This article is an informal outline of the grammar of Interlingua, an international auxiliary language first publicized by IALA. It follows the usage of the original grammar text (Gode & Blair, 1951), which is accepted today but regarded as conservative.
The grammar of Interlingua is based largely on that of the Romance languages, but simplified, primarily under the influence of English. However, all of the control languages, including German and Russian, were consulted in developing the grammar. Grammatical features absent from any of the primary control languages (English, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese) were dropped. For example, there is neither adjectival agreement (Spanish/Portuguese gatos negros 'black cats'), since this feature is absent in English, nor continuous verb tenses (English I am reading), since they are absent in French. Conversely, Interlingua has articles, unlike Russian, as Russian is a secondary control language.
There is no systemic marking for parts of speech. For example, nouns do not have to end in any particular letter. Typically, however, adjectives end in -e or a consonant, adverbs end in -mente or -o, while nouns end in -a, -e, -o or a consonant. Finite verbs virtually always end in -a, -e, or -i, while infinitives add -r: scribe, 'write', 'writes'; scriber, 'to write'.
Interlingua |
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The definite article is le, the indefinite article is un, and neither article shows any agreement in form with nouns. The prepositions a ("to") and de ("of") fuse with a following le into al and del respectively.
The definite article is, on the whole, used as in English, with the exception that it should not be omitted with titles preceding proper names nor with abstract nouns representing an entire class, species, etc.
Nouns inflect for number only. Plural nouns take -s after a vowel, -es after a consonant (but final -c, -g change in spelling to -ches, -ghes to preserve the hard [k]and[g] sound of c and g).
Interlingua has no grammatical gender. Animate nouns are sex-neutral, unless they refer specifically to a male or a female. Thus, jornalista 'journalist' and scientista 'scientist' are sex-neutral, while rege 'king' and regina 'queen' are sex-specific. Explicit feminine forms can be created by substituting final -a for a final -o or -e or by adding the suffix -essa.
These colour the regular forms as masculine when they appear in the same context.
Unlike in English, nouns cannot take adjectival forms, such as 'winter weather', 'research laboratory', 'fall coat', etc. Such constructions instead require the use of a preposition or a corresponding adjective, respectively tempore hibernal, laboratoria de recerca, and mantello pro autumno. This is however excepted by proper nouns which can be used adjectivally as in English: contator Geiger 'Geiger counter', motor Diesel 'Diesel engine', radios Röntgen 'Roentgen rays', etc.
Despite the above restrictions, Interlingua permits use of apposition, where the two nouns refer to the same thing.
Male and female forms should match.
Adjectives may precede or follow the noun they modify. As a matter of style, short adjectives tend to precede, long adjectives tend to follow. Numerals always precede the noun.
An adjective never has to agree with the noun it modifies, but adjectives may be pluralized when there is no explicit noun to modify.
Comparative degree is expressed by plus or minus preceding the adjective and superlative degree by le plus or le minus.
The suffix -issime may be used to express the absolute superlative degree.
The adjectives bon 'good', mal 'bad', magne 'great', and parve 'small' have optional irregular forms for the comparative and superlative.
bon → plus bon → le plus bon | or | bon → melior → optime | ||
mal → plus mal → le plus mal | or | mal → pejor → pessime | ||
magne → plus magne → le plus magne | or | magne → major → maxime | ||
parve → plus parve → le plus parve | or | parve → minor → minime | ||
Theoretically, every adjective may serve as a pronoun referring to something expressed in a previous passage.[ example needed ]
There are two types of adverbs, primary and secondary. Primary adverbs are a closed class of grammatical operators, such as quasi, 'almost'; jam, 'already'; and totevia, 'anyway'. Secondary adverbs are an open class derived from corresponding adjectives by adding the suffix -mente (-amente after final -c).
A few common adverbs have optional short forms in -o.
Like adjectives, adverbs use plus and minus to express the comparative and le plus and le minus to express the superlative.
The adverbs equivalent to bon, 'good' and mal, 'bad' have optional irregular forms.
bonmente → plus bonmente → le plus bonmente | or | ben → plus ben → le plus ben | or | ben → melio → optimo | ||||
malmente → plus malmente→ le plus malmente | or | mal → plus mal → le plus mal | or | mal → pejo → pessimo | ||||
Personal pronouns – singular | ||||||
Person | Gender | Nom. | Pre. | Obl. | Refl. | Genitive |
First | – | io | me | mi, mie | ||
Second | – | tu | te | tu, tue | ||
Third | masc. | ille | le | se | su, sue | |
fem. | illa | la | ||||
neut. | illo | lo | ||||
Personal pronouns – plural | ||||||
Person | Gender | Nom. | Pre. | Obl. | Refl. | Genitive |
First | – | nos | nostre | |||
Second | – | vos | vostre | |||
Third | masc. | illes | les | se | lor, lore | |
fem. | illas | las | ||||
neut. | illos | los | ||||
Personal pronouns inflect for number, case, and (in the third person) gender.
One could also assert the existence of a separate prepositional case, since third-person pronouns use the longer forms ille, illes etc. after a preposition in place of the expected le, les etc.
Many users follow the European custom of using the plural forms vos etc. rather than tu etc. in formal situations.
Illes can be used as a sex-neutral pronoun, like English 'they'. Illas may be used for entirely female groups.
Il is an impersonal nominative pronoun used in constructions like il pluve, 'it's raining'. It can also serve as a placeholder when the true subject is a clause occurring later in the sentence. It may be omitted where the sense is clear.
On is a nominative pronoun used when the identity of the subject is vague. The English translation is often 'one', 'you', or 'they'. It is sometimes equivalent to an English passive voice construction. The oblique form is uno.
Demonstratives | ||||
Role | Number | Gender | Proximate | Remote |
Adjective | – | – | iste | ille |
Pronoun | Sing. | masc. | iste | (ille) |
fem. | ista | (illa) | ||
neut. | isto | (illo) | ||
Plur. | masc. | istes | (illes) | |
fem. | istas | (illas) | ||
neut. | istos | (illos) | ||
The main demonstratives are the adjective iste, 'this' and the corresponding pronouns iste (masculine), ista (feminine), and isto (neuter), which may be pluralized. They are used more widely than English 'this/these', often encroaching on the territory of English 'that/those'. Where the subject of a sentence has two plausible antecedents, iste (or one of its derivatives) refers to the second one.
The demonstrative of remoteness is ille 'that'. The corresponding pronouns ille, illa, illo and their plurals are identical with the third-person personal pronouns, though they are normally accentuated in speech.
The relative pronouns for animates are qui (nominative case and after prepositions) and que (oblique case).
For inanimates, que covers both the nominative and oblique cases.
Cuje 'whose' is the genitive case for both animates and inanimates.
All the above may be replaced by the relative adjective forms le qual (singular) and le quales (plural).
The relative pronouns also serve as interrogative pronouns (see Questions).
Main verb forms | |||||
Tense | Ending | -ar verbs | -er verbs | -ir verbs | |
Infinitive | -r | parlar | vider | audir | |
Present | – | parla | vide | audi | |
Past* | -va | parlava | videva | audiva | |
Future* | -ra | parlara | videra | audira | |
Conditional* | -rea | parlarea | viderea | audirea | |
Present participle | -(e)nte | parlante | vidente | audiente | |
Past participle | -te | parlate | vidite | audite | |
*For alternative, compound forms, see Compound tenses. | |||||
The verb system is a simplified version of the systems found in English and the Romance languages. There is no imperfective aspect, as in Romance, no perfect as in English, and no continuous aspect, as in English and some Romance languages. Except (optionally) for esser 'to be', there are no personal inflections, and the indicative also covers the subjunctive and imperative moods. Three common verbs (esse, habe and vade) usually take short forms in the present tense (es, ha and va respectively), and a few optional irregular verbs are available.
For convenience' sake, this section often uses the term tense to also cover mood and aspect, though this is not strict grammatical terminology.
The table at the right shows the main verb forms, with examples for -ar, -er and -ir verbs (based on parlar 'to speak', vider 'to see', and audir 'to hear').
The simple past, future, and conditional tenses correspond to semantically identical compound tenses (composed of auxiliary verbs plus infinitives or past participles). These in turn furnish patterns for building more-complex tenses such as the future perfect.
Infinitive verbs always end in -ar, -er, or -ir. They cover the functions of both the infinitive and the gerund in English and can be pluralized where it makes sense.
Infinitives are also used in some compound tenses (see below).
There are four simple tenses: the present, past, future, and conditional.
The present participle is effectively the present tense form plus -nte. Verbs in -ir take -iente rather than *-inte (nutrir 'to feed' → nutriente 'feeding'). It functions as an adjective or as the verb in a participial phrase.
The past participle can be constructed by adding -te to the present tense form, except that -er verbs go to -ite rather than *-ete (eder 'to edit' → edite 'edited'). It is used as an adjective and to form various compound tenses.
Three compound tenses – the compound past, future, and conditional – are semantically identical with the corresponding simple tenses.
The fourth basic compound tense is the passive, formed from es (the present tense of esser 'to be') plus the past participle.
A wide variety of complex tenses can be created following the above patterns, by replacing ha, va, and es with other forms of haber, vader, and esser. Examples:
There are no distinct forms for the imperative and subjunctive moods, except in the case of esser 'to be'. Present-tense forms normally serve both functions. For clarity's sake, a nominative pronoun may be added after the verb.
The infinitive can serve as another, stylistically more impersonal, imperative form.
A less urgent version of imperative, the cohortative, employs a present-tense verb within a "that" ("que") clause and may be used with the first and third person as well as the second. The alternative vamos 'let's' (or 'let's go') is available for the second-person plural, but deprecated by some authorities.
Sia is the imperative and subjunctive form of esser 'to be'. The regular form esse may also be used.
Irregular forms of vader (ir) | ||||||
Singular | Plural | |||||
1. pers. | 2–3. pers. | |||||
Present | va | vamos | van | |||
Past | iva | |||||
Future | ira | |||||
Conditional | irea | |||||
Imperative | i |
Irregular forms of esser | ||||||
Singular | Plural | |||||
1. pers. | 2–3. pers. | 1. pers. | 2–3. pers. | |||
Present | so | es | somos | son | ||
Past | era | |||||
Future | sera | |||||
Conditional | serea | |||||
Imperative | sia |
The only irregular verb forms employed by most users are es, ha, and va – the shortened present-tense forms of esser 'to be', haber 'to have' and vader 'to go' – plus sia, the imperative/subjunctive of esser.
Other irregular forms are available, but official Interlingua publications (and the majority of users) have always favoured the regular forms. These optional irregular forms are known as collaterals.
A significant minority of users employ certain collateral forms of esser 'to be': son (present plural), era (past), sera (future), and serea (conditional), instead of es,esseva,essera, and esserea.
The forms io so 'I am', nos somos 'we are', nos vamos 'we go' and vos/illes van 'you/they go' also exist but are rarely used.
The Neo-Latin vocabulary that underlies Interlingua includes a group of verbs whose stems mutate when attached to certain suffixes. For example, agente, agentia, actrice, activista, reagente, reaction are all derivatives of ager 'to act', but some use the primary stem ag-, while others use the secondary stem act-. There are hundreds of such verbs, especially in international scientific vocabulary.
This raises a logical issue. Adding -e to one of these secondary stems produces an adjective that is structurally and semantically equivalent to the past participle of the same verb. Experte, for example, is related to experir 'to experience', which has the past participle experite. Yet, semantically, there is little difference between un experte carpentero 'an expert carpenter' and un experite carpentero 'an experienced carpenter'. Effectively, experte = experite. Furthermore, one can form a word like le experito 'the experienced one' as a quasi-synonym of le experto 'the expert'.
This process can be reversed. That is, can one substitute experte for experite in compound tenses (and other second-stem adjectives for other past participles).
The original Interlingua grammar (Gode & Blair, 1951) permitted this usage, and illustrated it in one experimental text. A minority of Interlinguists employ the irregular roots, at least occasionally, more often with recognizable forms like scripte (for scribite 'written') than opaque ones like fisse (for findite 'split'). The practice is controversial. Deprecators suggest that they complicate the active use of Interlingua and may confuse beginners. Proponents argue that by using the irregular participles, students of Interlingua become more aware of the connections between words like agente and actor, consequentia and consecutive, and so on. A compromise position holds that the irregular forms may be useful in some educational contexts (e.g., when using Interlingua to teach international scientific vocabulary or as an intermediate step in the study of Romance languages), but not in general communication.
A similar issue concerns the present participles of caper 'to grasp, seize', facer 'to do, make', saper 'to know', and all verbs ending in -ciper, -ficer, and -jicer. The regular forms are facente, sapente, etc., but the "preferred forms", according to the original grammar, are faciente, sapiente, etc.
Today, most users employ the regular forms in spontaneous usage. Forms like sufficiente are often used as adjectives, under the influence of similar forms in the source languages.
Cardinal numbers are formed by addition and multiplication of predetermined root numerals. Smaller values before larger ones corresponds to multiplication, while larger values before smaller ones corresponds to addition. Numerals below one hundred consist of a root numeral for the tens and a root numeral for the ones, concatenated with a hyphen, i.e. 42 quaranta-duo 'forty-two'.
For example, the number 2345 would be duo milles tres centos quaranta-cinque 'two thousand three hundred (and) forty-five', which corresponds to the expression 2 × 1000 + 3 × 100 + 40 + 5. The number 9 876 000 would be nove milliones octo centos septanta-sex milles 'nine million eight hundred (and) seventy-six thousand', which corresponds to the expression 9 × 1 000 000 + (8 × 100 + 70 + 6) × 1000. The conjunction e 'and' can always be inserted arbitrarily between any two roots in a number, even replacing the hyphen between tens and ones.
The cardinal numbers below 100 are all constructed regularly from nineteen roots. (Note that among the tens, fifty and onwards are constructed regularly from the corresponding ones and the ending -anta.)
0 | zero | ||
1 | un | 10 | dece |
2 | duo | 20 | vinti |
3 | tres | 30 | trenta |
4 | quatro | 40 | quaranta |
5 | cinque | 50 | cinquanta |
6 | sex | 60 | sexanta |
7 | septe | 70 | septanta |
8 | octo | 80 | octanta |
9 | nove | 90 | novanta |
The number 100 is cento 'hundred' and the number 1000 is mille 'thousand'. All further larger numbers follow the long scale.
100 | cento |
1 000 | mille |
1 000 0001 | million |
1 000 × 1 000 0001 | milliardo |
1 000 0002 | billion |
1 000 × 1 000 0002 | billiardo |
1 000 0003 | trillion |
1 000 × 1 000 0003 | trilliardo |
1 000 0004 | quatrillion |
1 000 × 1 000 0004 | quatrilliardo |
1 000 0005 | quintillion |
1 000 × 1 000 0005 | quintilliardo |
… | … |
The ordinal numbers have their own root numerals for the ones (and ten).
1st | prime |
2nd | secunde |
3rd | tertie |
4th | quarte |
5th | quinte |
6th | sexte |
7th | septime |
8th | octave |
9th | none |
10th | decime |
last | ultime |
All other ordinal numbers are formed by the cardinal number followed by the suffix -esime. In compound ordinals, only the last root numeral is modified.
11th | dece-prime 'eleventh' | |
102nd | cento secunde 'hundred (and) second' | |
99th | novanta-none 'ninety-ninth' | |
300th | tres centesime 'three hundredth' | |
With the exception of medie 'half', all fractional numerals are formed by a cardinal number representing the numerator followed by an ordinal number representing the denominator.
1/2 | medie 'half' | |
1/4 | un quarte 'one quarter' | |
22/7 | vinti-duo septime 'twenty-two seventh(s)' | |
Multiplicative numerals consist of either 14 basic multiplicative numeral roots or 14 basic prefixes which can in principle be compounded to any word.
Multiplicative numeral | Multiplicative prefix | |
---|---|---|
1 | simple or simplice 'simple' | uni- or mono- |
2 | duple or duplice 'double' | bi- or di- |
3 | triple or triplice 'triple' | tri- |
4 | quadruple 'quadruple' | quadri- or tetra- |
5 | quintuple 'quintuple' | penta- |
6 | sextuple 'sixfold' | hexa- |
7 | septuple 'sevenfold' | hepta- |
8 | octuple 'eightfold' | octa- |
9 | nonuple 'ninefold' | ennea- |
10 | decuple 'tenfold' | deca- |
100 | centuple 'hundredfold' | hecto- |
Continuing the series, all of the metric prefixes are valid productive prefixes in Interlingua. Beside these, there are also the irregular prefixes sesqui- 'one-and-a-half-', semi- 'half-', hemi- 'half-' and myria- 'ten-thousand-'.
All of the collective numerals are modelled after dozena 'dozen', and are formed by suffixing -ena to any cardinal numeral.
Decimals should always be written with commas by default, as per ISO recommendations. I.e. 3,1415 and not '3.1415' as in English. Since this would clash with the familiar usage of the comma as the thousands separator in English, this function is switched with the period in Interlingua, or alternatively empty spaces.
Ordinals and adverbials expressed in Arabic numerals are written as follows:
with the adverbials being identical except for ending in -o instead of -e. Alternatively, it is extremely common to simply use the suffixes -e or -o on their own for simplicity.
The normal word order in Interlingua is subject–verb–object, though this may be relaxed where the sense is clear.
Pronouns, however, tend to follow the Romance pattern subject–object–verb, except for infinitives and imperatives, where the object follows the verb.
When two pronouns, one a direct and one an indirect object, occur with the same verb, the indirect object comes first.
The position of adverbs and adverbial phrases is similar to English.
Questions can be created in several ways, familiar to French speakers.
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