Paolon

Verbs
Paolonese verbs are conjugated for ...


 * 1. their person: 1., 2. and 3. person


 * 2. their number: singular and plural


 * 3. their tense: present, past and future as well as participle constructions


 * 4. their voice: active and passive


 * 5. their mood: indicative, subjunctive and imperative

Paolon has 4 different conjugations, based on the suffix vowel of the verbal stem. Because Paolon makes heavy use of apophony to conjugate verbs, you have to know the verbal apophony row. Note that only the 1. sound can be the suffix vowel of a verb - because of that, all verbs end in either a, i, o or u.

Being in a certain conjugation has nothing to do with the meaning of the verb. However, there are some basic rules for which verbs belong in which conjugation.


 * 1. a conjugation: Usually, verbs of movement are in this group (to go, to walk, to swim ...).


 * 2. i conjugation: Usually, verbs of feeling/perception are in this group (to love, to hate, to see ...).


 * 3. o conjugation: Usually, verbs of "mental activity" are in this group (to think, to speak, to write ...).


 * 4. u conjugation: Usually, verbs of change are in this group (to grow up, to die ...).

With these rows, we can form all infinitives of Paolon which are needed for the conjugations (VS stands for "verbal stem").

With the 3 infinitives, we can now form all other verb forms.


 * 1. For the present tense conjugation, the following prefixes have to be attached to the "Infinitive Present".


 * 2. For the past tense conjugation, the following prefixes have to be attached to the "Infinitive Past".


 * 3. For the future tense conjugation, the following prefixes have to be attached to the "Infinitive Past".

The "imperative" is somewhat different from the other moods. It can only be used in the present and in the future because it gives orders - and the past is already over and unchangeable. So, it would be stupid to try giving orders to something in the past.

The "imperative" is formed by adding the following suffixes to the corresponding infinitive.

Participles are a way of giving more detailed information about different time stages - this is needed since Paolon only has 3 actual tenses.

Both the "Infinitive Past" and the "Infinitive Future" can build 3 participles by attaching the following suffixes to them. The "Infinitive Present" can only build the "Participle Present". The reason for this is the definitons of the participles.

The "Participle Past" expresses that something happens BEFORE the reference point (which is the tense of the infinitive).

The "Participle Present" expresses that something happens AT THE SAME TIME AS the reference point.

The "Participle Future" expresses that something happens AFTER the reference point.

It is crucial to understand that all participle information is within the reference tense - if we form participles from the "Infinitive Past", all actions described by the participles will be in the past. Even though something happened "after the past (tense)", it is still in the past. The same applies for the "Infinitive Future". This is the reason why these infinitves can form all participles as both the past and future are infinitly large. The present is not infinitly large like the past or the future. The present is only a point in time - we couldn't stay within the present when we use "before" or "after" because these words need additional time points (which don't exist in the present). In the case of the present, the actual past and future tense express the ideas of "before" and "after". The participles can also be used as adjectives (#adjectives).

Here is a visualisation of the tense/participle system as the whole:

Nouns
In Paolon, nouns are declined for ...


 * 1. their number: singular and plural


 * 2. their gender: male, female or neuter


 * 3. their case: nominative, accusative, locative, temporative, adessive, ablative, genetive, comparative and instructive


 * 3.1. Nominative: basic form of a noun, subject of the sentence, agent in active constructions, patient in passive constructions


 * 3.2. Accusative: direct object which an action is done to, patient in active constructions


 * 3.3. Locative: place


 * 3.4. Temporative: time


 * 3.5. Adessive: direction towards something (as in movement), indirect object (as the action is done in "its direction"), future goal (as in where you want to go to)


 * 3.6. Ablative: direction away from something (as in movement), agent in passive constructions, past reason (as in what you want to flee from)


 * 3.7. Genetive: possession, quality


 * 3.8. Comparative: comparison


 * 3.9. Inctructive: means or instruments for an action