Pronoun notes: There is

Ten ítí yodin pô nikeye, there is a port in the village

Ei ta pô, there is the port

Bâha has a number of rules about saying 'there is'. I'm settling down to this contrast. Ten ítí, literally 'it is (at)'. If somebody asks if there is a port in the village, you can say 'there is, it exists,' which is what the first sentence means. If you are going to point something out then the topic marker is used to mean 'there is'.

Pronoun notes: What?

Ei petta? What is that? What is this?

A common formation in the language. Ei is the topic marker. It indicates a new subject in talk, or something that has just appeared. So when the conversation changes then this phrase comes up. I imagine it is quite a common phrase.

Pronoun notes

Kude ítí-ten kem kembí yiret?, where are you going?

or Kembí yiret kude?

Today's question word is kude. Bâha ye shente has two words for where. Kude involves motion, to or from where, whither and whence. There is a group of prefixes that can go onto place words, including kude, to show direction.

To look for something in its place the question word is wú. I thought that this was a description about wú. Then I realised going meant motion not location and kude was more appropriate in these sentences.

Bâha ye shente, language of people, can be a good name for this language until such time as I find an ethnonym for it.

Pronoun notes

Otkai tí-ten kem ma tampat am shim gotú?, Why isn't my place ready?

Today's question word is otkai, why?

What puzzled me about this sentence was the original was 'Why isn't the bedroom ready?' Presumably the language has words for rooms, or even a room. I haven't found them yet. There are building words which I have yet to work through. Just not the words for the parts within a building. This creates an interesting conundrum.

Pronoun notes

Petta tí-ten kem kembí brant? What would you like?

My next cluster of notes have to do with question words. The examples are mostly from French, obvious from the sentence structure above. A literal translation of the sentence is What is it that you are-taking?

In the language brannant means to be taking. Some actions use different verbs when the action is a definite, once-and-for-all action; and when it is generic. An unrepeatable action would use weyant, to take. In this case when offered something the verb brannant is used for 'would like'.

And the question pronoun used here is petta, what, which thing.

Pronoun notes

Next on my notes I have the possessive adjectives for 'our':

naste, masculine
nastra, feminine
nastres, neuter
nas, plural

nastres kolon e nas, our bicycle
nas kola ye nas, our bicycles

Nas is the plural of yao, I. It appears nas doesn't have the status shift upwards that has happened to yao. Bodú has the plural bodúta. Nas and bodúta overlap in domains. Nas can be the plural of both yao and bodú.

Pronoun notes

The feminine article is da, accusative dan. Kalka, girl, is a example of a feminine noun; accusative kalkan. So far, so good. Nowela, new, is a feminine adjective, accusative nowelanian. Now that's just odd. The feminine accusative adjective has a long ending! What's more I think the ending is subject to sandhi. Put all three together and it becomes dan nowelaniang kalkan. The fun of language!

I could have used chona, woman, instead of kalka. I decided against it as the accusative takes a longer ending chonakan. Too much information at once.

Because this language has a feminine a-ending I wonder if I've invented a Teach Yourself Alien language.

Pronoun notes

The third person pronouns don't have possessive adjectives. It does have genitive pronouns which come after the possessed object. They are not used with the accompanitive preposition ya. The forms are yiha, masculine; yihes, feminine; and yihon, plural. The neuter genitive is taken from a different stem and I have not sat down and properly documented it yet.

The third person pronouns are ta, he; da, she; and ten, it. The plural pronoun is still lurking out there in the world of potential darkness, I think it is going to be *te. The forms ta and da were borrowed from a language sketch of a language I was using on the Planetpii list when I was a member. They were used as person markers, titles before proper names in the Khamtra language of the Old Dogs Pinclan language. They were borrowed from item markers for male and female objects in notes I took from Linear B. There is something counter-intuitive to me in having da as a feminine pronoun. I like it!

Feminine words: nouns, adjectives and pronouns, add the accusative ending -n. I thought masculine and neuter nouns take no similar marking of the accusative case. I have noticed that the next rule in my file says that animate masculines mark the accusative in the demonstrative pronoun and the adjective form, adding the tag -go. Apparently it is not marked in the noun although the genitive pronoun takes the same tag, yihago. There is no description of what defines a noun as animate. I shall have to decide that as I go along.

Pronoun notes

Súd is invariable and means own, self. It can be used by itself or with a pronoun.

súdam, my own
súd a bodú, my own
súd nas, our own
súdako, your own

If the pronoun is third person or second person addressed as kembí then the reflexive pronoun sebio is used.

Pronoun notes

Ta tent suon kolon as, he has his (own) bicycle.

Ta tent kolon yiha, he has his bicycle. (Hey! Where are you going with that!)

Suon is the third person reflexive possessive. It agrees with the noun. Like the first person possessive the possessed noun is followed by a second possessor after it. The first person is (y)am, the reflexive is (y)as. The reflexive is also used with the second person pronoun kembí.

In the second sentence the reflexive structure is replaced with the genitive pronoun yiha, of him. The possessed noun does not belong to the subject of the sentence. Instead it belongs to a third person. And, unless some agreement has been reached, he may object to someone taking off with his bike. Stop thief!

Pronoun notes

This is what the existing notes say:

Kolon, bicycle, neuter noun.

Ten kolon, the bicycle, correctly ten is the neuter pronoun.

Mes kolon am, my bicycle. Mes is the neuter possessive adjective. Possessive pronouns tend to be a bit belt-and-braces, literally my bicycle of-me. Most people don't even use this language unless they are someone in charge: a boss, a lord, your older sibling. Actually looking at the lexicon the Shente have a lot of language for people in charge. I'll write more about that another time. When people are not pulling rank they say kolon a bodú, (the) bicycle of your servant. There is no possessive adjective for bodú.

There are two words for you: kembí and ako. Kembí is the more common word; ako is used for addressing servants and employees, children, younger siblings and animals. Kembí and ako are like bodú in that they don't have possessive adjectives.