Taalen Morphology

Nominals

Cases

Agentive:
Patientive:
Focal:
Genitive: Allative: Ablative: Locative: Perlative: and something else:

Pronouns

The pronominal system of Taalen distinguishes for person (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and an obviative 4th) and animacy (in the 3rd person), but not number. Number is instead handled by complex pronouns, wherein the semantics of the pronoun are concatenations of person:

1+2 : 'I and you'; inclusive 'we'
1+3 : 'I and s/he or them'; exclusive 'we'
2+3 : 'you and s/he or them'; you, pl.

This is not quite the same as the usual 2nd pl. pronoun, as it does not address directly more than one person. Instead it focuses on one individual as representative of a group.

1+2+3 : 'I and you and s/he or them'; people, the ubiquitous "they", a generic plural
4 : the other, one, a generic singular

Implies more time or location specific identity than 1+2+3

Each person has a characteristic consonant and epenthetic vowel, used when marking verbs and nouns.

Person	Consonant	Vowel	Prefixed (V-/C-)	Suffixed (-V/-C)
1	n	e	n-/ne-	-n/-en
2	t / h	i	t-/ti-	-h/-ih
3an	0 (null)	a	0-/a-	-0/-a
3in	s	a	s-/sa-	-s/-as
4	r	o	r-/o-	-r/-o
1+2	m	e	m-/me-	-me/-amme
1+3	th	e	th-/the-	-th/-atthe
2+3	v	u	v-/u-	-v/-u
1+2+3	l	o	l-/lo-	-l/-o

As can be seen from the verbal complex, these pronominal affixes are agentive when suffixed, and patientive when prefixed. The prefix/suffix distinction holds on nouns as well, prefixed to indicate inalienable possession and suffixed for the alienable variety.

Alternation between vowel or consonant initial or final roots, for both patientive/inalienable (prefixed) and agentive/alienable (suffixed) morphemes. Agentively, note that 4^th and 1+2+3 are indentical, when affixed to a consonant-final root.

mode	shouva 'picture'	ora 'water'	tal 'tree'
Pref.	neshouva 'the picture I took'	tora 'your urine'	adal 'her tree that she planted'
Suff.	shouvan 'the picture of me, my picture'	orah 'your water'	tala 'her tree'

Verbs

Verbal Complex

PAT	ASP1	DER1	ROOT	DER2	ASP2	AGT

PAT : Patient: the patient or experiencer of the verb
ASP₁ : Aspect prefix: provides specialization of primary (ASP₂) aspectual marker
DER₁ : Derivative prefix: instrumental and claassifying prefixes
ROOT : the verb itself
DER₂ : Derivative suffix: directionals, applicatives, evidentials
ASP₂ : Aspect suffix: primary aspectual marker
AGT : Agent : the agent or causative force of the verb

Links

Phonology