Nouns in Vrkhazhian
Vrkhazhian nouns are called maḡimud (singular maḡimu). They are declined for case, gender, and number. Specifically there are five cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, allative, and ablative) and two numbers (singular and plural). Additionally, Vrkhazhian has three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. These genders are based on sex and strictly semantic, thus most nouns, such as inanimate objects, fall into the category of neuter.
Pallug Maḡimun (Noun inflection)
All nouns are declined in one of five cases, which are the nominative, accusative, genitive, allative, and ablative.
The Nominative case marks the subject of an intransitive verb and the agent of a transitive verb while the Accusative case marks the object, or patient, of a transitive verb. The Accusative case is denoted with the prefix "tu" and shortened to "t-" before a glottal stop (which is phonetically omitted word-initially). Next, The Allative case is used to indicate movement towards the marked noun while the Ablative case is used to denote movement away from the marked noun. Lastly, The Genitive case is used to mark the possessor of an object such as "Mark" in the sentence "Mark's cat". Proper nouns such as people and places are not marked with a genitive suffix.
| Noun (masc.) | Noun (fem.) | Noun (neut.) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative singular | ʾalkad-i | ʾalkad-a | ʾalkad-u |
| Accusative singular | t-ʾalkad-i | t-ʾalkad-a | t-ʾalkad-u |
| Genitive singular | ʾalkad-aẏ | ʾalkad-a | ʾalkad-aẇ |
| Allative singular | ʾalkad-eč-i | ʾalkad-eč-a | ʾalkad-eč-u |
| Ablative singular | ʾalkad-af-i | ʾalkad-af-a | ʾalkad-af-u |
| Nominative plural | ʾalikd-il | ʾalikd-an | ʾalikd-ud |
| Accusative plural | t-ʾalikd-il | t-ʾalikd-an | t-ʾalikd-ud |
| Genitive plural | ʾalikd-iḡ | ʾalikd-aš | ʾalikd-un |
| Allative plural | ʾalikd-eč-il | ʾalikd-eč-an | ʾalikd-eč-ud |
| Ablative plural | ʾalikd-af-il | ʾalikd-af-an | ʾalikd-af-ud |
Noun states
Nouns are also be placed into what are called "states". There are only two states: the governed state (taṗšišu), or status rectus, and the construct state (samlilu), or status constructus. The construct state is used in genitive constructions to mark the head noun (possessed noun), while the Genitive case is used to mark the dependent (modifying) noun or adjective. In Vrkhazhian, the head noun and the modifying noun/adjective are called malgigu and palgugu, respectively. Nouns that that are not placed in the construct state are considered to be in the governed state, which is the default state of all nouns.
When a noun is placed in the construct state, it is stripped of all gender marking. Additionally, some nouns who had original vowels that were elided have them restored in the singular, mostly if the removal of gender endings would result in illegal word-final clusters.
| Noun (masc.) | Noun (fem.) | Noun (neut.) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative singular | lamin | lamin | lamin |
| Accusative singular | tu-lamin | tu-lamin | tu-lamin |
| Genitive singular | lamin-al | lamin-al | lamin-al |
| Allative singular | lamin-ej | lamin-ej | lamin-ej |
| Ablative singular | lamin-av | lamin-av | lamin-av |
| Nominative plural | lamn-om | lamn-om | lamn-om |
| Nominative plural | tu-lamn-om | tu-lamn-om | tu-lamn-om |
| Genitive plural | lamn-al-om | lamn-al-om | lamn-al-om |
| Allative plural | lamn-ej-om | lamn-ej-om | lamn-ej-om |
| Ablative plural | lamn-av-om | ʾalikd-av-om | ʾalikd-av-om |
Monosyllabic nouns are phonetically reduced to ʾaCC when they are placed in the construct state and an epenthetic gender ending may be added if the word would end in an illegal consonant cluster. Examples of this are the nouns kaf (water) and šim (house) which, when placed in the construct state, are reduced to ʾakf and ʾašmu.
Definite marking
Vrkhazhian can be said to have a third noun state, the definite state, which is indicated by the proclitic "ṛ-". A noun placed in this state is indicated to be a particular one (or ones) identifiable to the listener. It may be something already mentioned or uniquely specified. The clitic is attached to the noun and the adjective(s) that modify the noun. When it is placed before a noun starting with ⟨ř⟩, then it is allomorphed to ʾoř-.
The definite marker may not attach to the noun if the noun is preceded by a demonstrative pronoun or followed by a genitive pronoun, since those mark the noun as definite by default.
