West Carpathian grammar

In this article various aspects of West Carpathian grammar are discussed. Unlike the neighbouring languages, such as Slovak and Polish, which are the Slavic languages, West Carpathian belongs to the Oronaic language family, and is typologically between fusional and agglutinative languages.

Nouns

The West Carpathian language has gender category in nouns or even in personal pronouns, similarly to neighbouring Hungarian: sun is "he", "she", or "it", depending on the referent. There are no articles, meaning the definiteness is not distinguished.

Cases

West Carpathian has eleven cases: six grammatical cases, three locative cases, three directional cases. The most typical case endings for singular (sg) and plural (pl) numbers are shown in the table below:

Case	Ending		Example		Translation
	sg	pl	sg	pl
Grammatical
nominative	–	-k	oiva	oivak	(a) head
accusative	different	-mma	oivā	oivamma	head (as an object)
genitive	-ui/-ū/-ju	-dū	oivū	oivadū	of (a) head
dative	-id/-cid	-īd/-ecid	oivid	oivīd	head (as an indirect object)
instrumental	-inä/-ina	-kīn/-kain	oivina	oivakain	by means of (a) head
essive	-pä/-pa	-ipä/-upa	oivapa	oivaupa	as (a) head
Locative
inessive	-utu	-eutui/-autui	oivautu	oivautui	in (a) head
adessive	-ie/-uo	-kke/-kko	oivuo	oivakko	on (a) head
apudessive	-ve/-vo	-uhe/-uho	oivavo	oivauho	at/near (a) head
Directional
illative	-ēn/-oan	-kēn/-kōn	oivoan	oivakōn	into (a) head
lative	-ivä/-iva	-kua	oivaiva	oivakua	to (a) head
allative	-hei/-hō	-kei/-kō	oivahō	oivakō	onto (a) head

Possessive suffixes

Instead of separate possessive pronouns, like English "my" or "her", West Carpathian uses special suffixes. The number of possessors and their person are distinguished. The notable feature is that if a possession is a subject or a direct object of a sentence, it would take a different possessive suffix, than a word in an another case (like genitive or dative). The following are the forms of oiva "head", declined to show possession:

person	number	Subject	Object	Other cases	Translation
first person	singular	oivasā	oivame	oiv(a)-vjad	my head
	plural	oivatōk	oivammō	oiv(a)-vnad	our head
second person	singular	oivasa	oivama	oiv(a)-vja	your (sing.) head
	plural	oivakēk	oivammē	oiv(a)-vna	your (pl.) head
third person	singular	oivasau	oivamau	oiv(a)-vjau	his/her/its head
	plural	oivapōk	oivammou	oiv(a)-vnou	their head

Words written through the hyphen (-) indicates an insertion of a case ending. When used with cases other than nominative or accusative, a possessive suffix always comes after a case ending, so it is sometimes called a postfix. For example: utuovjau "on his/her hand".