Azkali grammar
Azkali grammar is the structural rules which the Azkali language follows, including the rules for words, phrases, clauses, and sentences.
Parts of speech
There are seven different parts of speech that are commonly identified by linguists in Azkali: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adpositions, conjunctions, and interjections. It is generally not possible to identify which part of speech an Azkali word belongs to by itself. However, a large amount of words belong to multiple parts of speech.
Nouns
Azkali nouns are overtly declined for six grammatical cases (the ergative, absolutive, possessive, privative, dative, and instrumental) and three numbers (the singular, paucal, and plural), with any type of grammatical gender being completely absent in all attested dialects. Azkali nouns are constructed agglunatively, contrasting extremely with verbs.
Affixes occur in
Case
Case inflection in Azkali is fairly straightforward; the affixes only change depending on the lack of presence of a root final vowel. There are six grammatical cases in Azkali. The ergative case is used for subjects of transitive verbs. The absolutive case is used for subjects of intransitive verbs and objects of transitive verbs. The possessive case is used for direct ownership. The privative case is used to mark the lack of direct ownership. The dative case is used to mark the indirect object of an action, as well as the purpose of an action. In addition, in extremely formal varieties of Azkali, the dative case is also used to denote a noun that is owned by the noun in the phrase with the possessive case. Finally, the instrumental case is used to mark that the noun is the instrument in which the action is achieved, or occurs; the instrumental case can be used for both physical objects, or ideas and concepts.
The following chart shows each case suffix.
| Case | Vowel ending | Consonant ending |
|---|---|---|
| Ergative | -n | -en |
| Absolutive | ∅ | |
| Possessive | -k | -ek |
| Privative | -z | -az |
| Dative | -ti | -eti |
| Instrument | -gez | -ez |
For the most part,
Pronouns
Personal and reflexive pronouns
The following table shows each personal pronoun in Azkali, declining for case and number. In addition, there is also reflexive pronouns included; while not a case in itself, in most Azkali grammars, the reflexive pronouns are included with the personal ones.
| Singular | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ergative | Absolutive | Possessive | Privative | Dative | Instrumental | Reflexive | ||
| 1st | go | en | goz | get | gokoz | go ten | ||
| 2nd | tu | tuek | tukoz | tet | tukoz | tu ten | ||
| 3rd | Masculine | mai | maik | maiz | het | hekoz | ha ten | |
| Feminine | kut | kurez | kutek | keiz | ||||
| Neutral | hakel | harek | heiz | |||||
| Paucal | ||||||||
| 1st | tzo | tzen | tzeiz | tzego | tzo ten | |||
| 2nd | tzu | tzuk | tzuiz | tzeutu | tzu ten | |||
| 3rd | tzare | rutzez | tzak | tzaiz | tzere | tzare ten | ||
| Plural | ||||||||
| 1st | ko | komo | tzaoz | geo | geo ten | |||
| 2nd | ku | kumu | zku | tzauz | teo | teo ten | ||
| 3rd | kei | keime | ezkei | eztzeu | keo | keo ten | ||