Interrogative and relative pronouns
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This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 21 Jul 2017, 12:38.
[comments] mss,grammar
1. Conjugations
2. Declinations
7. Prosody
9. Word classes
10. Word order
As you can see in the article about the relative clauses, relative pronouns work the same way as English, except that they're different from their interrogative counterpart. But you simply have to prefix öm- to get the relative, so no big deal.What this article is about is a particularity of the Mayessan language: interrogative and relative pronouns agree in number depending on the following noun.
(öm)evos > (öm)evor (how)
(öm)fos > (öm)for (what)
(öm)eos > (öm)eoli (what)
(öm)ergo > (öm)egrgo (when)
(öm)xöul > (öm)xöli (where)
(öm)v̨a > (öm)v̨ahl (which)
(öm)üvin > (öm)üvica (who)
(öm)söu > (öm)söli (why)
Here's an example with interrogative pronouns:
Where is the horse gone? Where the rider? Where are the seats at the feast?
Losi üskloclës xöul ? Xöul üssalvaerg ? Eritas̨a ühsëtson hüsmoclamoh xöli ?
Notice the difference between the two following examples:
- I hate them.
- Why, they're cute.
- Saxates̨a suri.
- Söu, hevoeseritas̨a.
Why are they cute?
Hevoeseritas̨a söli ?
In the dialogue, the "why" has no relation with the fact that "they are cute". There could be two sentences: "Why? They're cute". But in the second example, the "why" is directly related to what's cute: "Why are they cute?" Hence agreement.
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