The Colognian declension system describes how the Colognian language alters words to reflect their roles in Colognian sentences, such as subject, direct object, indirect object, agent, patient, etc. Declension allows speakers to mark a difference between subjects, direct objects, indirect objects, possessives, and so on by changing the form of nouns or associated adjectives or articles instead of indicating this meaning through word order or prepositions, although also this happens in Colognian. Still, Colognian makes generally only limited use of word order, shifting words around does either not alter the meanings of sentences, or yields other types of sentences having different meanings but keeps the roles of the referents of the words as long as their declined forms are kept.
Contents
Colognian is a predominantly fusional language. It marks its articles, adjectives, nouns, pronouns, and more to distinguish gender, case, and number.
Colognian today distinguishes between five cases, they are nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and vocative. There are two kinds of genitive. Both are periphrastic. One is normally positioned before, the other always behind the noun or noun phrase it refers to.
There are three grammatical genders in Colognian, the feminine, masculine, and neuter gender. Almost all nouns have fixed genders, but there is a class of them that may switch from predominant neuter to feminine on certain occasions. They almost always refer to female persons. Colognian shares this property with a huge group of local and vernacular languages almost along the entire river Rhine.
There are grammatical numbers singular, and plural in Colognian. Few individual words implicitly have either singular forms only or plural forms only and cannot be marked the other, but almost all nouns exhibit either forms.
Colognian has three grammatical persons, 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd person. The plural form of the 1st person makes no semantic or formal distinction so as to differentiate between inclusion or exclusion of a 2nd person or a 3rd person, i.e. it always means: "me, but not me alone".
Articles
Colognian grammatical articles come in several flavours:
- stressed definite articles, or demonstrative articles, which are dä, däm, dat, der, die (the, this, that)
- unstressed definite articles, that are de, dem, der, et (the)
- indefinite articles, they are e, en, ene, enem, ener, ∅ (a, an, ∅)
- possessive articles, which are er, eer, eere, eerem, eeren, eerer, di, ding, dinge, dingem, dingen, dinger, iehr, iehre, iehrem, iehren, iehrer, mi, ming, minge, mingem, mingen, minger, ons, onse, onsem, onsen, onser, si, sing, singe, singem, singen, singer, ühr, ühre, ührem, ühren, ührer, uns, unse, unsem, unsen, unser (her, his, its, my, our, their, your)
Usage and semantics
- A demonstrative article, or stressed definite article marks a select or a specific one out of a set of possible ones, or a focused, special, specific, or only one. Anaphora always use a stressed definite article, for instance, exophora usually in conjunction with a pointing supplement such as heh (here) prepended, or doh (there) prepended, or appended to the expression lead by the article.
- Example: dat Faaratt un kei ander (this pushbike, not another one)
- An unstressed definite article is used to mark something unambiguous, known, having been mentioned already, not having a focus, or something general, but not arbitrary.
- Example: et Faaratt es em Hoff (the pushbike is in the backyard)
- An indefinite article marks something arbitrary, something unspecific, unspecified ones out of may, something general, or lacking individuality.
- Example: e Faaratt ussem Laade (a pushbike from a shop)
- A possessvive article marks something as being part of, belonging or relating to something else.
- Example: Ühre Bus ({{{2}}})
Colognian has possessive pronouns which can replace articles in phrases and expressions. In other words, you can have either a possessive pronoun or an article in those positions but not both. Thus, these possessive pronouns can as well be termed possessive articles for those use cases. Since declension does not differ for possessive pronouns and possessive article, declension is listed only once, under Possessive Pronouns.
Numbers
(**) Singular is always used, when there is exactly one instance of something, or occasionally, depending on the ways, such figures are expressed, with ones having a "one" at their end, such as 1001. Plural is used for anything else but zero. Depending on context and noun, singular or plural is used with zero instances depending on the noun, sometimes either can be chosen, but most often Colognian speakers choose their wording avoiding expressions of the type "zero + noun" using expressions like nix (nothing), undeclensed, or kei (no, none), which is declensed.
Pronouns
In the Colognian, pronouns come in several variations. There are demonstrative pronouns, stressed definite personal pronouns, unstressed definite personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, …
Pronoun use and semantics
Colognian demonstrative pronouns are used in sentences in positions where a noun phrase lead by stressed or demonstrative article could be used as well. The pronoun 'replaces' it for brevity. In fact, a demonstrative pronoun can formally be seen as a noun phrase with the article retained and anything else spared, because grammar forms of demonstrative pronouns and those of demonstrative articles exhibit no differences. Demonstrative pronouns are either strict anaphora, or can be cataphora being resolved within the same or next sentence or subsentence. The use as exophora is possible and reduces the choice of intonation and stress patterns to exactly one, most commonly supported by appropriate gestures.
There are personal pronouns for a variety of uses in Colognian. They all have in common that they link declension with an aspect of conjugation with their forms. Colognian declension follows a case, gender, number scheme, whereas declension among others has a person and number scheme with three grammatical persons: the 1st person referring to the speaker or speakers as agents or patients of a sentence, the 2nd person addresses the listener or listeners of the speaker or speakers as agents or patients of a sentence, while the 3rd person refers to something or someone else but the speaker(s) or the listener(s) as the agents or patients of a sentence, and two grammatical numbers, singular and plural. Declensed forms of personal pronouns combine these schemes.
Most possessive pronouns have two distinct uses, some have three.
- A possessive pronoun can replace an article, that is why Colognian possessive pronouns can also de called possessive articles.
- Example: et Auto → ding Auto (the car → your car)
- Like a demonstrative pronoun, a possessive pronoun can stand alone representing an entire noun phrase. It can be used exophoric or strict anaphoric, a cataphoric use must be resolved within the same or next sentence or sub-sentence.
- Example: minge kanns de han (you can have mine)
- One of the Cologinan genitives, namely the form having to precede its referent, can also be described as a possessive expression having the form: article-dative + noun-dative + possessive-pronoun-3rd person-nominative
- Example: em Pap singe Poste (fathers post or position)