Names in Lek-Tsaro.

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Uruwi
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Names in Lek-Tsaro.

Post by Uruwi »

Link to images (on Twitter) – uses hacm. | I keep my grammars here.

(Context: this language doesn't have dependent clauses, so something like "the city that remembers the Šedrŷ star" must be turned into a clause.)

Names fall into two grammatical categories:
  • Nominal names act as nouns. They are usually single words.
  • Clausal names are entire clauses. These names usually refer to places, although a few people have clausal names. In extreme cases, such a name can span multiple clauses.
Nominal names

These names act as nouns, and they are preceded by a backslash <\>. If the name spans multiple words (as common in foreign names), spaces are escaped by backslashes. No distinction is made between native and foreign names.

Only personal names can stand on their own, and even then, only given or full names. Other names must modify a common noun describing the nature of what is named, in the integral number without definiteness.

Some examples:
  • \ryse (personal name)
  • \tarul (also personal)
  • \remin (personal, foreign)
  • pröme-\waša'i (place name, foreign – pröme = city)
Native names will usually respect vowel harmony. Children of parents who work in professions demanding physical labour (e. g. bricklaying) will usually have names with back vowels. In contrast, those born to parents of professions that do not demand physical strength (e. g. computer programming) will usually bear names with front vowels.

Clausal names

These names comprise of one or more clauses. Due to the nature of clausal names, they are all considered native. Most of these names refer to places; personal clausal names are almost always nicknames or such. Orthographically, they are put into square brackets <[]>.

Clausal names are used by saying them as their own clauses, then using an anaphoric pronoun to backreference the entity describe by the name in question. The type of anaphoric pronoun used varies from name to name. It might be the anaphoric subject pronoun, the object pronoun or the last-clause pronoun.

We call the referent the subject, the object or the verb of the last clause, respectively depending on the type of anaphoric pronoun used to refer to the name. If the referent is a noun, it must be declined in the integral number without definiteness.

Here, as common in maps and such, the referent will be capitalised. However, other contexts that make the type of anaphoric pronoun to use clear do not use this type of capitalisation.

Some examples:
  • [NERFY přatsa tofok] place name: The trees covered the ground (i. e. they don't anymore)
  • [muta PRÖME ryk-\šedrŷ] place name: The city remembers the Šedrŷ star
  • [fy kratu-ma sil sur þha'en-ma sil kadŷ, gwesi'el PRÖMEM] place name: The city was founded by the warrior of the sun and the wizard of the moon
  • [mesa \GULTO syl-łely] personal name (nickname): Gulto takes care of 17 foxes
What did you think? Any suggestions?

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