Ćwarmin: Participles - an outline

The Ćwarmin verb morphology contains a system of participles, and these contribute a significant amount of mileage in the morphosyntax of the verb phrase.

Morphology

A primary division among the participles is that of transitivity: intransitive participles are merely infinitives with case suffixes. There is no reason to distinguish active from passive for an intransitive participle. However, some exceptional verbs exist - both intransitive verbs marked as transitive ones, and vice versa. [See this for more.]

The nominative is explicitly marked with -ij/-uw, but the other cases behave like any other noun case. Tense is not distinguished for intransitive participles. The perfect aspect can be marked by the suffix -em/-am, but is not mandatory. No explicit imperfect aspect marker exists.

Transitive verbs' participles, however, are formed with the marker -nem(e)-/-nam(a)- for active participles, and -yezi-/-wozu- for passive ones.

TAM is somewhat distinguished, with the active transitive verb having {perfect, imperfect} x {present, past} and the passive transitive verb having {perfect, imperfect}. 

The transitive active participle defaults to imperfect present. The reduplicated suffixes -nenem/-nanam convey perfect past. The past imperfect adds an -et/-at, but reducing the first syllable: -nmet, -nmat. Past perfect is a further reduplication- -memet/-mamat.

The passive morpheme -yezi/-wozu implies perfect aspect, but an extra morpheme -te/-ta gives the imperfect. In some eastern dialects, single -yezi/-wozu gives imperfect, -jejesd/-wowosd gives perfect. (In turn, we find dissimilated forms like -yedzest/-wolost, -źejest/-lowost, -rejest/-lowost, -jerest/-wolost, and even weird combos of them, as well as -ejdź/-owdz).

Usages

Participles in general

Participles function as adjectives and adverbs, expressing what someone is/was doing or what they were experiencing. More complex relations to the verb than subject, object or recipient generally requires rewriting as a clearly delineated subclause. However, the main verb in a subclause is often also inflected as a participle. Thus, participles could, at least partially, be considered subordinate finite verbs. (Non-relative subclauses tend to have normal finite verbs a bit more often, but this is not mandatory.)

• With verbs of perception to express subordinate actions ('see someone eating' etc)
• With some verbs of causation and other transitivity changing operations
  
• Heads of the verb phrase in relative subclauses
  

 

 The active participle

The active participles (i.e. the transitive active one, or the intransitive one) are used for these roles besides the prototypical subordinate verbal use:

• copositive present tense verbs (there is a post upcoming about what they are)
• This is restricted to the imperfect aspect form, but this does not convey an actual imperfect aspect, but rather copies the aspect of a different verb in the copositive construction)
  
• head of the verb phrase in relative subclauses, and sometimes other subclauses as well
• (were used as gerunds for a while in late middle Cwarmin)
  
• with some auxiliaries to express certain moods
• with some causative constructions and some embedded constructions (perceive someone doing something, etc)
• expressing general, impersonal things like 'it's raining', 'it's sunsetting', 'it's night', etc.
• Expressing 'while X:ing' or 'after X:ing' when used as an adverb, depending on the aspect used. The passive requires a periphrastic expression for this. 
• In place of a finite verb in expressions of surprise or adoration or appreciation.
• (transitive active only) used to express the additional verbal specifications as to how a direct object is affected by the subject's action
  
• (transitive active only) combined with the dative to express that the dative argument desires to do something
  

 The passive participle

• copositive present tense verbs (restricted to perfect aspect form, but the actual aspect is implicit)
  
• head of the verb phrase in relative subclauses, but never in other types of subclauses
• with some auxiliaries to express some voices
• can form temporal adverbs for 'before/after/while being X:ed' with adpositions.

The imperfect participle

• exhortation to continue
• in combination with the verb 'hold', signifying 'having the energy to go on doing x'

The perfect participle

This lists features that unify the passive and active perfect participles, but differ from the passive and active present participles.

• with some verbs, as an imperative of cessation. This especially in combination with the conjunction 'and'. This is mostly used with active perfect participles, but some passive participles are also used - usually ones whose argument structure is a bit unusual.
  
• with some verbs, as an imperative of immediate action.
  

Some family terms in Ćwarmin

The basic family terms:

julo = son
ot = oldest son
zel = daughter

father =  aru
mother = viri

brother = raŋa
older brother = cawot
sister = zuja

In older Ćwarmin, possessive suffixes existed, but are used in very restricted contexts. However, in some lexemes, they appear as derivative elements of unclear meaning. Thus

-ata | -ete, formerly 1sg possessive

has lead to these terms:

raŋata ('my brother') = uncle
zujata ('my sister') = aunt
aruta ('my father') = grandfather
virite ('my mother') = grandmother

Apparently, parents referring to their siblings and parents has become a way children refer to their uncles, aunts and grandparents, and this was lexicalized. Other synonyms do exist, however. In addition:

aruta and virite are sometimes used as formal address to parents.
julata and zelete are used by some clergymen to refer to congregants.
cawata is used by some clergymen to refer to their senior clergymen.

The plural forms never have the possessive suffixes in use, as the morphological complexities for that has been largely forgotten. 'Otata', 'my oldest son' appears in some testaments and such.

Parents- and siblings-in-law also have forms such as 

raŋaś
zujaś
aruś
viriś

In some regions, second person suffixes (-aba/-ebe) are used instead of these historical third person suffixes. Why second or third person suffixes won out in different regions is unclear.

Ćwarmin: How to distinguish a clitic postposition from a case

Ćwarmin has a rich system of cases, which to some extent form fusional forms with number and the definiteness system. Ćwarmin also has a rather rich system of postpositions which are not considered cases. What makes one set considered cases and the other set not?

The Ćwarmin cases can be found here. However, nearly all Ćwarmin postpositions also are suffixed (and the prepositions are prefixed) to words. There are, however, certain traits that distinguish them. Some suffixes are sometimes cases, sometimes not.

1. Possible carriers

Postpositions are less picky than cases. They go on the final word of a noun phrase, regardless of what that is. Cases can only go on nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numbers. However, some postpositions also have case suffixes on them, often showing their origin as nouns, adjectives or pronouns.
(Make up etymologies for "apart (from)", "together with", "between" and some others).

apart from: -źəd-ir (egəd 'roads' + plural general ablative)
"roads away (from each other)"
together with: -xədəŋ-ic
between: -xədəŋ-ijn (xədəŋ is related to the adaŋ-morpheme in numerals)

Similarly, only cases distinguish the paucal from the plural, or the specific from the definite. Postpositions tend to go on the accusative stem, but one also find examples of general ablative, the dative or the instrumental or negative, with the occasional comitative-to thrown in. Sometimes, a postposition will take a different case in the plural than in the singular. Postposition-case pairings are not entirely regular: there seems to be both a lexical component which is basically a parameter to a probabilistic parameter. In addition, many of the postpositions cause some morphological wear at the end of the suffix, sometimes making it unclear which case is involved. Factors which affect the postposition-case pairing are:

* the more individuated the noun, the more likely to be dative it is
* the more involved despite lack of volition, the more likely to be instrumental
* negations, absence, etc tend to favour the negative case
* the comitative-to sometimes is used to emphasize a noun as being central to the events or important
* the general ablative tends to be lexically determined by some nouns to appear in the plural
* the dative tends to be lexically determined by some verbs to appear with the postposition

Only in the case where a postposition goes on the accusative or general ablative stem is there any suspicion that they're actually cases.

2. Morphological position

Postpositions go after all the other suffixes of a word. Postpositions can, however, take their own suffixes. Cases go after derivational suffixes, and after case-number-definiteness*.

* Ćwarmin grammatical tradition is to consider the whole case-number-definiteness-complex a single marker, despite clear agglutination.

3. Behavior over gaps and ellipses

This, in particular, is the behavior where some cases in some constructions behave like cases, and in other constructions do not. Adpositions in Ćwarmin can mark a whole coordinated phrase, case can only mark one noun phrase each:

milt-əneś (ul) mar-ummona
[milti-əneś (ul) maruw-ummona]
"for liver (and) kidneys"
*milti ul mar-ummona

*wekre (ul) pokr-oku
wekr-iki (ul) pokr-oku
with garlic and onion

Two cases that have different behaviors in different contexts are the negative and the general ablative. The singular dative can also showcase both in a few particular constructions, e.g. with verbs for 'resemble x.dat', and other verbs of perception where something the stimulus is compared to is in the dative, it seems both case-like and case-unlike use is permissible for many speakers.

3.1 The negative

The negative, when communicating an abessive/caritive meaning, does not seem to be a proper case, but rather a postposition. Thus, you could get

wekre dar pokr-usta
garlic nor onion-without
without garlic and onion

but as subjects or objects,
*wekre dar pokr-usta ogm(o)-ur-ka źub-u
garlic nor onion stone-from-in grow-3sg

wekr-istə (dar) pokr-usta ogm-ur-ka źub-u
neither garlic nor onion grow from stone

4. Interactions with the reflexive accusative

Most postpositions can interact with the reflexive(ly possessed) accusative. Thus

wicxə-sin (my/your/his/her/... (own) house)
wicxə-sin-rede (behind my/your/his/her/... (own) house)
*wicxə-sin-itite (of ... (own) house)

Thus we can see that -rede, "behind" is a postposition, whereas -itite is not. The negative can combine with the reflexive possessive accusative whenever it is of a postpositional construction as well.

5. Congruence with numerals

The congruence with numerals is limited already, and is sometimes blocked by other case-marking constructions. However, the case suffixes do not participate in it at all, and only the case of the noun itself prior to case suffixing can affect case marking of numerals.

6. Fusionality

Fusionality with number and definiteness is generally not required to be a case, but if it is present, it is a case. All numbers that have such fusion have all the other hallmarks.

7. Coordination of postpositions

Postpositions can be coordinated, cases cannot:

bećəś-xədəŋ-ic ej-źəd-ir
you-together_with or_apart_from

*xarsab-ac-ak:a ej-enek:e
*the roof-on or-onto
*on or onto the roof

Nominative Plural Bryatesle

Plural Nominatives

Finally, the one remaining case form in Bryatesle. We have seen some patterns in the previous post about the nominative, and some of these provide us with the nominative plural. Going through the classes schematically, we get:

singular syncretisms implying parallel syncretisms

nom sg ≡ voc sg → nom pl ≡ voc pl

for one noun in this wider class, knavum, there is a dat pl syncretism, but this is basically the only exception to the rule. Tunsïm is a different exception, with even more syncretism thrown in.

nom sg ≡ excl sg → (nom pl ≡ (excl pl or acc pl))
nom sg ≡ acc sg → nom pl ≡ acc pl
nom sg ≡ dat sg → nom pl ≡ dat pl

For these, do not read A≡B as a commutative thing, read it rather as 'A is formed using the same morphological suffix as B'. I opted for the symbol '≡' in order that the reader realize that there is some non-standard notations in place. It is also important to note that these are implications, not equivalences, A → B does not imply B → A.*

* Talking about implications not implying something might feel a bit weird if you are not used to reasoning about logic. "A implies B" is essentially the same as "If A is true, then also B will be true", but says nothing about B in case A is not true - if "A implies B" holds and "A is false" holds, we do not know whether B is true or not, or in this rather prescriptive situation, the truth of B cannot be ascertained from the given information.

singular-plural syncretism

Some neuter nouns have a singular-plural nominative syncretism. With the exception of nayga (pine cone), these end in consonants. Thus we can't really say that there exists any specific nominative (singular or plural) suffix for these nouns.

REGULAR NOUNS
Now that the weirder nouns have been dealt with, we can look at the vanilla regulars. There is some level of "mild" irregularity going on even here, though. Beyond these, some loans from Dairwueh keep their plural nominative for about a generation or two, at least among the intelligentsia. The situation is not entirely similar to Latin in English, since the two languages are in a rather different relationship: both are quite likely at any given moment to be the dominant language of the area.

regular masculine plurals

A large number of masculine nouns have, in the singular, nominative suffixes in free variation. In the standard language, this situation does not obtain in the plural, but some tendencies exist that connect the singular and plural, along the following lines, where the higher up a rule is, the higher it ranks (i.e., a noun for which the suffixes {-a, -i} appear in the singular, the {-a, ...}-rule will be applied.

{-u, -y} → -yri (tho' some -iri or -ere also appear)
{-a, ...} → -ere
{-i, ...} → -ini, sometimes -uny (mainly after velars)
{-e, ...} → -ini, sometimes -uny (mainly after velars)

Nouns ending in a consonant tend to have -ere as plural nominative suffix as well.

In dialects, simplified systems exist (-iri or -ere for all), as well as systems with multiple permissible allomorphs (often in less elaborate systems than in the singular). Common consonants in the masculine plural suffixes are -r, -n, -l and -z. Atnel Bryatesle, however, has masculine (and neuter) plural suffixes with -k or -t in them, likely originating with a different particle in PBD than the particles giving rise to the standard set of suffixes.

regular feminine plurals

The most common regular plural feminine nominative suffixes are

-a, -(V)l, -(V)r/-r(V)

The feminine nouns ending in consonants all are somewhat irregular:

ib, ebel (eye)
sud, sadal (hub)
tsyl, tsular (feather) (dissimilation of -al following -r-)

The feminine plural nominative morpheme depends on the singular nominative morpheme according to this pattern:

-a → -al (dissimilated as -ar)
-i → -ir (dissimilated as -il)
-y → -yr (dissimilated as -il)
-e → -er (after a stem ending in -l, comes out as -ur)

mxera , mxeral ointment
nanmi, nanmir hook
tapsy, tapsyr birthmark
mekse, mekser mare
xable, xablur spear

 Occasional exceptions exist; some former hiatus situations have come out as follows:

...ai, ...ail → ...a, ...il
...ya, ...yal → ...e, ...al
...ue, ...uel → ...ve, ...ul

Some historical examples of these have been hit by analogy and rendered similar to the regular plurals, but some regular plurals have also hit and been turned into examples of these patterns.
Examples (with + marking examples that have appeared due to analogy):

gara, garil (bread roll)
rame, ramal (standard-sized wooden container for salted fish)
+nime, nimal (a flute)
sepe, sepul (grass turf)
gyle, gylar (chopsticks)
+rile, rilar (small drinking vessel)

regular neuter plurals

Regular neuter nouns form their plural by suffixes -veku or -uku. If the final syllable of the stem carries stress (or secondary stress), -uku is used. Otherwise, -veku is used. (This is not entirely true, the truth is "if the final syllable carried stress before the -ve- → -u- reduction in unstressed syllables, it is -uku", however, the previously stated rule of thumb will almost always be accurate, but does account for some dialectal differences. This rule has one absolute consequence, however: monosyllabic neuters always have plurals with -uku. A secondary development that has a similar outcome is -veku after consonant clusters becoming -uku. Here, ' marks stress, appearing before the stressed syllable)

ran-uku wool socks
min-uku fox pelts
tert-uku pebbles

'baset-veku mushrooms
ti'rik-uku straws
'tegarks-uku branches
a'gixn-uku riches

Formation of the Singular Nominative in Bryatesle

I have this far evaded discussing the formation of the nominative case in Bryatesle. Even in the tabular representation of the nominal morphology, the nominative column basically consists of varied all the way down, for both singular and plural. The feminine vocative likewise is varied.

It is now time to take a closer look at the singular part of this, with some early hints about the plural nominative as well. There are a few important phenomena we will encounter: a) case syncretism, b) free variation, c) lexically determined allomorphy, d) zero marking.

A phenomenon we'll also encounter is that of me not having planned the format very much ahead of time, and as I wrote this over several months of time, the format for lexical entries varies over the scope of the post, and I will not go and fix that.

I've spent a lot of time on this and there's a risk there's inconsistencies. Currently I feel that if I do not commit to this now, I'll never post it, so here goes.

There is some amount of free variation for a bunch of nouns, with several masculines having, for instance, one of these sets of permissible suffixes:

{-a, -e, -u} or {-e, -i, -ε} or {-i, -u}

as a common set of permissible masculine nominative suffixes for a bunch of nouns. However, some nouns have more restricted sets.

A final word before getting into the actual nitty-gritty on the case morphology of the nominative is that nearly all nouns adhere to the table here insofar as secondary case markers go.

Note: -ε is the empty string, which usually is to be taken as 'no suffix on the stem'. The stem usually will end in a consonant in Bryatesle. -ε may appear in several of the paragraphs below.

Historical linguistics of the situation

It is conceivable that the Sargaĺk-Dairwueh-Bryatesle proto-language had an alignment similar to that of Sargaĺk, viz. subjects of ditransitive verbs had a distinct case (called the 'pegative'), whereas all the other core NPs of ditransitive, transitive and intransitive verbs were in a default 'absolutive' case. The absolutive was not necessarily unmarked, but may have had morphemes correlating with the gender of the noun. It seems that a system of three genders was already in place by the proto-language.

Bryatesle and Dairwueh quickly shed the pegative case, but traces of the alignment can still be found: mainly nominative-accusative syncretism and nominative-dative syncretism in the case of Bryatesle. A nominative-accusative alignment has emerged, with a few ergative traces. The ergative subsystem in Dairwueh likewise might have emerged out of a similar tension with regards to the pegative alignment of the proto-language. A secondary complication is that for some nouns, the pegative form was in such prevalent use that it eventually became the nominative.

The nom-vocative and nom-exclamative syncretisms are harder to explain historically, but potentially, some semantic explanations can be posited: things that relatively often are invoked may receive the vocative or exclamative as their nominative through semantic bleaching of the voc/excl case suffixes.

Patterns in All Genders

All genders have examples where case syncretism between the nominative and some other case occurs. This is most thoroughly present in the neuter, where case syncretism with the accusative is near-universal. However, some 'extensions' exist there as well: the same syncretisms that occur in the masculine and feminine can occur in the neuter, but will extend the syncretism to the accusative for neuters. (Of course, the neuter lacks the vocative, so a nominative-accusative-vocative syncretism does not occur.)

Nominative-Vocative syncretism

The nominative-vocative syncretism is common with names for totemic spirits, ritual objects as well as objects that carry cultural roles without carrying actual kinetic functions, such as written deeds, testaments, and so forth.

Thus, a testament is xvuntam (f), and this syncretism is paralleled in the plural, with xvuntvim. A banner is a tunsïm, with the plural tunsïm as well. Most non-living masculine nouns will conflate the singular and plural vocative as well, bringing this syncretism quite far. A deed is a knavum, but exceptionally has a plural nominative distinct from the vocative nominative, viz. knavia (Thus falling in the nom-dat syncretism group in the plural).

Nominative-Exclamative syncretism

This comes in two subforms, one having nom-acc syncretism in the plural, the other having nom-excl consistently in the plural as well. Most of these nouns are 'semantically strong' - either abhorrently so, or less commonly positively so.

A few examples would be:

raxny (m, plural raxunu) a wolf
tineny (f, plural tivin) an omen
ruleny (n, plural ruluku) an abomination
parteny (n, plural partuku) a destructive fire
pileny (f, plural pilvin) a beauty
kysëny (m/f, plural kyrunu/kyrvin) a village elder, a wise (wo)ma

Most neuter nouns in the nom-excl category fall in the plural nom-acc subcategory, and most nouns in that subcategory are neuter, but neither of these implications hold fully.

Nominative-Accusative syncretism

In addition to the neuter nouns, a number of inanimate feminines have nominative-accusative syncretism.

tabe (f, plural taviku) ladle
tutë (f, plural tutviku) hood (the clothing detail)
rimbe (f, plural rimiku) ember
juzë (f, plural juzviku) basket
guge (f, plural guriku) bean (also, in the plural: testicles)

As mentioned, nom-excl syncretism oftentimes is paired with nom-acc syncretism in the plural. For singulars with nom-acc syncretism, this syncretism almost invariably also holds in the plural.

Nominative-Dative syncretism

Especially common in the masculine, but also has some 'partial' examples with masculines whose nominative is in free variation and one of the free variants happens to be identical to the dative.

gzare (pl. gzarmex) - shin
ulzë (pl. ulzumex)- mitten
kintë, kinti (pl. kintumex) - trapping pit
skare, skari (pl. skazumex) - road

 A very few feminines also have this, namely

yara (pl. yarvia) bride
bura (pl. burvia) pregnant woman
kmuta (pl. kmutvia) widow
kuǧa (pl. kuvia) a feminine supernatural being
ylna (pl. ylvia) a different type of feminine supernatural being
imba (pl. imbia) uterus

All nouns with nom-dat syncretism in the singular also have it in the plural, but the opposite does not hold. Thus, at least the following are attested with singular nominatives distinct from the dative, but the nominative and dative plurals conflated:

elet (pl. eleveku) roof
spen (pl. spenuku) thread

Patterns limited to the Masculine

Many masculine nouns end in consonants. (This is basically stolen from Russian!) However, way more than in Russian, there is also a number of masculines whose stems are followed by a vowel or even end in a vowel, and sometimes there are several possible nominative suffixes in free variation. This variation seems only to be a feature of the literary language, as different dialects rather seem to fix one or another, with at most two freely alternating forms existing in just a handful of "natural" dialects for just a handful of nouns. There is a systematic counter-exception, though: some nouns have both a singular ending in a consonant and a vowel in quite a few dialects, and this seems to be partially conditioned by prosodic cues.

However, all the forms attested in the literary language are attested in some dialect in the vicinity of some of the Bryatesle linguistic centres.

The following 'clusters' of nominative forms can be found:

{-a, -e, -u}, we find for instance
karna, karne, karnu (stone for ballast)
this has the dative karnë
xebsa, xebse, xebsu (puppy)
this has the dative xebsë
tata, tatë, tatu (thorn)
the dative is tatë, but dialects with either tete, tate, tetë or tatë as the nominative form often have other one for the dative.
saxa, saxe, saxu (link in a chain)
the dative is saxe. It turns out forms with nominative-dative conflation in some dialects have had a tendency to trigger innovation of new forms that are distinct, such as both the saxa and saxu forms here. -u is probably by analogy to the -u neuter suffix.
kydla, kydle, kydlu (glove)
the dative is kydlë. Dialectally, a nominative kydlë also appears, but this is not attested in the literary language.

{-ε, -e, -i }
stal, stalë, stali (knight)
The distribution of the monosyllabic vs. bisyllabic forms seems to follow some stress-based pattern, i.e. avoiding that stressed syllables come too close together. Many dialects thus have the -ε form for the next few nouns, but many also have one or the other of the longer forms. Stale as dative is known, probably emerging to restore the case distinction. (FYI: diareses in the Bryatesle orthography mark that a previous 'alveolar' actually is dental)

yrf, yrpe, yrpi (a scar, a nick in a knife blade, a tear in a piece of fabric or paper)

ibs, ibse, ibsi (mouse)
Conflation of dative and nominative is fairly common for this noun throughout the Bryatesle area, even to the extent that ibsi replaces the more regular dative ibse in several dialects. 'Ibs' as a nominative seems to be an innovation by analogy with other nouns in this class, with *ibse or *ibsi being the original form.

tnap, tnape, tnapi (sack)

{-u, -y}

gazu, gazy (makeshit bridge)

ambu, amby (hammer)

Nonsyncretic Masculines

Most masculine nouns do not exhibit any syncretism, and so have their own unique forms in the nominative. 

Many of them have their stem identical to the nominative. Not all of them end in consonants, but most do. However, some have suffixes such as -i, -a or -u after the stem.

The following examples will have the stem bolded, and nominative suffixes italicized, with an added dash just to be completely clear:

bagr-u (carpet)
yry-a (wool (mass noun))
dulr-u (hat)
safk (dust (mass noun))
fyn-i (toe)
azës (thief)
gen-u (bronze, bronze item)
imin-u (ditch, really minor river)
guv-u (mushroom, also penis)

Patterns Limited to the Feminine

In the feminine, there are few hard and fast rules as to what singular nominative and what plural nominative go together (plurals will be the topic of the next post). Some nom-voc syncretism also exists, but for most nouns there are some fairly regular vocative patterns, i.e. -e feminines tend to have -ele vocatives, -a feminines tend to have -ala, etc.

The full set of potential regular feminine nominative singular formations is:

(V)-e*, (V)-ε*, -e, -i, -y, -a

* These unusual forms, i.e. a stem ending in vowel is unique to the feminine, and only appears in six words: ala, 'mother', yjala, '(maternal) grandmother', diri-e, '(paternal grandmother)', myni-e, 'daughter', dajnu, 'granddaughter'. If we consider -ε to be the actual nominative suffix, we can in fact eliminate -u from the set of feminine nominative suffixes altogether.

In monosyllabic stems, the -i, -e and -y nominative suffixes sometimes cause an umlaut-like effect where u > y or a > e, but you also find the -a suffix causing some monosyllabic stems having i,y > e or e > a, thus

*matë > metë, mat- (chain)
*buli > byli, bul- ( mushroom, count noun)
*kera > kara, ker- ( knee )
*brytsa > bretsa, bryts- ( wind )
*glita > gleta, glit- ( candle )
*ykte > ekte, ykt- ( cheese )
*ansë > ensë, ans"- ( liver )

These effects are lacking in the masculine due to differences in prosody: the feminine -i/-e/-y suffixes were stressed at the time the sound change occurred.

A small number of feminines end in consonants:

ib - eye
sud - navel, middle, hub (of a wheel),
tsyl - feather

Patterns Limited to the Neuter

A unique syncretism for the neuter is singular-plural nominative syncretism, i.e. the nominative having no distinct plural form. This occurs for at least the following nouns:

ilenk shoe, shoes
unsyt a particular small type of fruit
keb a particular small species of fish
varal brick(s) - probably a former feminine plural?
surux wart(s)
ayg sinew
nayga pine cone(s), nipples
kirip seeds
selyg refuse, waste, any fairly useless by-product
vreg small stone
kun shape, mould, baking mould
kifut bug, insect, spider
ryp bug, insect, spider
yts wound
rifs needle (of coniferous trees)

For many of these, it is also occasionally seen that other cases are used in the singular even when the referent is plural, but at the very least the plural forms are possible, permitted and fairly well attested for the other cases.

Almost all neuter nouns end in -C, and most of the time, this is also the stem. However, a few have -ig, -eg, -yg, -ip, -ut or -yt as a nominative suffix, thus having the stem be shorter than the nominative.

Ŋʒädär: Introduction to the Perfective side of the TAM system

Beyond the reduplication mentioned here, Ŋʒädär is rich in moods and aspects. Its tense system permits rather complicated things by auxiliaries, but for a clause without an auxiliary, there are two tenses: past and non-past, which are not distinguished in all moods. Auxiliaries are used for specific times such as 'yesterday', and in combination with aspect forms, obtain forms like 'until yesterday', 'since yesterday', 'intermittently a long time ago', etc.

Non-past is generally not marked by any morpheme, although a handful of verbs do get the marker -vul/vıl/vil/vül- in the inverse when the verb is non-past, instead of the usual marker. These are verbs of perception, of opinion, and of mental states in general. The morpheme originates with the noun *vurl that in Proto-ŊƷD signified the 'soul' of animals. The reason for this only appearing in the non-past tense may originate with some kind of belief that animal cognition did not much care about the past - that animals were more present-centered than man, and this fits with ideas about animal psychology in ŊƷD superstitions throughout the ŊƷD tribes.

The past is marked by a suffix after the aspect marker, but before the person marking. This suffix appears in the realis, optative and dubitative, and takes the form -(I)c'l(I)-.

Beyond this, we get the aspect system. The location of the aspect marker is immediately after the verb root, sometimes causing slight morphophonological alterations of the root itself. The perfective marker has somewhat merged with modal markers.

Perfective, realis:

-mOl-

After stops, this mutates into

-wOl-

Before velar sounds and -w-, the -l- is lost, and before -v-, it's lost while turning the -v- into -w-.  The -m-/-w- part can cause a variety of other things as well: -pw- and -tw- tend to become -kw-. -nm- becomes -m(:)- or -n(:)-. Depending on dialect, -wm- becomes -m(:)-.

Note: intrinsically perfect verbs do not take this marker, unless the perfectivity is emphasized.

Infinitives do not form perfectives by agglutination, but rather as phrases consisting of two infinitives, with the second infinitive being 'modan', which never appears in any inflected form (since it has been subsumed into the morphology of the finite verb.)

Perfective, optative:

-mUksA-

After stops, this mutates into

-wUksA-, where if U = u, the w- further vanishes.

The -m(closed vowel)- part of these morphemes comes from a particle, 'mod', which was a reduction of the verb 'took' and came to signify perfectiveness. -ksA- comes from a similar particle, 'okta', which signified 'maybe'. The optative perfect is always intransitive. If the verb usually would be transitive, the perfect optative is understood as a passive.

Perfect, conditional

-OlOb-

If followed by a morpheme beginning in a labial, this turns into -OlwO-.

The historical origin is a noun olob, signifying 'circumstance, case, chance, fate'.

Perfective, imperative:

-rOn (sg)
-rOndA (pl)

From the imperative form of the verb 'go'. The marker that exists in other related languages had been lost, and the auxiliary 'go!' slowly was merged into the verb morphology. Certain verbs have their own exceptional forms.

Perfective, dubitative

The dubitative marks things that are somewhat unsure. The historical origin is a suffix -EŋdzE, whose further origins probably lie in an assimilated auxiliary. The suffix now is -ŋŋE

Detail #312: Conjugations, Declinations and Exceptional Lexemes

Consider a language along the style of Latin, Russian or Finnish, where nouns and verbs belong to conjugations or declensions. Each conjugation or declension provides somewhat different patterns for inflecting your nouns and verbs. Usually in languages such as these, a noun or verb belongs to one in particular, although dialectal, *-lectal and even historical variation may exist. A lexeme might also be somewhat ambiguous as to what particular such class it belongs to.

However, you can also imagine lexemes that in most normal use belongs to a particular class, but have individual exceptions – a certain case or TAM+person or whatever behaving like the lexeme belonged to a different class.

These are fairly plausible exceptions and can be found in many languages. However. A thing that I am unaware of any careful description of are semantically conditioned exceptions. I.e. a word that belongs to a particular class, except for a specific set of phrases including that word - for instance, sausages belong to declination III, but in a particular compound or with a particular attribute that turns it into a specific type of sausage, the lexeme "sausage" is suddenly inflected as though it belonged to a different conjugation. Referring to sausages of that particular type even without the compound or attribute may also trigger the exceptional inflectional pattern.

A couple of things one could do with this:

• restrict this quirk to only some specific case or number - say having the nominative plural behave exceptionally for the specific phrase, but no other case or number; or have it go for all the plurals?
• generalize it as a kind of derivational tool for those lexemes belonging to a particular declension or conjugation

This kind of detail is an easy way of giving one's conlang a kind of 'realistic texture', the kind of 'lived-in' feeling of, say, Finnish, German, Russian, Latin or Georgian.

The reason, btw, why I used the noun "sausage" as an example is that some speakers of Southwest Finnish have that exact distinction, apparently. Makkara has the plural stem makkaroi- in the plural for most sausages, but a few specific types of sausage have makkari- in the plural.

Imperatives and Exceptional Imperatives in Dairwueh

I decided to include imperatives in Dairwueh for a variety of reasons. Here's a few features:

A number of verbs have slight suppletions, c.f.

ak! (sg), aksu! (pl)
go!
kadu - go (inf)

ral! (sg) rallu! (pl)
sasalu - hurry

ten! tessu!
vedeu - help (inf)

vir! virru!
vesu - to listen

sim! smu!
gesem - tell, say

Some verbs drop part of the root:

bar! (sg), barru! (pl)
barinə - to be careful, to get out of the way, to be careful with something

dig! dixu!
endixu - stand

rud! ruxu!
berugu - leave a place

knu! knuvu!
aknuvu - keep, hold

Most roots lose any final vowel, and apply some morpheme out of the set {-u|-su, -ak|-su, -ar|-sur, -g|-xu}, where the left element is the singular and the right element the plural. The morpheme is lexically determined but tends to follow this schematic:

verbs of states: {-ar, -sur}
verbs of movement: {-ak, -su}
verbs of increase, and of stature: {-g, -xu}
other intransitive verbs: {-u, -su}
transitive verbs of applying a state to something: {-g, -xu}
transitive verbs of movement: {-u, -su}
other transitive verbs {-g, -xu}

Usually, the imperative is fronted, but this is not fully mandatory. There are also some syntactical complications. The main syntactical complication are 'imperatives with overt subjects', where some subject other than the addressee is syntactically in some sense the subject of the imperative. One of these is 'san|sannu', signifying 'look'. It can take a third person "subject".

kreruš san vorge
timberman look! strong
look how strong the timberman is

This might seem as an object, but it turns out that these quirky imperative-subjects can be coordinated as subjects of other verbs:

kreruš san vorge ke darav xogebars doŋbat-ta
timberman look! strong and works harder than smith

It also passes some other subjecthood tests, and therefore, peculiarly enough, qualifies as a subject despite the actual subject of the imperativey part of the verb is the second person.

Detail #247: Definite Articles as Derivative Affixes

Consider abstract nouns. For certain of them, definiteness* might not make much semantic sense. Of course, the language might have syntactic rules regarding definiteness that sometimes force a noun to be definite, but let's imagine that this language doesn't have such rules.

Why not have definiteness on these nouns instead be a way of deriving 'proper' or 'good' or 'ideal' X? Friendship vs. the friendship: the first is friendship in general, the latter is ideal friendship. Skill vs. the skill, the first is just ability in general, the latter the ideal ability.

* depending on how definiteness works in your language, a topic to which I have intentions of returning

Dairwueh: Some Morphological Tables

The Dairwueh verb is not excessively synthetic:

Finite Verbs with Congruence
	Isg	IIsg	IIIsg	IIIsg2	Ipl	IIpl	IIIpl
indicative, present	-as	-er	---/-o(fem)	*	-uan	-uše	-uni
indicative, past	-is	-eb	-iŋ	-e	-ad	-abe	-ari
affirmative irrealis	-əym	-əur	-əyi/-əvo	-əy	-əgan	-əgaš	-əŋan
negative, present	-šna	-(ə)vne	-šne	-š	-ušen	-ušen	-šne
negative, past	-eyš	-eyš	-eyš	-š	-eyšin	-eyšin	-eyšin
passive, present	-ŋor	-ŋor	-ŋa	-ŋ	-ŋan	-ŋan	-ŋa
Periphrastic Passive forms
passive, neg. pres.	erb- + passive neg participle
passive, irrealis	ŋey- + passive irrealis participle
passive, past	ŋe- + passive affirmative participle
passive, neg.	erb- + passive negative participle

The final consonant of the infinitive (and possibly the vowel before it) is removed, and the suffix is added. Notable here is that the realis distinguishes {past, present} x {positive, negative}, whereas irrealis distinguishes {affirmative, negative}. 

Infinitive:  no particular morpheme, but almost exclusively ends in consonants.

The negative does not distinguish realis from irrealis, but does distinguish past from present.

* is formed in a rather different way - if the last syllable of the infinitive is bimoraic (a post on moras in Dairwueh will appear at some point), the IIIsg2 is identical. Otherwise, the IIIsg lengthens the last syllable. The rest of the III_sg² forms are suffixed to that stem.

The participles are formed as follows:

active
	affirmative
		present	-un
		past	-ar
		irrealis	-umuš
	negative
		present	-šun
		past	-eyš
passive
	affirmative		-šəŋ
	negative		e-___-šor
	irrealis		e-___-šis

The negative and irrealis participle when inflected for cases other than the nominative change slightly: -šor and ₋šis shorten to -šr- and -šs- before suffixes that begin in vowel, e.g. ekanšsar - 'to he who may rise'.

Case forms

	masc sg	fem sg	neut sg	masc pl	fem pl	neut pl
nom	*	-(r)i	-e/-a	*	***-(t)a	-a (a few nouns have -e in both sg and pl)
acc	-na	-nu	-e	-ivna	***-(t)ar	-a
dat	-ar	-(r)ir	-n	-ivit	***-(r)it	-ivit
gen	-at	-ra	-ŋa	-ŋa/-edin**	***-(r)in	-ivit
loc-instr	-ŋa	-at	-ŋa	-ŋa/-eder**	***-(r)ar	-ŋa

* the masc sg and pl nominative have a plethora of lexically determined suffixes. Some nouns even permit a variety of suffixes for these forms, forms that sometimes convey extra information. The -iv-/-ed- part of the masc pl suffixes and the -er- part of the fem pl suffixes can be replaced by such suffixes as well to convey the same information.

**-edin/-eder are exclusively used with nouns referring to humans. 

*** a similar lengthening as that which happens with infinitives takes place before applying the suffix

The adjective will be laid out in a separate post.

Tatediem: Pronominal Possession, Indirect Objects

Tatediem marks indirect objects - these can only be humans, btw - by a specific set of prefixes (that in part are 'subsumed' in the object slot, generally prefixing themselves to the object prefix with some level of assimilation).

	1		2		3
	masc	fem	masc	fem	masc	fem
sg	-heŋ-	-heŋ-	-win-	-wir-	-ŋme-	-har-
dual	-hami-	-himi-	-sin-	-tir-	-ŋra-	-ŋar-
pl	-hew-	-hig-	-cin-	-cin-	-ŋim-	-lar-

Which, by the way, reminds me that I have not yet given the personal pronouns! Here, feminines to the right, masculines to the left:

	1		2
	subj	obj	subj	obj
sg	-ke-, -ke-	-her-, -hec-	-gi-, -gi-	-wir-, -ŋwiŋ-
dl	-am-, -im-	-kiim-, -kaam-	-di-, -tin-	-sir-, -sin-
pl	-eg-, -ic-	-xec-, -ki-	-gi-, -gi-	-cir-, -cir-

As for expressing possession, the object prefixes can be affixed between the gender prefix and the root of a noun. However, many dialects have opted for marking an empty verb-like particle in the vicinity with the gender of the possessed noun (as subject), and the dative prefix (or the object prefix for dative-less nouns) as the object. The verb is -gìan-, a verb that in some dialects also can serve as copula. It lacks all other markings except subject and object. 

Conversely, some dialects use -páhí-, 'possess', and have a somewhat different structure - the possessor as possessor, and the possessee as subject. If the possessor has a dative marker, the possessee is marked with that prefix in the subject slot, whereas if the possessor is of some other gender, the possessor has a subject-like marking and the possessum has an object marking.

Thus

ye-ŋəbs = the dog
ye-her-ŋəbs = my dog
ye-kiim-ŋəbs = the dog belonging to the two of us
ye-ŋim-ŋəbs - their dog
(assimilation often hits: yeki:ŋebs/yeki:mbs, yeŋiŋəbs/yeŋ:ibs) 

But also:

 (ye-)ŋəbs ye-heŋ-(g)ìan = a/the dog that belongs to me (assimilated as yeŋəbs yeŋ:ì:n)
(ye-)ŋebs heŋ-ye-páhí = a/the dog that I own (assimilates to yeŋəbs heypáí)
(ye-)ŋebs ku-l-páhí = the dog that belongs to neut1 noun 

Sometimes, the prefix relating to the possessum is omitted from -(g)ìan or páhí, if it is definite:

yeŋəbs heŋian
yeŋəbs kepáhí

Revisiting Bryatesle: Past tense verbs and their use

The Bryatesle verb morphology is relatively simple - in part because I made it while studying Russian, a language that overdoes verb morphology, and in part because I wanted to try something quite different from Finnish and Russian in that regard.

Most verbs do not mark tense, but all verbs mark person and aspect. The aspect resides somewhere between being derivative and being inflectional.

However, a handful of verbs do have a past tense form - to say (lirai), to give (likem), to go (kivyi), to have (ibam), to get (davei). Most of them have the full product of {telic, atelic}*{past, present}. Morphological tables can be found at the end of the post.

Since tense is rather marginal in Bryatesle, there is little in ways of 'specific' typological behaviors it showcases when it comes to tense. Its tense system is neither one of past-vs-nonpast or future-vs-nonfuture. I have chosen to call the tenses 'present' vs. 'past' out of convenience - 'present' is as much nonpast as it is future, and past is as much past as it is nonfuture. The system might best be described as one of nonfuture vs. nonpast.

This, however, only applies when these forms are used in isolation. When used in coordination with other verbs as 'tense-carrier', the difference becomes more clearly one of past vs. non-past - though a marked non-past is somewhat more likely to be future than present.

As tense-markers, these basically just coordinate with a verb that is inflected for aspect - both verbs usually are in the same aspect, although some circumstances (that I might describe later when I've designed them) permit for combinations of aspect, however. These do encode additional information about the function of the utterance, so these are not 'just tense markers', they mark a complicated combination of modal information.

Any more complex noun phrases than pronouns that are arguments of only the past-tense marked verb is an indicator that the past tense verb does not primarily work as a tense marker - its normal meaning is then assumed, although its past tense meaning too is invoked - and the past tense meaning of the other verb may still be implicit (although not fully necessarily). Shared arguments go to the left of both verbs. Only pronouns can go between the two verbs.

likem, to give. Also signifies to permit, to allow, to tolerate, to provide, to sustain, to hold up against something, to offer resistance

	PRESENT			PAST
	ATELIC	TELIC		ATELIC	TELIC
I sg	lïkem	lïkan		lïkun	lïkut
II sg	lïker	lïka		lïkuvi	lïkut
III h	lïker	lïkat		lïku	likut
III n	lïker	lïkat		lïku	lïkut
I pl	lïkeim	lïkam		lïkum	lïkvam
II pl	lïkeinï	likanë		lïkunï	lïkvanë
III h	lïkeis	lïkanis		lïkunï	lïkunas
III n	lïkeis/lïker	likanis/lïkanïi/ lïkat		lïkunï/liku	lïkanis/lïkanïi/lïkat

Esdos saube e liku - the bear roared (as an act of resistance)

hedam e lïkun - I kept sleeping (sleep-1sg give-1sg.past) (implicitly despite things that tried waking me up)

astas e likut - you fought (successfully) ('you gave, you fought' c.f. 'gave fight')

kvaster e nëm likut - he spoke nonsense (and I let him do so)

en kvaster e en likut - he spoke nonsense, (and continued to do so)

davei, to get. Also signifies to be released (from some obligation - x did until he no longer was obligated to, for instance), to be found innocent, to cave in, not to withstand something and thus to fall or be subdued by it, to be beset by something, to dislike the circumstance described by the other verb

	PRESENT			PAST
	ATELIC	TELIC		ATELIC	TELIC
I sg	davei	davin			davut
II sg	davar	davas			davuvi
III h	davasr	davat			davuvi
III n	davasr	davat			davat
I pl	davaim	davam			dauvam
II pl	davainï	davanë			dauvanë
III h	davais	davanis			daunas
III n	davais	davanis			davanis

emi ramat e tësri davuvi - she sings and you.dat got.3sg - she sang until you got annoyed

en sarbrat e davuvi - he work.3sg and got - he worked until he had fulfilled his obligation

en xnynër e davuvi - he felt a stench (and was revolted)

to say, to promise, to believe, to vouch for, to offer (a price or exchange), to claim ownership or entitlement to, to speak for (object in oblique secondary subject case), to have authority over (object in accusative possessive), to maintain a certain claim holds true

	PRESENT			PAST
	ATELIC	TELIC		ATELIC	TELIC
I sg	lïrai	lïran		lïrun	lïrut
II sg	lïrar	lïras		lïruri	lïrut
III h	lïrar	lïrat		lïrudë/liru	liruvi
III n	lïrar	lïrat		lïru	lïrat
I pl	lïraim	lïram		lïruim	lïruvam
II pl	lïrainï	liranë		lïrunï	lïruvanë
III h	lïrais	lïranis		lïrunï	lïrunas
III n	lïrar/lïrais	lirat/lïranïi		lïru/lïrudë	lïrunas

es parsak vanetsat nëm lïrun

he story tell.atelic3sg I say.past.telic

I told you he told a (mean) story!

lïrunï/lïrunas is often used as a past tense tag particle, marking the past-ness of the event referred to, and the general reputation that the event referred to is worth seeing, or that it truly does happen regularly or that the subject is able to perform such a stunt. Thus

es xudipanelë bumal xudsur lïrunï!

he throw-spring.dat water throws they said = the geyser really ejected water (as they are rumoured to).

A neuter noun that is the subject of a transitive verb is put in a construction where the masculine pronoun followed by the neuter noun in dative 'typecasts' the expression - basically, Bryatesle's ergative case looks like that. xudi = throw, panël = source, spring. Xudipanël = geyser.

to have, to understand, to rule, to judge, to consider [something or someone] [something], to know (by inference)

	PRESENT			PAST
	ATELIC	TELIC		ATELIC	TELIC
I sg	ibam	ibem		ibun	ibut
II sg	ibam	ibem		iburi	ibur
III h	ibar	ibem		ibudë	ibuvi
III n	tibar	tibem		ibu	tibem
I pl	ibaim	ibem		ibuim	ibuvam
II pl	ibanï	ibanë		ibunï	ibuvanë
III h	ibais	ibanis		ibunï	ibunas
III n	tibar	tibem		ibu	ibunas

to go, to continue, to appear to be, to acquire a quality or to increase having that quality, to be made to acquire a quality or increase having that quality, to resolve to do something, to go in order to fetch something (trans), to bring something (trans)

	PRESENT			PAST
	ATELIC	TELIC		ATELIC	TELIC
I sg	kivyi	kivan		kun	kut
II sg	kivar	kivas		kivuri	kivut
III h	kivyi	kivat		kivudë	kuvi
III n	kivi	kivat		kivudë	kuvi
I pl	kaim	kam		kuim	kuvam
II pl	kainï	kanë		kunï	kunë
III h	kais	kanis		kunï	kunas
III n	kais/kivi	kanis		kunï	kunas/kuvi

Exceptionally, this can take an adjective or a noun in the dative case as complement even when being a temporal marker - this then marks the quality which the subject is acquiring due to the other verb.

Tatediem: Some Morphology and also "Tense, Aspect and Mood: Not Quite Categories"

Tatediem's verbal system has a slot for TAM, which applies to all verb forms except infinitives. However, the TAM marking there comes in only four flavors: zero marking for non-future, and an often assimilated -də- for future, -ki- for imperative/hortative/optative and -ek- for tenseless irrealis. The extra subject congruence, of course, also codes for a somewhat specific aspect-tense thing.

Tatediem can encode information that encodes a much richer TAM system, but they are distributed in slightly weird ways. We find four slots in the verb slot system - manner, intensity, direction and the infinitive slots - where TAM-like information can be encoded. A slot can only ever take one prefix in it at a time.

The intensive slot can take the following quite regular markers:

-əŋu- non-committed, un-eagerly, weakly, slowly,
-oppo- intensely, strongly, quickly, obsessively (somewhat likely to be habitual)
-kauto- skillfully, gracefully, strongly
-habbi- sufficiently, suitably
-akriw- perversely, shamefully, like a madman, like a ferocious animal
-igŋu- pervasively, with lasting results (somewhat likely to be perfect)
-irbun- pervasively, with constant prevalence (somewhat likely to be gnomic)

In addition to these, the following also can appear in the same intensive slot and mark TAM-like meanings:

-iŋrul- optative
-kugbik- non-immediate future 

The voice slot does some non-voice stuff as well:

-gaf- (also -ŋaf-, -ŋav-, -gav-) passive present progressive
-daw- passive momentane
-raf- passive past
-lef- reflexive past
-lew- reflexive momentane, reflexive past
-tu- other third person subject than previously
-as- causative (adds an object slot after the regular object slot)
-ŋam- 'same subject and object as previously', leaves both slots empty. Aspectually, it also forms a kind of 'consecutive' tense. Historically a conjunction that turned into a prefix.

The manner slot can take the following markers, some of which tend to a more mood-like or evidentiality-related:

-hak- appears to be
-run- pretends to be
-sib- strives to be
-sok- is rumored to be
-cakŋi- "presently in preparatory stages for the verb"

 -nkurnke-  "enjoying the results of the verb, at the relative time spoken of" -gadun- "regretting the results of the verb, at the relative time spoken of"-stun- doing by cooperation
-stig- doing competitively
-hus- doing silently
-kagi- doing carefully
-xeme- doing due to duty
-sawin- doing as a gift to someone
-emek- doing in order to pay off an obligation or debt
-hayin- a chieftain-related causative
-kega- causing a change (reflexive or causative)

And finally, directions:

-ŋigi- homewards
-megs- outwards
-rigi- upwards
-rragi - turning upwards
-mags- turning clockwise
-tags- turning anticlockwise
-ŋiŋu- away from home
-nalk- downwards
-nnalik- turning downwards
-mis- in the role of, often present or past
-úli- turning into, often slightly future
-sud- in several directions, habitual
-irpi- towards an adverbial of location
-ahpi- away from an adverbial of location
-ippi- at an adverbial location
-kugi- towards the subject
-sagi- towards hunting grounds, present tense in times of hunting, past or future in times when hunting is not common
-nyagi- towards farming grounds, present tense in daytime, past or future in nighttime

Tatediem: Complements and Copulas and the First Hints of the TAM System

Tatediem does not have one verb that corresponds to English 'to be'. Instead, different strategies are used for different types of complements, and different types of distinctions can be found in those as well.

Adjectival predicates basically are given verbal inflections. Three verbal templates are commonly used with such predicates: Subj (Ind Obj) Voice STEM (Subj), Subj (Intensity) (Direction) (Manner) STEM, and Owner Subject (Direction) (Manner) STEM. There is one particular marker, -ére- that tends to go in the voice-slot that basically marks that the verb is a copula. The direction-marker can either be a zero morpheme or a translative marker -úli- (that shows acquiring the quality the verb-adjective encodes). For verbal adjectives, there are four manner-morphemes that often pop up:

-hak- appears to be

-run- pretends to be

-sib- strives to be 

-sok- is rumored to be 

For nominal predicates, it depends a bit on what type of noun we are dealing with:

Titles of authority tend to be objects of the verb sarwan, which means 'occupy, master, possess, have authority over, rule'. The manner slot of this verb is then -pel-, which in this case turns it into a slightly abstract sense. Thus, ruling a captain is nekoptan ----etensarwan, being a captain is nekoptan -----epelsarwan.

Family members and professions tend to have separate verb roots.

Being some more general noun is often expressed using the verb turw, with no object congruence and often no manner marker (although the four given for adjectival predicates above also do appear with turw). Direction also can have the translative -úli- marker to show turning into something.

Interestingly, -úli- is turning into an aspect marker (with hints of inceptive as well as progressive to it). Other markers in the voice and manner slots are also having a tendency towards aspect and tense marking, which means the tense-aspect marking system in Tatediem is not marked in any single spot in the verb morphology template.

Turw also is used for existential statements. Without any prefixes at all, turw also can be used as a confirming response, essentially 'yes'.

Bryatesle: Inflectional Noun Morphology (in tabular form)

A previous post on Bryatesle's phonology and a basic summary of its typological features can be found here.

This content may be corrected if I find errors in the tables. These tables have been somewhat updated since my previous Bryatesle grammar was written back in 2007 or somesuch.
First, the regular cases without any secondary cases on top:

		nom	acc	dat	abl	excl	voc
masc	sg	varied	-ak/-ik/-yk	-e/-ë	-ity/-ïty	-eny/-ëny	-im/-ïm
	plur	varied	-uku/-veku	-(u)mex	-(u)rsi	-uny/-vuny	various
fem	sg	varied	-e/-ë	-a/-ë	-eta/-ëta	-eny/-ëny	-am/-um
	plur	varied	-viku	-via	-vit	-vin	-vim
neut	sg	-u, varied	same as nom	-yn	-ity/-ïty	-iny/-ïny	N/A
	plur	-uku/-veku	-uku/-veku	-yn	-ity/-ïty	-uny/-vuny	N/A

 With possessive:

		nom	acc	dat	abl	voc and excl are absent
masc	sg	-unë	-an	-ar	-ent/-ënt
	plur	-uvu	-(v)ekux	-(v)emxi	-(v)emxi
fem	sg	-ela/-ëla	-ei/-ëi	-ir/-ïr	-ing, -ïn
	plur	-ivi/-ïvi	-(v)eki	-(v)ersi	-(v)ersi
neut	sg	-unë	-unë	-ent/-ënt	-ent/-ënt
	plur	-uvu	-uvu	-(v)emxi	-(v)emxi

With partitive: 

		nom	acc	oblique
masc	sg	-u	-eze/-ëze	-er/-ër
	plur	-(v)utë	-(v)ux	-(v)ux
fem	sg	-u	-uze	-er/-ër
	plur	-up	-(v)ube	-(v)unti
neut	sg	-ur	-ur	-yr
	plur	-uxa	-uxa	-uxi

 With definite:

		nom	acc	dat	abl	voc and excl are absent
masc	sg	-unë	-an	-ar	-ent/-ënt
	plur	-ven	-ver	-(v)emxi	-(v)emxi
fem	sg	-në	-nyk	-ir/-ïr	-am, -em
	plur	-tën	-ta	-(v)ersi	-(v)ersi
neut	sg	-es	-ek	-ent/-ënt	-ent/-ënt
	plur	-uvu	-uvu	-(v)emxi	-(v)emxi

 The secondary subject case is formed by attaching fem: -(n)isr, masc: -(n)isr, neut -(n)isn, plur -(n)yx to the regular case marking, the reciprocal object attaches -sus to the regular case marking, and suggestion marking attaches -ki to regular case suffixes.

Reflexivity in Tatediem

Tatediem has a complication with regards to its reflexives. Transitive verbs come in two varieties, and for want of a better term I will describe these as endoreflexive verbs and exoreflexive verbs.

Endoreflexive verbs mark reflexivity by the usual object congruence system - when the subject and object markers code for the same gender-number combination, the verb is understood as reflexive.

For exoreflexive verbs, the same construction would be parsed as referring to another entity.

endoreflexive:

Lìwkàmíl sar-ra-m-pìx 

Liwkamil fem.sg-fem.sg-present-wash 

Liwkamil washes her(self)

exoreflexive:

Tíkunam né-é-m-pág 

Tikunam masc.sg-masc.sg-present-see

Tikunam sees him

To obtain a separate object for endoreflexives, an external object is needed:

Kewmokin sar-rá-n-dàket ra-pék

Kewmokin fem.sg-fem.sg-present-"argue-in-favor-of-object" fem.sg-object.particle

Kewmokin argued in her (someone else's) favour

Kewmokin sarrándàket = Kewmokin argued in her (own) favour. 

For exoreflexives, the external object instead codes for reflexiveness, and is prefixed to the object marker -tèb. Further complications exist with regards to things such as congruence when reciprocals appear; there also are some verbs where reflexiveness is assumed for intransitive constructions.

Bryatesle: Verb Morphology

Bryatesle was somewhat inspired by Hebrew at the time, and therefore did not have any tenses. What it does have is an aspect system, although the marked aspects are more closely related to telicity than to perfect-imperfect or perfective-imperfective.

Both telic and atelic verbs showcase rather similar morphology:

ḑet, to run

1sg     ḑet - diţat 
2sg     ḑer - diţar
3sg     ḑei - diţai
3sg.n. ḑer  - diţa
1pl     ḑim - diţam
II pl  ḑine/diņe - diţane
III plh diḑes - diţanes
III pln ḑei/ḑer - diţanei/diţa

The somewhat unrealistic morphophonemic dissimilation that causes some dental consonants to turn into postalveolar and vice versa in the vicinity of other similar sounds accounts for the change in the initial consonant in these words. The vowel changes are even less regular, but this example accounts for quite a large number of verbs. The left column holds the atelic forms, the right one the telic forms.

Bryatesle has three conjugations that all are pretty annoyingly huge, with a few verbs having an additional past tense form. These are sometimes coordinated with regular verbs to construct tense forms, but are far from mandatory.

The Imperative can be formed in a few different ways: attaching the suggestion marker morpheme to the 2nd person verb, for one, can attain such a function. The suggestion marker on the object can also have a similar effect. Finally, having a noun in the vocative case followed by a second or third person verb is often a way of constructing an optative or imperative sense, depending on the person of the verb. Finally, the object sometimes is in the exclamative in such sentences.

Other modal forms do not exist, but are attained by other types of markers, primarily determiners in noun phrases serve to mark various types of irrealis.

Revisiting Bryatesle: Phonology and nouns

I have now postponed updating Bryatesle for almost a decade. Since it was (and still is) a language with some potential greatness, I will now go on developing it on this blog. But first, an overview.

Phonology

Bryatesle basically has these vowels, all showcasing length distinction:

i  ɨ   u

ɛ   

     ɑ

The following consonant phonemes are present:

p b ɸ ʋ m t̪ d̪ s̪ z̪ l̪ n̪ t̙ʲ d̙ʲ rʲ̙ ɕ lʲ̙ n̙ʲ k g x 

Orthographically, these are represented as p b f w m t d s z l n ţ ḑ ŗ ş ļ ņ k g h. Some morphophonological alterations happen between some of them - especially, short words tend to avoid having two dental or two postalveolar consonants of the same kind of articulation close together.

For the moment, allophony will not be presented in any greater detail, nor will phonotax.

Grammar

The Noun

The noun, like in Indo-European languages come in three genders - masculine, feminine and neuter. This is fairly boring, but opens some fairly intriguing possibilities. Bryatesle's case system consists of two partially parallel systems. For lack of a better terminology, I have decided to call these primary and secondary cases.

Primary Cases

The six primary cases line up in a kind of two-by-three system: nominative vs. accusative, dative vs. ablative, vocative vs. exclamative. 

The nominative and accusative distinguish subjects from objects. Nominal complements of verbs also agree with the subject or object noun that they pertain too. Neuter nouns do not distinguish nominative from accusative; however, neuter subjects of transitive verbs take a masculine nominative determiner, essentially forming a kind of periphrastic ergative.

The dative and ablative both figure in ways quite typical of Indo-European languages; 

The vocative and exclamative form a pair of opposites. The vocative is used to attract the attention of someone - usually a person - to the listener, the exclamative on the other hand draws the attention of the listeners to a person or a thing. These are not all the uses of them - they also have uses that verge onto information structure, pragmatics and social interaction.

Secondary Cases

The secondary cases come in a much more haphazard bunch. Some agglutinate, some are more fusional. The full list consists of possessed, definite, partitive, the reciprocal object, the secondary subject, negativity agreement and suggestion marking. The possessed secondary case marks nouns that are the property of, or otherwise in some significant relation to another noun, usually some salient argument in the phrase or a nearby noun in the dative. The exact uses of the partitive will require a post of its own, as will the reciprocal objects and secondary subjects. Suggestion marking is often used with the exclamative, but also with some other cases. Its main role is to communicate that the statement is a suggestion. The definite case is fairly similar to English 'the', but with more syntactic restrictions.

Number

Bryatesle has singular and plural numbers, and to a small extent an undefined number. This final number is highly restricted in usage - mainly appearing in compounds. The undefined number distinguishes two cases, nominative and non-nominative.

Morphological tables will appear at some point.

Ćwarmin: The Verb

The Ćwarmin verb behaves fairly straightforwardly for an agglutinating language: it has a stem, to which suffixes and prefixes are added. Some morphophonological things do occur, though.

A few verbs:

to eat - sewkən to drink - itrin  to grip - brewən to reside, to live somewhere, to stay somewhere - twam to walk - rakam to read - xaukam to see - saulto talk - ragamto breathe - taucon

 The form given above is the infinitive. It is not quite similar to the English infinitive, in that it mostly serves as a gerund. However, for most verbs it is fairly close to the verb stem and thus it is a good place to start. -an, -in, -am, -en, -jul, -jig all are suffixes that carry some grammatical information, and some verbs can take several different ones when forming infinitives:

to think - hacan, hacam, hajul

Some slight change in meaning may occur, i.e. hacan signifies thinking about things, hacam tends to pertain to beliefs and convictions, and hajul denotes planning and such. Not all infinitives showcase such a variety of meaning, and the meanings imparted by the different suffixes seem somewhat inconsistent - there is but almost a pattern there.

Non-past (a.k.a. present)

The non-past is formed by removing the infinitive marker and applying the following suffixes:

	singular	plural	paucal
1st	-er|-ar	-e|-o	-ei|-ou
2nd	-əc|-ac	-in|-un	-ie|-wu
3rd	-i|-u	-iy|-uw	-irə|-ura

The paucal has other uses than paucal number. -er, -iy, -in, -id, -iwe, -iru all cause some changes:  . -i, -in, -irre, -iwe, -iru cause changes along these lines:

sewkən  → sewcer, sewkə, sewkei, sewkəc, sewćin, sewćie, sewći, sewćiy, sewćirə

ragam   → raźar, rawo, rawwu, ragac, ragun, rawwu, ragu, raguv (rav), ragura (ragra)

taucon  →  taućar, tauco, taucou, taucac, taućun, taućuu, tauću, taućuv, taućura

-l- sometimes also turns into ź or w

saul   → saular, sauwo, sauwwou, saulac, sauźun, sauwwu, sauwu, sauwuv, saura

Immediate past

The immediate past is formed from the infinitive by use of the subject complement case. I.e. sewkən → sewkəmce, itrəmce, brewəmce. Further forming a personally inflected verb form for this is done for the singular and plural first and second persons, omitting the final e, to obtain sewkəmcer, sewkəmco, sewkəmcəc, sewkəmćin, but these forms are optional.

The object complement case is used in a slightly similar way for causative constructions.

Non-immediate past

The non-immediate past is formed by the suffixes -i(n)-| -u(n)-, sometimes omitting the final consonant of the stem: sewkir, sewkine, sewkinei, sewkinəc, sewkini, sewkini, sewkin, sewkinð, sewkinrə.

The use of the tenses will be described in more detail once the discourse particles are described, in combination with how they interact with case and tense. Omitting the person inflections reduces the certainty. This is utilized, although not mandatorily so, to mark inferred knowledge or knowledge by hearsay.

Passive voices

The regular passive promotes an object to subject status and marking. The agent can be present in the general ablative case. For those verbs that permit the regular passive, person congruence is lost. The suffix is replaced by -aśp. The indirect object being promoted to subject by a different passive is permitted for all verbs, and is formed by replacing the person marker with -əźbel|-ažbul. The past passives are more complicated and they use various weird constructions.

Participles

Combinations of the basic cases and the infinitive serves a lot of the participle-like needs of Ćwarmin. However, a large number of adjectival derived forms that may reasonably be called participles exist. Their formation and use is not described here, and is subject to great lexical variation. Ćwarmin resides on the edge of a sprachbund where this is one of the central languages. The preponderance of pseudo-participles is not the only shared trait, but their use is much more limited to adjective-like constructions in Ćwarmin.