Nēpoki: Difference between revisions

The grammar of Nepoki is essentially a ‘reflex’ of Proto-Indo-European. It's an inflectional language with declensional and conjugational patterns, sometimes seeming more conservative than Proto-Indo-European itself. Several striking similarities with Anatolian languages have been found. The presence of allative and elative besides the eight ‘classical’ PIE cases even led to the assumption that Nepoki is a ‘para-proto-indo-european’ language and not a descendent of PIE proper. However, Nepokian allative –a has the same origin as Hittite allative –a (< *- eh₂) and Nepokian elative –e seems to go back to PIE *-er. Nepokian might therefore preserve a very old stage of Proto-Indo-European. As Hittite, Nepokian has to genders, animate and unanimate.  

Nouns belong to one of two genders: animate and unanimate (neuter). Apart from that, nouns are inflected for three numbers: singular, dual and plural; as well as for ten cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, locative, allative and elative. All declensions can be traced back to PIE ones, though some simplifications happened.  

This declension, being recently established as a separate one, stems from neuter nouns of PIE o-declension (*-óm). All unanimate nouns ending in o belong here. The singular is identical to the first declension.