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Colognian grammar describes the formal systems of the modernColognian language or dialect cluster used inCologne currently and during at least the past 150 years. It does not cover theHistoric Colognian grammar, although similarities exist.
Colognian has verbalconjugation and nominaldeclension.
TheColognian declension systemmarksnouns,pronouns,articles, andadjectives to distinguishgender,case, andnumber.There are the threegrammatical genders calledfeminine,masculine, andneuter, and a special case most often treated as exceptions of neuter. Like the German declension, the Colognian declension system does not mark grammatical gender for its plural forms; plural can thus be treated similar to another gender in it formalism.Fivegrammatical cases are distinguished:nominative,genitive,dative,accusative, andvocative.Genitive has two variants, either of which can also be described as expressions using dative.Number is eithersingular orplural in declension.
TheColognian conjugation system has a few hundred individual types ofgrammatical conjugations, which markverbs to distinguishperson,number,voice,aspect,tense,mood, modality, etc.Colognian basic verbs are classified as strong, 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 threepersons,1st person,2nd person, and3rd person.Number is eithersingular orplural in conjugations.Grammatical voice can beactive,passive, orreflexive.Colognian hasindicative andconjunctivemoods, and there are alsoimperative andenergetic mood,inferential andrenarrative, none of which is completely developed.Theaspects of Colognian conjugation includeunitary-episodic,continuous,habitual-enduring, andgnomic.In Colognian,grammatical tense can bepresent tense,preterite tense orpast tense,simple perfect orpresent perfect,past perfect tense,completed past perfect tense,simple future tense, orperfect future tense.
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Colognian distinguishes the fourgrammatical casesnominative,genitive,dative, andaccusative.The genitive has two variants, both of which are compounds or expressions.
Colognian is anominative–accusative language, more precisely a nominative–accusative–dative language.
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 the active voice.It marks the subject or patient in a clause, the verb of which is in the passive voice.
The two variants of the genitive are compounds. They both contain declined forms identical to dative, plus additional elements. Genitives can only be used in conjunction with another noun, to which they refer. One genitive form in standard word order 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.
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Theaccusative marks thedirect object of atransitive verb in atransitive sentence.
The accusative is also governed by someprepositions, and by some prepositions in conjunction with specific verb classes, which means that independent of other grammatical contexts, these prepositions make the referenced noun use the accusative form.
There is a class ofadverbial 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 corresponding nominative forms. Where needed, potential ambiguities are reduced byprosodic 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 and predicate–subject–object (PSO) for questions. This makes it very distinct from German, where word order is more flexible. Because direct objects cannot occur in the passive voice, the accusative does not occur in passive sentences.
It could be argued that Colognian has avocative, the forms of which is identical to the nominative with the articles stripped off. Most commonly, this case is seen as a part of the nominative. Since wishes can be expressed using vocative + imperative, this case is applicable to almost anynoun andnoun expression. Also, few specific verbs can require an object to use the vocative case.
There are threegrammatical genders in Colognian:masculine,feminine, andneuter gender. Most nouns have fixed gender, but there is a class of nouns that can switch from predominantly 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.
Natural gender plays only a small role in Colognian grammar. While male persons or living beings customarily are referred to with the masculine gender, females are generally referred to using the neuter gender, with some exceptions mentionedbelow. However, if a person or animal is named or nicknamed with a meaningful Colognian noun, which is not uncommon, the noun's gender is used to determinearticles accompanying the name, but otherwise the person's natural gender is used.
There are very few Colognian nouns of unclear grammatical gender, which have therefore been used with varying gender. This may apply toneologisms for some time until a certain gender evolves for them.
The 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 1,001. The plural is used in all other cases, except with zero. Depending on the context and the noun, the singular or the plural is used with zero; sometimes either can be used, but most often, Colognian speakers choose their wording to avoid expressions of the type "zero + noun."...
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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 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 onaesthetic aspects of the sentence.Generally, this has little impact since most often Colognian speakers prefer wordings avoiding expressions ususing zero as a count.
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Colognian conjugation has thevoices:active andpassive. Also, there is thereflexive which combinesmiddle voice andmediopassive.
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The reflexive is used, when agent and patient of an action are identical. It can be seen as amiddle voice which is bothactive andpassive at the same time. There are fewreflexive 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, there the aspect of being formally reflexive can also be seen asbenefactive. Reflexive can also bemediopassive. Since this is predominantly used in generalized speech, semantics diverge from middle voice.Prosody may help to disambiguate. Grammatical forms are identical, however....
