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	zɣémē	zɣémes
Vocative	θéɣom
Accusative	zɣémum		zumūŋ
Genitive	zmō	zmōs	zmõ
Locative	zɣéi̯me	zmō	zumsu
Dative	zmē	zuŋu̯ō	zuŋu̯ō
Instrumental	zma

	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

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