Cases

The cases are:

Absolutive: -Ø (whichever plural applies)

Accusative: -ish (plural -ishu)

Genitive: -ôz/-ob (plural -ôzu. No plural for -ob, -ob means of and -ôz is an Adûnaic loan and stands in for "'s")

Ergative: -szh (plural -shazhu)

Essive: dub (no plural form)

Prepositional: -ishi (no plural form)

Allative: -naru (no plural form)

Ablative: ghâra/ghâraz (no plural form)

Instrumental: -sha (no plural form)

Ablative-instrumental: -itâk (plural form -itâku)

Comitative: sha/kha sha (no plural form)

Equative: -dub (plural form -dubu)

E-case: -â/-dhâ (no plural form)

Associative: -nû (plural form -nûz)

Sublative: -dı, -ıdı (no plural form)

Allocutive: -k (male), -th (female) (no plural form)

Elative: -vôl (no plural form)

Terminative: -žî, -ıž (plural form žı, ıžu)

Translative-Factitive: -kzsh, -ıkszh (no plural form)

Partitive: -akh (plural -akhu)

Abessive: ob-, ro- (no plural form)

Ilative: -ank (no plural form)

Vocative: -î (female), -a (male)

This is an ergative-absolutive alignment based on Hurrian's case system (with the addition of an optional accusative case used only in genitive contexts when using OSV order do distinguish the experiencer).

The absolutive case marks the experiencer or patient of an action or verb.

The ergative case marks the doer of the action.

The genitive generally marks "of" (-ob) and "'s" (-ôz). The only exception to this rule is "his" which functions as a pronoun. The genitive case also has a special form of the feature called suffixaufnahme. This a new grammatical structure called Suffixaufnahme + Relativization by Agreement + Case Concord. For example, a literal translation of kan mokh-Ø-ish nakbûr û shara-ôz-bûr-Ø karnbûr would not be "the house that is the man's is red." It would be "the house-ABS-ACC that-is man's-ABS-is red-is." The order for this in a simple sentence (in OSV) is obj-GEN-ABS sub-GEN-ABS verb.

The essive case means "as."

The prepositional case is "in."

The allative case means "to" or "towards."

The ablative case means "from" or "originating from." This case is a stand-alone word.

The instrumental case means "with." This can be a stand-alone word or be a suffix for the next closest noun. This simply depends on the purpose of the sentence. For example, a war chant will attach -sha to the end of a noun like uglur (glory) to create uglursha. This is short and punchy. Now, in a normal conversation you would probably say sha uglur.

The ablative-instrumental means "through" or "by."

The comitative case is related to the instrumental case and means "with" and "together with." This case is also a stand-alone word.

The allative case simply means towards.

Equative involves similarity and means literally "like" or "as" but is used mainly in mathematical context. To explain more fully the difference between the essive and equative cases, here is an example: ash'ranidub (equative: like a king or similar to a king) vs dub ash'rani (essive: as a king). So if you wanted to say "he is like a king," it would be ogh-Ø-bûr ash'ranidub. If you wanted to say "his first year as a king," it would be oghz-Ø âshûrzvaut dub ash'rani.

The e-case is related to the genitive and allative cases. It is used when a sentence has both direction and possession. This is an extremely rare grammatical feature in most languages and mainly present in Hurrian. -â is used after a consonant and -dhâ is used after a vowel.

Oddly, it also has an accusative case that is used in conjunction with the absolutive case. This case is only used in genitive case contexts to differentiate the experiencer. It is used only as discourse marker for disambiguation in the OSV order. That is why this is not a split-ergative system. The associative case is added as a suffix when the noun is associated with a specific verb or other noun. For example, "Bilbo, member of Thorin's Company" would be "torinôz-nû bîlbu-Ø-ish-ob" (Lit. Thorin's-association/company Bilbo-of).

The sublative case means onto. The elative case means out of or out from and is used instead of -ob and instead of ghâra/ghâraz.

The allocutive case is used in dialogue. When you are speaking to someone, you add the suffix to all nouns in the sentence depending on their gender, whether male or female (if the person is transgender you would use no suffix and s).

The terminative case is used when marking the end of something, until, and time. It is used in conjunction with gûrz, zî, or naru, attaching itself to the absolutive or ergative noun of the sentence.

The transitive-factitive case is attached to a noun in a sentence becoming something. For example, in "y becomes x," the TRAN-FACT suffix would be attached to y.

The partitive refers to an unspecified amount of something. The abessive case means without.

The ilative case means into.

The vocative case is used in an exclamation or proclamation and attaches itself to names specifically. For example, in "John sucks!," the suffix -a would attach to John (Johna). Similarly, if "Charlotte sucks!," Charlotte would be modified to Charlottaî.