site/blog/reconlangmo-4-noun-and-verb-morphology-05-15-2020.markdown

---
title: "ReConLangMo 4: Noun and Verb Morphology"
date: 2020-05-15
series: reconlangmo
tags:
 - conlang
 - lewa
---

# ReConLangMo 4: Noun and Verb Morphology

Last time on [ReConLangMo][reconlangmoseries] I covered word order and some of
the finer points about how sentences work. This time we are covering how nouns
and verbs get modified (some languages call this conjugation or declension).
This is a response to [this prompt][rclm4].

[reconlangmoseries]: /blog/series/reconlangmo
[rclm4]: https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/gjvczy/reconlangmo_4_noun_and_verb_morphology/

## Other Noun Things

At a high level, noun-phrases can be marked for direct ownership or number. The
general pattern is like this:

```
<article> [pronoun] [negation] [number] <verb>
```

## Pronouns

Here's some of the pronouns:

| English               | L'ewa |
| --------------------- | ----- |
| me, I                 | mi    |
| My system and I       | mi'a  |
| you                   | ro    |
| we (all-inclusive)    | mi'o  |
| your system and you   | ro'a  |
| This (near me)        | ti    |
| That (near you)       | ta    |
| That (far away)       | tu    |

## Numbers

Numbers are in [base six][seximal]. Here are a few numerals:

[seximal]: https://www.seximal.net/

| Decimal | Seximal | L'ewa |
| ------- | ------- | ----- |
|       0 |       0 | zo    |
|       1 |       1 | ja    |
|       2 |       2 | he    |
|       3 |       3 | xu    |
|       4 |       4 | ho    |
|       5 |       5 | qi    |
|       6 |      10 | jazo  |
|      36 |     100 | gau   |

Here are few non-numerals-but-technically-still-numbers-I-guess:

| English         | L'ewa |
| --------------- | ----- |
| all             | to    |
| some            | ra'o  |
| number-question | so    |

## Negation

As L'ewa is more of a logical language, it has several forms of negation. Here
are a few:

| English               | L'ewa |
| --------------------- | ----- |
| contradiction         | na    |
| total scalar negation | na'o  |
| particle negation     | nai   |

na can be placed before the sentence's verb too:

```
ti na spalo
This is something other than an apple
```

## Verb Forms

Verbs have one form in L'ewa. Aspects like tense or the perfective aspect are
marked with particles. Here's a table of the common ones:

| English           | L'ewa |
| ----------        | ----- |
| past tense        | qu    |
| present tense     | qa    |
| future tense      | qo    |
| perfective aspect | qe    |

## Modality

Modality is going to be expressed with emotion words. These words have not been
assigned yet, but their grammar will be a lot looser than the normal L'ewa
particle grammar. They will allow any two vowels in any combination that might
otherwise make them not "legal" for particles.

- VV (ii)
- V'V (i'i)

## Explicitly Ending Noun Phrases

In case it is otherwise confusing, ko can be used to end noun phrases grammatically.

---

I will probably be fleshing this out some more, but for now this is how all of
this works.