Indojisnen Grammar
Indojisnen is a polysynthetic language.
Nouns
Nouns can be derived from verbs, for example using suffixes such as -ssit, which forms nouns that refers to some sort of substance, e.g. lyurinjessit "awesome stuff" from lyurinjero "to be awesome".
Pronouns
Pronouns decline for person and number. The second person singular pronoun is sayak.
Adjectives
In the Indojisnen language, there are no adjectives per se, their function instead being filled by verbs describing being a certain quality (see below).
Verbs
Verbs agree with their subjects in person and number, and conjugate for tense. Direct objects can be incorporated into the verb, which causes the verb to conjugate as if it were intranstive. Verbal morphology differs based on if the verb is transitive or intransitive. Indojisnen verbs have three tenses: perfective (indicating completed actions), imperfective (indicating ongoing or incomplete actions), and gnomic (conveying actions viewed generically rather than with specific temporal reference). Verbs also have infinitive forms, such as lyurinjero "to be awesome" (stem lyurinje-).
The -tlan ending is used to indicate the gnomic tense when verbs have third-person subjects and the verb stems conclude with a vowel . For instance, with verb stems like eyda- "be good" and vowku- "be strong," the resulting words signify "he/she is/was good generally" (eydatlan) and "he/she is/was strong generally" (vowkutlan). While the literal translation may be a verb form, the conveyed meaning aligns closely with the concept of adjectives in English.
Verbs with direct objects can incorporate the direct object noun or pronoun. Consider the word sayatranguhan "I love you.", which has the following components:
- sayak: Second person singular pronoun.
- -tra: Suffix added to a noun to form a verb meaning "to want x," with x being the noun to which the suffix is attached. The addition of this suffix results in the deletion of a previous consonant.
- -nggu: Suffix added to any verb to convey the meaning of "to do to excess" or "to do too much," often with a negative connotation.
- -tranggu: Combined suffixes, forming a verb meaning "to love x," particularly in a colloquial sense.
- sayatrangu: The combination of sayak and -tranggu, with a regular sound change (nasal-voiced stop sequences reduce outside of the first two syllables). This forms a verb stem that inflects regularly.
- -han: The conjugation for intransitive verbs in the gnomic (or timeless) tense in the first person singular. The verb, being intransitive due to the incorporation of the noun, takes this conjugation.