Basics of Grammar - Castes (I)
On Alternia, and in the Alternian Empire, the trolls are the main (if not the only) component. Biologically, trolls are theoretically sorted into one of twelve blood castes, though limebloods, as far as we know, are not an extant caste.
There also exists a dichotomy between seadwellers and landdwelling trolls that permeates all layers of the caste mindset (as seen with Equius' contempt of Eridan). An additional feature of the hemospectrum (the blood caste system) is that there occasionally may be glitches or mutations, which can (as with Karkat) produce trolls of an abnormal blood colour, or give (as with Rufioh) physical mutations of an undesirable kind.
This division into blood castes is so prevalent that it even seeps into Karkat's own speech, even if he is against the hemospectrum. He identifies three different caste types:
When talking to Terezi, he identifies her as a 'blue blood' indirectly via his use of 'your blue blooded vernacular', but when he explains to Dave the nuances of romance in a trashy romance novel he uses the terms 'highblood' and 'lowblood'. Equius additionally uses 'sea dweller' as a label for Eridan's caste:
As Equius identifies Eridan as a sea dweller, but also as a highblood ("his blood is even purplier"), that kind of brings about that there might be multiple caste groupings involved.
I propose the following:
Lowbloods > [Red, Bronze, Yellow, (Lime)]
Midbloods > [Olive, Jade, Teal]
Highbloods > [Teal, Cerulean, Indigo, Purlple, Violet, Tyrian]
Additionally, I propose another division level that deals specifically with more general groupings by colour terms which excludes the lowbloods whose blood colours differ significantly:
Greenbloods > [(Lime), Olive, Jade, Teal]
Bluebloods > [Teal, Cerulean, Indigo, Purple]
Seadwellers > [Violet, Tyrian]
In both groupings, teal acts as a sort of a boundary, meaning that it can be used as both a midblood/greenblood colour or as a highblood/blueblood colour when appropriate in context.
Further, due to the massive impact on troll society and culture that the hemospectrum and castes have, a formality system based both on social status and blood colour would definitely be present. In form and function this system would likely resemble the formality system of Japanese, with honorific speech and extensive formality in the grammar itself.
On the other hand, I don't think that castes would be marked on the nouns themselves (which is what the conlang on nowordsforsnow did), but rather it seems better to mark the nouns with a sort of an animacy system. In that case, nouns would belong to one of three classes: terrestrial (land-based), aquatic (sea-based) and inanimate. Twelve noun classes might be a bit overkill.
—Nexvs
