Northian grammar

Northian grammar is highly synthetic.

Overview

Ablaut is a system of vowel apophony, altering the quality or quantity of vowels but not their lexical meaning, that affects most classes of words in Northian. The system is most prominent in substantives, i.e. nouns, pronouns, and adjectives. Though ablaut was transparent in reconstructed Proto-Erani-Eracuran, it has been obscured by sound change and analogical replacement in the process of its evolution into Proto-Nordic-Northian and subsequently Galic Northian, the oldest attested stage of the Northian language.  In particular, the erosion of consonant clusters and sound change in unaccented and coda vowels in the immediate prehistory of Galic has made many inflectional endings unrecognizable, yet protected by poetic metre and strict tradition, Galic texts retain many archaicisms. These processes have not occurred to the same extent in the Epic language, but there the word forms were subject to more rigorous regularization.

It is generally accepted that there was a fairly rigorous system of derivation in Proto-Erani-Eracuran, extending lexical roots by various affixes, before attaching inflectional endings. In this way, roots representing abstract meanings gave rise to nouns, adjectives, and verbs.

Nouns

m-stems

This class is known from only three but important nouns, θéɣõ "earth", žõ "winter", and dõ "house".

	se θéɣõ, "earth"
	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	θéɣõ	zθémē	zθémes
Vocative	θéɣom
Accusative	zθémum		zumūŋ
Genitive	zu̯u̯ō	zu̯ōs	zu̯õ
Locative	zθéi̯me	zu̯ō	zumsu
Dative	zu̯ē	zuŋu̯ō	zuŋu̯ō
Instrumental	zoa

θéɣõ is one of the rarer Northian words that reflects all three ablaut grades.

θéɣõ "eath" is from the full-grade stem of Proto-Erani-Eracuran *dʰeǵʰōm "earth", where final -m drops and causes the preceding long vowel to become nasalized. Gen. zu̯u̯ō and dat. zu̯ē are the results of the zero-grade stem *dʰǵʰm̥ > *zm̥- > zw-. Final *-os regularly contracts to -ō, lengthening the vowel, and *-ey monophthongized into -ē. The e-grade stem is visible in the strong cases in singular and dual, sing. loc., as well as plural nom., as zθém < *dʰǵʰem-. In the sing. loc., the lowering of final *-i triggered the regular mutation in the preceding short vowel. The plural acc. unexpectedly displays zero-grade stem; final *-n̥s regularly > *-uns > Galic -ūŋ. The stem ending in -m mutates with the initial m- of the du. and pl. dat.-ins. endings.

The behaviour of žõ "winter" is underlyingly similar to that of θéɣõ, but other phonetic changes have caused the surface forms to be altered in other ways.

	se dõ, "house"
	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	dõ	doma	domes
Vocative	dom
Accusative	dōm, domum		domūŋ
Genitive	dēŋ	demus	demõ
Locative	déi̯me	demu	deŋsu
Dative		dei̯ma	deŋu̯ō
Instrumental	dema

dõ "house", an extremely common noun, also displays three ablaut grades; however, its stems differ by the quantity and quality of the vowel in the same root syllable, as it has no suffix. In the sing. nom., final vowel is lengthened already in PEE. The regular strong stem is visible in the sing. acc., which has two forms. dōm stands as a poetic or dialectal term in place of expected domum sometimes; its creation is either late, as it does not have vowel nasalization, or reflects compensatory lengthening from dropping the final syllable of domum. dõ displays a paroxytone accentual pattern and has the zero-grade endings: sing. gen. dēŋ < *dems and dat. déi̯me < *demi, the latter showing regular mutation after the lowering of the final *-i.

n-stems

HD mon PD mn AS mn

r-stems

There are three subtypes within the r-stem group, corresponding to the three ablaut patterns enumerated above.

In mētur "mother", the accent is persistent on the root, sg. gen. mētūs < *meHtr̥s, dat. mētrė < *meHtri, acc. mētrum, loc. mēteire with full grade . βrētur "brother" is inflected in the same manner.

The paroxytone declension of ster "star" is unique, sg. gen. stēr < *Hsters, dat. steire, etc.

All other stems in -ter are inflected with oxytone accent. Thus piter "father", gen. patrō < *pHtrós, acc. paterum < *pHtérm̥.

l-stems

The l-stems originally inflect as other ablauting consonant stems, but because intervocalic *-l- regularly > -y-, the resulting paradigm presents certain quirks not seen in the normal consonant-stem paradigm.

sē slō sáyum

sāwwō

The noun sāuuuuō "sun" continues the PEE heteroclitic stem in -l/n-. The nominative is due to assimilation of approximants and the regular sound change of *wu > wo. Genitive xʷveīŋ shows influence from r/n-stems, for expected *xʷvēn < *swens.

See also

• Northian language