and the pluperfect next.

The more complex tenses are the perfect, the past imperfect, and the pluperfect. These tenses are formed by taking a conjugated form of either gaffan ("to have") or van ("to be") and using it in conjunction with the supine. The supine is formed, in regular verbs, by replacing the infinitive ending (-an) with -aðan and adding ga- to the front of the verb. For example gagaisþaðan "called," gacræddaðan "scratched," and g'adyllaðan "built" (note the /a/ is contracted next to another vowel). In common speech, the ga- may be dropped, but this is considered very informal - nearly slang - and shouldn't be used by those using higher level Cepperjoleddicg.

Out of all the complex past tenses, the perfect is the easiest for English speakers to understand. The perfect is used to relate incidents that have happened. No information about their finish is included. Ech ve flobhan na California, "I flew to California," sį g'þ įddan, "she ate." The second such tense is the past imperfect. This tense is used to relate events that occurred in the past and are ending in the present. Ech var flobhan na California, "I have been flying to California," sį gœfd'þ įddan, "she has been eating." The final complex past tense is the pluperfect. It refers to actions that took place in the distant past, or it can be used to compare the time of actions. Ech ve gasod flobhan na California, "I had flown to California," sį g'þ gaøn įddan, "she had eaten," or ech ve gasod flobhan na California, førsįððan gaþ įddan sį, "I had flown to California before she ate." The conjugation of these tense auxiliaries is very irregular and deserves discussion:

		Singular			Plural
	Perfect	Past Imperfect	Pluperfect	Perfect	Past Imperfect	Pluperfect
1^st	ga (g’)	gœfde	ga (g’) gaøn	gum	gœffum	gum gaøn
2^nd	gasd	gœsda	gasd gaøn	gad (g’d)	gœd’d	gad (g’d) gaøn
3^rd	gaþ (g’þ)	gœfd’þ	gaþ (g’þ) gaøn	gas (g’s)	gœd’s	gas (g’s) gaøn

1^st	ve	var	ve gasod	vum	varrum	vum gasod
2^nd	esd	er (’r)	esd gasod	æd (’d)	vud’d	æd gasod
3^rd	æþ (’þ)	er (’r)	æþ (’þ) gasod	us (’s)	vuds	us (’s) gasod

The forms of "to have" (gaffan) (the first conjugated set at the top) are used to for transitive verbs; the forms of "to be" (van) are used for intransitives. Where a form appears in parentheses, this form is used when the verb appears directly after a vowel. When using a form of "to be" the contractions are enclitic, but that is not true of the "to have" forms. The preterite imperfect is the final past tense conjugation. It is not in any way equivalent to the English preterite; it instead has an imperfect meaning attached to it (thus preterite imperfect, get it? :) ) It's translated as "was doing" and refers to actions that began in the past and either won't finish or haven't finished yet. Its conjugation looks similar to the present conjugation, but it is different is several respects, most noteably the infixed /-d-/:

	Singular	Plural
1^st	-da	-dum
2^nd	-der	-d’d, -dad*
3^rd	-der	-d’s, -dus

The preterite imperfect has many more uses than the imperfect does in English. It's used to describe things, for example. Þæssį bodo'r blaew, "The house is blue," literally, "the house was being blue." The preterite imperfect is also used in exclamations: ech gœfde regd! "I'm right!" literally, "I was having correctness!"

Verbs that end in the reciprocal -(i)sd ending (such as mesd, įddrisd, and villisd) have no independent preterite form and the past tense meaning has to be taken from context. Ech įddrisd þassan dag, burdvad U, "I rue the day you were born." Actually, reciprocal verbs do not conjugate at all, aside from adding -end for the present participle.
The other tenses are a bit more complex because they require the use of a second verb, which brings us to auxiliary verbs.

Auxiliary verbs are those that have no semantic meaning of their own, but serve to grammatically alter the sentence or to supply an additional meaning to the semantic verb. It's a rather unfriendly and alien explanation, but I assure you they are not as strange as they sound. English, in fact, is crawling with them. In English, they are words like could, might, will, and have. They entirity of Kepper auxiliary verbs is short enough to be written here. It is below:

English	Present	Preterite	Subjunctive
to do	jøbh-*	jaund-*	gobh-*
not to want to	nill-	nuld-	null-
to be able to	csunn-	csund-	csþydd-
to have permission to	mag-	mægd-	mægg-
to consider to	møgd-	møgdad-	mogdad-
to be obliged to	mod-	mœdd-	modd-
to be committed to	sgylð-	sgæld-	sgæll-
to want to	vill-	vuld-	vull-
will	mønn-	-	mþydd-

* This is the "pro-verb" we will discuss later.

When an auxiliary verb is used, the semantic verb is put in its infinitive form. If the semantic verb is transitive, the direct object (not necessarily the accusative word, but the direct object) will be placed between the auxiliary verb and the infinitive. If there is no direct object, the infinitive of the semantic verb is placed directly behind the auxiliary verb. There are two exceptions, nilja and vilja which do not take the inifinitive, but instead they take the inflected infinitive. The inflected infinitive is a special verb form that relays purpose: drįngan, "to drink," tuad drįnginna, "in order to drink," where the second form is the inflected infinitive. The two auxiliary exceptions are probably do to the fact that nillan and villan are not true auxiliary verbs, they do have semantic meaning of their own, but they are grouped with the auxiliaries because they are conjugated like auxiliaries. Granted, sį vill tuad drįnginna, literally, "She wants in order to drink," is awkward for English speakers. Actually, it sounds awkward to Kepper school children as well and using the incorrect verb form with nillan and villan is quite a common mistake, as common as the mistake in English of using an indicative form where a subjunctive should go - "I wish I was going," instead of "I wish I were going."

As I just mentioned, auxiliaries are not conjugated in the standard way. Their conjugation, for both the present and the preterite imperfect, is as follows:

	Singular	Plural
1^st	-	-dum
2^nd	-esd	-’d, -ad
3^rd	-	-’s, -us

The functions of the inflected infinitive are few. It is usually used when a semantic verb acts like an auxiliary: Þynn fierer tuad drįnginna, "You came [in order] to drink." Ech ellsa tuad farinna, "I like to drive." It would be wise to note here that ellsa, "to like," is not an auxiliary like it is in other languages. It is a semantic verb and using the inflected infinitive with it may sound a bit strange at first but it is grammatically correct.

Cepperjoleddicg makes an interesting grammar distinction that only a few other languages make - the differention between supine and past participle. The participles, there are two, present and past, are adjectival forms of the verbs. The present is formed by removing the infinitive -a and replacing it with -end. The past participle is formed by replacing the infinitive ending with -að. It looks likes like the 2nd person plural form, except that endings are attached to it as it declines. (Examples of participles in use will be given when I discuss adjectives.) The supine is formed by replacing the -a with -aðn and adding ga- to the front, as discussed above.

The gerundive is a verbal form that is closely related to the inflected infinitive and is used to give a time reference. Out of all verbal forms, it is the least common. It is simple to form - merely replace the at in front of the inflected stem and replace it with baew. Baew taewginna affa sinnan œgglasan, Dsycg gaþ gasadd og raaðjøbhd'þ wørða ymb wørðsregdį adda vriddinna, "Taking off his glasses, Zeke sat down and prepared to write a paper on grammar." I underlined the gerundive. They're infrequently used, and they are the mark of a good education. Finally, the pro-verb. The pro-verb functions, not surprisingly, like a pronoun in that it takes the place of a word already refered to in a sentence. There is only one pro-verb: jøbhan. The best way to explain their function is to demonstrate it. Sį løppþ jįgger æ ech jøbh, "She runs faster than I do."

Adjectives and the Nouns They Modify

Like all Germanic languages (yes, English did it too at one point), Cepperjoleddicgg declines its adjectives according to the case of the noun which they modify. Cepperjoleddicgg also declines its nouns, to as certain extent. There are five cases: nominative, accusative, dative, genetive, and instrumental. Each case has a certain set of adjective endings which belong to it according to number and gender and whether or not the adjective is used in conjunction with another adjective or with a determiner. The strong declension is used when an adjective is used with a form of the article (there's only one type of article, corresponding to the definite article of English.) The weak declension is used when an adjective is used with any other determiner. The mixed declension is used with a possessive pronoun or with an adjective of nationality (for example, Kepper, or English, or German). The declension tables are below:

Case

Strong

Weak

Mixed

-a

-į

-a

-an

-a

-į

-a

-an

-į

-a

-an

-į

-an

-um

-er

-um

-an

-um

-er

-um

-as

-er

-as

-an

-as

-an

-as

-a

-er

-a

-er

-an

-er

-an

-er