Valmoric morphology

Nouns

Gender

There are three genders: Masculine, feminine and neuter. Each gender has multiple inflectional paradigms governing case-number endings.

Cases

See also Valmoric semiotics for more information on morphosyntactic alignment.

Valmoric has 10 cases, detailed below.

The nominative case is principially unmarked. It is used to denote:

The subject of an accusative-aligned intransitive clause: The woman read.
The subject of an accusative-aligned transitive clause: The woman read a book.
In ergative-aligned clauses, it functions as the genitive case (see below).

The accusative case is used to denote:

The object of an accusative-aligned monotransitive clause: The woman read a book.
The theme of an accusative-aligned ditransitive clause: The woman read the child a book.
Prepositional objects of motion: He went into the house.
In ergative-aligned clauses, it also functions as the instrumental case (see below).

The dative case is used to denote:

The recipient of a ditransitive clause: The woman read the child a book.
A generic indirect object: The woman read (to) the child.
Static prepositional objects: He was inside the house.
A compulsory autobenefactive: I will lay me down. (Modern English: I will lie down. / I will lay myself down.)

The genitive case is used to denote:

A possessor in an accusative-aligned clause: That is someone's house.
In ergative-aligned clauses, the genitive case acts as the ergative case, which is then used to denote:
- The subject of an intransitive clause: The woman read.
- The object of a transitive clause: The woman read a book.

The instrumental case is used to denote:

An instrument using which something was done in an accusative-aligned clause: I diced the onions with a knife.
An object or person with which something was done in an accusative-aligned clause: I diced the onions with my friend.
A manner in which something was done in an accusative-aligned clause: I diced the onions with haste.
In ergative-aligned clauses, the instrumental case acts as the absolutive case, which is used to denote the subject of a transitive clause: The woman read a book.

The ablative case indicates:

Motion from a place: I came from work.
A cause: I lost my job because of laziness.
The agent of a passive clause: He was dearly loved by his brothers.

The allative case indicates:

Motion to a place: I am going to work.
A goal: I applied for a job.
A benefactive: I would do anything for him.

The partitive case is used for:

A subset: I met some of them.
A distinction: I am different from them.
A superlative comparison: I am the best in my class.
Certain objects of intransitive verbs: I drank of the water. (Also used in Valmoric with such verbs as "forget", "know" and "remember".

The comparative case is used for:

Equative comparisons: I am as good as them.
Differentiating comparisons: I am better than them.

The essive case is used for:

A state of being: Being a composer I know a lot about music.
A period of time: I often went swimming as a child.

The vocative case expresses direct address: Hello, world!

Number

See also: #Attributive numerals

Declension paradigms

Compounding and affixes

Verbs

Copula

Nonfinite forms

Infinitive

Aspect-tense nouns

Inflectional endings

Person-number-tense

2nd aorist

Voice and valency

Auxiliary verbs

Defective verbs

Existential verb

Verbs of manner

Patient clitics

Verbal particles

Derivational morphology

Pronouns and determiners

For more detail on deixis and anaphora see Valmoric semiotics.

Definite article

Personal pronouns

Possessives

Demonstratives

Indefinites

Relatives

Interrogatives

Quantifiers

Prepositions

Declension

Case

Adjectives

See also Valmoric semiotics for further information on the predicative and attributive use of adjectives.

Attributive

Predicative

Degrees of comparison

Adverbs

Formation

Verbal adverbs

Adjectival adverbs

Numerals

Attributive numerals

Cardinals

Ordinals

Cardinal particles

Numeral nouns

Ordinal noun

Collective animate

Collective inanimate

Other numerals

Multipliers

Multiplicative adverbs

Distributive adverbs

Conjunctions

See Valmoric semiotics for information on dependent clauses.

Coordinators

Subordinators

Correlatives