Elefdar Personal Pronouns and the Definite Article

Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns include the universal first, second and third person. The second person singular pronoun has both polite and intimate forms, much like old English 'you' and 'thou'. The intimate forms are only used by husband and wife, lovers and close friends, and near relatives. The second person plural pronoun has no such distinction.

The following table declines the personal pronouns.

	Singular (I, you, he, she, it)	Singular Intimate (you)	Plural (we, you, they, they, those)
Nominative, Genitive	im, su, fe, ne, se -	du -	imer, sur, fer, ner, ser -er [-r]
Accusative, Dative	ima, sua, fa, na, sa -a	dua -a	imern, suren, fern, nern, sern -ern [-rn, irreg. -ren]

Note that fe/ne/se (he/she/it) are irregular, in that the final vowel assimilates the accusative/dative ending rather than joining it as a double vowel sound (as with "you": su/sua). Other pronouns decline the same way as the regular personal pronouns. The second person singular intimate form, of course, does not exist among the non-personal pronouns.

Definite Articles

There are no indefinite articles in Elefdar; the indefinite article is assumed, unless the definite article is used. The definite article always declines to the same case and number as its connected noun. The definite articles are declined in the next table.

	Single	Plural
Nominative, Genitive	da -	dar -er [-r]
Accusative, Dative	da -a [-]	darn -ern [-rn]

By virtue of the nominal declensions, there is no specific word order prescribed in the Elefdar tongue when constructing phrases and sentences. Rather, the importance of certain words in the phrase or sentence is what determines their position. If the subject is of paramount importance, then it will be placed at the head of the phrase. But if the object is considered by the speaker to be more important, then it will be placed at the head. Generally, the subject and object will be separated at least by the verb, and possibly by other things like the indirect object – but this is not always the case. It is also possible to emphasize a word by placing it at the end of a sentence or phrase – thus, the verb could be placed at the end, following any combination of subject, object, and modifiers.