Classical Arithide grammar

The grammar of Classical Arithide is characterised by a degree of inflection unseen in most modern tongues, and notably absent from its own modern descendant. Due to this inflectionary tendency, Classical Arithide possesses considerably free word order, especially in poetry, but syntax commonly and usually retains the traditional order of Subject Object Verb. Classical Arithide is left-branching, prepositional (on the rare occasions where prepositions are employed), verb-framed, pro-drop and lexically-classed; it does not use articles. While some of these characteristics, such as its pro-drop and genderless character, simplify the learning process, the task is invariably complicated by the complexity of the language's inflection.

The Classical Arithide inflection system involves 8 declension classes of nouns, each inflected for 11 cases; two classes of verbs, each conjugated in three voices, three aspects and six moods, and which each produce an assortment of various derivative forms; two classes of adjectives, the nominal behaving like regular nouns, and the verbal behaving like regular verbs; adverbs, the most common of which are generally indeclinable but most of which are derivations of adjectives and hence declined as per their class.

Nouns

The use in Classical Arithide of lexical classing in nouns means that each declension class represents a broad group of nouns that share a certain characteristic. Traditional grammatical analysis takes the number of declension classes in Classical Arithide to be six, but the sub-classes that are sometimes sufficiently distinct from their ostensible parent class render the number about double. Factoring in overlapping and coincident declensions, modern grammarians generally accept the existence of 8 discrete groups, numbered declension classes I to VIII respectively. Only 7 classes were lexical: classes I to IV were productive classes due to their nature—they are still productive in Modern Arithide—and the separate but largely coincident declensions of the nouns thence derived were categorised under an eighth class.

Nouns of the first declension end in -os, and are associated lexically with abstractions: actions (vagos, "act of going"), states (stantos, "weight"), qualities (fugirnos, "dangerousness"), among others (sonos, "daily life"). The second declension ends in -as and is associated with places: kitaras "hall". The third (-ir) and fourth (-rir) both indicate a negative denotation or connotation associated with the noun, and were treated traditionally as variants of one declension, but separately nowadays because of the differences in their declension; they are also the only declensions where disyllabic nouns are stressed on the last syllable; vokir "evil", kirir "faux pas". The fifth declension consists of nouns ending in either -er or -a, and the association here is with people, society and culture: ither "person", medier "wife", steima "measurement". The sixth declension consists solely of the agentive derivatives of verbs, and hence all end in -on. The seventh is made up of nouns ending in -i, but no apparent lexical connection has been found that sufficiently encompasses the nouns in the category. The eighth, and last, declension class comprises the derived nouns, ending in any of -os, -as or -ir, and is the most regular declension class due to its character: it is the only class in which no irregularity is observed in any individual noun.

Adjectives & adverbs

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