South Carpathian grammar

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This article discusses the grammar of the South Carpathian language.

Morphophonology

South Carpathian has two main morphophonological processes: the vowel harmony and the consonant gradation.

Vowel harmony is a redundancy feature, meaning that it is uniform within a word, so either only front or only back vowels can be present in a single word. This usually does not apply to new compound words and loanwords.

Unlike in other Carpathian languages, the consonant gradation became non-productive and unpredictable in South Carpathian. Originally a consonant in the strong grade "weakened" when a syllable became closed. However, in the modern laguage those grades were altered significantly, especially after the merging of geminated consonants with plain ones. South Carpathian shows only the qualitative gradation of stops and fricatives. Examples of the gradation are listed in the table below (nouns are shown in the nominative and accusative case):

Gradation Example Translation
p : b holpu : holboda swan
t : d partu : pardoda axe
k : g pelkĕ : pelgĕg bridge
c : z lelcĕ : lelzĕg alder
č : ž uču : užoda question
nk : ∅/j fenkă : feag winter
nz : n kedvenzĕ : kedvenĕg kindness

Nouns

South Carpathian has the least amount of cases among the Carpathian languages: four grammatical, three directional, and two locative cases (nine in total). The commitative case is obsolete, but it is used dialects of some villages and (seldom) in literature, thus it is listed below. Endings with back and front vowels are used with words having a respecting vowel harmony, so koi "house" uses back vowel endings, while pienkä "wind" uses front vowel endings.

Case Ending Example Translation
sg pl sg pl
Grammatical
nominative -k koi koik (a) house
accusative -g/-da/-dä -ba/-bä kojug koibă house (as an object)
genitive -gă/-gĕ -ădă/-ĕdĕ koigă kojudă of (a) house
essive -p/-ĭp/-ip -ub/-üb koip kojub as (a) house
Locative
inessive -t -tui/-töi kojut kojutui in (a) house
adessive -go/-gö -ko/-kö koigo kojuko on (a) house
Directional
elative -hĭ/-hi -kĭ/-ki koihĭ koikĭ out of (a) house
lative -jăb/-jĕb/-ib -kăb/-kĕb koijăb koikăb to (a) house
ablative -ci -i koici kojui from (a) house
Obsolete
commitative -ĭn/-in -käin/-koan kojĭn koikoan with (a) house