Ipeyól Grammar

Nouns

Gender

Ipeyól features a grammatical gender system that distinguishes nouns along a dual animacy hierarchy, divided into animate and inanimate classes. This system, while deriving from the ancestral Spanish biological gender classification, reflects unique cultural and cognitive categories within Ipeyól speakers.

Animate nouns in Ipeyól typically include human beings, large animals, birds, celestial and atmospheric phenomena (e.g., wind, storms, lightning, the sun, the moon), and culturally significant plants or objects associated with motion, vitality, or perceived agency. Inanimate nouns encompass most objects, insects, cold-blooded animals, body parts, concepts, mass and abstract nouns, tools, all dead animate nouns, and landscape features.

Crucially, this animacy distinction is not scientific, but culturally informed. For instance, while the general term larrul (‘tree’) is inanimate, specific, named trees such as lafalmere (‘palm’) or ilpine (‘pine’) are animate.

​​A notable feature of Ipeyól is its capacity for gender shifting: the ability of certain inanimate nouns to adopt animate grammatical status in specific contexts. This shift often occurs when the noun is personified, becomes the subject of speech or thought, or plays a central role in narrative sequences. For example, the normally inanimate noun laflór may take animate agreement when appearing as a personified spirit or character in discourse, or if the speaker wishes to give a typically inanimate noun an endearing characterization (e.g., lorí, ‘ant’ is typically inanimate, but in cultural fables with ant characters the noun follows animate morphosyntax). Likewise, body parts, tools, or natural features can be treated as animate if they exhibit agency or symbolic power in a story. Since there is no explicit animate or inanimate suffix in Ipeyól, this fluidity is very common. Some nouns switch meaning depending on animacy, for example the word lalenwe,‘tongue’ when it is inanimate refers to the body part in an animal’s mouth, whereas an animate pattern connotes ‘language.’

Number

Only animate nouns can be pluralized. Inanimate nouns remain morphologically singular. The plural is generally marked with -s, though adjectives ending in -z, -ch, or -j take -es for phonological reasons. If a noun ends in -e, the plural suffix deletes the vowel intervening from the singular form.

Cases

Nouns do not have morphological case marking. Case-position is marked with case particles, many derived from Spanish prepositions, which precede the determiner or noun phrase. These function words serve the same essential function as morphological cases.

Ipeyól exhibits a split-ergative alignment system conditioned by animacy. Animate nouns follow a nominative-accusative pattern, while inanimate nouns follow an ergative-absolutive pattern. There is however syncretism between the nominative and absolutive cases, as both are unmarked.

Ipeyól has six cases, and they can be broadly described here:

• nominative: marks the subject of a verb
• genitive: marks a noun as modifying another
• oblique: marks the direct object of a transitive verb
• locative: marks the location, functioning adverbially
• instrumental: marks accompaniment or the means by which the subject accomplishes an action
• ergative: marks the agent of a verb

Nominative

The unmarked form of the noun is used for the animate agent of transitive verbs and the animate subject of intransitive verbs. The nominative also serves as the default case for inanimate subjects of intransitive verbs and inanimate objects of transitive verbs.

Genitive

Expresses possession, origin, and is also used as the complement of many prepositions. The genitive is not marked morphologically but causes vowel mutation in the noun phrase. The genitive has similar functions to the Latin genitive, particularly in expressing possession. The genitive is manifested through the particle di (which undergoes vowel deletion when preceding a vowel, becoming a prefix)

Partitive constructions in Ipeyól express partial reference to a larger set or quantity. They typically consist of a quantifier followed by a noun in the genitive case. These constructions serve to delimit a subset of an identified whole, emphasizing inclusion, exclusion, or proportion.

Oblique

The oblique marks the direct and indirect object of transitive verbs, as well as the object of certain prepositions often related to allative motion. The oblique is introduced by the particle a, which causes vowel mutation in noun phrases and elides the initial vowel otherwise.

Notably, animate nouns can appear in the oblique as both direct and indirect objects. When a sentence contains both, Ipeyól relies on fixed word order, with the direct object directly following the verb.

Locative

The locative denotes the spatial location of animate or inanimate nouns. It is marked by the particle ń, a reduced form derived historically from Spanish en. Before vowels, the particle loses its syllabic quality and becomes a prefix.

Instrumental

The instrumental companionship, accompaniment, instrument, or participation with animate or inanimate nouns. It is marked by the particle hń, deriving from Spanish 'con' and may be translated as ‘with’, ‘together with,’ or ‘using’.

Ergative

The ergative marks the inanimate agent of transitive verbs. The ergative is marked with the particle po, which does not trigger vowel mutation but takes an epenthetic final -r if preceding a word with an initial vowel.

Prepositions

Prepositional phrases are made up of prepositions followed by a noun phrase in the genitive or accusative case. The preposition determines the case that is used, with some prepositions allowing different cases to change the meaning.

The only preposition which takes the nominative case is nugń ‘without’.

Prepositions in Ipeyól can be stranded as in English, or move continuously with pied-piped wh- question words in interrogative statements or in relative clauses.