Adjectival and Adverbial Clauses in Paiodd

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.