Interlingua - Grammar

Grammar

Interlingua has been developed to omit any grammatical feature that is absent from even one control language. Thus, Interlingua has no noun-adjective agreement by gender, case, or number (cf. Spanish and Portuguese gatas negras or Italian "gatte nere", 'black female cats'), since this is absent from English, and it has no progressive verb tenses (English I am reading), since they are absent from French. Conversely, Interlingua distinguishes singular nouns from plural nouns since all the control languages do.

The definite article le is invariable, as in English. Nouns have no grammatical gender. Plurals are formed by adding -s, or -es after a final consonant. Personal pronouns take one form for the subject and one for the direct object and reflexive. In the third person, the reflexive is always se. Most adverbs are derived regularly from adjectives by adding -mente, or -amente after a -c. An adverb can be formed from any adjective in this way.

Verbs take the same form for all persons (io, tu, illa vive, 'I live', 'you live', 'she lives'). The indicative (pare, 'appear', 'appears') is the same as the imperative (pare! 'appear!'), and there is no subjunctive. Three common verbs usually take short forms in the present tense: es for 'is', 'am', 'are;' ha for 'has', 'have;' and va for 'go', 'goes'. A few irregular verb forms are available, but rarely used.

There are four simple tenses (present, past, future, and conditional), three compound tenses (past, future, and conditional), and the passive voice. The compound structures employ an auxiliary plus the infinitive or the past participle (e.g., Ille ha arrivate, 'He has arrived'). Simple and compound tenses can be combined in various ways to express more complex tenses (e.g., Nos haberea morite, 'We would have died').

Word order is subject–verb–object, except that a direct object pronoun or reflexive pronoun comes before the verb (Io les vide, 'I see them'). Adjectives may precede or follow the nouns they modify, but they most often follow it. The position of adverbs is flexible, though constrained by common sense.

The grammar of Interlingua has been described as similar to that of the Romance languages, but greatly simplified, primarily under the influence of English. More recently, Interlingua's grammar has been likened to the simple grammars of Japanese and particularly Chinese.