User:Bukkia/sandboxVIII

Noun declension

As usual to an agglutinative language, Æbbro nouns display a set of number endings, which is clearly separated from the set of case endings. All endings are placed at the end of the nominal root, without undergoing any change (except for vowel armony). The sequence root + ending is thus easily recognizable:

retižewææ → reti - že - wææ
as people → person - plural - essive case

The numeral endings are always placed before the case endings .

Nouns are declined in number by adding the following endings to the base form of the noun. Only in this case a semantical distinction between animate and inanimate nouns is made in the choice among the endings:

animate nouns		inanimate nouns
front vowel	back vowel	front vowel	back vowel
-že	-žo	-hii	-huu

There is, however, a limited amount of exceptions, in which the root is not expanded by any suffix, by having a clear noun role.

Nouns do decline, according to their role in the sentence for case. They also distinguish two morphological numbers, singular, and plural.

A nominal root is thus declined for case and number by adding the following morphemes:

Numeral morphemes
singular	-
plural	-j-/-ij-
Case morphemes
ergative	-k̇ə
absolutive	-
possessive	-ṗu
terminative	-ʈu
ablative	-ʡo
causative	-no
abessive	-pə
instrumental	-ma
locative	-wa

The numeral morpheme is always placed before the case morphemes. The form -ij- is added after a semivowel.

Some examples are shown below: a typical active or animate noun, rome, father, and a typical inactive or inanimate noun, tojme, house.

	rome		tojme
	singular	plural	singular	plural
ergative	romek̇ə	romejk̇ə
absolutive	rome	romej	tojme	tojmej
possessive	romeṗu	romejṗu
terminative	romeʈu	romejʈu	tojmeʈu	tojmejʈu
ablative	romeʡo	romejʡo	tojmeʡo	tojmejʡo
causative	romeno	romejno	tojmeno	tojmejno
benefactive	romepə	romejpə	tojmepə	tojmejpə
instrumental			tojmema	tojmejma
locative			tojmewa	tojmejwa

The endings for the secondary oblique cases are not usually added to a semantically animate noun, while the endings for the primary main cases are not usually added to a semantically inanimate noun.