Complete list of all noun roots
Here is the complete list of all basic noun roots, as it is defined now. This list is not definitive; as the dictionary evolves, this list may still grow - but also shrink (see next chapter).
Beginning with "th": Living Things
| th-d | plant |
| th-k | god, deity, angel, demon, celestial body |
| th-ph | man, human being |
| th-p | person, personal pronoun |
| th-t | animal |
Beginning with "t": Non-Living Things
| t-d | material, stuff, element, kind |
| t-kh | food |
| t-k | body part, tool |
| t-th | place |
| t-t | thing |
Beginning with "d": Non-Things
| d-b | way (of doing) |
| d-d | abstraction, -ness |
| d-g | action, happening |
| d-th | time |
| d-m | reason |
| d-p | case, alternative |
Interrogative and demonstrative pronouns
The noun system of Dêbiua allows the definition of an elegant, Esperanto-like pronoun system in a natural way: Taking the noun roots from the previous chapter and combining them with the adjective roots
uri (which), oéo (this), åüo (that), êèr (some), åió (every, all), réi (no)
we get:
thupri (who), thopéo (this person), thåpüo (that person), thêpèr (somebody), thåpió (everybody), thrpéi (nobody)
and in the same way:
tutri (what), totéo (this) etc.
tuthri (where), tothéo (here) etc.
tudri (what kind of), todéo (this kind of) etc.
dubri (how), dobéo (like this) etc.
duthri (when), dothéo (now) etc.
dumri (why), doméo (because of this) etc.
Remark 1:
The construction schema works for any noun root, which gives us some more interrogative pronouns than most of us are probably used to - instead of just "what" you have to use a different word, depending of whether you ask for an animal, a plant, a tool or an action... It is possible that one day I decide to reduce the number of noun roots - at the moment I leave it as it is, as a picturesque feature of the language :-).
Remark 2:
Observe that the words formed above are all nouns, which has to be kept in mind when using them. E.g., the last line of the "ring" poem:
In the land of Mordor, where the shadows lie.
is to be translated as
påi pèr Mordor tåthrl, påi tuthri thrikuo kathlé.
i.e. tuthri (where) appears in locative case. In the same way, dumri (why) usually appears with the preposition phuè (ablative case), dubri (how) with the preposition pöa (instrumental case). For duthri (when) the locative is used, too.
Looking at the above, BTW, I got a slightly crazy idea: There seems to exist a certain relation between noun classes and cases. Maybe it would be possible to systematize this somehow - defining cases from noun classes and/or vice versa, getting, at the end, a unification of the concepts of noun classes and prepositions? I did not follow this further this time - but I might in my next conlang...