58 lines
1.9 KiB
Markdown
58 lines
1.9 KiB
Markdown
## Word Order
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L'ewa is normally a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) language like English. However,
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the word order of a sentence can be changed if it is important to specify some
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part of the sentence in particular.
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I haven't completely finalized the particles for this, but I'd like to use `ka` to
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denote the subject, `ke` to denote the verb and `ku` to denote the object. For
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example if the input sentence is something like:
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```
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/mi/ /mad.sa/ /lo/ /spa.lo/
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mi madsa lo spalo
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I eat an apple
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```
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You could emphasize the eating with:
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```
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/kɛ/ /mad.sa/ /ka/ /mi/ /lo/ /spa.lo/
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[ke] madsa ka mi lo spalo
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V eat S I an apple
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```
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(the `ke` is in square brackets here because it is technically not required, but
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it can make more sense to be explicit in some cases)
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or the apple with:
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```
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/ku/ /lo/ /spalo/ /kɛ/ /mad.sa/ /mi
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ku lo spalo ke madsa mi
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O an apple V eat I
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```
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L'ewa doesn't really have adjectives or adverbs in the normal indo-european
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sense, but it does have a way to analytically combine meanings together. For
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example if `qa'te` is the word for `is fast/quick/rapid in rate`, then saying
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you are quickly eating (or wolfing food down) would be something like:
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```
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/qaʔ.tɛ/ /mad.sa/
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qa'te madsa
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is fast [kind of] eat
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```
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These are assumed to be metaphorical by default. It's not always clear what
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someone would mean by a fast kind of language (would they be referencing
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[Speedtalk][speedtalk]?)
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[speedtalk]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedtalk
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L'ewa doesn't always require a subject or object if it can be figured out from
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context. You can just say "rain" instead of "it's raining". By default, the
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first word in a sentence without an article is the verb. The ka/ke/ku series
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needs to be used if the word order deviates from Subject-Verb-Object (it
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functions a lot like the selma'o FA from Lojban).
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