Name of the Language
The Lihmelinyans usually call their language
Inētā. This endonym is used for a variety of Mantian languages (Inet, Inta, Inetas, etc. you'll find variations on it). The origin of the name is obscure. It seems to go back to an ancient name for the Mantian people, though the Lihmelinyans usually call themselves
Mants (pl.
Mántes). Another name for the language is
mélgis tetayānās (tongue of the palace) or simply
mélgis Lihmelīnyās.
Nouns
The nominal system of Lihmelinyan is fairly complex. I would say that at this point, it's not even quite complete, but I will demonstrate what I have. Nouns are classed according to stem, but these classes do not form such neat declensions as in Latin or Greek. If I tried to create declensions, I'd probably have over 10 of them. I'll admit that I enjoy working on nouns more than I do on verbs, but I've tried to put an equal amount of effort into both. Either way, I'm starting with nouns because I do find them more interesting and everyone seems to do nouns before verbs :)
The largest division in nouns is between thematic and athematic nouns. Thematic nouns are marked by the presence of /a/ or /e/ before the case endings. These are also marked by a lack of ablaut in the root. Not every athematic noun ablauts in the root, but ones that meet certain conditions do (which I will explain later). The thematic nouns are a large class and the easiest to learn, so I will start with them.
Gender and Number
As I mentioned in my initial post, nouns have three possible genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter) and three possible numbers (singular, dual, plural). The neuter is distinguished mainly in the nominative and accusative cases. Neuter nouns also have an extra case not present in masculine and feminine, which is the
ergative. Neuter nouns use the ergative case (a late addition to Lihmelinyan and absent in most other Mantian languages) when they are the subject of a transitive verb. I borrowed this idea from Hittite.
The
feminine is fairly marginal as a class. In only a few instances does it even differ from the masculine at all (the long vowel stems ā, ī, and ū). Elsewhere, the feminine is indistinguishable from the masculine and is only marked in some adjectives and pronouns. This is because Proto-Manto-Kuruan had only two genders, common and neuter, and the feminine evolved fairly late. Other Mantian languages have developed the feminine further than Lihmelinyan, and some Mantian languages, like Tuhizawan, are missing it entirely.
There's not much to say about the numbers other than that the dual has a lot of syncretism, but it is still fully productive and fully utilized in standard Lihmelinyan.
Strong and Weak Cases
There are nine cases. Neuter nouns have an tenth, but since the nominative, accusative, and vocative are leveled in the neuter, neuter nouns effectively only have eight. Here's a brief overview of the cases and their uses.
First, the cases can be divided into
strong (or "direct") and
weak (or "oblique"). The strong cases are:
Nominative - Used for subjects and predicative nominatives--the reference form of the noun.
Vocative - Used for direct address and some exclamations.
Accusative - Used for direct objects and predicate accusatives.
These three cases form a unit, not only because they are leveled in the neuter, but also because in athematic nouns they ablaut differently than the weak cases. Many athematic nouns essentially have a "strong" stem and a "weak" stem. There is also one more case that is sort of in between strong and weak:
Ergative - Used for neuter subjects of an transitive verb.
The "weak" cases are as follows:
Genitive - Used for possession and other noun relations.
Locative - Used for location in time or space. Also for objects of postpositions that do not have a sense of motion.
Dative - Used for indirect objects, recipients, beneficiaries. Also used for syntactic direct objects of some verbs that have a more "indirect" sense of action.
Ablative - Used for motion away from or source. Also for objects of postpositions that have a sense of motion away from or coming from a source.
Instrumental - Used for instrument, means, manner, agents of passive constructions.
Allative - Used for motion toward or a goal. Also for objects of postpositions that have a sense of motion toward something.
Case Endings
One thing you'll find about Lihmelinyan is that the case endings might seem somewhat inconsistent from class to class, but this is usually the result of vowels merging or ablaut . Here, however, is a list of the case endings in their most basic forms. They should look familiar to anyone who knows PIE :) I can't figure out how to do the "Code" thing right, so I'll just screenshot what I typed up on Notepad:
Code: Select all
Case Singular Dual Plural
Nominative -s -e -es
-(endingless) -ih (neuter) -ā (neuter)
-n (neuter) -(lengthening)
Vocative -(endingless) -same as NOM. -same as NOM.
Accusative -n -same as NOM. -ns
Genitive -s, -es -eyaus -ān
Locative -i -eyaus -su
Dative -ei -ban -bas
Ablative -at -ban -bas
Instrumental -h, -eh -ban -bi
Allative -a -nā -nas
Ergative -anza -antā -antes
I'll explain these more as I introduce more noun classes :)
Thematic Nouns
Thematic nouns, as I said before, are marked by the presence of an /a/ or /e/ (i.e. a- or e-grade ablaut of the stem) before the case endings shown above are attached. Thematic nouns also have a special genitive singular form not related to the endings given in the above table.
Thematic nouns are almost all masculine or neuter, though some masculine nouns that refer to people can take feminine agreement in special cases. There are no inherently feminine nouns in the thematic class.
For the masculine noun, I will use
antīlas, which means "rabbit" or "hare". The hare is an important symbol of the Mantians, appearing on coats of arms and regalia. For this reason it's a good beginner word:
Code: Select all
Case Singular Dual Plural
Nominative antīlas antīlā antīlās
Vocative antīle antīlā antīlās
Accusative antīlan antīlā antīlans
Genitive antīlaša antīleyaus antīlahan
Locative antīlei antīleyaus antīlaisu
Dative antīlāi antīlaban antīlabas
Ablative antīlāt antīlaban antīlabas
Instrumental antīleh antīlaban antīlāis
Allative antīla antīlanā antīlanas
So as you can see, the stem is in a-grade in most cases, but it is in e-grade in the voc. singular, gen. and loc. dual, loc. singular, ins. singular. It is in a-grade in all the plural cases. The expected allative singular ending would be ā, but due to the homophony with the dual nom/voc/acc, the allative has essentially become the bare stem in a-grade.
The thematic nouns have the following special case endings (which differ from the athematic endings):
-genitive singular: -aša (from *-asya > PIE *-osyo)
-genitive plural: -ahan
-locative plural: -aisu
-instrumental plural: -āis
Here is an example of a thematic neuter. For this paradigm, I'll use the word
lédian, which means "stream" or "brook":
Code: Select all
Case Singular Dual Plural
NOM lédian lédiaih lédiā
VOC lédian lédiaih lédiā
ACC lédian lédiaih lédiā
GEN ledíaša ledíeyaus ledíahan
LOC lédiei ledíeyaus ledíaisu
DAT lédiāi ledíaban ledíabas
ABL lédiāt ledíaban ledíabas
INS lédieh ledíaban lédiāis
ALL lédia ledíana ledíanas
ERG ledíanza ledíanta ledíantes
Here you can see that in the neuter, the nom/voc/acc have the exact same forms in all cases. You can also see that the ergative comes into play here. Otherwise, the forms are the same as the masculine.
Note that the accent shifts one syllable to the right when a disyllabic suffix is added. Accents can never occur further back then the antepenultimate.
Most thematic nouns are only disyllabic. The two I used for example happened to be trisyllabic.
Well that's all I have for now. Hope this doesn't completely suck
![xD [xD]](./images/smilies/icon_xd2.png)