Kirtumur nouns
A typical Kirtumur sentence consists of a finite verbal form and, as a rule, one or more noun phrases. The verb form refers to a certain action and to its participants having roles in that action. Usually its participants are noun phrases. A noun phrase is, broadly speaking, a grammatical unit of one or more words which is in some case, expressed by an enclitic case marker which is attached to the last word of the noun phrase. A noun phrase can refer to one or more persons, animals, things, to a time, a place, etc., depending on the context. Case markers establish roles which noun phrases play in a sentence and also mark boundaries of the individual noun phrases.
Structure
A crucial point in describing the structure of a noun phrase is to establish its head – usually a noun, central to a noun phrase the same way, how a finite verb is central to a verb phrase. It determines both the general meaning and the general grammatical properties of the phrase as a whole. For instance, the following noun phrase:
ŋirak ēlnenues ... ŋir-ak ēl-nen-u-es ... person-PL word-3PL.POSS-1SG.POSS-ERG "My witnesses ..."
The noun ŋirak "people" is the head of this phrase. It determines the general meaning of the phrase, which refers to a specific kind of "people". It also determines the gender of the phrase, which is animate, and thus it is the gender of the head noun, even though it also countains the inanimate noun ēl "word". The ergative marker -es shows the boundary of the phrase and that it performs the role of the agent (the complete sentence is not shown here, however). Most noun phrases have a noun as their head, but numerals, ideophones and nominalized phrases can also be used as heads of noun phrases.
Number
Kirtumur nouns inflect for three numbers: singular, dual and plural, though only animate and a few naturally paired inanimate nouns can have dual forms.
The dual and plural of an animate noun are indicated with suffixes: -u (dual) and -ek/-ak (plural). The marker is attached directly to the animate noun regardless of its position in a noun phrase, while the plural marker is attached to the last word of a noun phrase, if the noun is inanimate, and has the form -ka/-kan depending on case markers, attached to it. Dual of naturally paired inanimate objects behaves the same way as the dual of animate nouns. The number marker always comes before any case markers and behaves either as a suffix or a clitic depending on the class of the noun, which it modifies.
Case
Cases play an important role in Kirtumur. Every noun phrase is marked with some case, which shows, how the phrase is related to the verb or to other parts of the sentence. Kirtumur cases express syntactic functions such as the subject and the various types of objects. The category of case is expressed by enclitic case markers which are attached to the last word of the noun phrase the case of which they indicate. There are four cases in the modern language, but the fifth case, called vocative is often used by the nobility, preserved in their speech through Kērsalur influence. Kirtumur nouns belong to one of three declension types, based on their animacy and whether they end in a consonant or a vowel.
The case clitics are:
| Case | Animate | Inanimate I | Inanimate II |
|---|---|---|---|
| absolutive | ŋiri | khiŋ | kōwa |
| ergative | ŋires | khiŋem | kōwa |
| dative | ŋirara | khiŋex | kōwōx |
| locative | ŋirinei | khiŋenei | kōwōnei |
| Translation | head | day | back |
Rarely the case clitic -zur, called terminative, is used to indicate an end of action or a limit in time, though not every noun can be used with it, it is mostly restricted to a temporal meaning. Unlike in Kērsalur and other old languages, Kirtumur nouns do not have short forms which appear in more complex noun clauses in other Eastern languages, however noun case markers are clitics and are attached to the last word in a noun clause nevertheless. If a noun clause contains more than one noun, all case markers are stacked onto the last word in the order of those nouns, for example:
Kōl entiri ualennararax kōl entiri ual-enn-ara-ara-ex name god great-3rd.PL-DAT.AN-DAT.AN-DAT.INAN "for the name of the great gods".
The dual of or plural markers are used with the noun they modify, although this particular example is from an old text. In modern colloquial language the word "gods" would be entirik instead, the second animate dative marker would be dropped too.
Possession
Possession is a category that describes an asymmetric relationship between two constituents: the possessor and the possessed. The possessed can be further divided into alienable and inalienable. When something is inalienably possessed, it is usually an attribute or a quality that can not be physically removed from the possessor and blood relations. A distinct inalienable category exists only for first and second persons in Kirtumur.
Like number, possession is marked with suffixes (inalieble possession is marked with prefixes instead), but they share some clitic-like behaviour with the case markers, for example: ōl ŋiwinu nōsa phasanu (blue eye-du bright.3rd.sg-stative wide.3rd.sg-stative-3sgPoss) "his/her wide bright blue eyes", where -nu "his" is phrase-final, even though the possessed is ŋiwinu "eyes". Since both "bright" and "wide" are stative verbs, they do not receive a possessive marker, but if an adjective is noun-like, a possessive marker will be used to denote the relation to the noun it modifies: uheim ukhinaušatnu "a magnificent palace" (palace magnificent-3sgPoss). Multiple possession suffixes can be used to mark more than one possessor, but, unlike case markers, they do not necessarily stack at the end of a phrase: ninnau hephenu "their child’s hair" (child-3duPoss hair-3sgPoss, but nini hephenunau is equally possible and is a marker of a noble speech), in this example the absolutive marker -i is not used with the noun, it is never used with possessed nouns.
The possessive suffixes are:
| Alienable | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type I | Type II | |||||
| singular | dual | plural | singular | dual | plural | |
| 1st | -u | -au | -em | -yu | -yau | -me |
| 2nd | -šu | -ašu | -šen | -šu | -šau | -šne |
| 3rd | -nu | -anu | -nen | -nu | -nau | -nne |
| Inalienable | ||||||
| Type I | Type II | |||||
| singular | dual | plural | singular | dual | plural | |
| 1st | ani- | anu- | anne- | an- | anu- | ann- |
| 2nd | ari- | aru- | arne- | ar- | aru- | arn- |
Type I are used after (or in case of inalieble markers - before) consonants when they are word-final (or word-initial), while Type II are used after or before vowels. The possessive markers are always placed before case clitics: phasa muphastur araltenunux "for his/her wide beautiful yard".