Umbrean Lessons/05 Nouns and Pronouns

While you probably by now know how to construct basic sentences there haven't been good discussion in depth with the nouns and pronouns, that will be done here.

=Nouns= Nouns have various subdivision of classes but also forms they can take them on. I shall try describing them here as well as possible.

Declension properties
These properties affects the declension of the noun.

Definitiveness
Definitiveness often refers to if the object in question have been mentioned earlier or is being brought into the conversation.
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! Definitiveness ! Explanation ! Example ! Defined been talked about previously. ! Undefined brought into the conversation an apple As seen here in english it is seperated by an article, a/an is the indefinite article while the is the defined.
 * The object have
 * The car
 * The object is being
 * A car
 * }

An example, "I saw a car drive by, later the car hit him", the "the" in the second part refers back to the first one as it has already been mentioned

In Umbrean this is marked through a series of endings that differ on various things.

Gender
Those who are familiar with noun gender from English will think of the romance languages feminine and masculine noun classes, but German have those two along with neuter. Swedish have Common gender and neuter, other languages have even more division. Gender in language is simply a way of dividing nouns up into several groups, English has none of the sort. The gender can determine a lot of things, as in German what definite article is done, how adjectives are treated and more.


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! Gender ! Spanish example ! English ! Masculine ! Feminine
 * Gato
 * Cat
 * Casa
 * House
 * }

In these languages the choice is rather arbitrary and reflect in no manner the object in question. In umbrean there are four genders, Magical, Non-Moving, Living and Artificial.

These genders are not arbitrary but reflect a certain property the object have and is subject to a hierarchy of the choice. The nouns contain a root and upon that root the gender vowel is added to mark its gender while in declension it is removed.
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! Hierarchy Number ! Gender ! Defining trait ! Ending ! Example ! English ! 1 alive or related to the living ! 2 manifactured by an intelligent being ! 3 seem to be able to move somehow or possess magical traits ! 4 none of the other classes
 * Living
 * The object in question is
 * -u
 * Döndiu
 * Tooth
 * Artificial
 * The object is constructed, created or
 * -y
 * Lyyokhsy
 * Table
 * Magical
 * It is neither living nor artificial yet
 * -a
 * Adwia
 * Water
 * Non-moving
 * Object cant move on its own and matches
 * ó
 * }
 * }
 * }

Few things can fall into multiple genders but if thats the case the most obvious feature or dominant feature that fit a gender is the one it falls into. In Umbrean the gender distinction is quite important and controls a lot of the morphology

Number
Numbers of course, as the very name implies, discuss the number or amount of something. In English you have just two of them, these two.
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! Number ! Example ! Singular ! Plural
 * One Apple
 * Two apples
 * }

That's all English has, Umbrean has one category more called "paucal" which means "a few" and is defined as "The amount one can instantly perceive without counting". As one can figure it has no solid stop and can stop at five for some all the way up to nine for others.


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! Number ! Example ! English ! Singular ! Paucal ! Plural
 * Döndiudh
 * a tooth
 * Döndiuhse
 * Few teeth
 * Döndiul
 * Many teeth
 * }

Case
Cases are ways for a noun to change phonologically to accommodate a certain meaning, English has three cases of which only one is truly used on nouns, Genitive case.

Umbrean is richer in that in the way it has four cases used constantly on everything. But its cases only gives grammatical roles, if it does something, if its done to it, if it acts alone, was it indirectly affected and such by the verb. There is no genitive case as such. Here is a description of the cases:
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! Case ! Description ! Intransitive affecting something else directly ! Ergative through the verb ! Accusative ! Dative by the actor
 * The actor when it acts on its own without
 * The actor when it affects something else
 * The thing on which the actor acts on
 * The object which is indirectly affected
 * }

Mass or Quantitative
One fancy word and once small one, no the "mass" part does not mean the words are big, long or have a heavy weight in real life, I´ll explain it here.

Mass nouns refer to objects that cannot be quantified by numbers and only by some other unit of measurement. For example, in English, you cannot say "I have two waters" or "The two hairs I saw were horrible". Because they are mass nouns, you put in water usually liter or weight unit along with it and hair is most often owned by someone.

Quantitative nouns can on the other hand be, "One apple" "two apples" they do not need a unit for them but can use them anyway.


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! Type ! Description ! Example ! Countable ! Mass
 * Can be counted individually
 * Apples
 * Cannot be counted without the use of units
 * Water
 * }

=Pro-nouns= Pro-nouns are nouns meant to replace other ones typicly by refering to a previously stated item, an English example would be "The food was great, but it did come late". The personal pronouns, the mostly used ones, are such as "I" "we" etc. A table below will show ones from real languages but one can go Here


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! colspan=2 | ! English ! Spanish ! Swedish ! rowspan=3 | Singular ! First ! Second ! Third ! rowspan=3 | Plural ! First ! Second ! Third
 * I
 * Yo
 * Jag
 * You
 * Tú
 * Du
 * He/She/it
 * Ello/Ella/Él
 * Han/Hon/Den/Det
 * We
 * Nosotros
 * Vi
 * You
 * Vosotros
 * Ni
 * Them
 * Ustedes
 * Dem
 * }

Pro-Drop
Umbrean is a pro-drop language and it means that one can drop out the pronouns both in the subject and objects.


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! With pronouns ! Without pronouns ! colspan=2 | I hit you with a tooth
 * Süün gnidja döndiau novaömñumuögs
 * Döndiau novaömñumuögs
 * }
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! With pronouns ! Without pronouns ! colspan=2 | I hit you with it/him/her
 * Süün gnidja noviaömñumuögs
 * noviaömñumuör
 * }


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