Zhyler Adjectives
This page is devoted to adjectives and adverbs in Zhyler (I threw in adverbs, because they don't really fall into a separate class in Zhyler). First I'll give an overview of basic adjectives and how they're formed, then I'll go into adjectival cases, adverb placement, and some derivational morphology.
Adjectives Themselves
There are two ways of looking at adjectives in Zhyler. One way leaves you with the impression that all words in Zhyler are basically adjectives. The other way leaves you with the impression that there are actually very, very few true adjectives in Zhyler. Both are true in their own way, and I'll explain how that can be right now.
In Zhyler, you've got noun classes, which means that you rarely see a word without some sort of a suffix on it, e.g., palka, palmos, paldÿ, palkÿz, palmal, etc. So what happens when such a word appears with no suffix? Often it's meaningless. A good percentage of the time, though, you'll get a third person present tense verb. So, you could say, "Denšar pal", for example, and that'd mean, "He's wearing a hat". However, another function that the suffixless root has is an adjectival function. So, if you say, to use an example I've already used before, pal petti, it means, "The king who's wearing something", or "The wearing something king". This particular example may seem kind of strange, but let's take the root of the word friend, širkÿ. If we say, for example, šir petti, now we've said, "The friendly king". And there you have a good example of a root acting as an adjective.
Now, though, let's talk about other adjectives. These are adjectives that really seem like they were adjectives to begin with. Also, they look very different from other Zhyler words. Usually, a root in Zhyler is of the form CC, (C)VC(C), or, rarely, (C)V or (C)VCV. Take a look at these adjectives, though:
| kamÿž | kamh. | "purple" | CVCVC | ||||
| ügral | xgral | "pink" | VCCVC | ||||
| žiyel | .iyel | "orange" | CVCVC | ||||
| öröč | qrqj | "slow" | VCVC | ||||
| onöþ | onqf | "great" | VCVC | ||||
| danlen | danlen | "trillion" | CVCCVC |
These adjectives, to say the least, are very oddly shaped as roots. (To say the most, check out the word for "pink". It's one thing to have a disharmonious root, but a and ü are polar opposites in this system!) Basically, what these have in common is that they all end in consonants, and they're all more than one syllable long. Another thing they have in common is that their origins are not the same as those of most of the words of Zhyler. But I'll leave that discussion for another time.
Anyway, these words work the same as the bare roots. So, if you said onöþ petti, you'd be saying "the great king". So they function the same.
One crucial difference between these two classes of adjectives (I'll be callling the former root adjectives, and the latter true adjectives) is stress. The reason is that, in Zhyler, all adjectives are stressed on the penultimate syllable, rather than the ultimate. The difference between root adjectives and true adjectives is that true adjectives are always stressed on the ultimate syllable, just like nouns. So, if you say müsa petti, "walking king", stress falls on the first syllable of müsa. If, however, you say onöþ petti, "great king", the stress falls on the last syllable of onöþ. This only goes for true adjectives in the nominative case, though, as we'll see later.
Adjective Formation
So far, we've discussed root adjectives and true adjectives. A third type of adjective is what I'll call the derived adjective. A nice thing about Zhyler is that every single word is a potential adjective. The reason has to do with adjectival stress. Since all adjectives are stressed penultimately, and everything else is stressed ultimately, all you need to do to form an adjective is switch the stress from ultimate to penultimate. This is what's known as a suprafix. So, let's say you had a king with eight arms. You might call him something like a kamÿžmos petti, "an octopus-like king", where the stress falls on /mÿž/ and not /mos/.
This adjective formation strategy can be very handy, and is used often, for stylistic purposes. I won't be marking stress for Zhyler (partly because I don't know how to put an acute accent over an umlauted vowel without resorting to orthographic attrocities of Hungarian proportions). Most of the time, though, it'll be easy to tell a derived adjective from a noun, since it'll take adjectival morphology, and not nominal.
Combinatory Adjectives
The final type of adjective in Zhyler is the combinatory adjective, so-called because these types of adjectives are a combination of a noun and a verb. The way you do it is you take a noun and put it in the genitive case, and then you take a verb and put it in the present or past tense, or in the passive. No matter what you do, the modified noun or noun phrase is supposed to be the subject of the verb. So, basically you have two nouns and a verb to link them. If the noun that's a part of the combinatory adjective is supposed to act on the modified noun, then the verb is in the passive. If the modified noun is the one acted upon, then the verb is in the past or present tense.
[An important note about the noun: Though it's in the genitive, the genitive vowel, either u or ü, never shows up, and the v only shows up if: (a) the noun ends in a vowel, and (b) the verb begins with a vowel. In other words, the genitive only serves as a linker, really, though it was once productive.]
Orthographically (and this means in the script of Zhyler), combinatory adjectives are separated by a savgalep, or hyphen/comma, and so they shall be in the romanization (hyphen, not comma). As with normal adjectives, combinatory adjectives are stressed penultimately. Also, though they're still written as two words, there is only one main stress in a combinatory adjective.
Generally, forming a combinatory adjective is less productive than deriving one from a noun, as combinatory adjectives tend to be idiomatic in nature, but it's not totally unproductive. Anyway, here's a list of some common combinatory adjectives:
| alga-zabnes | /pocket+sew-PASS./ | "stingy, cheap" | |||
| göjgöv-usnus | /stomach+eat-PASS./ | "starved, starving, famished" | |||
| rašwÿv-ÿšnus | /wind+blow-PASS./ | "bisexual, biaffectionate" | |||
| genka-jomoslar | /sibling+kill-PAST/ | "treachorous, back-stabbing" | |||
| naška-ðažas | /foot+clean-PRES./ | "sycophantic" |
Romantic Interlude
Ahhhh...romance! One of the many things that I find unintriguing about romance languages is that they exhibit robust adjectival agreement. So, en Français, on ne peut pas dire, "une femme
Like French, in Zhyler, an adjective must agree with its noun in number. This means that if the noun is plural, then the adjective will be plural. The plural, however, is a little different. So, while the nominal plural varies according to: (a) whether the word ends in a front or back vowel; (b) whether the word ends in a consonant or a vowel; and (c) whether the word has an odd or even number of
| ügrala ovyoy | xgrala ovyoy | "pink oyster shells" | |||
| onöðe pekyay | onqfe pekyay | "great mountains" | |||
| müsaya sexay | saya seâay | "walking men" | |||
| šeye welšay | ,eye wel,ay | "dry shirts" |
Adjectives also need to agree with the nouns they modify in case. There, though, it's been drastically simplified. Since the goal of all these adjectival cases is to get the adjective to end in a vowel, there are only two cases an adjective must agree with when it comes to a noun: The nominative case, and everything else. The nominative ending is, well, nothing. So that should be pretty easy to remember. The nonnominative ending (and, yes, that is the name of the case) is -B after adjectives ending in a consonant, and nothing after adjectives ending in a vowel. I won't show any examples of the nominative, but here are some examples of the nonnominative:
| müsa sexan | mxsa seâan | "with the walking man" | |||
| zi rujðalavö | zi rujfalavq | "about human life" | |||
| ügrala ovyor | xgrala ovyor | "pink oyster shell (direct object)" | |||
| kamÿžÿ ezjez | kamh.h ezjez | "inside the purple house" |
A final note about adjectival agreement, before moving on to cases, is that combinatory adjectives agree in neither number nor case with the nouns they modify (this is mainly due to their verbal nature).
Adjectival Cases
The time has come to discuss adjectival cases in Zhyler. Strictly speaking, these things aren't cases, so much as agreement markers and inflectional affixes. To the extent that those are cases, these are cases. Nevertheless, I'm calling them cases, 'cause I'm on the one with his finger on the button.
Okay, what I'm going to do is put up a table with all the cases. I'm then going to give each case an internal link to its corresponding explanation below. I didn't do that with the noun cases, because there's just too damn many of them. There're only sixteen adjectival cases, though, so it's cool. And now, what Samuel Beckett has been waiting for: The table.
| Case | Suffix | Sample Stems | Orthographic Form |
| Nominative | — | müsa, öröč | mxsa-qrqj |
| Nonnominative | -B/— | müsa, öröja | mxsa-qrqja |
| Adverbial | -F/-sF | müsase, öröje | mxsase-qrqje |
| Equative | -lX | müsale, öröjle | mxsale-qrqjle |
| Inequative | -rX | müsare, öröjre | mxsare-qrqjre |
| Comparative | -tI | müsatÿ, öröjdü | mxsath-qrqjdx |
| Superlative | -lA | müsala, öröjle | mxsala-qrqjle |
| Affirmative | -žE | müsaža, öröjžö | mxsa.a-qrqj.q |
| Negative | -rO | müsaro, öröjrö | mxsaro-qrqjrq |
| Intensive | -A/-yA | müsaya, öröje | mxsaya-qrqje |
| Pejorative | -gI | müsağÿ, öröjgü | mxsa©h-qrqjgx |
| Diminutive | -lR | müsale, öröjlö | mxsale-qrqjlq |
| Augmentative | -jQ | müsajo, öröjjo | mxsajo-qrqjjo |
| Conjunctive | -nA | müsana, öröjne | mxsana-qrqjne |
| Discriminatory | -tF | müsate, öröjde | mxsate-qrqjde |
| Exclusive | -rA | müsara, öröjre | mxsara-qrqjre |
Case Explanations
|
The nominative case is the case an adjective is put in whenever it modifies a noun which is in the nominative case. It has no ending, but it does, in a way, push stress back to the penultimate syllable, if the stress of the form in question would ordinarily be on the ultimate syllable (except in a few cases discussed above). A couple quick examples of the nominative: Onöþ sexa, "Great man"; and Müsa petti, "Walking king". |
|
|
The nonnominative case is the case an adjective is put in whenever it modifies a noun which is in any case other than the nominative (hence, the name). The main function of the nonnominative is to make sure that the adjective ends in an unstressed vowel, so you get the vowel allomorph on C-final words, and the null allomorph with V-final words. Here are a couple examples: Onöða sexalavö, "About the great man"; and Müsa pettin, "With the walking king". One slightly interesting thing about the nonnominative case ending is that when you get the vowel allomorph, the vowel can be elided when the adjective modifies a vowel initial word. Here's an example: Ügrala ovyot, "With the pink shell", becomes Ügral'ovyot. |
|
|
The adverbial case, cognate with the nominal adverbial case, is used to make an adjective into an adverb. The meanings of the adverbs formed using this case are usually fairly predictable if you know the meaning of the adjective from which the adverb is derived. These kinds of adjectives are always placed directly before the verb in a sentence. Two examples would be: Tese, "Quickly", from Tes, "Quick"; and Müsase, "Walking" (as in, "He went into the room walking"), from Müsa, "Walking". The adverbial also has one specialized use. When the object of the verb mexel, "to be", is an adjective, the adjective is put in the adverbial case. So a quick example would be: Amša itwini mek, "The book is white". |
|
|
The use of this adjectival case is closely tied to the nominal equative case. Basically, if you're talking about a property like "blueness", this adjectival case describes a blue that's as blue as some other object. That other object is expressed using the equative noun case. If that object is already understood in the course of the discourse than it need not be specified. Here's an example: Aylane išwiliž, "As blue as water" (where "as water" is "water" in the equative case). If you want to use this in an equative sentence, you do the following: Za amša aylanese išwiliž mek, "That book is as blue as water". In this sentence, "as blue" is the direct object of the equative verb mexel, and so it must be marked with the adverbial case, which is added after the equative case marker. Additionally, "water" is still marked with the equative noun case, "book" is marked with the nominative noun case, and its modifier "that" is marked with the nominative adjectival case. Additionally, there's a special use of the equative case that's not obvious. If you use an adjective in the equative by itself without an object to compare it to (i.e., there's not even one in the discourse that's obvious), it renders an "enough" meaning. Here's an example: Eyanle matek mexel, "You're good enough for me" (where "for me" is rendered by the focus/oblique nominal case). [Note: An alternation is present here between l and n. For information on this alternation, read rule (5) in the phonology section.] |
|
|
The use of this adjectival case is closely tied to the nominal inequative case. Basically, if you're talking about a property like "blueness", this adjectival case describes a blue that's not as blue as some other object. That other object is expressed using the inequative noun case. If that object is already understood in the course of the discourse than it need not be specified. Here's an example: Aylare išwiriž, "Not as blue as water" (where "as water" is "water" in the inequative case. The double negative is required in Zhyler, though ungrammatical in English [i.e., "Not as blue not as water"?]). If you want to use this in an equative sentence, you do the following: Za amša aylarese išwiriž mek(rez), "That book is not as blue as water". In this sentence, "not as blue" is the direct object of the equative verb mexel, and so it must be marked with the adverbial case, which is added after the equative case marker. Additionally, "water" is still marked with the inequative noun case, "book" is marked with the nominative noun case, and its modifier "that" is marked with the nominative adjectival case. (Note: The negative marker on the verb is optional. If included, it renders a really negative meaning. So, without it means, "Th book is not as blue as water". With the negative, it's something like, "Ain't no way that book's as blue water!") Additionally, there's a special use of the inequative case that's not obvious. If you use an adjective in the inequative by itself without an object to compare it to (i.e., there's not even one in the discourse that's obvious), it renders a "not enough" meaning. Here's an example: Eyanre matek mexel/mekrezel, "You're not good enough for me" (where "for me" is rendered by the focus/oblique nominal case). (Note: Again, in this sentence, the version where the verb is negated is an emphatic version of the normal.) [Note: An alternation is present here between r and z. For information on this alternation, read rule (5) in the phonology section.] |
|
|
The use of this adjectival case is closely tied to the nominal comparative case, as well as the nominal contrastive case. Basically, if you're talking about a property like "blueness", this adjectival case describes a blue that's bluer than some other object. That other object is expressed using the contrastive noun case. If that object is already understood in the course of the discourse than it need not be specified. Here's an example: Aylatÿ išwisif, "Bluer than water" (where "than water" is "water" in the contrastive case). If you want to use this in an equative sentence, you do the following: Za amša aylatÿsi išwisif mek, "That book is bluer than water". In this sentence, "bluer" is the direct object of the equative verb mexel, and so it must be marked with the adverbial case, which is added after the comparative case marker. Additionally, "water" is still marked with the contrastive noun case, "book" is marked with the nominative noun case, and its modifier "that" is marked with the nominative adjectival case. |
|
|
The use of this adjectival case is closely tied to the nominal superlative case. Basically, if you're talking about a property like "blueness", this adjectival case describes a blue that's the bluest blue that there can be. A superlative generally doesn't have an object of comparison, since it's, by definition, bluer than everything, taking "blue" as an example. Here's an example: Aylana, "Bluest" (say that If you want to use this in an equative sentence, you do the following: Za amša aylanase mek, "That book is the bluest (of all)". In this sentence, "bluest" is the direct object of the equative verb mexel, and so it must be marked with the adverbial case, which is added after the comparative case marker. Additionally, "book" is marked with the nominative noun case, and its modifier "that" is marked with the nominative adjectival case. This sentence works in such a way that the adjective aylanase, "bluest", can stand alone, just as "bluer" and "blue" and "as blue". To render this in English, you need to say something like, "That book is the bluest", or "that book is the bluest of all", or "that book is the bluest one/book". In Zhyler, it's not awkward if you say something that comes out, word-for-word, as "That book is bluest". (Well, in English that isn't awkward, either, in certain contexts.) [Note: An alternation is present here between l and n. For information on this alternation, read rule (5) in the phonology section.] |
|
|
This adjectival case is used when the assertion that the adjective makes, so to speak, is being called into question. So, imagine you have a teal car, and person A says, "That car's blue". Person B doesn't think of teal as a type of blue, but as a type of green, and so says, "No it isn't". Person A, not understanding that B obviously has a different frame of reference, then says, "It is blue!" That "is blue" part would be rendered in Zhyler with the affirmative case. Here's an example using a book instead of a car: Amša aylažase mek!, "The book is blue!" In this sentence, "blue" is the direct object of the equative verb mexel, and so it must be marked with the adverbial case, which is added after the affirmative case marker. |
|
|
In Zhyler, everything can be negated. Since adjectives are a part of the set that includes all things, adjectives can also be negated. The difference is hard to explain, because English doesn't exactly parallel the Zhylerian case. So, in English, you have, "The book isn't blue", which means, "Of all the things the book is, 'blue' is not one of them". You also might have, "The book is not blue" (not meant to be an emphatic), which would mean, "The book is a color, but that color is not blue". In Zhyler, there are two sentences like this, but they have different semantics. If you attach a negative to the adjective, you get the expected meaning (i.e., "blue is not one of the book's properties"). If you attach the negative to the verb, though, you get something different. What you get is something that would elicit the following: "The book isn't blue, it's becoming blue." In other words, the property of being is what's being negated, and not the color. In this scenario, the person who called the book blue would be getting the blueness right, but the relation wrong. Anyway, now that I've trotted out that confusing and not-altogether-on-topic example, here's the simpler one: Amša aylarose mek, "The book is not blue." In this sentence, "blue" is the direct object of the equative verb mexel, and so it must be marked with the adverbial case, which is added after the negative case marker. |
|
|
The intensive case is fairly simple to explain. Basically, if you want to say something is really something, you use the intensive. So, to make use of a cognitive anecdote, back when super-saturated colors came out in the 60's, people were known to say things like, "That's the bluest blue I've ever seen". And it was. Super-saturated colors were a new thing, and were able to get closer to American focal blue (or whatever) than ever before. Thus, the blues they were seeing were really blue. That's kind of how you use this case. Here's an example of the case in action: Za amša aylayase mek, "That book is really blue." In this sentence, "really blue" is the direct object of the equative verb mexel, and so it must be marked with the adverbial case, which is added after the negative case marker. [P.S.: In practice, that phrase would actually be written Z'amša aylayase, because the words "this" (le) and "that" (za) attach to words beginning with a vowel (in which case their vowel is elided), and because the verb mexel is rarely realized in the present tense.] An additional use for the intensive that makes it different from the augmentative case is its use in exclamations. So in English when you say something like, "How smart you are!", or "How blue that is!", the adjectival part of such sentences, in Zhyler, is always expressed using the intensive. In fact, it can be added to adjectives that are already in a case, so if you wanted to remark on the greenness of a frog, or something, you could exclaim, Rene!, or Renjoya!. The latter, which uses the augmentative case as well as the intensive, is simply a further intensification. Nevertheless, the last case is always the intensive. Outside of this usage, the difference between the augmentative case and the intensive case is trivial, save that the intensive case can't be used for derivation. |
|
|
The pejorative case is used pretty much as an attitudinal marker. If a speaker wishes to express some property that s/he doesn't think too highly of, then the pejorative case is used. It's also used derivationally. For example: Gönlö is "yellow", and gönlöğü is "sickly". Here's an example of how the case might be used: Ezgamar žÿzzağÿsi sadlaral!, "You painted my room bright red!" In this sentence, "bright red" is the vehicle, if you will, of the verb sadal, "to paint", and so it must be marked with the adverbial case. The first noun is composed of "room", ezga, the first person singular possessive suffix -m, and the accusative case suffix |
|
|
The diminutive case is another kind of attitudinal marker. If a speaker wishes to express some property that s/he thinks is cute or small in some way, then the diminutive case is used. It's also used derivationally. For example: Göč is "big, large", and göjlö is an adjective applied to someone who is small in stature or "cute", and yet is unsuccessfully trying to appear fierce, angry or threatening. Here's an example of how the case might be used: Za iškiz miliplisi mek!, "That frog is itsy-bitsy!" In this sentence, "itsy-bitsy" is the direct object of the equative verb mexel, and so it must be marked with the adverbial case. [P.S.: In practice, that phrase would actually be written Z'iškiz miliplisi, because the words "this" (le) and "that" (za) attach to words beginning with a vowel (in which case their vowel is elided), and because the verb mexel is rarely realized in the present tense.] |
|
|
The augmentative case is another kind of attitudinal marker. If a speaker wishes to express some property emphatically, then the augmentative case is used. It's also used derivationally. For example: Jom is "dead", and jomjo is an adjective one uses when something is all but dead, or on its last legs. Here's an example of how the case might be used: Za iškiz renjo mek!, "That frog is really green!" In this sentence, "really green" is the direct object of the equative verb mexel, and so it must be marked with the adverbial case. [P.S.: In practice, that phrase would actually be written Z'iškiz renjo, because the words "this" (le) and "that" (za) attach to words beginning with a vowel (in which case their vowel is elided), and because the verb mexel is rarely realized in the present tense.] |
|
|
The conjunctive case is simply used to conjoin two or more adjectives. It's added to the last adjective in a series of adjectives. Here's an example: Jom, milipli, renne iškiz saylar, "The dead, small, (and) green frog died" (where "frog" is in the nominative nominal case). [Poor froggy! :( ] The difference between the English sentence and the Zhyler sentence is that whereas in English the "and" is optional (or perhaps even dispreferred, as in the sentence above), it's required in Zhyler when two or more adjectives modify a noun or are the object of a verb. |
|
|
The discriminatory case is used to conjoin two or more adjectives in an either/or (inclusive or or exclusive or) relationship. It's added to the last adjective in a series of adjectives. Here's an example: Le iškiz jome, rujete mek, "This frog is either dead or alive" (where "frog" is in the nominative nominal case, and both adjectives are in the adverbial case, because both are the objects of the verb mexel, "to be" [note that the discriminatory case suffix comes after the adverbial case suffix). [Could there be hope for our froggish [P.S.: In practice, that phrase would actually be written L'iškiz jome, rujete, because the words "this" (le) and "that" (za) attach to words beginning with a vowel (in which case their vowel is elided), and because the verb mexel is rarely realized in the present tense.] |
|
|
The exclusive case is used to conjoin two or more adjectives in a neither/nor relationship. It's added to the last adjective in a series of adjectives. Here's an example: Le iškiz jome, rujere mek: Išiškizet mek!, "This frog is neither dead nor alive: He's Superfrog!" (where "frog" is in the nominative nominal case, "Superfrog" is in the instrumental nominal case [since it's the nominal object of the verb mexel, "to be"], and both adjectives are in the adverbial case, because both are the objects of the verb mexel, "to be" [note that the exclusive case suffix comes after the adverbial case suffix]). [Hurray for Superfrog! ~:D] [P.S.: In practice, that phrase would actually be written L'iškiz jome, rujere: Išiškizet, because the words "this" (le) and "that" (za) attach to words beginning with a vowel (in which case their vowel is elided), and because the verb mexel is rarely realized in the present tense.] |
|
Adverbs
Adverbs in Zhyler come in different forms. Three different forms, actually. Fantastic forms, they are. The three types of adverbs are: (1) Adverbs of time; (2) adverbs of manner; and (3) adverbs of place. They each are placed in slightly different ways. I shall summarize below:
- Adverbs of Time: I begin with adverbs of time because they're the...second easiest to explain. (Hmm... Perhaps I should rethink this ordering... Oh well: Too late now.) The main adverbial position is directly before the verb. All adverbs can always appear directly before the verb. Adverbs of time, however, can also appear at the beginning of the sentence to set up the time frame of the statement. Here's an example of one sentence written two ways: Yeldabanar ye usum, or, Ye yeldabanar usum, "I'm eating an apple (right) now" (where "apple" is in the accusative case, and the first person subject is marked on the verb).
- Adverbs of Manner: Adverbs of manner describe the way an action is accomplished. Often these adverbs are formed by adding the adverbial adjectival case to an adjective. They can also be formed, though, by putting a noun into the adverbial nominal case (e.g., "He runs like a cheetah!"). In either case, adverbs of manner are always placed directly before the verb. Here's an example: Zalka tesfene zal, "The runner runs like a cheetah!" (In this example, "the runner" is in the nominative case, and "the cheetah" is in the adverbial case.)
- Adverbs of Place: Adverbs of place describe a location that the action occurs with respect to. They are generally formed by putting a noun into a spatial case. Such an adverb must be placed directly before the verb unless: (a) It's not a derived adverb (e.g., zase, "there"); (b) there are other manner or time adverbs before the verb (it should appear before those); or (c) a noun is modified by an adjective. The reason for reason (c) is that, generally, a spatial adverb appearing before a noun will modify that noun (e.g., the lawn-on man-nom. ate will be "The man on the lawn ate", and not "The man ate on the lawn"). If a noun is modified by an adjective, a spatial adverb must come in between the natural adjective an the noun to be construed as modifying the noun. Therefore, if a noun is modified by an adjective, a spatial adverb which modifies the verb can be placed before the verb or before the adjective. Here's an example: Milip leyetfen sešlersa uslar, or Sešlersa milip leyetfen uslar, "The little mouse ate on the grass" (where "mouse" is in the nominative case, and "the grass" is in the enessive case. Also: "Little" is in the nominative adjectival case). Note: Milip sešlersa leyetfen uslar, "The little mouse on the grass ate/was eating".