Object roles within a Gevey clause
The grammatical case of an object is decided by the object's role within the clause or sentence - in other words, what is it doing? An object will take one of five roles within a clause or sentence:
- primary objects
- subject
- direct object
- indirect object
- secondary objects
- posessive object
- modifying object
Subjects, direct objects and indirect objects are known as primary objects because they are affected by the action of the principal verb in the clause or sentence. The other objects are known as secondary objects because the action of a principle verb will have no effect on them.
To determine the role of an object in a clause or sentence, it is important to understand the basic structure of a Gevey clause:
Example 1:
| subject | direct object | principle verb | indirect object |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mary | a ball | throws | to the dog |
| mar +e | laeb +u | palc +ase | tusr +eks |
- Mary is throwing the ball, ie Mary is directing the action of the principle verb, thus Mary is the subject of the clause.
- The ball is being thrown by Mary, ie the ball is receiving the action of the principle verb, thus the ball is the direct object of the clause.
- The dog is not throwing the ball, nor is Mary throwing the dog, so the dog is neither the subject nor the direct object of the clause. In fact, Mary is throwing the ball towards the dog. Because the dog is added to explain where (in other cases it could be why, how, when or with what) the ball is being thrown, the dog is the indirect object of the clause.
Mare yu laep palcase tatusreks
Example 2:
| subject | possessive object | direct object | modifying object | modifying object | principle verb |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mary | the dog's | balls | plastic | box | throws |
| Mar +e | tusr +en | laeb +um | sootr +u | glom +u | palc +ase |
- Here, Mary is the subject and the balls are the direct object of the clause. There is no indirect object in this clause because there is no indication given of where, when, why or how the balls are being thrown.
- To decide if there is a posessive object in the clause, it must be demonstrated that one of the primary objects (subject, direct object or indirect object) has an owner. In this clause, the dog owns the box of plastic balls, therefore the dog will be a posessive object.
- In this example, some additional information is provided about the direct object - they are in fact plastic balls. In this case, we form the compound noun plastic balls by making "plastic" a modifying object
- Finally, it is not a ball that is being thrown, it is a box of balls. The "box" object is further compounding the direct object "plastic balls". The second (and far more common) method of compounding nouns in Gevey is through listing them with coordinating conjunctions - in this case rhuut, the grouping conjunction
Mare yum sootrjixum laep rut yu glom tusren palcase
As can be seen from the above examples, an object will be amended in various ways to demonstrate the role it is playing within the clause. This is called case declension. The eight object cases of Gevey are distributed as follows (further information on case formation, and deciding under which circumstances a particular case should be used, can be found in the nouns section of this grammar):
| subject | nominative case | no particle present |
| direct object | accusative case | y- |
| indirect object | systemic dative case | -s- |
| motive dative case | -ks- | |
| temporal dative case | -ljs- | |
| spatial dative case | -bz- | |
| posessive object | genetive case | -n- |
| modifying object | noun compounding | no particle present |