Ergative-Absolutive
Van Narvadæsi is in a state of flux right now as I play more and more with how sentences are structured. The biggest change is the shift from a nominative-accusative system to an ergative-absolutive system. To explain this, first a reminder of some things you probably forgot outside of your grammar classes in school.
An intransitive verb is one that doesn't have an object. Take the sentence "the cat eats." The sentence only has a subject (the cat) and a verb (eats), and so the verb is intransitive. A transitive verb is one that does have an object such as "the cat eats the bird." Here, there is a subject (the cat), a verb (eats), and an object (the bird) which describes what the subject is eating.
So, consider the following roles:
1: subject of transitive sentences: The cat eats the bird.
2: object of transitive sentences: The cat eats the bird.
3: subject of intransitive sentences: The cat eats.
English groups together 1 and 3 as the nominative caser and calls 2 the accusative case. It does this via word order: nominative case coming first and accusative case following the verb. It's perhaps easier to see in English when using pronouns because the English pronouns have different forms for subject and object: He eats him.
In an language with an ergative-absolutive system, 2 and 3 are grouped together as the absolutive case and 1 is the ergative case. This is how it is now in Van Narvadæsi.
To mark the cases, I've gone back to one of my original ideas for the language, and that is the manipulation of the articles/demonstratives/pronouns as opposed to the manipulation of the nouns themselves. Thus, I have overhauled both the pronouns as well as the articles and demonstratives, creating their absolutive forms and largely using their original forms as ergative.
Using the above sentences as an example:
An intransitive verb is one that doesn't have an object. Take the sentence "the cat eats." The sentence only has a subject (the cat) and a verb (eats), and so the verb is intransitive. A transitive verb is one that does have an object such as "the cat eats the bird." Here, there is a subject (the cat), a verb (eats), and an object (the bird) which describes what the subject is eating.
So, consider the following roles:
1: subject of transitive sentences: The cat eats the bird.
2: object of transitive sentences: The cat eats the bird.
3: subject of intransitive sentences: The cat eats.
English groups together 1 and 3 as the nominative caser and calls 2 the accusative case. It does this via word order: nominative case coming first and accusative case following the verb. It's perhaps easier to see in English when using pronouns because the English pronouns have different forms for subject and object: He eats him.
In an language with an ergative-absolutive system, 2 and 3 are grouped together as the absolutive case and 1 is the ergative case. This is how it is now in Van Narvadæsi.
To mark the cases, I've gone back to one of my original ideas for the language, and that is the manipulation of the articles/demonstratives/pronouns as opposed to the manipulation of the nouns themselves. Thus, I have overhauled both the pronouns as well as the articles and demonstratives, creating their absolutive forms and largely using their original forms as ergative.
Using the above sentences as an example:
- The cat eats.
ons sora im vate.
Sora (cat) is the subject of an intransitive verb, so it takes the absolutive case, marked by ons, which is the absolutive version of the definite article (the).
- The cat eats the bird.
ons šion ono sora im vate.
Šion (bird) is the object of a transitive verb, so it takes the absolutive case. Sora is the subject of a transitive verb, so it takes the ergative case. Ono is the ergative version of the definite article.
- He eats him.
ers ero im vate.
An example of the pronoun forms of the two cases. Remember standard word order in this language is object-subject-verb, not subject-verb-object as in English.