Volapűük nulíik: Difference between revisions

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 remains 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, such as Welsh, which provide a singular suffix for nouns that normally denominate entities that exist in conglomeration, e.g. the trees of a forest ''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 the default numerical value 1, and 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 evolved 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 phonological changes.

'''Volapȕük nulíik''' has a complex set of cases. The complexity arises from a set of nine primary cases, which exist independently but can also be combined with a set of prefixes of local, temporal, or abstract function. This combination creates more than seventy different cases, which can not all be named and are not all actually regarded as cases of their own.