Nouns

Nouns decline for 4 cases, 6 classes, 7 adjuncts, and possesive marking. Adorish takes no plural marking in the standard form and for most dialects except the Halburo dialect and some divergent varieties in the far west.

Noun Classes

Adorish noun classes are based off animacy:

-          Feminine: Applies to female humans.

-          Masculine: Applies to male humans.

-          Organic: Applies to non-binary humans, animals, and either lifeforms. Adoran views all life is sacred and of equal power. This also includes parts of lifeforms.

-          Inorganic: Applies to objects that are not organic.

-          Abstract: Applies to abstract concepts, weather, and some objects that are linked to the gods.

-          Neutral: A blank noun class.

Regular Class Declension

Adorish declines its six classes with its four cases. These are marked on nouns and because of analogy, adjectives which always take the genitive case.

*-soe and -sô are colloquial feminine forms.

Irregular declensions

There are some irregular noun declensions in Adorish that did not get analogised:

Noun Cases and Adjuncts

Cases:

-          Ergative: subject with a transitive verb (verb with object)

-          Absolutive: subject with an intransitive verb, direct object.

-          Genitive: possessor, adjectival noun.

-          Dative: indirect object, benefactive noun.

Adjuncts:

-          Inessive: inside / within

-          Adessive: near / on

-          Ablative: out of / from / away from

-          Illative: into / through / to

-          Allative: onto / out of (while inside) [ to

-          Comitative: with

-          Instrumental: by / using / with

Ergative and Absolutive

Adorish’ morphosyntactic alignment is ergative-absolutive meaning transitive subjects are treated differently to intransitve subjects and objects. The latter is marked with the ergative, whereas the latter is marked blank for the absolutive.

For reference, an intransitive verb is a verb whose action or state of being is not affecting the object. For example, the phrase “John hit the fruit” has a verb affecting the object, and therefore, the subject must be ergative

Chón-on yáj-a syláer-so

John-Erg. Fruit-Abs. Punch-Ces.

“John hit the fruit”

But for the sentence “John was hit by an arrow,” the subject becomes the noun affected by the verb. And therefore, the subject is absolutive.

Chón-o fiorô-s-miz nynché-so-e

John-Abs. Arrow-Gen.-With Pierce-Ces.-Pas.

“John was hit by an arrow”

Genitive

The Adorish genitive marks the possessor:

 Ardifách-oe nôcaesan 

Ardfiax-Gen. Heir-Abs.

But it is also marked on base adjectives for declining with nouns:

uv-és tôvo

Big-Gen. Man-Abs.

This fucntion is why the possessor comes before the possessum in a possessive phrase.

Dative

The dative marks indirect objects and recipients:

pa-n yáj-ae tôvo crán-ve

1S-Erg. Fruit-Dat. Man-Abs. Give-Dyn.Con.

“I’m giving the man fruit”

In very archaic registers of Adorish, it also has an allative meaning. So pan yájae vae tôvo cránve usually meant, “I give the man to the fruit”. This was before the development of adjuncts in Adorish.

Locative Adjuncts

Adorish has 7 adjuncts derived from three Old Adorish appositions: pynô “in”, nôri “near, at”, and miz “with”. They are mainly used for spatial functions, but also for other functions:

pa escrônôlî tzíac

1S-Abs. Lake-Abs.-Near Loc.Cop.

“I am at the lake”

There are two adjunct suffixes used to create five locative adjuncts: -nô for relation to being inside something and -nôri for being near to but not inside something.

-          With the absolutive case, -nô and -nôrî are rendered as the inessive and adessive adjuncts.

-          Combined with the genitive, -nô becomes the ablative. -nôri is used in some dialects as an ablative roughly meaning “from near”, but it feel out of usage in Western and Central Adorish.

-          The locative adjuncts combined with the dative case form the illative for -nô and the allative for -nôrî. In other words, the sense of motion to the object gets added to their meaning.

Locative adjuncts are not paired with verbs derived from locative prepositions like tzíac and vaerî, since those words already convey spatial sense.

Secondary Adjuncts

The adjunctive suffix -miz on its own modifies the noun as a comitative. In colloquial speech, this usually stands in for the conjunction “and” when used in a list of nouns. This replaces the usual conjunctive prefix o-, which is retained for formal speech.

-miz can only be combined with the genitive to take on an instrumental meaning:

Íchen Clinió-s-miz já-ej-e

Ixen-Abs. Clyne-Gen.-With Die-4S.-Pas.

“Ixen was killed by Clyne”

Sheet of adjuncts combined with Neutral case endings

Dialectal plural marking

The suffix is -yn, which originated from Erkanic -in. This marking is only used in a few dialects, namely the Halburan dialect.

Possessive marking

The possessum is marked with possessive prefixes. This prefixes usually stand in for possessive pronouns:

zé-maeso

1S.-Mother-Abs.

“My mother”

It is not commonly used in combination with another noun in a sentence. If it does, only the third person markers get used. In Adorish, an animate noun includes anything that can be kinetic. This partially separates from the noun class system in which there are a few classes which show a mix of the animacy hierarchy:

It should be noted that some irregularities occur:

-          vô- becomes ô- before nouns beginning with v-

Conjunctions

Xynorese used to rely more on conjunctions for linking clauses.

páno sôrō o harrô - Xynorese “I arrived and I noticed”

But in the Xynoric daughter languages, the complementizers  gained traction as the primary method for linking clauses. A few conjunctions stuck around in Adorish as either additional attachment to the subject, or for linking nouns in a phrase.

jo éjon-frô-miz

2P.-Abs. Add.-3P.-With

“us and also them”

These are the main three conjunctions:

-          éjon- ~ additive denotes that something is a part of a group. Equivalent to “also” in English.

-          o- ~ conjunctive combines two nouns as a part of a group.

-          y- ~ disjunctive denotes something is being apart of a different group. Equivalent to “or” in English.