Morphology

Nouns

Introduction

Nouns in Lortho have three distinct features:

1. They are one of three genders: masculine, feminine, or neuter
2. All nouns can be modified to denote case
3. All nouns end in a vowel (with few exceptions)

Gender

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
-i dharakhi mountain	-u dhammu chair	-a hadikha country, land

Exceptions:

There there are a couple nouns that do not follow the above rules for gender (this will increase as Lortho's lexicon grows):

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
tapa pasta		dhi water

Grammatical Case

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Lortho has ten cases. The vowels in parentheses are added if the word ends in a consonant. The following word will be used for demonstration:

• kansaptha
  (n. neut.)

1. woods, forest

Case	Affix	Example	Translation
Nominative	-	kansaptha	woods, forest
Accusative	-me	kansapthame	forest (direct obj.)
Dative	-mela	kansapthamela	forest (indirect obj.)
Genitive1	-nau	kansapthanau	of the forest
Lative2	-ina/ena3,4	kansaptaina	in/into the forest
Ablative	-nat	kansapthanat	out of/from the forest
Allative	-dan	kansapthadan	to/towards the forest
Prolative	-dar	kansapthadar	through/via/by way of the forest
Instrumental	-len	kansapthalen	using the forest
Vocative	fa(l)-	fakansaptha	Hey, Forest!

¹ -nau is the alienable genitive whereas -tho is the inalienable genitive as seen in the endonym Lortho.
² The lative case also doubles as the locative case.
³ -ina is added to feminine and neuter nouns and -ena is added to masculine nouns
⁴ When -ina is added to a feminine noun, the final u changes to o creating the diphthong oi. e.g. kansapu tree -> kansapoina in the tree.

Possessive

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The personal possessive is formed using a prefix which is gender and number specific. We will use the following word:

• dhammu
  (n. fem.)

1. chair, seat

Person	Singular			Plural
	masculine	feminine	neuter	masculine	feminine	neuter
1st person	nidhammu	nudhammu	-	nimadhammu	numadhammu	-
2nd person	lindhammu	lundhammu	-	nanidhammu	nanudhammu	-
3rd person	lidhammu	ludhammu	ladhammu	limidhammu	limudhammu	limadhammu

Pluralization

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Each noun is pluralized by adding a suffix:

1. Feminine (-u) and Neuter (-a) nouns add the plural suffix -ne:
   • Examples:
   1. Feminine: kansaphu (n. fem) tree; pl kansaphune
   2. Neuter: hadikha (n. neut) land, country; pl hadikhane
2. Masculine nouns (-i):
   • Regular masculine nouns will add the infix -en- before -i:
   • Masculine nouns that end in -ni will add the infix -em-.
   • Examples:
   1. olakhi (n. masc) boat; pl olakheni
   2. phorenni (n. masc) peak, summit; pl phoɾennemi

Example:

• madhit (madhid-) v. to give
  1. madhid-ikh-i    i       khanishu-me  u      -mela
give-  PST-3MSG PN.3MSG book.F  -ACC PN.3FSG-DAT
     He gave the book to her
     • The verb agrees with the subject he (i).
  2. madhid-im  -ikh-u    khanishu u      -mela
give  -PASS-PST-3FSG book.F   PN.3FSG-DAT
     The book was given to her
     • The verb agrees with book since there is no subject initiating the action; however, book is still affected by the action, hence the accusative case.

Negation

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Negation is accomplished by adding the prefix dha(k)-. The phoneme /k/ is added before verbs with either initial vowel or initial /h/, which in turn morphs into /kʰ/.

1. konpharo (konphar-)
   to speak
   • konpharin
     I speak
   • dhakonpharin
     I do not speak, I am not speaking
2. hankhan (hankhan-)
   to want, wish
   • hankhanin
     I want
   • dhakhankhanin
     I do not want
3. artemit (artemid-)
   to continue
   • artemidin
     I continue
   • dhakartemidin
     I do not continue

Adjectives

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Adjectives behave a little differently than most natural languages. All adjectives are roots since they must agree in gender with the noun which they modify; however, they do not agree in number. For placement, adjectives must be placed in front of the noun which they modify.

Numerals

The counting system is base 10 (i.e. decimal, 0-9). Cardinal numbers, like adverbs, do not take any suffix to agree with the noun they modify (cf. Adjectives). You can see the written numerals on the orthography page. Ordinal numbers are still a mystery.