Sersen stulserss íagué.
Gué císershía aejímai.
That's
Paiodd for "Today is my birthday. I am thirty years old."
And it was true yesterday. So today we could say:
Éuía (or
Éwoía) sersan stulserss íagué.
Yesterday
was my birthday.
goPST.REL(or
go.PRES.PRF) day-that birth.NML-day POSS.I
Thus,
literally: That day that went (or has gone) (was) birthday of me.
Struggling
with how to say 'yesterday', particularly in this context, leads to a
good discussion of adjectival and adverbial clauses in Paiodd. On the
one hand, many entire phrases in English can often be rendered by a
single word in Paiodd, thanks to the inflection system in nouns, with
verbal inflection indicating a relationship to verbs, and nominal
inflection indicating a relationship to nouns. Let's look at some
examples of these single-word adjectivals and adverbials.
Verbal:
Alevodía daemm lodd armas.
The
man cut the bread with a knife.
Nominal:
Daemm alevutía lodd armas.
The
man with (or who had)
a knife cut the bread.
In
the first sentence, the noun alevudd
is in verbal inflection, with the suffix -ía,
which in this case has instrumental meaning. The word order is
somewhat important as well, however, because of the verbal inflection
of alevudd, it's clear
that it is modifying the verb armas
'cut', which is the only verb in the sentence. As a result, we could
move the word to almost any position in the sentence, and it would
still maintain the same meaning. The only position that would be
off-limits is between the subject, lodd
and the verb armas.
This is the most inviolable rule of Paiodd word order: the subject
must be directly next to its verb.
In
the sentence with the nominal form alevotía,
this word is inflected to show that it is related to the closest
noun, lodd. We know
that it is most likely not related to daemm
because of course it doesn't make much since for bread to have a
knife (though it could, presumably, have a knife stuck in it), but
also, and more importantly, adjectival forms typically appear before
the noun they modify. This helps to preserve the inviolable rule of a
subject appearing directly before its verb in the OSV word order that
is most typical in Paiodd.
There
is one other important thing to note before we move into clauses
consisting of more than one word. That is the lack of copula in
Paiodd. In other words, there is no word equivalent to 'to be' in
English. Thus, in order to say something like 'The man is tall' or 'I
am a doctor', we must place the words for tall
and doctor immediately
after the subject. No other change is necessary, although the word
for tall is merely the
word for 'height' in nominal form with the suffix -ía.
Lodd paisenía.
The
man is tall.
(lit:
The man is with height)
Gué acullodd.
I am a
doctor (lit: healer).
Likewise,
in the sentence that began this post, sersen 'today'
comes immediately next to stulserss
'birthday'. Thus, in such equative sentences, the subject must be
immediately next to its equivalent, or appositive modifier, just as
in verbal sentences the subject must be immediately next to the verb.
This same kind of order plays a role in forming adjectival clauses.
So, how
do we make clauses, whether adverbial or adjectival? First, we should
clarify what a clause is. The most basic units of the sentence in
English are the subject and verb. As long as a sentence has those
two, it can be considered a complete sentence (so long as it makes
sense logically, of course). Often, however, sentences have more than
one subject and verb, and in this case we have at least two clauses.
Sometimes entire clauses can modify either the main verb (and
consequently, in fact, the entire sentence), and sometimes they can
modify nouns within the sentence. Some examples in English:
Adverbial:
When the man went to the store, he bought more than he needed.
Adjectival:
The man who went to the store bought more than he needed.
In
the first sentence, the clause when the man went to the
store is an adverbial clause,
modifying the entire sentence by telling us the time at which the
events in the main clause happened. That time was when he
went to the store.
The
second sentence, on the other hand, gives us the clause who
went to the store. In this case,
the clause is adjectival, modifying the subject, the man.
Consequently, it gives us more information about the man, rather than
the time at which the events happened.
Both
of these are separate clauses, however, because they have a separate
subject (the man) and
verb (went) from the
main clause.
In
Paiodd, thanks to the verbal/nominal declension system and the lack
of copula, many entire phrases in English can be rendered with a
single word in Paiodd, as we saw above. However, in those cases,
there is no separate subject and verb, or at least, there is no
separate verb. I hadn't really dealt with too many cases where there
were separate subjects and verbs until trying to decide how to say
'yesterday' this morning.
Since
there are no participles, I couldn't say something like 'the
gone/past day', but that did give me an idea. I could use 'go' with
the relative marker -ía
(when it appears on verbs, it marks relative clauses) and the noun
serss with the
demonstrative suffix -an. The
verbal or nominal inflection of serss would
be used as appropriate to the sentence. For example, in the verbal
inflection:
Éuía sirzan nir gué
oz.
Yesterday
I saw you.
The
nominal inflection is used instead for the sentence we have
already seen:
Éuía sersan stulserss
íagué.
Yesterday
was my birthday.
Of
course, a simpler, and more common way to render the same sentences
would be to use the temporal suffix -é.
Éuía sirzé nir gué
oz.
Éuía sersé stulserss
íagué.
There
may be some other ways to express the idea of yesterday, but this
method allows a bit more freedom than I previously had with clauses.
I intended to have the subjects of relative verbs only appear in
verbal inflection themselves, since they are, after all, related to
verbs. But this prohibits any sort of adjectival clause from being
formed. This way, if the relative verb precedes its subject, that
subject can then pull double duty as an appositive or adjectival
modifier of a noun in the main clause. Said noun could be either the
subject or object of the main clause, but I'll have to examine that
further in a future post.
