Ádeyan Noun Morphology

3.1  Definiteness and Specificity

Nouns in Ádeyan are marked for definiteness and specificity.  Definiteness is marked by the presence (or absence) of the definite article, yu.  Specificity is marked by infixing th after the final vowel of nonspecific noun, optionally adding e if this results in a coda cluster.

Definite nouns refer to things that have already been mentioned in or which can be inferred from the context.  All definite nouns are marked, even ones that are names or proper nouns.  Without the definite article, names mean something like "a person named X" instead of just "X", whereas with the definite article they refer to someone who has already been mentioned in the context.  For example:

Specific nouns refer to specific things, while nonspecific nouns refer to general, theoretical, hypothetical, unimportant, or unquantifiable things.  For example:

Technically speaking, something cannot be both definite and nonspecific, but in Ádeyan marking a noun for both definiteness and nonspecificity is used to mean "all of the..", as in:

(See Verbal Morphology for explanation of the verb forms, and Basic Syntax for explanation of rin, and Pronouns for an explanation of yun and its gloss.)

3.2  Coda-Dropping Roots

Ususally, when nouns attach onto other nouns or verbs, they are unchanged in the compound - for example, the root nído attaches onto the -yan suffix to form nídoyan and likewise to the -ref suffix to form nídoref.  However, some noun roots that end with a consonant drop that consonant when they are put in front of another root that begins with a consonant.  For example, when zíon is put in front of nido, it drops the final n and becomes zíonido, whereas xún, a non-coda-dropping root, combines with it to form xunnído, with the n being pronounced twice.  The exception to this is when the noun precedes a classifier.

3.3  Classifiers

Ádeyan nouns are divided into a number of different classes, each of which has a classifier associated with it, which is sometimes appended to nouns in the assocated class.  Not all nouns in any given class have the classifier appended, and some have multiple classifiers (in which case they belong to the class associated with the last classifier).  The classifiers themselves are shortened forms of words or roots.  More basic nouns usually do not have classifiers; they are more common on compounds, and mandatory on most pronouns.  Some nouns can appear with or without a classifier, in which case the classified is usually either a proper name or is "stronger" in some way - for example, xun by itself means "moon", but the classified noun Xunra is the name of a goddess; thelas by itself means "river" as a generic noun, while Thélasra is the name of an actual river in Ádeya.  Sometimes a classifier of one class can affix to a noun whose meaning is associated with another class, which changes the meaning of the noun into something associated to the original meaning, but which semantically belongs to the new class.  For example, ade by itself means "desert", which is semantically a class -ra noun.  When it is given the -ra classifier (Ádera), it refers to the actual desert in the southern part of Ádeya; when it is given the -ya classifier (having to do with groups of people and cultures) it becomes Ádeya, or the people who come from the desert.

Ádeyan has the following classifiers:

When -yen and -soc are affixed to a noun which has a coda, the initial y or s are dropped, leaving -en and -oc.

On to Pronouns.