Page:Hand-book of Volapük (Sprauge, 1888).djvu/14

4

PARTS OF SPEECH
There are in Volap&uuml;k the following Parts of Speech: Noun, Pronoun, Adjectiv, Verb, Participle, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction, Interjection. Their uses are the same as in English.

There are no Articles in Volap&uuml;k.

The grammatical distinctions are: Number, Gender, Case, Person, Degree, Tense, Mood, Voice.

These distinctions are marked by adding a sound or a syllable at the beginning or end of the simple root-form. In English we often mark them by separate words. Thus the one word pulogoms stands for the five words, they will have been seen. They is indicated by the ending oms ; will have been by the syllable pu at the beginning ; log is the simple root-form, and means, as a noun, eye</I>, but as a verb, <I>to see</I>. <B>Pu</B> and <B>oms</B> may be analyzed thus: <B>u</B> as a verb-prefix (or tense augment, as it is called) indicates the future-perfect ; <B>p</B> is the sign of the passiv voice. In <B>oms</B>, <B>s</B> denotes the plural ; <B>m</B> denotes the masculin third person; <B>o</B> is characteristic of all person endings and unites them to the verb.

When no such distinctiv syllables are added it is understood that

Nouns have number, gender and case.

Pronouns have number, gender, case and person.

Verbs have number, gender, person, tense, mood and voice.

Adjectivs and adverbs have degree.

Adjectivs <I>may</I> also have the inflections of nouns, but this is seldom required.