OK, onto nouns. We'll start with animates, since they have more inflection than inanimates. Animate nouns inflect for possession, number, and obviation; they have locative and vocative forms.
All nouns in addition can take prenouns, a closed class of descriptive prefixes which basically act like adjectives in European languages. (There is no lexical class of adjective in Proto-Nahtak- their functions are handled by prenouns and stative verbs). The template for a noun is:
[possessive prefix]-[prenoun]-stem-[obviation/plurality]-[locative/vocative]-[possessive suffix]
We'll start with possession. Possessed animate nouns always take a prefix and a suffix. A table of possessive markers:
| Sg | Pl |
---|
1 | nɨ-...-(h)et | nɨ-...nɨk |
12 | Ø | łɨ-...nɨk |
2 | łɨ-...-(h)et | łɨ-...(e)k |
3AN.PROX | hā(n)-...(h)et | hā(n)-...(e)k |
3AN.OBV | wī(y)-...-(h)et | wī(y)...(e)k |
All words in Proto-Nahtak must begin with a consonant, but prenouns do not necessarily start with one. If a prefix contains an optional consonant, this only shows up before vowel-initial prenouns. Optional vowels in suffixes appear when the suffix must come after a consonant, and optional consonants after a vowel.
When the possessor is plural, the possessive suffix distinguishes first-person from non first-person. A first-person inclusive possessor takes a second-person prefix and a first-person suffix.
Some examples:
heθe 'dog' ->
nɨ-heθe-het 'my dog'
šɨ̄šē 'duck' ->
łɨ-šɨ̄šē-nɨk 'our (including your) duck'
θēno 'cow' ->
hā-θēno-k 'his/her cow'
Prenouns come between any possessive prefix and the noun stem. They are semantic, not syntactic, and usually encode adjective-like semantic primes. Examples include
-ōsi- 'large' and
-cōʔa- 'tall'. There may be an /h/ inserted before the prenoun if there would be a vowel hiatus or word-initial vowel. Some examples:
nɨ-hōsi-heθe-het 'my big dog'
cōʔakʷēh 'the tall woman'
This is followed by the stem. This may always stand alone (unless the noun is obligatorily possessed); if so, it is unpossessed, singular, proximate (if animate) and neither locative nor vocative.
The stem is followed by the plurality/obviation slot. Animate nouns combine these into a single affix.
| Singular | Plural |
---|
Proximate | -Ø- | -(y)āt- |
Obviative | -(y)ēh/-(w)ōh | -(e)hta/-(o)hta |
Optional consonants appear after vowels, and likewise with optional vowels. The plural markers signal a retention of some sort of vowel-harmony system in pre-Proto-Nahtak: when the first vowel of the root is a front vowel /i ī e ē/, use the /e/ variant; when it's a back vowel /a ā o ō/, use the /o/ variant. The behavior of the high central vowels /ɨ ɨ̄/ varied by branch; some branches treated them as front, others as back. (The branch I'm working on first treated /ɨ ɨ̄/ as front, so that's what I'll do in examples.)
When the singular obviative ending would have taken the same vowel as the last vowel of the root, they merged, producing -ēh/-ōh, so that
heθe 'dog' obviates to
heθēh, not
heθe-yēh. Similar mergers and lengthening occured in the plural obviative:
heθēhta, not
heθehta.
Examples:
hēs-ēh 'beavers'
nahtāk-ohta 'tribes, peoples (obviated)'
łɨ-č'ān-ōh-et 'your friends'
Finally, locative and vocative endings may appear (though before any possessive suffixes). The locative ending, again, varies by vowel harmony: in words whose first vowel is front it is
-hse/-ise, in back-vowel words
-hso/-aso. After the plural proximate animate ending, simply add
-se/-so.
The vocative ending is
-(ʔ)ā. It only occurs on animate nouns.
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Inanimates
Inanimates are simpler in inflection than animates. They have no obviation or vocative markers, and possession is a bit simpler in that no possessive suffix is needed if the possessor is singular. To wit:
| Sg | Pl |
---|
1 | nɨ- | nɨ-...nɨk |
12 | Ø | łɨ-...nɨk |
2 | łɨ- | łɨ-...(e)k |
3AN.PROX | hā(n)- | hā(n)-...(e)k |
3AN.OBV | wī(y)- | wī(y)...(e)k |
Prenouns do not distinguish gender.
There is no obviation marking in inanimate nouns, so they have only a plural to deal with in the obviation/plurality slot. This morpheme is
-iki/-hki and does not distinguish vowel harmony. If the word ends in
-h, simply add
-ki; if it ends in
-k, add
-i. Examples:
nismā-hki 'potatoes'
māhi-ki 'fish'
yahmɨ-hki 'knives'
mɨkʷik-i 'clouds'
The locative is the same as in animates.
[EDIT: Also adding an instrumental marker
-(y)eši-/-(y)oši-. This is the same in animates and inanimates and goes in the locative/vocative slot.]