Yassi: Difference between revisions

Yassi is a S-O-V language, though the word order is not as strict as in English . Adjectives come before nouns. Nouns and adjectives are inflected for number (sing./plur.) and case (nominative, accusative, prepositional and genitive). There is no gender distinction.   

Unlike other Uralic languages which have kept an agglutinative case system, the Yassi declension displays an inflectional type close to Indo-European idioms. All the endings are genuinely inherited, though. The transition from agglutination to inflection is the consequence of far-reaching sound changes Yassi has been subjected to. In this respect notice the occasional loss of the first vowel in the oblique cases (prepositional and genitives cases singular and plural as well as accusative plural). The reason is the different stress in Proto-Yassi: The nominative of ‘mother’ was áma (> am), but the prepositional was ‘amáta’ (> mal). However, this loss affects mostly a and ā; i remains. For the word ix̌t 'son', the putative Proto-Uralic origin is given in brackets:

* nominative: '''mǝ''' ('I') '''am''' ('mother') '''ix̌t''' ('son') (< PU *irkä)

* accusative: '''mǝn''' ('me') '''am''' ('mother') '''ix̌t''' ('son') (< PU *irkä-m)  

* genitive: '''mǝnǝy''' ('mine') '''amǝy''' ('mother's') '''ix̌tǝy''' ('son's') (< PU *irkä-k)

* nominative: '''amǝl''' (‘mothers’) '''ix̌tǝl''' ('sons') (< PU *irkä-t)

* accusative: '''mal'''  (‘mothers’) '''ix̌tal''' ('sons') (< PU *irkä-t-äm)

* prepositional: '''mat''' (‘to the mothers’) '''ix̌tat''' ('to the sons') (< PU *irkä-t-tä)

* genitive: '''malǝy''' (‘of the mothers’) '''ix̌talǝy''' ('of the sons') (< PU *irkä-t-äk)

== Vocabulary ==