Cenyani grammar reference

• Contents
• 1 Numbers, definiteness and cases
  • 1.1 Numbers
  • 1.2 Definiteness
  • 1.3 Cases
  • 1.4 Genitive
• 2 Inflection patterns
  • 2.1 Consonant-final
  • 2.2 Vowel-final

This page contains high-Unicode IPA characters.

Adpositions, while technically a feature of nouns, are complicated enough to deserve their very own page.

Numbers, definiteness and cases

In Cenyani, there are five so-called core cases and three numbers – significantly more than English, which has one case (or none at all, depending on how you look at it) and two numbers. Cenyani also separates between two levels of definiteness – indefinite and definite. It seems that grasping the differences between the three numbers is the trickiest part for most people, so that’s what I’ll start with below.

Numbers

The three noun numbers in Cenyani are:

Singular (sg.):

this number is used when the noun refers to a single entity of whatever the noun describes, if what the noun describes can be logically seen as countable. It is sometimes used with uncountable nouns as well, and in that case usually translates to “a sort/kind/type/etc. of ‹noun›”.

Plural (pl.):

similar to the above, only it is used when referring to multiple entities (more than one). If used with uncountable nouns, the precise meaning almost always becomes ambiguous between “several sorts/kinds/types/etc. of ‹noun›” and “several of a sort/kind/type/etc. of ‹noun›”.

Conceptual (cc.):

this is the noun number that apparently tends to give people the most trouble. It it used, essentially, for uncountable nouns, e.g. food, fire, water; but also for names (of languages, people, settlements, provinces, countries, planets, solar systems...); as well as for countable nouns if and only if the actual number is 0 or less, e.g. “no humans”, “-3 degrees” and so on.

The conceptual number, further, is used (as the name implies) when referring to the concept or idea of something or other, or when referring to the generic thought of something or other. This is a very vague definition, I know; so allow me to give some examples of its usage. For example, “Do you like carrots?” asks the recipient of the question not whether they like a specific collection of carrots (that would probably be “Do you like the carrots?”, anyway), but rather asks whether they fancy carrots in general; whether the idea of consuming small, vaguely cone-shaped, orangey vegetables causes their brain to light up pleasantly. Here, in Cenyani, you would not use the plural or singular number: you would use conceptual, because it refers to the concept of carrots, i.e. carrots in general, no specified entity or entities, etc. Similarly, “Do you play the piano?” does not ask whether the recipient of the question plays a particular piano, but whether they play the instrument commonly known as the piano; here, too, the conceptual number would be used. It would not, however, be used in questions such as “Do you have a piano?”, because that question inquires as to whether the person possesses an instance of the instrument known as the piano, not whether they have piano in general.

Most non-native speakers have difficulty grasping the very subtle nuances of the conceptual number.

(As a perhaps interesting side note: because Cenyani lacks the distinction between “does” and “is doing”, the sentence “Do you play the piano?” with “piano” in indefinite singular would actually translate to “Are you playing a piano?”. With a singular indefinite noun, the question asks whether the listener is currently playing an instance of the instrument known as the piano, rather than whether he/she/it knows how to play the instrument known as the piano or whether he/she/it occasionally or regularly does it.)

It is worth noting that many nouns with an uncountable meaning in the conceptual number take on a slightly different (but almost always closely related) meaning in singular and plural. For example, ešet means “food” in uncountable form, but translates to “meal” when countable. Make note of the difference between these two usages of ešet:

A note about names: names, as previously stated, are also considered to be in the conceptual number; this applies to all kinds of names, especially of languages, people and geographical areas (including mountains and rivers and forests and so on). However, in the case of personal names, the conceptual number is only used when referring to a specific person by that name. Personal names can be singular or plural, and in that case translates to “a person/people by the name of ‹name›”. Asking “Do you know (an) Írya?” with Írya in singular would be the same as asking “Do you know anyone with the name Írya?”. However, in the vocative case, the conceptual number is not used – in favour of singular or plural – as you are always addressing a single individual (or several, as the case may be) with the name in question. This behaviour is rather irregular and very slightly unpredictable, I know.

Definiteness

Like English, Cenyani makes a distinction between two levels of definiteness: indefinite and definite. If you’re familiar with English grammar, it would be more or less sufficient to say the Cenyani definiteness is more or less the same as English. More or less.

In the most generic of terms:

Indefinite

is used if the noun refers either to something that has not been mentioned before, or to something... unspecific.

Definite

refers to something which has been mentioned or defined at some point, or to something which is implicitly defined.

Allow me to give some examples to clarify. The sentence “I have a cookie” introduces something new – a cookie. This particular cookie has not been mentioned before; and the fact that I have one is a piece of new information. Even though I’m referring to a specific cookie (the one I have, as opposed to any other), I need to use the indefinite form here because simply stating that “I have the cookie” implies that the listener has some knowledge as to what cookie I’m referring to. Since the cookie in question has not actually been mentioned before, the listener of course cannot know which particular one I’m thinking of.

However, if I were to refer back to the previously mentioned cookie, I would now refer to it as “the cookie”. The listener, having heard what I said about possessing a cookie, will now understand what I mean when I say “The cookie was tasty”.

Similarly, the definite form is also used if the thing being referred to is implicitly defined, as mentioned above. This includes things like “the sun”, “the air” and so on. A sentence such as “Even though the sun is shining brightly, the air is quite cold” does not cause confusion; everyone knows there’s only one sun to refer to, and in that context, “the air” could only ever be the air surrounding us, as opposed to, say, the compressed air in that small canister over there. Just like within the context of football, you don’t have to define what “the ball” is – it is understood from the context alone that “the ball” is of course the one being used in the game.

Cases

The Cenyani language distinguishes between five so-called core cases, to four of which can be appended a genitive suffix. The five core cases are:

Nominative (nom.):

the noun is the subject/agent/actant of the clause, i.e. the one performing the action in question. For example, in the sentence “The man kissed the girl”, “the man” is the subject (because he is indeed the one doing the kissing), and is hence in the nominative.

Accusative (acc.):

the noun is the direct object of the clause, the “direct recipient” of the action. In the above example sentence, “the girl” is the direct object, as she is the one who is directly affected by the kissing; she is the one who is being kissed.

Dative (dat.):

the noun is the indirect object of the clause, and is almost only used in the context of transferring ownership, where it marks the recipient of the transfer. In the sentence “The man gave the girl a kiss”, “the girl” is the indirect object: she is the one who is receiving the kiss (which is the direct object, the thing that is given). “The man”, again, is the subject, since he is the one who is doing the giving. In general, nouns in the dative can in English be translated as “to ‹noun›”. In general, too, the dative is used for things that are not directly affected by the action which the verb describes (hence indirect object); but please note that some verbs conduct the dative case where accusative might be expected.

Expossessive (exp.):

this unique and unusual case is not used very often, but originally described the source of a transfer of ownership, i.e. the previous owner. (Unless otherwise specified, the previous owner is usually assumed to be the subject, especially when, say, giving gifts.) “Írya gave her girlfriend a present from her mother” has a nominative noun (“Írya”, which is a personal name), an accusative noun (“a present”), a dative noun (“her girlfriend”), and finally an expossessive noun: “(from) her mother”. (Since the expossessive already expresses “from” in this case all on its own, no pre- or postposition is included in Cenyani.) Despite what the case’s (admittedly poorly chosen) name might suggest, expossessive is also used for more general “source” (but not origin) relationships, especially ones not directly related to physical space.

Vocative (voc.):

finally, this core case is probably one of the easiest to grasp; it is used exclusively when addressing people, and that’s all there’s to it. It is most commonly appended to personal names, but may also be used on nouns which one considers to be descriptive of the person being addressed. Failure to use the vocative case when addressing someone is considered to be exceedingly rude, though the cenya will (usually) be more lenient towards non-native speakers. Slightly.

Genitive

The first four of these core cases can be modified to include a genitive suffix. The rules for forming the genitive form are slightly irregular, but one thing to remember is that all genitive nouns end in -š. See the inflection tables below for a complete table. Unlike the English genitive and English “‹noun› of ‹owner›”, the Cenyani genitive is only used for alienable possession – that is, things you can actually own. For more details on other kinds of possessive marking, see Possession.

Unlike most (if not all) European languages, the Cenyani genitive case is not a separate case all on its own, but is rather an extension to the first four core cases. This is because in Cenyani, the owner has to be in the same core case as the ownee. For example (note the case agreement on noxrrtumi and annyam):

The owner is always invariably placed after the ownee, just like in the English construct “‹ownee› of ‹owner›”. See Syntax for more details about construction of genitive phrases.

Inflection patterns

Like verbs, nouns inflect depending on the sound they end in. Unlike verbs, there are only two groups for nouns: vowel- and consonant-final. (Nouns cannot end in syllabic consonants, however.)

Somewhat unpredictably, though, nouns which end in -h are treated as if they ended in a stressed vowel. The -h actually disappears entirely in spoken language when the word is inflected; for example, the indefinite accusative conceptual of Arimah [ɑrimax] is Arimahcö [ɑrimakø]. As you can see, the -h is retained in writing, solely for clarity.

Nouns which have no uncountable usage, such as šía, may omit the indefinite singular nominative ending -y.

Consonant-final

This is probably the most straight-forward of the noun groups. The suffixes above are tacked on to the noun with relatively few exceptions. There are two things to note:

• Nouns ending in -m: in the accusative definite forms, the m of the suffix is replaced by n instead: aštum (“morning”) in the definite singular accusative is aštumun, not *aštumum.
• Nouns with “reversion”: some nouns in Cenyani experience something known as reversion, which occurs in some nouns which end in -CVC. Reversion causes the order of the last two sounds of the word to be reversed in the definite form, resulting in -CCV. Nouns which exhibit this behaviour inflect as if they were vowel-final in the definite forms – mostly because they indeed become vowel-final in those forms. The oft-used example ešet (“food, meal”) is one such noun: in the definite conceptual nominative, it is eštenö rather than *ešetön.

In Cenyani dictionaries, nouns with reversion are always marked as “n^r” or “n (r)”.

Vowel-final

This noun group is very slightly tricker to get right because of its higher number of irregular nouns, but there are only really three things to note:

• If the last consonant of the noun is m (not the last letter, but the last consonant sound in the noun), the suffix for the definite accusative form has its m replaced with n, just like with some consonant-final nouns. Unlike the consonant-final ones, however, if the vowel-final noun ends in a non-stressed vowel, it is replaced with u. This means that a word like timi (a genus of eagle-like birds) in the definite accusative singular would be timun.
• In the indefinite plural form, the vowel of the suffix replaces the last vowel of the noun; for example, aya (“soul, spirit”) becomes ayi in indefinite plural, not *ayai – unless the vowel is -o, in which case it remains unchanged (e.g. íro – “fire, flame” – becomes íroi, not *íri). Alternatively, if the final syllable is stressed, the suffix -þiC is used instead (where C is the consonant of non-nominative cases) – rá (“arm; forelimb”) becomes ráþi.
• Finally, still in the indefinite plural, if the noun ends in -i, the vowel of the suffix is changed to a, turning words such as cenyi into cenya.