Dal'qörian Nominal adjectives

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Certain adjectives are used to denote a class by describing one of the attributes of the class. For example, the poor denotes a class of people who share a similar financial status. Other nominal adjectives are:  

• the old  

• the sick  

• the wealthy

• the blind  

• the innocent 

A major subclass of nominal adjectives refers to nationalities:  

• the French

• the British

• the Japanese

However, not all nationalities have corresponding nominal adjectives. Many of them are denoted by plural, proper nouns:   

• the Germans  

• the Russians  

• the Americans  

• the Poles 

  Nominal adjectives do not refer exclusively to classes of people. Indeed some of them do not denote classes at all:   

• the opposite  

• the contrary  

• the good 

Comparative and superlative forms can also be nominal adjectives: 

• the best is yet to come  

• the elder of the two  

• the greatest of these  

• the most important among them 

We refer to all of these types as nominal adjectives because they share some of the characteristics of nouns (hence nominal) and some of the characteristics of adjectives. They have the following nominal characteristics: 

ː They are preceded by a determiner (usually the definite article the) 

ː They can be modified by adjectives (the gallant French, the unfortunate poor) 

ː They are gradable (the very old, the extremely wealthy) 

ː Many can take comparative and superlative forms (the poorer, the poorest)  

In dal'qörian, when an adjective is used in a nominal sense, it takes the noun ending ämös. This adds to those which already end in ädn and, where a non-inflected adjective ends in a vowel, the vowel is dropped. Exceptions are those which depict nationality, and comparative and superlative forms:

• di EƒrancaniÞ-the French

• di BretæniÞ-the British

• di GemæniÞ-the Germans

adjective	noun-adjective
stæni-opposite	stænämös-the opposite
éagöra-good	éagörämös-the good

• stæni-opposite

• éagöra-good

• talgresta-guilty

• ädøni-old

• täcélosträdn-injured

• stælilangörädn-bald

• neÞörädn-brave