Morphology is the component of grammar which includes the rules of word formation. This section describes in detail how to put morphemes together to create words that you would use in Ferengi sentences.
Morpheme - Smallest unit of linguistic meaning. Basically, a piece of a word that has some meaning apart from the rest of the word, but itself cannot be divided.
Active voice - The subject of the sentence is the one performing an action or being described. Example: "The boy kissed the girl."
Passive voice - The subject of the sentence is the one on which an action is being performed. Example: "The girl was kissed by the boy." This sentence is equivalent to the example above, but 'the girl' is made the subject of the sentence.
Agent - The subject of an active voice sentence. 'The boy' is the agent of both example sentences above, even though 'the girl' is the subject of the second one.
Patient - The direct object of an active voice sentence or the subject of a passive voice sentence. In both examples above, 'the girl' is the patient, even though she becomes the subject of the passive sentence. In Ferengi, a distinction is made between agent and patient, not between subject and direct object. Ferengi marks verbs in the passive voice with the /ub/ suffix, and the Patient case is used for the subject.
Beneficiary - The indirect object of a sentence. Examples: "The boy gave a ball to the girl." and "The boy gave the girl a ball." In both examples, 'the girl' is the beneficiary, because she benefits from the action of the sentence.
Participle - Verb used as an adjective. Example: "The hired men are working." Here, the word 'hired' is a participle because it acts as an adjective, modifying 'men', and also comes from the verb of the sentence "The men have been hired." (In this case, it's also passive.)
Gerund - Verb used as a noun. Example: "Seeing is believing." Here, both 'seeing' and 'believing' are gerunds because they are being used as nouns. You can distinguish gerunds in English from participles (which have the same surface form) by seeing if the gerund can be replaced by an infinitive. "To see is to believe" has the same meaning as the above example, and therefore, we conclude that they were gerunds.
Ferengi has noun classes, and each noun belongs implicitly to one of those classes. The classes are affector, affected, instrument, and inanimate, and each has its own pronoun used in everyday speech just like "he", "she", and "it". Many linguists like to call this kind of word classing "gender". If one were to assign the gender terms "male", "female", and "neuter" to the Ferengi noun classes, then LOOSELY, you would have this arrangement:
affector masculine animate affected feminine animate instrument masculine inanimate or neuter1 inanimate feminine inanimate or neuter2
The antecedant of a pronoun is almost always of the corresponding noun class, and this frequently aids in making complex sentences easier to understand.
Many compound words have a class which is indepentant of the componnent words, but by default, the class is based on the last componnent. Some suffixes also carry a class, and the resulting word always takes on the class of the suffix. When the suffix does not have a class, the resulting word keeps its original class.
In word lists, the following letters are used to specify the class for each noun:
/?/ - Affector /q/ - Affected /m/ - Instrument /p/ - Inanimate /x/ - Action, verb, or entire sentence /b/ - Anything which is Plural
Pronouns are usually attached to the beginning of the verb. If the verb (in
the active voice) has only an agent pronoun, the pronoun particle is attached
to the beginning of the verb. If the verb has both an agent and a patient,
then agent pronoun particles are used for both the agent and patient (agent
then patient). If the verb has a patient only, then the patient paticle is
used. The patient form is usually only used when alone, and must be used
in passive sentences.
Here is a list of the pronoun particles used in Ferengi. The Agent is
followed by the Patient.
t s -- I, first person singular
k f -- you/thou, second person singular
? h -- one/he/she, third person singular, affector
q R -- it, third person singular, affected
m S -- it, third person singular, instrument
(/m/ turns to /t/ when both /m/ and /S/ are used.
/tS/ sounds like 'ch' in English)
p T -- it, third person singular, inanimate
d z -- we, first person plural, including person spoken to
n Z -- we, first person plural, excluding person spoken to
(/n/ turns to /d/ when both /n/ and /Z/ are used.
/dZ/ sounds like 'j' in English)
g v -- you/ye, second person plural
b D -- they, third person plural
x l -- that, last sentense/concept, subordinate clause
Ferengi has a set of vowels that are attached to word roots to show what type of word it is. Some Latin case names are used, even though Ferengi word types do not correspond well with Latin cases. These vowels are attached to the end of the ROOT of a word (primary case vowel), and also to the beginning of roots and between verb modifier consonants when necessary (secondary case vowel). Primary case vowels are always long, while secondary case vowels are always short. It should be noted that case vowels go between word roots and any suffixes that might be added, except in a few rare cases.
Verb modifiers are items that are attached to the end of the verb, participle, or gerund, immediately following the case vowel. They are listed in the relative order in which they are usually attached. When verb modifier consonants are piled together, a secondary case vowel is inserted between them, rather than the usual schwa in difficult consonant clusters, except between syllables (the first modifier consonant usually ends a syllable that is also composed of the end of the root and the first modifier consonant, so a secondary case vowel is not usually needed after the first verb modifier).
Now that you have pronouns, cases, and modifiers, you need to know now to attach them to verbs. Verb phrases in Ferengi usually end up being single words, and they can get rather long.
Ferengi verb phrases are constructed like this: <pronouns> + <case> + <verb> + <case> + <aspect> + <auxiliary> The first case vowel (called the 'secondary' case vowel) is dropped when the first letter of the root is a vowel. It's needed to seperate the pronouns from the root that they may be confused with, and it's always the same as the first case vowel. It's also not used when there are no pronouns.
Here, I will build a few example words, using the root for 'see', which is /v/:
"Have I not seen you?"
t {I} k {you} a {verb} v {see} aa {verb} v {complete} p {not} z {question}
/tkavaavpz/
[t@ka'vaav-paz]
"Do I see myself?"
t {I} s {me} a {verb} v {see} aa {verb} z {question}
/tsavaaz/
[tsa'vaaz]
"I will have been seen."
s {me} a {verb} v {see} aa {verb} v {complete} ub {passive}
/savaavub/
[sa'vaa-vub]
"To be seen"
v {see} aa {verb} s {infintive} ub {passive}
/vaasub/
['vaa-sub]
In the case of imperatives, the pronoun (/k/ or /g/) is usually given explicitly.
"See!" (command to no one in particular or emphatic)
v {see} aa {verb} vt {imperative}
/vaavt/
['vaa-vat]
"(thou) see!"
k {thou} avaavt
/kavaavt/
[ka'vaa-vat]
"(ye) see!"
g {ye} avavt
/gavaavt/
[ga'vaa-vat]
There are some other situations to consider. Gerunds are simply made by giving a verb root a noun (default, etc.) case ending, plus an aspect. Participles are distinguised from adjectives by having an aspect particle attached.
"seeing" - /vyyt/ (participle) ("_Seeing_ this in context, we...")
"seeing" - /voot/ (gerund) ("_Seeing_ is believing")
"having seen" - /vyyv/ (participle),
/voov/ (gerund)
There are cases when some of the above listed particles and attachments will have to stand alone. For example, the word "my" is the pronoun /t/, attached to the genitive particle /uu/, making the word /tuu/.
Pronouns can even stand alone if it is necessary to emphasize them. In that case, patient pronouns are used in conjuntion with the patient case particle in proper circumstances. For example, "I see you", which is /tkavaa/, can be split up into:
to {I + agent} f^ {thou + patient} va {see + verb}
/to foo vaa/
Genitive pronouns act as adjectives and therefore follow the word they modify:
"My hand"
kax {hand + default} tuu {I + genitive}
/kax tuu/
In cases where the possession is less imporant than something else in the sentence, genitive particles can be attached to the end of the word, so the above phrase would become /kaxtuu/, which results in virtually no change in pronounciation, but in writing, it shows a difference.
The dative case uses agent pronoun forms to imply motion or transfer, and it uses patient pronoun forms to imply location. As an example, consider /tii/ (I + dative), which means "to me" and /sii/ (me + dative), which means more like "for me", and which can mean other things with a preposition such as /uf/, making /ufsii/, meaning "under me". While this particle can stand anywhere in the part of a sentence in which it belongs, the default position is as a suffix for the object which is being moved, if there is one, in which case, the case vowel is usually shortened to /i/. Here are some examples:
"Give me money!" /katxaavt bvooti/ [ka'txaa-vat 'bBoo-ti] (this could be clipped to /txa bvo/, meaning "Give money.") "He sells them food." /?ak?aa wloobi/ [?ak'?aa w@'loo-bi] "He sits under it." /?arfaa ufTii/ [?ar'faa uf'Tii]
There is no root word for "to be" in Ferengi. Rather, it is a vowel that is attached to an adjective, turning the adjective into part of a verb phrase. /Gal/ is the root for "red". If something "IS" red, then you attach the vowel /ee/ and get /Galee/. If _I_ am red, then you get this:
t {I} e {is/am} Gal {red} ee {is/am}
/teGalee/
[te'Ga-lee]
In a case where you absolutely NEED the verb "to be", then you simply stand it alone with aspect and auxilaries attached to the end.
"to be" /ees/ "to have been" /eev/ "to not be" or "not to be" /eesp/ [eesp] or ['ee-sep] "to be been" (which makes no sense in English; passive of "to be") /esub/ ['ee-sub] "to be?" /eesz/ ['ee-sez] "To be or not to be, that is the question. /ees mala eesp, xee ziloo/
/ee/ is seldom used as just shown above, but it has been found in cases where an object being referred to was in visual proximity to the speaker and it was very important. For example:
"This money IS mine!" /ees bvo tuu/ [ees bvo tuu] "My name IS Silu." /ees dZfkootu siluoo/ [ees dZ@f'koo-tu si-lu'woo]
Ferengi has the tendancy to compound words when two or more words are part of a single concept. For example, take the concept of "language-study". The root for 'language' or 'speak' is /pZ/, and the root for 'study' is /pf/. They are simply stuck together to form a new word which means "language- study".
Older Ferengi compounds, and even some newer ones, are not simple compounds of their componnents. Instead, part of either word is removed. For example, the root for 'trade' is /fet/, and the root for agreement is /&k/. The compound, which means 'deal', is not /fet&k/, as one might expect, but instead, it has collapsed into /f&k/. This was originally due in many cases to frequent use and the need for efficiency, which caused people to start sluring certain words to speak faster. Now, this is simply a feature of the language. If a compound is important enough, it will be collapsed.
Ferengi do not make acronyms like we do in English, but they do use something similar. The tendancy is to take the first consonant and the first vowel from each word and pronounce the combination as a word.
Ferengi has a case which is associated almost exclusively with prepositional phrases, so I refer to it as the dative case. The dative particle is /ii/, and it is used to specify location or direction.
When a pronoun is in the dative case, /ii/ is attached to the end. If the pronoun is the agent form, then the word specifies that motion, transfer, or direction is involved. If the pronoun is the patient form, then location is specified. For example, /tii/ means "to me" or "from me", while /sii/ can mean "of me" or "for me", etc. With pronouns, the dative particle /ii/ is always used. When used as an indirect object, dative pronouns are often attached as a suffix to the patient. When a preposition is attached to a pronoun, the pronoun is also put into the dative case. When a dative is attached to the end of another word with a dominating case vowel (like the Patient case), the dative vowel becomes /i/.
If a noun is in the dative case and the implied preposition is "to", "of", "for", or "from", then /ii/ is simply used as the case particle for that noun.
"For the love of money" /idlii bvii/
If a preposition and a noun are involved, the preposition is attached as a prefix to the noun. If only location is implied, the case particle is often omitted, although classically, it takes the agent case. If motion is involved toward the noun, the dative case it used, while if motion is involved away from the noun, the patient case is used (like German 'her' and 'hin', but not as well developed).
There are words which mean things like "to", "from", etc. to avoid confusion, but they are not used very often, since subtle nuances can usually be picked up from context. For example, consider these sentences:
"He gives it to me." /?patxaa tii/ [?@p-at'xaa tii] "He takes it from me." /?pasjaa tii/ [?@p-a'sjaa tii]
Here, there is no confusion about which /tii/ implies "from" and which implies "to", since the verb indicates the direction.
There are a few postpositions which change the meaning of a single word, unlike prepositions which can head a phrase.
Below is a list of some postpositions in Ferengi. The attach to the end of a word and modify the meaning. The extra symbol in between the suffix and the meaning specifies the gender that the new word takes. If no gender is specified, the original gender is retained. The case vowel goes between the root and the suffix.
-gi belonging to/part of (forming a noun) -gy belonging to/part of (forming an adjective) -gal q home of -ple ? one who does/performs (some action) -iG q diminutive -vt ? emphasizer/augmentative -m b plural
If you're interested in this language, try to make sentences, and then suddenly realize that the vocabulary is too small, make some up! The rules for creating them are simple.
1) If your concept is a complex one and it can be created by combining
existing roots, combine the roots according to the compounding rules.
2) Otherwise, throw together a set of consonants, and possibly a vowel to
make a root that doesn't match anything you're familiar with.
3) If the concept looks complex, make a long root (4 to 6 phonemes).
4) If the concept looks simple, make it a short root (2 to 4 phonemes).
5) Make sure that your root is not identical or too similar to an
existing root.
6) Write down your new root and its meaning.
7) If you created a long root, split it somewhere near the middle and
then make up meanings for the two parts.
8) If either of the pieces does not conform to the above rules, throw
out the non-conforming piece(s).
9) Write down your new roots and their meanings.
10) Make up appropriate genders (see the section on gender) for your words.
11) Email the new roots to me at [email protected] so that I can
make certain that there are no conflicts. I will respond with
approval or disapproval, and I will try to replace any rejected words
with already-existing replacements.
Please try to use the full range of Ferengi phonology. I do not want an imballance in the vocabulary toward anyone's native human language. Don't go to the other extreme and use only unfamiliar phonemes either. The easiest way to pick good words is to write each of the 50 letters of the Ferengi alphabet on a piece of paper and blindly pick phonemes and then make sure your root is acceptable. Also, if any existing words violate the rules, I would appreciate them being pointed out to me.