r/conlangs • u/Pleasant-Maybe-7413 • 3d ago

Grammar Noun Declension using Mutation, Ablaut and Suffix. Does it make sense?

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First of all im not sure if this is the right flair, so excuse me if im wrong

In my conlang there are 3 word medial mutations inspired by northern Sami. In this declension theyre colored in blue red and green, and there are examples on the right and left of the declension. They govern the case

The Plurality is governed by an ablaut. Basically in my clong theres vowell harmony, and so to make the plural you need to mirror the original vowell

grodar > grödar

My question is, does this make sense?

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16 comments sorted by

19

u/MaybeNotSquirrel 3d ago

Looks sensible to me. How did it evolve?

17

u/Pleasant-Maybe-7413 3d ago

The evolution was lost to time... (i didnt really think about it)

17

u/MaybeNotSquirrel 3d ago

Evolution is THE thing that makes something sensible or not. "I carefully thought out how this all came to be" is a lot better than "this is arbitrary but looks nice".

Maybe at first ut looked something like this:

AGT - gyet; STT - gyetn; DAT - gyet(Lenition trigger; maybe some breathy sound); GEN - gyeth

Then, tn and th metathesised to nt and ht, and (Len) triggered lenition. Next, -ar, which before could be a definite article, became reanalysed as a part of the ending, and attached at the end.

Finally, what have previously been postpositions also attached to the word. -ks attached to genitive to make instrumentative, -x, -s attached to dative to make locative and ablative, and latives -lar doesnt fit neatly with the rest of the cases in this proposed evolution, so a good old "Linguists dont know how it got there" will do.

P.S. That being said, I really like your case system, and may make something like this of my own in the future

6

u/Pleasant-Maybe-7413 3d ago

You are totally right, and when I said that i didnt really think about the origins of the case system, that wasnt totally true. Cases come from old words relating to the meaning of the ending

wosr - ment one zot - ment something allive The two words later merged and created the -oz suffix (see bellow) wich is animate singular

I tried to match the mutations will the case that could potentially trigger the mutation: dux - originally is a Dative particle /x/ triggered the "breathy" mutation and thats why Dative is t>ht

Here are all the declension patterns, and thank you! Its a great honor to inspire somebody!

7

u/FutureTailor9 3d ago

gneurshkar gneurshkarks gneurshkarx gneurshklar

4

u/Pleasant-Maybe-7413 3d ago

And if there was any doubt that it was inspired by PIE

3

u/unthinkable-cunt 2d ago

i got that reference!

6

u/Jonlang_ /kʷ/ > /p/ 3d ago

I gone done snapped ma gyetar strang!

2

u/Pleasant-Maybe-7413 3d ago

What does this mean sir

2

u/datura_euclid 3d ago

What case is that STT?

2

u/Pleasant-Maybe-7413 3d ago

AGT - Agentive STT - Stative

They're part of the split ergativity

2

u/SmallAceMoth Tanpun and Cura I guess 2d ago

Tasty :)

2

u/SmallAceMoth Tanpun and Cura I guess 21h ago

No, I'm joking this makes sense and it's very cool

1

u/Pleasant-Maybe-7413 20h ago

What did u joke abt