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Volapűük nulíik: Difference between revisions
→Morphology
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The category of nouns encompasses all verbs that denotes concrete and abstract objects, persons, animals, plants, feelings and concepts. It is the basic category of words since each adjective, verb and so on is based on a nominal root and derived from it. Nouns inflect for case, number and possession and may receive further conjunctive / modal particles | The category of nouns encompasses all verbs that denotes concrete and abstract objects, persons, animals, plants, feelings and concepts. It is the basic category of words since each adjective, verb and so on is based on a nominal root and derived from it. Nouns inflect for case, number and possession and may receive further conjunctive / modal particles | ||
Numbers | |||
Nouns inflect for numbers. This means they indicate wheather a noun appears as a single entity (singular) as a pair / in two (dual) or in more that one entity (plural). Each number has specific marker: | |||
{| class="wikitable" | |||
!Singular !! Dual !! Plural | |||
|- | |||
|-ø-/-b- || -t-/-d- || -s-/-z-(-š-/-ž-) | |||
|} | |||
Since the singular is a category that almost any object, person, animal, idea or anything else can appear in, it is considered the 'default' category and unmarked. This is also true for most natural languages, where there is no explicit suffix denoting a single unit of something. However, there are languages as Welsh which provide a singular suffix for nouns that normal denominate entities that exist in a conglomeration, e.g. the trees of a forrest ''coed'' where a single tree is derived from the whole via the suffix -en, thus giving ''coeden'' 'a tree'. This system does not apply to Volapȕük nulíik. Every noun has per default the numerical value 1, thus is in the singular by default. The second suffix for the singular number is actually a suffix occasionally used, e. g. for poetic purposes or when a speaker wants to stress the singularity of a noun. The dual suffix has a correspondence with the number word for 'two' ''tel''. It can appear in a voiced alternative which evolve as a result of voiced surrounding consonants. This applies also to the plural marker ''s'' which alternates with ''z''. In personal endings there is also the alternation -š-/-ž- which evolved due to phonolgical changes. | |||