Cernelian/Nominals

Nominals in Cernelian includes nouns, adjectives, or (demonstrative, personal, interrogative) pronouns. Unlike that of Finnish or Estonian that those have large number of grammatical cases (15 or 14), Cernelian has simplified it to 8 cases. Due to the influence of Slavic languages, Cernelian developed animacy.

Grammatical cases

There are 8 grammatical cases in Cernelian:

Grammatical cases	Cernelian name	Usual endings (singular)	Usual meanings
Nominative	niemię	-∅	none
Accusative	passywię	-ę, -∅	(object)
Genitive	omieśdzię	-ę	(of, 's)
Dative	siędzię	-ę, -ą	to
Locative	piedzę	-so, -sie, -cho, -sze	in, on
Ablative	łożę	-sto, -ście	from
Instrumental	instrumendzię	-łe, -le	from
Vocative	siedzię	-so, -sie, -cho, -sze	(calling, -!)

All of the grammatical case names has the alternative forms in -emię póle, e.g. niemię póle.

Declensions

• 1st declension: Nominals ending in -o, and it is the largest group of nominal declension by number.
• 2nd declension: Nominals ending in -e, also as the soft variant of 1st declension.
• 3rd declension: Nominals ending in soft -∅.
• 4th declension: Nominals ending in hard -∅, including sonorants.
• 5th declension: Nominals ending in -ę or -ą (n-stem).
• Irregular nominals: Numerous nominals that declined irregularly, like long stems, s-stems, and consonantic stems uncovered in 4th declension.

Specific alterations

• In the 3rd and 4th declensions (except sonorant stems), last vowels -ę- and -o- becomes -ą- and -ó- (póch : gen. pochię "thick", chącz : chęczę "breath").
• In some nouns that contain final Proto-Cernelian yers (ь/ъ), the vowel -(i)e- sometimes deleted (čьvь : čьvę → czew : czwie "stone").
• Endings containing initial -i- becomes -y- after consonants c, cz, dz, dż, rz, and sz (icze : dat. pl. iczyję "age").
• Like Finnish and Estonian, consonant gradation (involving lenition) are frequent in Cernelian. However, it is not possible to predict the ending whose affected by gradation (weak grade), due to syllable structure changes. This is the gradation table:

Strong grade (unaffected)		Weak grade (affected)
Plain	Palatal	Plain	Palatal
k	cz/c	∅/g	ż/dz
t	ć/ci	∅/d	dź/dzi
p	p/pi	∅/w	w/wi
s	ś/si	∅	j/i/∅

The weak grades g, d, and w are used after consonants, although due to Slavic metathesis the original weak grades sometimes still exist (*oldak → łodo, not *ła). The nature of palatal weak grade of s varies: j are used intervocalically, i used after the rest of consonants, and ∅ (just succeeding vowels, i → y) only used after consonants explained in point 3 including l. The forms cz and ż are used in certain endings affected by first palatalization, otherwise c and dz used instead (see the respective pages).

• Before non-palatalized (including historically ones) consonants, *ě and *e becomes a and (i)o (*jȅko : pl. *jȅ → joko : je "time").
• Cernelian exhibits final obstruent devoicing that not reflected in the orthography, see more at Cernelian/Phonetics and Orthography.