Search examples

Alternate word order allowed: Swan kílu an helíyel ("is blue this sky"). *An helíyel kílu swa-n ("this sky blue is") and *Kílu swa-n an helíyel ("blue is the sky") are not allowed, because the predicate adjective must directly follow swa. *Helíyel swa-n kílu is also not allowed, because the lack of an makes the sky not proximate; Helíyel swaim kílu is allowed, though.

Also note that the sky is kílu (cyan, what we would consider light blue) during the day, rather than húsu (dark blue). Both of these are basic color terms.

An helíyel swa-n híleng úni ("this sky is purple not") is also allowed; adverbs can go before or after the predicate adjective.

This statement expresses roughly the same amount of certainty as An helíyel swa-n kílu ("the sky is blue"), but also says that the speaker got the information from direct perception (especially sight). Contrast with the version without hwel, where there's more uncertainty about whether the sky actually is blue.

One possible word order (and the most likely).

The other possible word order.

This is not allowed because swan swatel ("is black") is considered one phrase, and can't be split apart by a noun. (It can, however, be split apart by an adverb.)

This isn't allowed, because an myau is a noun phrase, and therefore can't be split up. (Well, in this case, it has a different but similar meaning: "This is a black cat".)

An explicit separate clause as an argument to maus "say".

The clause is an argument like any other, and therefore can go in different positions in the sentence.

For the verbs lú "see", maus "say", tap "use", and tyus "make", having an explicit marker for the clause is optional (but can be included to prevent ambiguity).

For the verbs mentioned previously, the verb and (in the case of maus and tyus) its subject can be mixed freely with the words in the dependent clause.

...although rules about splitting apart phrases still apply.

Mu is basically a verbal quotation mark, and replaces the particle hem.

Haupi lun is a noun meaning "the place where I saw it". (Lun is "I saw it".)

Straightforward conditional clause.

Different word orders are allowed.

The clause can go anywhere in the sentence that's not inside another phrase.

The condition, swa-n pikuni hupep, is actually the question "Is this a dog?".

This works for non-polar questions as well.

Answering "no" to that question might imply that one is still beating one's wife. To signal that that implication is wrong, úni is preceded by twak (indicating that something the sentence might imply is wrong); details are given at the end, after the conjunction útwek "but".

Basic example sentence that I'll use to construct more complex examples.

This statement expresses roughly the same amount of certainty as An myau swa-n swatel ("the cat looks black"), but also says that the speaker got the information from direct perception (especially sight). The verb also changes back to the indicative mood.

An myau swa-n swatel lú (with neither the subjunctive nor hwel) is ambiguous between this meaning and the previous meaning, but is allowed in informal speech.

While in English, hear can imply that you were told the information by someone else, in Lwaitel using lú ustelw here would imply that you directly perceived the cat using hearing.

With a verb of emotion, the main sentence is a normal indicative sentence and lú niuspe expresses how the person feels about it. This implies that the fact that the cat is black is known, and the focus is only on the speaker's happiness about it.

Defocusing lú implies that the cat being black is new, important information, and the fact that I'm happy about it is not the main point of the sentence.

This means that the person said, in their head, the sentence "the cat is black", or some paraphrase of it.

Literally "the cats are five". Numbers can be used as predicate adjectives.

Saki takes inalienable possession, and is required to be possessed; one couldn't just say *An saki swa-n húkyes. Because ku is being used as a pronoun, a noun phrase is not required.

"Next to" (or "beside") is just a simple preposition, lenk. The equivalent noun phrase ("the cat next to the box") would just be an myau lenk al piuleng.

When used with an object (rather than a location), pe means "in".

If you want to clarify or focus that the cat is inside the box, and not any other relation to it, you can add the word "tius".

A direction word can come directly after the preposition. With lenk "by", it means that the thing is close to the other thing and on the specified side.

A prepositional phrase starting with hu can come directly after a phrase talking about a direction (left or right, also up and down when talking about outer space) to indicate whose perspective this is from.

Hu hyangu specifies that the perspective being used is that of a map, oriented the way maps are usually oriented in this world (west = up).

Hu hyangu is a set phrase, so demonstratives, determiners, and other adjectives are not used with hyangu.

With the preposition pe "in, at", a direction specifies that the item is in that direction, but not necessarily close by.

This is similar; it uses sapchem as an adjective with its comparative form. Unlike the pe form, this only talks about one axis; that is, for example, the cat may also be far above the box or far in front of it.

...this also specifies that it's far away. (TODO is this right?)

This uses the adjective kalkel; using this adjective, the object being compared to is specified using the preposition hu.

Multiple direction-type words can be used together.

The word for "between" acts sort of like a conjunction, going between the two nouns.

Ípwenk usually refers to time, but it also has a metaphorical extension into space meaning "beyond"/"past".

While this wouldn't make sense in English, the preposition meaning "towards" can apply to nouns as well as verbs.