Chapter 11 Nouns and their world
Descriptors and quantifiers
The noun comes last. What gathers before it can identify an associated person, point, count, or describe, but those jobs do not become interchangeable merely because they share a direction.
Descriptors
An adjective stands before its noun:
| Phi | Literal gloss | English |
|---|---|---|
serao shiro | old tree | an old tree |
welao nuora | good food | good food |
mioru lei | beautiful harmony | beautiful harmony |
Several descriptors may stack: serao mioru shelu is an old, beautiful book. Phi sets no universal hierarchy among adjective meanings. Order changes which description has wider scope or receives earlier attention, so a speaker should keep the sequence that makes the intended grouping easiest to recover.
Quantifiers
Quantifiers precede the noun directly and leave the actual count to context:
| Phi | Gloss | Range |
|---|---|---|
theula | all, every | the whole relevant set |
sheloi | many | a contextually large number or amount |
shelami | most | the larger part of a relevant set |
soli | some, several | an indefinite nonzero quantity |
phina | few | a contextually small number or amount |
theli | each | members considered one by one |
wheli | any | an unrestricted choice within the relevant set |
mawha | none | no member or amount |
henoi | enough | sufficient for the purpose at hand |
wia | how many | a request for quantity |
sheloi melu means many friends; mawha nophi means no stories. henoi makes a sufficiency judgment rather than hiding an exact number: enough soup for one bowl may not be enough for the table.
An ordinary quantifier does not combine with lo, a numeral, or a classifier. Those are alternative quantity strategies. wia may take an optional classifier because it asks for the kind of count that a numeral could answer.
Numerals
An exact numeral also precedes the noun:
ta melu — one friend
wi shelu — two books
ta shao miona
one three-group person
Bare shao miona is approximate, on the scale of a three-group. A numeral may take an optional classifier after its complete number expression.
Deictics
ha marks proximal reference and ra distal reference:
| Particle | Example | English |
|---|---|---|
ha | ha shelu | this book |
ra | ra thepalu | that garden |
The reference centre may be physical or conversational. Context decides whether ra nophi is a story farther away in space, earlier in the discussion, or otherwise treated as distal.
Canonical order
The broad noun-phrase order is:
- Possessor
- Quantifier
- Deictic
- Number or lo
- Classifier
- Descriptors
- Noun
The quantity positions are alternatives, so a phrase will not fill all of them. A classifier appears only after a numeral or wia.
mia ha serao shelu — this old book of mine
sheloi welao melu — many good friends
ta shao mioru thepalu
one three-group beautiful garden
Qualities as nouns
Every adjective also licenses its quality noun without changing form. thua is fair and fairness; wesoma is mutual and mutuality; siloma is simple and simplicity. The lexicon records the adjective once, while grammar supplies the noun use.
The reverse bridge is ordinary noun modification. A noun before another noun can identify an owner, source, kind, direction, or association: nitho ruela is the north path, shiro womu a tree house, and pukea ruela a dangerous path, literally a danger path. Meaning and context choose the relation.
One word keeps one lexical class. Position and the quality-noun rule let it work beyond that home without turning every noun into an adjective or every adjective into two dictionary entries.