Detail #313: A Noun Morphology (for once without cases!)

Let's consider a language in which almost all noun stems begin on consonants; the exceptions are few enough that the minds of the speakers basically are able to keep track of them pretty well. All nouns belong to a variety of noun classes, which are (sometimes optionally) marked by a suffix.

The interesting bit is a set of five prefixes, a-, e-, i- and u-. These have different functions depending on the definiteness, the number and the class of the noun. Before -r-, -l-, and -w-, a- appears in the allomorph o-, whereas in the handful of nouns that begin with vowels, u- appears as w-, i- as y-, and the others get an intrusive -l-, also causing a- to appear as o-.

The class of thin, long things have these prefixes mark for orientation:

i-  away from the current reference (sg, pl)
u- towards the current reference (sg, pl)
a- perpendicular to the line of sight of the reference
e- moving (sg, pl) , in disarray (plural)

The class of round and irregular things have

i- small
a- large
u- large (very irregular shape)
e- varying sizes (only plural)

Places have

i- close by
a- forest
e- inhabited
u- pasture

Humans have

i- sibling
u- at least one generation older
e- slave or otherwise non-free
a- higher in social status

Animals have

i- small
e- tame
u- wild
a- large

Some of these may have meanings differing by definiteness as well, e.g. foodstuffs have this:

indef:
i- a small amount of
a- sweet, fat
u- sour, bitter
e- medical, poisonous

def:
i- a small piece of
a- sweet, fat
u- sour, bitter
e- of ritual importance

Unlike nominal or adjectival attributes, these cannot form simple predicates. You can of course take a noun with the prefix and use that as a predicate. However, a special verb exists that has the prefix appear twice in it:

i-l-i-t___
o-l-a-t___
u-l-u-t___
e-l-e-t____

  These of course take noun class congruence. For these, however, the noun class congruence is sort of half-way derivational: saying something like 'my brother is far away' would use the place-class congruence marker as well as the human-class marker.