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Main article: Höśikə

This page gives an extensive description of Gəjlnigo morphological features.

Nouns

Nouns in Gəjlnigo language end predominantly in a vowel. A certain amount of nouns, however, ends in a consonant, usually a palatalized one; these nouns tend to behave as irregular ones, but a euphonic vowel, mostly -i-, is generally added at the end of noun before the normal declension endings.

Nouns display neither gender nor class distinction. There are, however, two morphological numbers for almost all nouns, singular and plural, and a limited case system. If a noun is deemed as definite, a form of definite article is used and placed before it.

Cases

Gəjlnigo nouns do decline, according to a nominative-accusative system with 2 cases:

Case	Meaning
Direct	This case marks both the subject and the direct object of a verb. It is regarded as the base form of the noun, and it is used as the vocative form.
Oblique	It has no specifical meaning and it is generally used only with prepositions. It can be occasionally used without prepositions, marking the indirect object. In earlier texts it can mark the final point of a movement (motion toward a place) and, limited to proper nouns, possession and belonging.

Articles

There is only one article, the definite article, ež, which is placed before the noun, agreeing with it in case and number.

	singular	plural
direct	ež / ežd	ežno
oblique	ežəre	ežnore

In the singular direct case two forms of the article are listed. The choice between the two forms depends on the first phoneme of the following word:

• ež is placed before a word beginning with a consonant.
• ežd is placed before a word beginning with a vowel.

Examples:

ež pɔge čəjnnos
the person is singing

ežd ɔne čəjnnos
the woman is singing

The definite article, both in its singular and plural forms and in any case, can merge with some prepositions to form the so-called articled prepositions. Such forms will be analyzed in a following section.

Noun declension

Nouns are declined in case and number by adding the following endings to the base form of the noun:

	singular	plural
direct	-	-no
oblique	-re	-nure

Some examples are shown below: bevvo, father, and hɔgo, house.

	bevvo		hɔgo
	singular	plural	singular	plural
direct	bevvo	bevvono	hɔgo	hɔgono
oblique	bevvore	bevvonore	hɔgore	hɔgonore

Nouns ending in a consonant in their base form, except for nouns ending in the semiconsonant -j, usually add a euphonic vowel before the endings of the other cases. This vowel is generally -i-, but other vowels are also possible.

dir. heǵ → obl. heǵire, ...

Some irregular nouns, however, change their last vowel in the root before adding other endings. The commonest change is o → u. A lot of these nouns display both irregular and regular forms, especially in earlier texts. In modern texts the amount of irregular forms is extremely limited, with a strong tendency towards regularization by analogy.

dir. heňo → obl. heňure, ...

A small amount of nouns, conversely, display unpredictable irregularities, both vocalic and consonantal, in the noun root.

dir. beĺ → obl. bejre, ...