Colognian grammar

Colognian grammar
Articles Adjectives Prepositions Nouns Pronouns Declension Verbs Tense-Aspect-Mood Modal particle Conjugation Adverbial phrases Sentence structure

The Colognian grammar describes the formal systems of the modern Colognian language being used in Cologne contemporarily and during the past approximately 150 years, likely longer. It does not cover the Historic Colognian grammar although similarities exist.

Colognian knows conjugation, declension, …

The Colognian declension system marks nouns, pronouns, articles, and adjectives to distinguish gender, case, and number. There are the three grammatical genders called feminine, masculine, and neuter, and a special case most often treated as exceptions of neuter. Five grammatical cases are distinguished: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and vocative. Genitive has two variants, either of which can also be described as expressions using dative. Number is either singular or plural in declension.

The Colognian conjugation system has few hundred individual types of grammatical conjugations which mark verbs to distinguish person, number, voice, aspect, tense, mood, modality, … Colognian basic verbs are classified as either strong or weak or irregular. Independently, there are composite verbs which are classified as either separable or inseparable. Colognian also has modal verbs and auxiliary verbs, each forming grammatical classes of their own. There are three persons, numberd 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd person. Number is either singular or plural in conjugations. Grammatical voice can bei either of active, passive, or reflexive. Colognian knows indicative and conjunctive moods, also there are imperative and energetic mood, inferential and renarrative, none of which is completely built out. The aspects of Colognian conjugation include unitary-episodic, continuous, habitual-enduring, and gnomic. In Colognian, grammatical tense can be present tense, preterite tense or past tense, simple perfect or present perfect, past perfect tense, completed past perfect tense, simple future tense, perfect future tense, …

Case system

Colognian distinguishes the four grammatical cases nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative. Genitive has two variants. Both are compounds, or expressions.

Colognian is a nominative–accusative language, more precisely a nominative–accusative–dative language.

Nominative

Nominative is the basic form of nouns, etc. … It is used to mark the subject or agent in a clause, the verb of which is in active voice. It marks the subject or patient in a clause, the verb of which is in passive voice.

Genitive

The two two variants of genitive are compounds. They both contain declensed forms identical to dative, plus additional elements. Genitives can only be used in conjunction with another noun, to which they refer. One genitive form requires that noun to precede the genitive compound, while the other genitive form is required to follow the noun it refers to. Genitives express a stronger or weaker kind of possession, ownership, or belonging-to.

♦ Examples: ^[1] • däm Päul sing Sofa  (Pauls sofa)  • dat Sofa vum Pitter  (Peters sofa)  • däm Marie sing Sofa  (Marys sofa)  • dä Tant Marie iehr lila Hötche  (Auntie Marys little purple hat)  • dat Jeseech vun dä Frau Schmitz  (Mrs. Smiths face)  • ene Fläsch ehre Ring  (a bottles ring, the ring of a bottle)  • et Föttche vun enem Pöttche  (the rear side of a mug or jar or little pot or potty) 

Dative

…

Accusative

The accusative marks the direct object of a transitive verb in a transitive sentence.

Accusative is also commanded by some prepositions, and by some prepositions in conjunction with specific verb classes, which means that independent of other grammatical context, these prepositions make the referenced noun use the accusative form.

There is a class of adverbial expressions most often telling a time of an action, or the place of a movement employing the accusative case. They always have an equivalent expression using a preposition + accusative.

Accusative forms in Colognian grammar are in all instances identical to their respective nominative forms. Where needed, potential ambiguities are reduced by prosodic elements of speech, but are extremely rare, since Colognian unlike elsewhere follows a strict subject–predicate–object (SPO) word order for transitive sentences in active and reflexive voices, predicate–subject–object (PSO) for questions. This makes it very distinct from German, where word order is almost arbitrary. Passive voice cannot have direct objects, and never goes with accusative.

♦ Examples: ^[1] • dä Päul  (Paul)  • di Schief  (the pane)  • et Kind  (the child)  • de Pooschte  (the lads)  • Höngkche  (doggies)  • e Booch  (a book)  • dat Dooch  (this cloth, this sheet)  • Friedaach  (friday) 

Vocative

Arguably could be said, Colognian had a vocative the forms of which were identical to nominative with eventual articles stripped. Most commonly, this case is seen as part of nominative. Since wishes can be expressed using vocative + imperative, this case is applicable to almost any noun and noun expression. Also, verbs can require an object to be using vocative.

♦ Examples: ^[1] • Marie  (Mary)  • Köbes  (waiter, keeper, Jacob)  • Mam  (mum, mama, mother)  • leev Bröck  (dear bridge)  • Pääd  (horse)  • mi Levve  (my life)  • do fies Knöllche  (you bloody notice of a due payment for an observed traffic offense)  • ech heißen Antunn  (I am named Anthony) 

Gender system

There are three grammatical genders in Colognian. They are called the feminine, masculine, and neuter gender. A nomen most often has a fixed gender, but there is a class of them that may switch from predominant neuter to feminine on certain occasions. Colognian shares this phenomenon with a large group of local and vernacular languages almost along the entire river Rhine. Very few nouns have an unclear gender.

Masculine

Feminine

Neuter

Natural gender

Natural gender does not play an important role in Colognian grammar, though it does. While male persons or living beings customarily are referred to with the masculine gender, females are generally referred to using the neuter grammatical gender, with some exceptions mentioned below. Yet, if someone or some animal is named, or nicknamed, with a meaningful Colognian word, which happens not uncommonly, that words gender is used to determine articles going with that name, but otherwise the persons natural gender as given above is used.

Neuter-feminine gender switching

Unclear gender

There are or were very few Colognian nouns the grammatical gender of which is mor was not clearly determined, which are or were thus used with their gender varying. This may apply to neologisms for some time until a certain gender evolves for them.

Number system

Number in declension

Singular is always used, when there is exactly one instance of something, or occasionally, depending on the ways, such figures are expressed, with magnitudes having a "one" at their end, such as 1001. Plural is used for anything else but zero. Depending on context and noun, singular or plural is used with zero instances depending on the noun, sometimes either can be chosen, but most often Colognian speakers choose their wording avoiding expressions of the type "zero + noun". …

Number in conjugation

…

Number in syntax

Singular

Singular is always used, when there is exactly one instance of something, or occasionally, depending on the ways, such figures are expressed, with magnitudes having a "one" at their end, such as 1001.

Plural

Plural is used for anything else but zero.

Zero

Depending on context and the noun, singular or plural is used with zero instances. Some nouns allow only one of them, other nouns allow that either can be chosen arbitrarily. Yet the actual choice then usually depends on aesthetic aspects of the sentence. Generally, this has little impact since most often Colognian speakers prefer wordings avoiding expressions uusing zero as a count.

Verbs

…

Voices

Colognian conjugation has the voices: active and passive. Also, there is the reflexive which combines middle voice and mediopassive.

Active

…

Passive

…

Reflexive

The reflexive is being used, when agent and patient of an action are identical. It can be seen as a middle voice which is both active and passive at the same time. There are few reflexive verbs that are used reflexively only. Many verbs, when used in their reflexive form, carry a connotation of self-contention, or of emotional profit for the agent/patient. Reflexive can also be mediopassive. Since this is predominantly used in generalized speech, semantics diverge from middle voice. Prosody may help to disambiguate. Grammatical forms are identical, however. …

♦ Examples ^[1] of mandatory middle voice reflexive: • Dat deiht sech bedde  (She is praying)  • Ech moot mech lääje  (I had to lay down)  • Ühr kännd Üch he nit uß  (You do not know the ways here) 
♦ Examples of optional middle voice reflexive : • Se drieht sech noch e Brütche ren  ([For her pleasure] She eats another roll)  • Se kumme sech veraffscheede  (They come to say goodbye)  • It hät sech dud jesoffe  (She died from alcohol abuse)  • Mer hatte uns de Hand jejovve  (We had shaken hands)  • Ömdriehe däätet Er Üch!  (You would turn [around])  • Dat jeiht sech nit uß  (It does not fit or work out) 
♦ Examples of mediopassive reflexive: • Die Appelsine schälle sech joot  (These Oranges peel well)  • De Stunde lohße sesch nit ophallde  (You cannot catch time)  • Winter läät sech övver et Land  (Winter covers the land)  • Mer verköhlt sech ens jään  (You likely catch a cold)  • Verköhle deit mer sech jään  (You likely catch a cold)  • Verköhlt hät mer sech flöck  (You likely catch a cold quickly) 
♦ Examples of ambiguos reflexive: • Baade kann dä sech nit  (He never takes a bath or refuses bathing / He cannot take baths)  • Mer hellef sech met Bedde  (Praying is supportive / I've resorted to prayer) 
• Mer hellef sech  (People support each other / One finds ways to get along) 

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Examples use these conventions:
   1. Where stress is of importance, stressed syllables or words are underlined.
   2. Alternative translations are separated with commas when their sense is identical.
   3. If the original has multiple meanings, their translations are separated with slashes.

Bibliography

• Ferdinand Münch: Grammatik der ripuarisch-fränkischen Mundart. Cohen, Bonn 1904. (online)
  Reprinted with permission: Saendig Reprint Verlag, Wiesbaden 1970, ISBN 3-500-21670-6, under a license by Verlag Bouvier, Bonn.
• Fritz Hoenig: Wörterbuch der Kölner Mundart. second, extended edition, Cologne 1905.
• Alice Tiling-Herrwegen: De kölsche Sproch, Kurzgrammatik Kölsch-Deutsch. Bachem-Verlag Köln. 1st edition, 2002. ISBN 3-7616-1604-X
• Christa Bhatt, Alice Herrwegen: Das Kölsche Wörterbuch. Bachem-Verlag Köln. 2nd edition, 2005. ISBN 3-7616-1942-1