Zemeni Grammar

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

Zemeni is an agglutinative language.

Phonology

Main page: Appendix:Zemeni pronunciation

An important phonetic rule is that high vowels lower after glides, which plays a role in many of the inflectional paradigms.

Nouns

Nouns inflect only for singular and plural number. The plural marker is a prefix which comes from an historic word *is- ("all"), which also gave rise to the plural pronouns. The following table shows examples of singular and plural forms for noun roots with different initials:

Initial		Singular	Plural	Prefix	Initial Change
Vowel		ara	isara	is-	—
Stop/Affricate	Voiceless
	Voiced	gambo	iskambo	is-	Devoicing
Glottal		hon	ison	is-	Deletion
Glide		yavi	ishavi	ish-	Deletion
Fricative		khaze	ikkhaze	i-	Gemination
Nasal		neri	izneri	iz-	—
Liquid		remba	izhremba	izh-	—

Pronouns

Pronouns decline for case, number and person. The cases are nominative and accusative, and the numbers singular and plural. In addition to first, second and third-person pronouns, there is also an inclusive dual pronoun, with no case distinctions. The pronouns decline as follows:

	Singular		Plural
	Nominative	Accusative	Nominative	Accusative
First Person	avi	av	isi	ek
Second Person	o		iso	is
Third Person	ene	en
Inclusive Dual	avo

Verbs

Verbs conjugate for tense and voice, and agree with their subjects in person and number. The voices are active and passive, and the tenses non-past, perfect, and imperfect. Verbs differ in their conjugation patterens based what sound the verb root begins and ends with.

Take as an example the verb root adaw- "fight". The forms adawe ("fight!") and adawesi ("we fight") are formed from the root by means of suffixes. The infinitive form of a verb is marked with bes ("do") followed by a verbal noun, in this case adawa ("fight"), which gives the infinitive form bes adawa ("to fight"). Verbal nouns for verb roots ending in a glide are formed by copying the final vowel of the root as a suffix. Historically, the fact that bes was used with verbal nouns, which were zero-derived from the verb root, combined with the fact that roots ending in a glide required the addition of a copy vowel, resulted in the generalization that the addition of a copy vowel to the root forms a verbal noun. The conjugation of adawa (vowel-initial, glide-final root) is depicted in the following chart:

		Active			Passive
		Non-Past	Perfect	Imperfect	Non-Past	Perfect	Imperfect
Singular	1st Person	adawa	kyadawa	inadawa	ezadawa	kyezadawa	inezadawa
	2nd Person	adawo	kyadawo	inadawo	ezadawo	kyezadawo	inezadawo
	3rd Person	adawene	kyadawene	inadawene	ezadawene	kyezadawene	inezadawene
Plural	1st Person	adawesi	kyadawesi	inadawesi	ezadawesi	kyezadawesi	inezadawesi
	2nd Person	adaweso	kyadaweso	inadaweso	ezadaweso	kyezadaweso	inezadaweso
	3rd Person
Infinitive		bes adawa	kibes adawa	imbes adawa	bes ezadawa	kibes ezadawa	imbes ezadawa
Imperative		adawe			ezadawe