2. Morphological Typology and Word Formation

2. MORPHOLOGICAL TYPOLOGY AND WORD FORMATION

Somi possesses a strictly isolating morphological profile with an underlying oligosynthetic lexemic core. There is an absolute absence of inflectional bound morphemes: verbs do not inflect for person, number, tense, aspect, or mood; nouns do not inflect for case, gender, or number.

2.1 Agglutinative Structural Compounding

New lexemes are generated exclusively by compounding standard monosyllabic roots. The morphological sequence follows a strict Head-Initial pattern within structural compounds: the primary semantic category is stated first, followed immediately by modifiers that specify its scope.

For instance, given the core roots ko (discrete entity), wa (fluid), and pa (dynamic action/energy):

• wako (Fluid + Entity) = Water / Liquid

• pako (Energy + Entity) = Engine / Machine / Battery

• pawa (Energy + Fluid) = Fuel / Current

2.2 Functional Shifts

Syntactic category conversion (noun-to-verb, adjective-to-noun) is universally valid and determined exclusively by structural positioning within the sentence structure. A root or compound functions as a verb when placed within the designated predicate slot, and as a noun when within an argument slot. No formal derivational affixes exist.