Volapűük nulíik: Difference between revisions

Adjectives are predominantly nouns - they have a fixed position within the noun phrase and may function as nouns on their own. However, they may also function as a verb including the copula verb "binön":

The first version is more common among speakers of a lower social status, whereas the second has a more official and literal style. The first version, however, may also be used by people of upper status, especially in situations in which a person wants to emphasise that the dress IS expensive. This is in contrast to languages like German or English not expressed on the intonational level but on the morphological.  

Numerals also belong, just like adjectives, predominantly to the category of nouns but can be used as verbs as well:

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

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:  

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.

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

The Northern dialect has retained a tenth case that has collapsed in other dialects with the dative suffixe -é(-) and thus adding its meaning to the dative case:

In the Northern dialect this principle has remained to the very day and developped in a manner that adding the suffix showed the person adressed a form of respect. Adressing a "normal" person was gradually done by simply using the nominative form. However, about two hundred years ago the people speaking the northern dialect started to adopt a fashion of using the lenited nominative form as a normal form of adressing. Therefore, the dialect incorporated both forms, having a "normal" vocative form and a "special" vocative form, showing extra respect to the person adressed.:

The further development spread the ''-ȍ''-suffix to other dialects and within about 50 years the usage as a marker of respect evolved. Therefore, the language has nowadays two forms of marking the vocative case: a) using the lenited nominative stem b) adding the suffix -ȍ to show more respect to the person adressed.

c) they do occur alone but are allways combined with a specific case suffix. In some cases a single prefix may be combined with more than one case suffixe and thus giving a specific, different meaning with each case suffix.

These prefixes indicate spatial relations. In most natlangs and conlangs these relations are expressed via seperate words. In Volapȕük nulíik this used to be done as well. However, about two thousend years ago the people started combining adverbs with prepositions, e.g. ''in domó'' 'at the house' > ''indomó''. These new expressions were very fast recognised and analysed as complet words and only about 100 years after the first appearence of such constructions they were written with the initial syllabic structure CV- including a change of the initial consonant: ''niddomó'' ( ''dd'' representing a dental fricative [ð]).