Novoslovnica. Guide for a Slavic constructed language. George Carpow

adjectives, verbs, adverbs, participles, numerals, pronouns refer to independent POS. You see that every word has its own meaning full enough to imagine yourself some information you have received. This is not true for a word of an auxiliary POS.

      On – this word can be recognized as a placement of an object against some horizontal surface. It can refer to some time moment (be on time). It can also be used with a fully different value (come on – to increase the activity of doing something).

      For – it can be recognized as an aim for something or an object that participates in some action. Also this word can refer to a duration of a process.

      Moreover, words «and» or «to» cannot give you any map in your mind into any sensible meanings. Though these words have no determined semantic value, they are extremely important in the whole phrase connecting two words of the same POS with logical value (AND, OR, NOT). English language is an analytical one, that is why words are mostly connected with each other in the phrase by an auxiliary POS. Without them you are not able to understand what the person is speaking about. Slavic languages are fusional, however, there are enough analytic features in them, hence auxiliary parts of speech are also important. Articles, prepositions and conjunctions are referred to auxiliary parts of speech.

      There are also two additional categories – particles and interjections. Some allocate them into separate categories, some claim they belong to an auxiliary category. Nevertheless, these are both separated parts of speech because they have different grammar properties.

      These are all categories of POS. If we speak about an independent POS, we should take into account that there are different semantic, morphological and syntax functions can be described by it. There are several types of semantic functions: the concept, the attribute, the predicate and the demonstrative.

      The concept is something that correlates with the object or subject in the real world. It could be either abstract or imaginary, but we can ask a questions «Who? What?» about it.

      The predicate is something that determines the action, corresponding to a concept. We often ask questions «What to do?» to reveal a predicate.

      The attribute is something that is correspond to a concept or an action. We ask questions «What concept is like?» or «What action is like?» to find out the determine value of the attribute.

      The demonstrative points out the concept. It has the same question with the attribute yet has no semantic value but demonstrating the concept it corresponds with.

      – Reducing verbal suffix "-a-», «-e-» etc.) and adding null-ending. These nouns will be of the second declension.

      Parts of speech that have properties of an attribute are: adjectives, participles, ordinal numerals and adverbs.

      Parts of speech that have properties of a predicate are: verbs, transgressive, and gerund.

      Parts of speech that have demonstrative properties are most kinds of pronouns.

      Thus, noun, adjective, verb, adverb, numeral, pronoun, gerund and participle are independent POSes, while preposition, particle, interjection (with Onomatopoetic), article and conjunction are auxiliary ones.

      Independent parts of speech are also divided into nominal and verbal ones. It is extremely important because this division shows differences in grammar forms of nominal and verbal POS. Verb, participle, transgressive, gerund are verbal parts of speech, while noun, adjective, numeral are nominal. Adverb and pronoun stay separately – the first one because of its immutability and the second one because of its heterogenity.

      In the chapter it will be spoken about the very POS exists in Novoslovnica. The table with grammar and semantic properties of a POS will be given in the corresponding section.

      First of all you should know some facts about different grammatical properties in Novoslovnica.

      Cases

      Case is a grammatical property of a nominal POS (Part of speech) that shows what references this nominal POS has with other words in a sentence (phrase). This property is widely known in fusional languages, while analytical languages do not often possess this property. Thus, English has only two active cases – Nominative and Oblique one. Moreover, oblique case is used practically only within pronouns while nouns have no such a case. That means case is not the only way to show references between nominal POS and other words in a sentence. Case is just one of the ways to show it and Slavic languages as being fusional widely use this grammar category.

      Different Slavic languages have different number of cases. For example, Russian language has six cases while Serbian language has seven. We can find exceptions in Bulgarian and Macedonian languages, which are analytical that is why they have only one case for a noun and adjective and three cases for a pronoun.

      Different cases are referred to different semantic links between words. It is the cause why we see ambiguity of cases in different languages (that have different amount of cases and different usage rules of cases). Novoslovnica provides most common and wide means to use cases with almost full determination. When you speak Novoslovnica you have to use the case of exact semantic value and not of the longstanding phraseology of your own language.

      With this principle Novoslovnica establishes nine cases. Nine changing patterns that determine alterations of all words of nominal POS. This is the unification of Slavic languages in the sphrere of fusial word linking. Here they are:

      – Nominative (N.C.)

      – Genitive (G.C.)

      – Partitive (P.C.)

      – Dative (D.C.)

      – Accusative (A.C.)

      – Instrumental (I.C.)

      – Prepositional (Pr. C.)

      – Locative (L.C.})

      – Vocative (V.C.)

      In this chapter we will speak about cases in general. All examples will disclose case features through nouns as examples.

      Nominative case (Imenóvnik} is used when we are talking about a concept as an actor. If the sentence is full, the subject is in Nominative. You can ask questions like «Who? What?» to it.

      This case is basic in most languages, so POSes in this case are supposed to be in the normal form (that we can find in a dictionary). In Novoslovnica nominative also determines a normal from of the word. In the examples you can see full sentenses, where subject is used in nominative.

      Examples:

      – Dom-òt je vëlïkym. – The house is big.

      – Izučilišto, de ja sę učam, je starym. – The school I attend is old.

      – Klüč-òt je od ovoŭ vråtoŭ. – The key is to these doors.

      Genitive case (Čyǐnik) is used when we are talking to an object being related to another one. Thus this case show what generation the object is of and what is it made from or whom does it belong to. The questions that determine the case are «Whose? Which? What?».

      In Novoslovnica possessive case equals to genitive one, so English «’s» constructions should be translated in genitive (example 4.1.4). Further, genitive in Novoslovnica could be related to usage of nouns with «of» preposition (example 2, 3).

      Examples:

      – Kniga brata je vëlïmi zajimliva. – My brother’s book is very fascinating.

      – Cěna uspěha je mnogo vëlïka. – The price of success is very high.

      – Sklad je na koncu ulicy