The Colognian declension system describes how the

Colognian language Colognian or Kölsch (; natively ''Kölsch Platt'') is a small set of very closely related dialects, or variants, of the Ripuarian group of dialects of the Central German group. These dialects are spoken in the area covered by the Archdiocese ...

alters words to reflect their roles in Colognian sentences, such as subject, direct object, indirect object, agent, patient, etc. Declension allows speakers to mark nouns as being used in their different roles – whether as subjects, direct objects, indirect objects, possessives, etc. – by changing the form of the noun plus any associated adjectives or articles instead of indicating this meaning through word order or prepositions (although this also happens in Colognian). Still, Colognian generally makes only limited use of word order; shifting words around either does not alter the meanings of sentences, or yields other types of sentences which have different meanings yet still maintain the roles of the referents of the words as long as their declined forms are kept. Colognian is a predominantly

fusional language Fusional languages or inflected languages are a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by their tendency to use a single inflectional morpheme to denote multiple grammatical, syntactic, or semantic features. Fo ...

. It

marks Marks may refer to: Business * Mark's, a Canadian retail chain * Marks & Spencer, a British retail chain * Collective trade marks, trademarks owned by an organisation for the benefit of its members * Marks & Co, the inspiration for the novel '' ...

its

article Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: G ...

adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...

pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not co ...

s, and more to distinguish

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...

case Case or CASE may refer to: Containers * Case (goods), a package of related merchandise * Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component * Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books * Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to c ...

, and

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...

. Colognian today distinguishes between five cases:

nominative In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Engl ...

genitive In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...

dative In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a ...

accusative The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...

, and

vocative In grammar, the vocative Grammatical case, case (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which is used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object, etc.) being addressed, or occasionally for the noun modifiers ...

. There are two kinds of genitives, both of which are

periphrastic In linguistics, periphrasis () is the use of one or more function words to express meaning that otherwise may be expressed by attaching an affix or clitic to a word. The resulting phrase includes two or more collocated words instead of one infl ...

. One is normally positioned before the noun or noun phrase it refers to, the other always behind. There are three

grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...

s in Colognian: feminine, masculine, and neuter. Almost all nouns have fixed genders, but there is a class of nouns that may switch gender from predominantly neuter to feminine on certain occasions. These almost always refer to female persons. Colognian shares this property with a large number of local and vernacular languages running almost the entire length of the

Rhine ), Surselva, Graubünden, Switzerland , source1_coordinates= , source1_elevation = , source2 = Rein Posteriur/Hinterrhein , source2_location = Paradies Glacier, Graubünden, Switzerland , source2_coordinates= , so ...

river. There are two grammatical numbers in Colognian:

singular Singular may refer to: * Singular, the grammatical number that denotes a unit quantity, as opposed to the plural and other forms * Singular homology * SINGULAR, an open source Computer Algebra System (CAS) * Singular or sounder, a group of boar, ...

and

plural The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...

. While a few individual words implicitly have either singular forms only or plural forms only and cannot be marked as the other, almost all nouns exhibit both forms. Colognian has three

grammatical person In linguistics, grammatical person is the grammatical distinction between deictic references to participant(s) in an event; typically the distinction is between the speaker ( first person), the addressee ( second person), and others (third pers ...

s: 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd person. The plural form of the 1st person makes no semantic or formal distinction so as to differentiate between inclusion or exclusion of a 2nd person or a 3rd person, i.e. it always means: "me, but not me alone".

Articles

Colognian

grammatical article An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" and "a(n)" ar ...

s come in several flavours: # stressed definite articles, or demonstrative articles: ' (the, this, that) # unstressed

definite article An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" and "a(n)" ar ...

s: ' (the) #

indefinite article An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" and "a(n)" ar ...

s: ' (a, an, ∅) #

possessive article Possessive determiners (from la, possessivus, translit=; grc, κτητικός / ktētikós - en. ktetic Lallu) are determiners which express possession. Some traditional grammars of English refer to them as possessive adjectives, though they d ...

s: ' (her, his, its, my, our, their, your)

Usage and semantics

# A demonstrative article, or stressed definite article, marks a select or specific one out of a set of possible ones, or a focused, special, specific, or only one. Anaphora always uses a stressed definite article, while

exophora In pragmatics, exophora is reference to something extratextual, i.e. not in the immediate text, and contrasts with endophora. Exophora can be deictic, in which special words or grammatical markings are used to make reference to something in the con ...

usually uses some pointing supplement such as ' (here) or ' (there), which may be prepended or appended to a noun phrase led by an article. #* Example: ' () # An unstressed definite article is used to mark something unambiguous, known, having been mentioned already, not having a focus, or something general, but not arbitrary. #* Example: ' () # An indefinite article marks something arbitrary, something unspecific, unspecified ones out of many, something general, or lacking individuality. #* Example: ' () # A possessive article marks something as being part of, belonging to or relating to something else. #* Example: ' ()
Colognian has possessive pronouns which can replace articles in phrases and expressions. In other words, a sentence can have either a possessive pronoun or an article in those positions but not both. Thus, these possessive pronouns can also be termed possessive articles when used in such cases. Since declension does not differ for possessive pronouns and possessive articles, declension is listed only once, under

Possessive Pronouns A possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict own ...

Article declensions

Numbers

(**) Singular is always used when there is exactly one instance of something. It may also occasionally be found with numbers having "one" at the end such as 1001, depending on how such figures are expressed. Plural is used for anything else but zero. With zero instances of something, either the singular or the plural might be chosen depending on the context and the particular noun. However, Colognian speakers most often choose wording that avoids expressions of the type "zero + noun", using expressions like ' (nothing), which is not declined, or ' (no, none), which is declined.

Pronouns

In Colognian,

s come in several variations. There are

demonstrative pronoun Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...

s, stressed definite personal pronouns, unstressed definite personal pronouns,

possessive pronouns A possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict own ...

, etc.

Pronoun use and semantics

Colognian

s are used in sentences in positions where a noun phrase led by a stressed or demonstrative article could be used as well. The pronoun 'replaces' it for brevity. In fact, a demonstrative pronoun can formally be seen as a noun phrase with the article retained and anything else spared, because grammar forms of demonstrative pronouns and those of demonstrative articles exhibit no differences. Demonstrative pronouns are either strict anaphora, or can be

cataphora In linguistics, cataphora (; from Greek, '' καταφορά'', ''kataphora'', "a downward motion" from '' κατά'', ''kata'', "downwards" and '' φέρω'', ''pherō'', "I carry") is the use of an expression or word that co-refers with a later, ...

being resolved within the same or next sentence or subsentence. The use as

is possible and reduces the choice of intonation and stress patterns to exactly one, most commonly supported by appropriate gestures. * Example of cataphoric use: ' () * Example of anaphoric use: ' () There are

personal pronoun Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...

s for a variety of uses in Colognian. They all have in common that they link

declension In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ar ...

with an aspect of

conjugation Conjugation or conjugate may refer to: Linguistics * Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form * Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language Mathematics * Complex conjugation, the chang ...

with their forms. While Colognian declension follows a

scheme, the personal pronouns also decline for

person A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, ...

. This scheme includes three grammatical persons: the 1st person which refers to the speaker or speakers as agents or patients of a sentence; the 2nd person which addresses the listener or listeners of the speaker or speakers as agents or patients of a sentence; and the 3rd person which refers to something or someone else besides the speaker(s) or the listener(s) as the agents or patients of a sentence. These three persons may be found in two grammatical numbers:

and

. Thus declined forms of personal pronouns reflect case, gender, person and number. Most

possessive pronoun A possessive or ktetic form (Glossing abbreviation, abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession (linguistics), possessio ...

s have two distinct uses, though some have three. # A possessive pronoun can replace an

, which is why Colognian possessive pronouns can also be called

s. #* Example: ' () # Like a demonstrative pronoun, a possessive pronoun can stand alone representing an entire noun phrase. Its use can be exophoric or strict anaphoric; a cataphoric use must be resolved within the same or next sentence or sub-sentence. #* Example: ' () # One of the Cologinan genitives, namely the form having to precede its referent, can also be described as a possessive expression having the form: article-dative + noun-dative + possessive-pronoun-3rd person-nominative #* Example: ' ()

Pronoun declensions

Notes and references

{{DEFAULTSORT:Colognian Declension

Declension In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ar ...

Declension