[3822] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: declensions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Mon Mar 14 17:59:28 1994
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@klingon.East.Sun.COM
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@klingon.East.Sun.COM
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@klingon.East.Sun.COM
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@klingon.East.Sun.COM>
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@klingon.East.Sun.COM
From: erich@bush.cs.tamu.edu (Erich Schneider)
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@klingon.East.Sun.COM>
Cc: tlhIngan-Hol@klingon.East.Sun.COM
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 94 16:42:57 CST
In-Reply-To: <9403142217.AA08190@codex.com> (message from Captain Krankor on Mo
n, 14 Mar 94 15:19:01 -0700)
Qanqorvo':
content-length: 1399
>Ok, for those of us unfamiliar with it, just what are "declensions"?
>I tend to doubt that I'm the only one here who doesn't know,
>although maybe I'm the only one who wants to know, so if the
>explanation is long and involved, perhaps e-mail is more appropriate.
A "declension" is a class into which nouns (sometimes adjectives) fall
in languages with certain kinds of case systems. All the nouns
in a given declension mark their cases in more-or-less the same
way. For example, Latin has five declensions; an example from the
first declension is "poeta", poet:
Sing Plural
Nominative poeta poetae
Genitive poetae poetarum
Dative poetae poetis
Accusative poetam poetas
Ablative poeta poetis
All first-declension nouns "decline" "-a -ae -ae -am -a / -ae -arum
-is -as -is". The pattern for the other four declensions is different.
There's an analogous term for verbs, "conjugation", which refers to
classes based on how verbs mark person/number/tense/etc. Latin has
four of these.
Klingon is (more or less) an "agglutinating" language, and marks case
by suffixes which don't change with the noun being marked (the type 5
suffixes), so it doesn't have declensions. Neither does English, which
is (more or less) a "root-isolating" language, which mostly marks
cases by prepositions and word-order.
jIlugh 'e' vItul! jIlughHa'chugh HIlughmoH.
-QumpIn 'avrIn
