Conlang Syntax Test Cases

This content pertains to version 9c of Ŋarâþ Crîþ.
It is now outdated as the current version differs from this version.

A work-in-progress translation of the Conlang Syntax Test Cases, used to help develop grammar.

1. The sun shines.

The word for sun is in the singular here because the sentence mentions a particular sun (namely, the sun).

2. The sun is shining.

Unfortunately, this sentence is ambiguous with Sentence #1.

3. The sun shone.

Here, we use the perfective inflection, as well as the past suffix. The initial consonant of the verb is not eclipsable, so eclipsis has no effect.

As of cþBF4, the subject affixes are divided by direct and inverse aspects instead of by imperfective and perfective aspects.

4. The sun will shine.

Ŋarâþ Crîþ lacks a future tense, but the intended meaning can be expressed using the verb mîrm·arit.

5. The sun has been shining.

Ŋarâþ Crîþ does not have a perfect aspect; we simply use the past imperfective form here.

6. The sun is shining again.

Note that the meaning of “again” is expressed using an auxiliary verb instead of with an adverb as in English.

7. The sun will shine tomorrow.

The expression enven sado, literally meaning the next thing out of days, is used to mean tomorrow.

8. The sun shines brightly.

Instead of using an adverb, we use a serial verb construction.

9. The bright sun shines.

Ŋarâþ Crîþ lacks adjectives; instead, it uses verb participles.

10. The sun is rising now.

A third-person generic subject can be used to make an impersonal subject.

11. All the people shouted.

⟨šino⟩ is used in the genitive singular as a universal determiner with a plural head for a partitive construction.

12. Some of the people shouted.

This is almost identical to 11.

13. Many of the people shouted twice.

⟨nefarel⟩ means twice, derived from ⟨nefas⟩ the dative celestial form of 2, plus the suffix ⟨-el⟩.

14. Happy people often shout.

This is a general statement; hence the generic number. This sentence refers to people who are currently happy, as opposed to those who are generally happy (that would use ⟨tesarit vjełat⟩).

15. The kitten jumped up.

The perfective aspect is used (jumped up instead of was jumping up).

Note that ⟨lârinčin⟩ is a collective noun, so we have to use a marked form (the singulative) to refer to one kitten.

16. The kitten jumped onto the table.

We use a serial verb construction, translating literally to the kitten jumped and became on top of the table. The sentence below is also correct but does not necessarily imply that the kitten ended up on top of the table.

17. My little kitten walked away.

We see our first use of the possessive clitics.

18. It’s raining.

Straightforward and almost the same as in ŊCv7, save for the generic number.

19. The rain came down.

This is a serial verb construction, but ⟨mêva⟩ is the object of the converbal clause and the subject of the main clause. In order to avoid confusion, we use the clitic ⟨=’ul⟩ to clarify that ⟨mêva⟩ is the subject of the main clause. This can also be stated more concisely as one of the following:

20. The kitten is playing in the rain.

Note that it would be incorrect to use ⟨es⟩ instead of ⟨þon⟩ to translate in in this sentence. In addition, ⟨þon⟩ has an adnominal bias.

When translating this sentence, I was curious about how Arka translated in the rain. Asaka Lulu (known as davfapel unilent in Arka) helpfully answered that pot esk is attested in the Ardia.

21. The rain has stopped.

Among other things, the present perfective can be used to refer to an immediate past event.

22. Soon the rain will stop.

⟨falþon’po fêmîr⟩ can be translated to after now by a short span of time: the third-person generic prefix on the relational ⟨mîr⟩ conventionally refers to the current time, and the clitic ⟨=’po⟩ on an accusative noun phrase describes the amount of separation between the two events.

23. I hope the rain stops soon.

Another nominalized verb phrase occurs here. The word order is changed here because the rain can be seen as the topic.

24. Once wild animals lived here.

Yes, you could say ⟨fêtectoen antrilcos⟩ instead of ⟨tectontelt⟩, but that’s a bit too wordy, isn’t it?

25. Slowly she looked around.

We see our first use of a calculus affix.

26. Go away!

If we wanted to, we could use the ⟦-pe⟧ object affix on the verb, but the context makes it clear anyway.

27. Let's go!

The destination is unspecified, so it can be omitted.

28. You should go.

If the direct object is not clear from context, the following is more appropriate:

29. I will be happy to go.

In this case, ⟨nelsit⟩ is the nominative argument, not a target of an auxiliary verb, because ⟨dotesarit⟩ is transitive, not auxiliary.

30. He will arrive soon.

The ‘present’ tense is actually nonpast – it can include the future.

31. The baby’s ball has rolled away.

⟨enenčin⟩ is a celestial noun. That it has a human referent in this case is irrelevant.

32. The two boys are working together.

Ŋarâþ Crîþ lacks a single word for boy or girl. Indicating one sex is possible, but it would sound unusual to native speakers in this case.

33. The mist will probably clear away.

An example of an auxiliary chain with three verbs.

34. Lovely flowers are growing everywhere.

Here, ⟨šino⟩ is being used to mean everywhere.

⟨tovra⟩ is also a collective noun. For that reason, the unmarked form is used for many flowers.

35. We should eat more slowly.

This is also valid:

36. You have come too soon.

The most suitable translation for this sentence depends on the context – namely, the reason why the speaker didn’t want the listener to come so early.

37. You must write more neatly.

Another way for Ŋarâþ Crîþ v9 to avoid having a lexical adverb category, though by now, I'm not sure where the line is.

38. Directly opposite stands a wonderful palace.

Here, we encounter our first trivalent relational. We also see the use of the relational modifier ⟨pâ⟩.

39. Henry’s dog is lost.

Yes, this means that we’re replacing names.

40. My cat is black.

Only a nominal form for the color black exists; to use it predicatively, we need the help of the relational ⟨čil⟩.

41. The little girl’s doll is broken.

Here, broken means broken into pieces instead of merely nonfunctioning.

42. I usually sleep soundly.

Compare to Sentence #37.

43. The children ran after Jack.

Another serial verb construction.

44. I can play after school.

The action of attending school takes a span of time instead of happening at a single point. ⟨mîr⟩, then, implies that the event described by the object must be finished before the one described by the subject starts.

45. We went to the village for a visit.

Translating this sentence was challenging because the English word visit has several meanings.

Note that the cluster ⟦-cþt-⟧ simplifies to ⟨-þt-⟩.

46. We arrived at the river.

Nothing too weird here.

47. I have been waiting for you.

Squeeze it all into one word!

48. The campers sat around the fire.

We’re starting to see verb-to-noun derivations now.

49. A little girl with a kitten sat near me.

Note that ⟨cþîšat⟩ near is a verb and not a relational. Incidentally, it is transitive, even though its antonym ⟨ecljat⟩ is semitransitive.

50. The child waited at the door for her father.

From the English sentence, we know that the child is female, so ⟨tfoso⟩ is the appropriate term for her father.

51. Yesterday the oldest girl in the village lost her kitten.

Note that we have to use ⟨*sedapat⟩ here: the oldest girl in the village is not necessarily the same person as the oldest young person in the village! Nevertheless, a native speaker would probably describe that person as, say, the second-oldest child in the village.

On a sidenote, this sentence marks the first nef in the CSTC translations.

52. Were you born in this village?

Usually, ⟨lê⟩ triggers an eclipsis, but eclipsis does not apply to words beginning in a stop–fricative cluster.

53. Can your brother dance well?

Depending on whom you’re speaking to, ⟨ša melsas’ve torait pente?⟩ might be more appropriate.

54. Did the man leave?

Nothing we haven’t yet seen.

55. Is your sister coming for you?

Again, you might want to say ⟨melsas’ve⟩ instead, depending on the listener.

56. Can you come tomorrow?

The auxiliary verb ⟨gevat⟩ is used to make requests.

57. Have the neighbors gone away for the winter?

The auxiliary verb ⟨gevat⟩ is used to make requests.

58. Does the robin sing in the rain?

⟨sifłit⟩ is used for the vocalizations of a bird.

59. Are you going with us to the concert?

⟨nelsit⟩ can be used to mean attend an event as well as the literal move toward a destination.

60. Have you ever travelled in the jungle?

The experiential aspect is expressed with the verb ⟨ŋačat⟩ (the event is its dative argument). To travel is expressed with ⟨cfileca nelsit⟩, or literally go with a travel.

61. We sailed down the river for several miles.

⟨celprit⟩ is used to express movement by a given distance. ⟨penmino⟩ is an indefinite exact numeral (since its significand is ⟦pen-⟧) with an exponent of $16^0$.

62. Everybody knows about hunting.

In addition to its use to mean below, ⟨desa⟩ is used to mean related to or regarding.

63. On a Sunny morning after the solstice we started for the mountains.

⟨malenva⟩ can refer to an equinox or solstice.

64. Tom laughed at the monkey’s tricks.

Trick in this sentence could have multiple interpretations. I chosse to interpret it as a stunt.

65. An old man with a walking stick stood beside the fence.

⟨ŋeprinoros⟩ comes from ⟨ŋeprit⟩ prop up, support and ⟨inoros⟩ stick, rod, with the double vowel merged into one. (There is no double vowel to elide in the L stem, ⟦ŋeprijanar-⟧.)

66. The squirrel’s nest was hidden by drooping boughs.

Ŋarâþ Crîþ has no passive construction because the topic and focus can be implied by varying the word order.

67. The little seeds waited patiently under the snow for the warm spring sun.

Note that ⟨aŋaras lerþil eleþes⟩ would give an unintended meaning here – the sun itself is a lot more than warm! Rather, the sun is causing other things to become warm.

68. Many little girls with wreaths of flowers on their heads danced around the bonfire.

⟨cþar⟩ is the wrong relational to use here, as it indicates the state of surrounding something, not moving around it. ⟨cþarar⟩ does not have the intended meaning, either; it means ‘moving toward something as to surround it’. ⟨cþarnîs⟩ is the correct relational to use in this case.

69. The cover of the basket fell to the floor.

Haha funny number! ⟨cajos⟩ is a mass noun, but this isn’t a concern for this sentence.

70. The first boy in the line stopped at the entrance.

Replaced ‘boy’ with something Ŋarâþ Crîþ has a word for. ⟨areleþiłes⟩ is the location derivation of the verb ⟨areleþit⟩, which is what you get when you place the relational ⟨es⟩ along with the allative modifier ⟨ar⟩ on a scaffolding verb. Looking at it this way, it means place at which one starts being inside something.

71. On the top of the hill in a little hut lived a wise old woman.

Note that we have to use the nominalized form of ⟨sêna⟩ instead of the relational directly (which would mean above, not on the top of).

72. During our residence in the country we often walked in the pastures.

The noun ⟨treca⟩ plain is often used in the plural to refer to the countryside.

73. When will your guests from the city arrive?

Here, the noun phrase ⟨artfaþos ijas arceoþ⟩ guests from the city acts as the topic and thus occurs before the interrogative word ⟨pełevas⟩.

74. Near the mouth of the river, its course turns sharply towards the East.

We need the applicative prefix ⟦si-⟧ here to promote the locative adjunct to a dative argument because adverbial relationals can only describe either the action itself or the result on one of the nominative, accusative, or dative arguments (i.e. on the shifted subject).

Note that the sentence below, which tries to avoid the applicative prefix, has a slightly different meaning:

75. Between the two lofty mountains lay a fertile valley.

We use the bare form of ⟨eþit⟩ with the relational phrase with ⟨nerła⟩ modifying the verb. This construction is preferred over using ⟨nerła⟩ predicatively in this case because the relational phrase ⟨ragasos c·ercêli nerła⟩ forms a sort of topic. That is, the latter option would delay the information of ‘betweenness’ to the end.

76. Among the wheat grew tall red poppies.

⟨*naša⟩ refers to a species of red flower in Njôro.

77. The strong roots of the oak trees were torn from the ground.

Mostly straightforward, but notice that ⟨vesran⟩ is separated from its head ⟨ranan⟩.

78. The sun looked down through the branches upon the children at play.

It would be weird to say that the sun was looking in Ŋarâþ Crîþ, so the sentence is rephrased to be more idiomatic.

79. The west wind blew across my face like a friendly caress.

The like a friendly caress part was adapted to fit with Ŋarâþ Crîþ, but nothing else spectacular.

80. The spool of thread rolled across the floor.

This sentence shows a tendency toward satellite framing.

81. A box of growing plants stood in the Window.

We use ⟨eþit⟩ instead of ⟨jorniłit⟩ because the subject is not animate.