Basic grammar: view article

Eo'iona uses SOV as its primary word order. VOS is used for questions.

Adjectives come before nouns and adverbs come before verbs. The language is strongly head-final, but not universally so.

[edit] [top]Adjective/Adverb Reduplication

Adjectives and adverbs can be reduplicated for emphasis. For example, a'e a'e (big big) means very big.

[edit] [top]Comparative and Superlative

To say the comparative phrase "X is Y-er than Z" in Eo-iona, you would say "X Y is than Z". Grammatically, the superlative in Eo'iona is no different from the comparative: to say "X is the Y-est [thing]", you would say "X Y is than all [thing]s"; and to say "X is the Y-est Z", you would say "X Y is than Z-s" or "X Y is than all Z-s".

Actually, this is not quite right; since it is ungrammatical in Eo'iona to use a plain adjective as an argument to a verb, you must use a noun applicable to both X and Z after Y. This noun is most often â "thing".

For example:

Ôío	oiá'á	á	înén	áon	Iâná.
Ôío	tall	thing.SGSingular (number) one countable entity.ANAnimate (gender/class) alive, moving	be.PRESPresent tense (tense) current.3Third person (person) neither speaker nor addressee	than	Iâná
"Ôío is taller than Iâná."

To say that X Y more than Z (where Y is a verb), you would say "X Y than Z". To say that X Y less than Z, you would conjugate Y to NEGNegative (polarity)
not.

Superlative constructions often use the word neîo, which roughly means "thing which is the same" or "such thing". For example:

Ì'înanàt	a'e	áiô'eò	înén	áon	aá'i	neîò'a.
Greenland	big	island.SGSingular (number) one countable entity.INInanimate (gender/class) for non-living things	be.PRESPresent tense (tense) current.3Third person (person) neither speaker nor addressee	than	all	such_thing.PLPlural (number) more than one/few.INInanimate (gender/class) for non-living things
"Greenland is the biggest island."

To ask if X is Y-er than Z, you would say "Z than is Y N X?", where N is a noun which applies to both X and Z.

Other verbs can be used as well: for example, to say that X is your favourite Y, you would say that "I X like than all Ys", and to ask if someone's favourite Y is X, you would say "All Ys than like X you?".

I know this probably isn't very clear, it will hopefully be rewritten eventually.

[edit] [top]Transitivity

In Eo'iona, all monotransitive verbs are also valid intransitive verbs, and all ditransitive verbs are valid as monotransitive verbs or intransitive verbs (for example, "I give", "I give [to] you", and "I give it to you" are all valid sentences and would use the same verb). However, strictly intransitive verbs cannot be used as transitive verbs, and strictly monotransitive verbs cannot be used as ditransitive verbs.

[edit] [top]One of Them

To say that something is one of X (for example, "one of them"), simply use the number one followed by the paucal or plural form of the noun. For example, assuming that the word "they" refers to a group of people or animals, the phrase "one of them" in English would become ín ié'a (one.G1Gender 1 (gender/class)
for nonsemantic, very language-specific, or not-yet-added word classes 3PThird person plural (person)
neither speaker nor addressee, they/them.ANAnimate (gender/class)
alive, moving) in Eo'iona.

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Comments

[link] [quote] [move] [edit] [del] 17-Aug-21 21:06 [Deactivated User]

Just stumbed upon this language. Cool! I've had a similar idea of a vowel-only language which I've called Yanyarin. There, however, vowels rather had qualities like nasal, rhotic, breathed and interdental (so that Yanyarin sounded like /yɑ̃œ̃ɑ˞ ĩ˞/ not including tones, and I've had a bilabial click instead of /n/. But you seem to only have bilabial consonants in the loanwords too, so it seems we went pretty much the same way.