Valian: Difference between revisions

The "weakened" variants of ''p, t, k'' (see [[{{FULLPAGENAME}}#Phonology#Consonants|17aug phonology]]) encountered after certain consonants and intervocalically are written as ''b, d, g'' something which may confusion at first as they are not fully voiced sounds (unlike say English).Like the vowels, the basic (non-weakened) consonants can all be doubled for the long versions of the consonants. Note, this means that there are no double ⟨b d g⟩ at all. The voiced labial fricative ⟨v⟩ is counted among the "weakened" consonantal sounds as it too cannot be doubled even though there is no 'full' form of it.

Nouns in 17aug can be inflected for number, gender, and possession. Unlike the pronouns, they are not inflected for case ever. Instead, 17aug requires noun-heavy sentences to obey a quite fix word order to mark objects and subjects.

Words in 17aug can belong to either a masculine {{sc|(m)}}, a feminine {{sc|(f)}} or a neuter {{sc|(n)}} gender. This is grammatically determined and does not always correspond to natural gender. For example, ''siit'' 'hope' is masculine, ''vilya'' 'cloud' is feminine, and ''aegast'' 'needle' is neuter. Generally, it can be said that nouns that end in a stop often are masculine, while nouns with final vowel sounds often are feminine. While there are some exceptions, this holds true in more than 70% of the cases. Determining if a noun is neuter is much more difficult as they may appear similar to both feminine and masculine nouns. The only sure way of knowing if a word is neuter is by memorising it.

Nouns can be inflected for three numbers: singular ({{sc|s}}), dual ({{sc|dual}}), and plural ({{sc|pl}}). The singular is the unmarked form.

The singular is the default, unmarked form of the noun. It is worth noting that there are many nouns which cannot be pluralised in standard 17aug such as ''{{term|pää}}'' 'snow'.

The dual is used only for things that naturally form pairs such as eyes, ears, legs and such. It is thus not very common outside a very specific semantic area. Nevertheless, it is often utilised when referring to a person's eyes. Care must be taken to remember that only the dual is correct here. The dual marker is -id something which may seem a bit strange at first. It is not too surprising when one takes into account that this is a relatively new development – the old dual was -idü – traces of which can be seen in certain set phrases such as "riimidüinä!" 'a physically or sexually attractive person'.  

:leg-{{sc|dual}} long-{{sc|dual}}

The plural is formed by the addition of -in to the word, e.g. ''tormin'' 'fathers', ''vilyain'' 'clouds', ''siidin'' 'hopes'.

Notice how the plural does trigger weakening of the plosive series (reflected in spelling).