Arêndron Morphology
1: Nouns and Pronouns

Nouns

Arêndron nouns are inflected for both number and case. In terms of number, Arêndron makes the distinction familiar from English between singular and plural. The singular is the simpler, unmarked form, the noun as it appears in the dictionary. Unlike English, which forms nearly all plurals with the -s morpheme, Arêndron has a variety of ways to form the plural, and which way is used must be learnt separately for each noun (or looked up). The form of the plural tells you which of the four declensions the noun belongs to, which in turn determines the endings taken in the different cases, so the plural is the only form that must be learnt separately.

Arêndron nouns have eight cases, although one, the nominative, is simply the unchanged noun as it appears in the dictionary. (For example, gor means “gate” or “a gate”.) Of the other cases, the genitive and associative both correspond to English “of” (gôron or gôroi, “of a gate”), but the genitive typically denotes that the noun is in a possessive or superior relation to another noun, while the associative denotes a noun related to another in a more general way.

The dative denotes a goal, purpose or beneficiary that an action is done for (gôrath, “for a gate”), while the instrumental denotes the tool that an action is done with (gôros, “with a gate”). The remaining three cases are collectively called the spatiotemporal cases, because they denote relations in space or time: the allative corresponds to towards or before (gôru, “towards a gate”); the ablative to away from or after (gôri, “away from a gate”); and the locative to at or at the same time as (gôryen, “at a gate”).

First declension

The first declension is the most common; unless a noun fits into the patterns of one of the other declensions (which are explained below) you can guess with reasonable certainty that it takes first-declension endings, which are as follows:

Some notes:

• The endings are usually added directly to the stem. However, if the stem ends in a short vowel (a or e), this vowel is instead replaced by the case endings. Most nouns ending in short vowels take second-declension endings instead (see below), but there are a few, mainly loanwords and foreign names, that do not.
• The dictionary will tell you if a first-declension noun has a lengthened final vowel in the plural. If it does, it will be lengthened in all the non-nominative cases as well, as the above example shows. Note that i does not take a circumflex but becomes ei when lengthened.
• Most nouns ending in -ar drop the a in the plural and non-nominative cases, unless this would create an awkward consonant cluster. This leads to a new a being inserted after the r before the case endings beginning with n. For instance, galtar “star” has the nominative plural galtran (not *galtaran), the associative plural galtrani.
• All first-declension nouns stress the last syllable before the endings. Thus, all the case forms of gor stress the “gô”; all the case forms of galtar stress the “gal”.

There are a few irregularities that should be noted:

• Nouns ending in -th dissimilate this to s in the dative, both singular and plural. For example, the dative singular of proth “book” is prôsath.
• Nouns ending in -ei form the ablative singular by changing -ei to -ai. Nouns ending in -û form the allative singular by changing this to -au.
• Nouns ending in -ai, -ei, -ê, -oi or ui take just -en, not -yen, in the locative singular (which is therefore homophonous with the nominative plural for these nouns). Nouns ending in -û replace this with -uien.

Intervocalic voicing

In first-declension nouns ending in an unvoiced plosive, this becomes voiced before endings beginning with a vowel: t becomes d and k becomes g. For example, balnik “cat” has the nominative plural balneigan, but the associative plural balneikni. Nouns ending in unvoiced affricates instead replace these with the corresponding voiced fricative: x becomes z, and ch becomes j. For example, klux “key” has the nominative plural klûzan.

Fricatives also undergo intervocalic voicing, but this is not written. For instance, cas “name”, pronounced with /s/, has the nominative plural câsan, pronounced with /z/.

Locative palatalisation

In first-declension nouns ending with a consonant other than l or r, the cluster formed with the y of the locative singular simplifies to a single consonant. The clusters ty and dy become ch and j; ky becomes c. Any nasal plus y becomes nh, while sy and thy both become sh. After the palatal consonants ch and sh, the y is simply dropped.

Some examples: khûst “moon”, locative singular khûschen; lêk “group”, locative singular lêcen; cas “name”, locative singular câshen.

In nouns ending in -g or -gh, this disappears with diphthongisation of the preceding vowel; a and i become ai, e becomes ei, o and u become oi and ui. The same changes happen to corresponding long vowels (for instance, â also becomes ai); œ becomes ei. Diphthongs (including ei) are unchanged, but note that the y of the locative ending is not written after an i.

The above does not apply to nouns ending in -ng or -rg, which instead form locatives in -nhen and -ryen respectively; for example, narg “wolf”, locative singular naryen.

Some examples of nouns to which the rule does apply: onzag “wall”, locative singular onzaien; regh “foot”, locative singular reien; lemêg “evening meal”, locative singular lemeien.

Second declension

As stated above, most nouns ending in a short vowel (and no others) fall into the second declension. In all these nouns, the final short vowel is dropped before the endings are added, which are as follows:

All second-declension nouns stress the last syllable before the endings; thus, all the case forms of geira stress the “gei”.

As in the first declension, nouns with th before the ending dissimilate this to s in the dative, both singular and plural. For example, laitha “smell” has the dative singular laiseth.

Nouns with c before the ending dissimilate this to k in the associative, ablative and locative singular and the locative plural; nouns with nh dissimilate this to n. For example, treuca “shape” has the associative singular treukui; telnha “friend” has the associative singular telnui. In some dialects, particularly that of Endros, ch and sh are also dissimilated, to t and s respectively.

Third declension

The third declension contains most nouns ending in a short vowel followed by a nasal (though if the vowel is a or e this is pronounced as a syllabic nasal), but does not include nouns formed with the nominalising suffix -en, which instead fall into the fourth declension (see below). The third declension takes endings as follows:

Third-declension nouns stress the penultimate vowel of the stem in the singular (except locative); the plural (and the locative) lengthens the last vowel of the stem, which is stressed. (As before, treat ei as the long vowel equivalent to i.) Thus the singular forms of xœmam stress the “xœ”; the plural forms and the locative stress the “mâm”.

An exception: the nominative plural stresses the long vowel if the noun has only two syllables, as with the example of xœmâm. Nouns with more than two syllables never stress the last syllable in Arêndron, and so the stress will instead fall on the same syllable as in the nominative singular.

Fourth declension

The fourth declension contains many, but not all, nouns that end in a short vowel followed by a coronal consonant. All fourth-declension nouns have the same forms in both singular and plural, so there are only half as many forms to be learnt. They are as follows:

Fourth-declension nouns stress the penultimate syllable before the endings; in the above example of basat, all the case forms stress the “ba”.

Nouns formed with the nominalising suffix -en fall into the fourth declension, and have an alternative locative form, replacing the -en with -nhen. This form is only used when it would not create too awkward a consonant cluster. For example, zûren “black thing” has the locative zûrnhen; ghasten “old man” takes the standard locative ghastenain. There is considerable dialectal variation as to exactly which words prefer which form.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

Arêndron has ten personal pronouns: first, second, third and fourth person, each with singular and plural forms, and masculine and feminine forms of the third person singular. The pronouns take the same eight cases as nouns, and each pronoun declines similarly to one of the noun declensions, although the pronouns show greater irregularity. Pronouns do not take the plural case endings; instead, each plural pronoun declines like a separate noun.

The fourth person is, like the third person, used to translate “he”, “she” or “it”, but the difference is that the fourth person always refers to a different person or thing from the most recently mentioned third person. For example, in the sentence “He picked up his drink”, Arêndron would use the third person for “his” if the man picked up his own drink, but the fourth person if it belonged to someone else (other than the speaker or listener).

The complete set of pronoun forms is as follows. (Note that the first and second pronouns do not have spatiotemporal case forms; these have died out as they are so rarely used.)

Singular

Plural

Other pronouns

Arêndron has three more pronouns: the interrogative var, the relative do, and the anaphoric sa. These pronouns do not distinguish singular and plural. They decline as follows:

In speech, the locative interrogative pronoun vâryen is often elided to “vêyen”. Colloquially, the other two-syllable forms of var may be trimmed of their first syllables when they are used within a sentence and not as a one-word question.