Vinnish: Difference between revisions

** gal'''t'''- + t > gal'''st'''

Vinnish nouns fall into one of two genders, common and neuter. The common gender comes from the conflation of the masculine and feminine genders in Old Norse. Nouns inflect for number and case.

On the whole, common nouns show a much larger variance in declension patterns than neuter nouns. There are two overarching declension patterns among common nouns: strong and weak.

Note that "(u)" refers to the presence of u-umlaut and "∅" refers to a null ending.

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A number of strong common nouns show an i-umlaut in the dative singular and in the nominative and accusative plurals, as well as an ending of -er in the nominative and accusative plurals.

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These nouns all refer to family members. They are characterized by a consistent -ar ending in the cases of the singular, and an i-umlaut in the stem in the plural cases.

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A few common strong nouns end in -i. These usually refer to abstract concepts, do not have a plural, and only show case marking in the genitive.

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The weak declension pattern of common nouns is somewhat simpler than that of the strong common nouns.

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Definiteness is shown via a cliticized definite article on the end of a noun. This definite article inflects for gender, case, and number.

<nowiki>**</nowiki>The dative plural article also overrides the final “-m” of the dative plural noun form; ergo, the word “hest'''em'''” (dat. pl. of hester “horse”) has the definite counterpart “hest'''enem'''”, rather than the expected *hestemnem.

Adjectives in Vinnish agree with the nouns they modify in gender, case, number, and definiteness. There are two inflections for adjectives: strong and weak adjectives.

Strong adjectives are used attributively with indefinite nouns and predicatively with all nouns. They inflect for gender, case, and number.

| Gen ||! colspan="2" | -re

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Weak adjectives are formed by adding an ending of -e to the stem of the adjective, and do not change form for case or number in Modern Vinnish. They are used with definite nouns and nouns modified by a demonstrative.

In more archaic texts in Vinnish, a naturally or semantically masculine noun can optionally take the ending -i in the nominative singular case. In all other cases of the noun, the ending -e is used.

There are two overarching types of verbs in Vinnish, strong and weak verbs. Weak verbs form the past stem via a dental suffix on the present stem, while strong verbs form the past stem via vowel alternation. Vinnish verbs inflect for two tenses (past and present), person, and number. In addition, they make use of certain auxiliary verbs to show aspect, and one of two moods: indicative and subjunctive. Verbs also have both a past and a present participle, and inflect for active and mediopassive voice.

Weak verbs are characterized by their usage of a dental consonant to form their past stem. This dental consonant can be either -d, -ð, or -t. Which consonant is used is not always readily predictable for a weak verb, and so must simply be memorized along with the verb; however, the majority of Vinnish verbs use -ð.

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Strong verbs show tense via a change in the stem vowel. There are seven classes of strong verbs in Vinnish, each characterized by a different alternation pattern.