Personal Endings

Suvile has the usual 3 personal classes (1st, 2nd, 3rd), and four different numbers (singular, dual, plural, and class plural). These 3 persons and 4 numbers combine to form a total of 12 personal endings for verbs. The 3rd person singular is optional, the rest are required in formal writing, but are often elided in speech. All 12 are suffixes, and they are summarized here in Table 1.

First person is, of course, the speaker, while second person is the listener. Third person refers to everyone else. Suvile has no distinction between third parties nearer to the speaker and those nearer to the listener.

The singular and plural are familiar to speakers of most languages, but the other two might need an explanation. The dual is used when talking about a "natural" pair, such as eyes or ears, or even a married couple. It can also be used to discuss two objects that the speaker wants to treat as a natural pair. The class plural is used when discussing a group as a whole, rather than particular pieces of it. A crowd would be addressed at first with the class plural, for example. After the first use, the regular (non-class) plural may be used. However, a speaker may wish to connote a sense of "togetherness", in which case he would continue to use the class plural.

Each ending in Table 1 can be combined with the genitive case marker |-e| (see below) to form possessive endings. Thus, |-r| becomes |-re|, and so on. In the case of the 3rd person singular, the form |-se| is used. So a translation of "my house" would be |ðond-re|, and "his (or her) house" would be |ðond-se|, or |ðondze| after consonant assimilation.

Also, each ending can be used as a standalone pronoun. In the cases of the single consonants (1st and 2nd person singulars), an |a| is prefixed, giving |ar| and |al|. These are used as emphatic pronouns, or in cases where, due to the addition of other markers, confusion may arise.

Table 1 contains the verbal endings, for person and number concord. Table 2, however, lists the nominal endings for number. The singular has a zero ending, and the other three have single-consonant endings, with an epenthetic /e/ added when the noun ends in a consonant. The dual and class plural are described above.

Case Endings

Similar to Latin and many other languages, Suvile has a rich case system. Counting the nominative, which is unmarked, there are eight cases. These are listed below in Table 3.

The allative and dative endings--/l/ and /r/, respectively--are represented by their syllabic allophones. The case ending is always applied before the number. Thus, a phrase like "for all people" would be translated as |sil-r-et| not |sil-et-r|.

The cases are explained as follows:

• Nominative is the subject or agent of a sentence.
• Accusative marks the object or patient.
• Genitive marks possession and most uses of English "of".
• Dative is used for indirect objects, as well as some uses of English "for" or "to".
• Ablative marks "from", when used with locations.
• Allative is the opposite of ablative, marking "to" or "toward".
• Locative marks location, similar to English "in", "on", or "at"
• Instrumental marks usage, as with English "with" or "by"

 © 2005 Michael Potter

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