A Brief Overview of the Nominal Morphology of Classical Qerenon

Introduction

The nominal morphology of CQ may seem intimidating at first blush; but by the second blush one sees that, despite the gender system, 11 cases, a postpositive (or postclitical, at times) particle with a broad range of senses, and four numbers, it's all quite simple, and thanks to a consistently suffixing trend easily learned.

Gender

There are two genders in CQ, traditionally known as ‹pasus› Feminine and ‹kosus› Masculine. These genders extend beyond natural gender and encompass the entire noun system; new coinages and borrowed words receive genders typically based on how closely their final syllables match up against the general paradigm. This paradigm is as follows:

Fem. nouns are those ending with -a, -e, -i
Masc. nouns are those ending with -o, -u, or a consonant

There are several words, native and borrowed, that do not follow this paradigm, and instead receive the opposite gender from what would be expected. These are most frequently words with apparent natural genders.

Case

The eleven cases of CQ are divided into two groups, Grammatical and Locative. The Grammatical cases deal with syntactic alignment or association, and are the Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Comitative, and Privative. The Comitative is both a case of association and instrumentality. The Locative cases deal with position and movement, and are the Lative, Ablative, Adessive, Delative, Inessive, and Prolative. The Lative describes motion towards an object; the Ablative motion away from an object, as well as origin; the Adessive current position, as well as a basis for comparisons; the Delative motion off of an object; the Inessive position inside an object; and the Prolative motion through an object or position in the vicinity of an object, as well as denoting the topic of certain verbs, as in ‹folear tores› "I'm thinking about leopards."

The case endings are as follows:

Nom.   -Ø
Acc.   -ot
Gen.   -on
Com.   -ul
Pri.   -er
Lat.   -an
Abl.   -o
Ade.   -has
Del.   -no
In.    -ru
Pro.   -ar

The cases suffix to nouns without exception, except for sandhi; i.e. the accusative of ‹aro› "bird" is ‹aroot›, while the lative of ‹poa› "she" is ‹poaan›. In quick speech these would likely have been realized as long vowels, but a grumpy classics professor will scorn such sloppiness and insist on differentiated syllables. But the delative of ‹pouk› "crow" is ‹pouhno›.

The Postposition ‹la›

The postposition ‹la› carries no inherent meaning of its own, but combines with declined nouns to create new senses. When postposed to a nominative noun, it carries the sense of a Dative, that is to say the indirect object of a verb like ‹zeur› "to give," as in the sentence ‹omot fe la zeures› "I give it(masc.) to you(fem.)". When postposed to an accusative noun, it carries the sense of a Benefactive, that is the intended recipient of the benefit of a verb, as in ‹omot feot la feores› "I made it(masc.) for you(fem.)". When postposed to a lative noun, it carries the sense of a Final, the purpose of the action, as in ‹urean la reoot cures› "I measure the wood to get a house." And when postposed to an ablative noun, it carries the sense of a Causative, the triggering agent, as in ‹omo la dukac feocees› "The fight was started because of him."

Number

There are four grammatical numbers in CQ: Singular, Paucal, Plural, and Lagging or Superlative Plural. The singular is unmarked and the normal form of the noun. The paucal carries some aspects of a dual as well as a paucal, depending on the situation; for objects that come in natural pairs, including such diverse things as ears, eyes, and oars, it is always a dual and the regular plural is used to count larger quantities; for other nouns it's used for quantities from two to five, or for the notion of "a few". It is also used with numerical comparisons for indicating "less than." The plain plural is used for all other counted numbers. The lagging plural, so-called because it is a suffix on a suffix, is not used with counted numbers, but instead to express "so many, the most, all of the," as in ‹aroed tarooted dures› "All of the birds are fighting all of the people." It is also used with numerical comparisons for indicating "more than."

Both the paucal and plural are flexive over the two previously mentioned case groups; that is, the forms are different for Grammatical and Locative cases. The suffixes for all of the numbers are as follows:

Sing.   -Ø

Pauc.   -te in Grammatical cases
        -to in Locative cases

Plur.   -e in Grammatical cases
        -sa in Locative cases

Lag.    -d following the plural

As with cases, these suffix without exception or change, except for sandhi; i.e. the adessive pl. is ‹-hassa›, while the lative pauc. is ‹-anso›.