Ravkan Grammar

Ravkan Language Navigation: Home, Phonology, Grammar, Vocabulary, Orthography, Dialogue

Ravkan is a fusional language. Adjectives precede the nouns they modify, while possessors follow their possessees.

Nouns

Nouns in Ravkan decline for case and number, according to their grammatical gender. The cases are nominative, accusative, partitive, dative, and instrumental. There are three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter.

Noun possession

Possessors are marked with the partitive case, and follow the possessee, e.g. Soldat Sol ("Soldiers of the Sun").

Noun declension

Masculine

Masculine nouns end in a consonant in the nominative singular, and have a plural in -i. Masculine nouns merge the nominative and accusative in the singular and plural, respectively:

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	borov	borovi
Accusative			borov	borovi
Partitive	borovi	borovya
Dative	borovan	borovin
Instrumental	borovash	borovisi

Palatal-final masculine

Masculine nouns with an underlying root ending in -y (a palatalized consonant) decline in a somewhat irregular fashion, the nominative singular itself lacking the -y which appears in other forms:

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	prats	pratsyi
Accusative			pratsy	pratsyi
Partitive	pratsyi	pratsya
Dative	pratsyan	pratsyin
Instrumental	pratsyash	pratsyisi

Feminine

Feminine nouns end in -a, and have a plural in -ai. They merge the nominative and partitive singular, as well as the accusative singular, the accusative plural and the partitive plural:

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	madra	madrai
Accusative	madre	madre
Partitive	madra		madre
Dative	madrat	madres
Instrumental	madrash	madresi

Neuter count

Neuter nouns differ in their declension for count and mass nouns, respectively. Neuter count nouns end in a consonant, and have a plural in -a. They merge the nominative, accusative and partitive singular; the nominative and accusative plural; and the dative singular and plural:

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	arman	armana
Accusative			arman	armana
Partitive		arman	armani
Dative	armane		armane
Instrumental	armanash	armanisi

Neuter mass

Neuter mass nouns end -i in the nominative, and do not have separate plural forms. They merge the nominative, accusative and partitive:

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	masi		masi
Accusative			masi	masi
Partitive			masi	masi
Dative	mase		mase
Instrumental	masisi		masisi

Irregular neuter mass

An exception is the irregular noun gresu (“beer”), a Fjerdan borrowing:

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	gresu		greswi
Accusative			greswi	greswi
Partitive			greswi	greswi
Dative	greswe		greswe
Instrumental	greswisi		greswisi

Noun derivation

Abstract nouns may be derived from adjectives with the suffix -ost (“-ness”), which then take neuter gender, for example yolost (“gratefulness”) from yol (“grateful”), whence yolostash (“thanks”, literally “with gratefulness”), an instrumental form.