|
1. Accusative. Strong declension.
So far we have been dealing with the initial form of nouns
which is called the nominative case. In Nynorn there are
three additional cases. One of them is called the accusative.
The accusative case is used for the object of verbs and with a
number of prepositions.
The difference between nominative and accusative can be rather difficult to grasp
for those whose native language is English. There are several
tips you can follow in order to distinguish between the cases: the subject is normally in the nominative (the acting
body), the object of the action is normally in the accusative
(the patient). There is a golden rule: normally there would not be
two nominatives within the same phrase (the main
exception being the verbs like 'to be', 'become', 'be
called/named', 'is like' and similar).
In fact, English is not totally free of cases - they are still
used with the personal pronouns I, he, she, we, they
(corresponds to nominative), which change to me, him,
her, us, them (in our case corresponds to accusative)
respectively. So if you are in doubt as to which case, nominative
or accusative to use in a given situation, you can check it by
replacing the substantive with a personal pronoun instead.
Say, we are dealing with the sentence A dog is biting a
man. Which case(s) would a dog and a
man have in Nynorn? Replace a dog with I
and a man with he and you will
get I am biting him. The unchanged pronoun (I,
he) corresponds to nominative, the changed (me,
him) refers to accusative (at least in this particular
case). Hence a dog will have nominative and a
man - accusative.
In the strong declension, accusative (A) is the same as
nominative (N) except for the plural of masculine. The first
masculine class (pl. -ar) has the ending -a
in accusative plural, while the second masculine class (pl. -er)
takes the ending -i:
Sg. |
Pl. |
M. N hest - A hest, N fjord - A fjord |
N hestar - A hesta,
N fjorder - A fjordi |
F. N ferd - A ferd, N kerling - A kerling |
N ferder - A ferder, N kerlingar - A kerlingar |
N. N kast - A kast |
N kast - A kast |
Exercise 4.1.
Change the following words to the nominative and accusative of
plural:
dag 'day' (MS1), toft
'thwart; ruin' (FS2), fjord 'fjord'
(MS2), hus 'house' (NS), rug
'heap' (FS1), fisk 'fish' (MS1), sild
'herring' (FS2), rum 'space; room' (NS),
sta? 'place' (MS2), mess
'mass' (FS1).
2. Prepositions with accusative
å 'onto'
i 'into'
veð 'close to, near'
um 'about'
Examples:
i hus 'into a house/into houses', um
Hjetland 'about Shetland', å hesta
'onto horses', veð fjord 'near a fjord',
veð fjordi 'near fjords'.
Exercise 4.2.
Translate the following phrases into Nynorn using the words from
the preceding lessons:
close to ruins, about horses, near Shetland, into
houses, onto heaps
3. Verbs. Present tense. Strong declension.
Like substantives, verbs in Nynorn are divided into strong and
weak, depending on how they form their past tense. Strong verbs
roughly correspond to English irregular verbs (like bite-bit-bitten,
stand-stood-stood), while weak verbs are reminiscent of
English regular verbs, which form their past by adding -ed.
In this lesson we will show how strong verbs form their
present. The present tense in Nynorn corresponds both to English
present simple (I go) and present progressive (I'm going). The
endings are as follows:
eg - (zero) |
vi -a |
du -er |
di -a |
hann,hun,dað -er |
dir,der,de -a |
As in Faroese, the plural of the present tense looks the same
as the infinitive. Further on, we are going only to give one form
for plural:
at bita 'to bite':
eg bit 'I bite'
du biter
hann biter
vi bita
Verbs with radical -a- and -o-
(i.e. with a or o in the root)
change the vowel to -e- in singular forms:
at standa 'to stand', at koma
'to come':
eg stend, kem
du stender, kemer
hann stender, kemer
vi standa,koma
Several verbs conjugate irregularly, e.g., at sjå
'to see':
eg se
du ser
hann ser
vi sjå
Exercise 4.3.
Conjugate the following strong verbs in the singular:skina 'to shine', taga
'to take', sita 'to sit', sjå 'to
see', halda 'to hold', koma
'to come', lega 'to play', ligga
'to lie', ganga 'to go', geva
'to give', finna 'to find'
Exercise 4.4.
Translate the following phrases:
I'm seeing horses. She is going into a house. We are
sitting near a heap. A dog is biting fishes. Old women find
children.
Discuss this lesson on the
forum
|
|