Basic Particles

Listen to the examples of this grammar lesson here.

Rishlao is a language that makes use of particles to indicate what use nouns and other types of words play in a sentence.  This is because, for the most part, nouns do not conjugate or inflect, not even for plurality or anything.  Adjectives conjugate a little for gender, as do pronouns, but for the main part only verbs really conjugate (compared to Japanese, which regularly conjugates its adjectives).

(As a further note, Rishlao is an agglutinative language mostly, though some of the ways I come up with words might label it more of a fusional language.  A lot of times, however, I make a word by combining morphemes: sound change or smushing the morphemes together happens rarely.)

In any case, particles come after the word that it modifies, without fail.  For example, py comes after the word it modifies, and can mean either on, by, or by means of (I came by the train-I came on the train-I came by means of the train).  This little series of sentences would be expressed as merely,

Pei li tejo py kajae.  (f.)

Tejo (train) is modified by py, and therefore comes after the noun.

Another thing to remember is this: nouns do not have determiners like English does.  There is no “the” or “a”.  A noun, seen by itself is presumed to be singular.  Tejo is “the train” or “a train” or even “all trains”.  You know which on it is by context or by modifiers.

tejo (a train, the train, all trains)

da tejo (three trains)

lici tejo (every train)

Please note that while particles come after what they modify, adjectives and numbers come before what they modify.  So if you added in the particle py you get:

tejo py(by/on a train, by/on the train, by/on all trains)

da tejo py (by/on three trains)

lici tejo py (by/on every train)

There are two other particles that are pretty important to know.  They are li and e.  These particles, rather than mean something like by, on, towards, etc. designate the subject and objects of the sentence.

Please look at the following sentences.

Hero li hiyashe meku. (The dog is repulsive.  Lit. (It) exists that the dog is repulsive.)

Pea li shei yuyasho e miluvu.  (I like that prostitute.  [A male is speaking about a female.)

Dupydrae kivraco li preciño e kavracae.  (The evil god annihilated the planet.)

The particle li designates the subject of the sentence (the dog, I, the evil god) while e indicates the object, or what is being acted upon (the prostitute, the planet).  In the first example, it is clear that there is no object, while there is both a subject and an object in the other two.  Because of markers that indicate  the words, word order of simple sentences can vary so long as the verb is at the end of the sentence.  Pea li shei yuyasho e miluvu can also be shei yuyasho e pea li miluvu.  However, it would never be miluvu pea li shei yuyasho e. 

Other particles will be added later.