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Nouns - Number, Animacy and Case
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Nouns - Number, Animacy and Case
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 5 Jan 2023, 18:49.

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NOTES: currently need to update Common Declension table.

Number, Animacy and Case in Iru Nouns

Animacy

Every word in Iru belongs to one of three animacy categories. While the words aren't marked, their meaning carries the animacy level that they belong within. These levels are:
  1. Common
  2. Humans
  3. Deferencial


"Common" is fairly simple, and a large umbrella, as it refers to any non-human concepts. "Human" and "Deferencial may need some clarification. "Human" contains nouns referring to humans to whom no deference is directed, meaning, in particular, those of overall low social status. "Deferential" contains nouns referring to human to whom deference is directed, meaning those of overall higher social status. Much like in the pronoun system, the social status lines are drawn along age, gender, familial relationships, social positions and achievements.

Plurality

Plurality is expressed along singular and plural. The singular number is unmarked, while the plural is. The plurality markings are affixed at the end of the word, after the case markings. The marker for the plural is "(y)i".

SingularPlural
N/A-(y)i


Articles

Nouns are preceeded by determiners. More information on determiners can be found on an article dedicated to them.

Nominal Cases

The nominal case system is the most robust of these and brings together all the multiple aspects of nouns. Each noun can decline along five cases (Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Genitive and Locative) according to their syntactic function. The nouns are affixed accordingly to the case they are declining to, as well as according to their level of animacy - marking that which was previously unmarked in the root words.

There are three declensions. The first declension is for nouns ending in open vowels. The second declension for nouns ending in closed i (phonetically, j). The third declension is for nouns ending in consonants.

The Genitive Case

While most declensions alter the noun alone, the genitive case doesn't. It declines on the noun itself, but it preffixes d- to the article that follows it. For example:

A menyai ayira de guom yer ryom.
The old woman's dog is black


Declensions

First Declension - Open Vowel Stems

The tables below contains all the case suffixes that are applied to nouns.

A1. CommonA2. HumanA3. Deferential
SingularPluralSingularPluralSingularPlural
Nominative-m-mi-m-mi-m-mi
Accusative-he-hei-ha-hai-ho-hoi
Dative-ne-nei-na-nai-no-noi
Genitive-re d--rei d--ra d--rai d--ro d--roi d-
Locative-che-chei-cha-chai-cho-choi



Second Declension - Closed I Stems

A1. CommonA2. HumanA3. Deferential
SingularPluralSingularPluralSingularPlural
Nominative-mi-myi-mi-myi-mi-myi
Accusative-hei-heyi-hai-hayi-hoi-hoyi
Dative-mei-meyi-mai-mayi-moi-moyi
Genitive-rei d--reyi d--rai d--rayi d--roi d--royi d-
Locative-chei-cheyi-chai-chayi-choi-choyi

*Note: For closed I stems, the final 'i' is always removed before the word is suffixed.


Third Declension - Consonant Stems

A1. CommonA2. HumanA3. Deferential
SingularPluralSingularPluralSingularPlural
Nominative-e-i-a-i-o-i
Accusative-ehi-ahi-ohi
Dative-ei-ai-oi
Genitive-re d--rei d--ra d--rai d--ro d--roi d-
Locative-che--che- -i-cha--cha- -i-cho-cho- -i

*Note: For consonant stems, the process of declension for the locative involves infixing the 'ch-' particle before the last consonant. A root like "im" becomes "ichem".
*Note: For consonant stems, the suffixing of -r will always cause 'r' to cluster with some other consonant. Although it forms standard clusters in some instances, in others it instead merges into a different sound. List as follows: rr > r | zr > s | lr > l | mr > mn | nr > dr | sr/hr > sh | jr/chr/shr > sht



Exceptions

While this is an exhaustive list of the case endings in [...]. However, there are exceptions to these rules. An example of such is "yaiche", which in the accusative and locative is suffixed as "yaike" instead - yaikeshe(i) / yaikeche(i).
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