Nominal morphology
Nouns
Given the variation in article forms (see below), it seems likely that nouns in "Feelyat" are gendered. The article variation further suggests the indication of noun case, but there is little evidence from the corpus that nouns themselves indicate case. One possible exception is in the question /wʊt ˈkundɚ mit?/46 "what kind of meat?". The word /kundɚ/ would seem to be closely related to English "kind", suggesting that the /-ɚ/ is an inflectional ending of some kind. If this is the case, it could mean that genitives in this language are (or sometimes are) indicated by marking the dependent noun rather than the head. This is a highly unusual construction in Germanic languages, and what little we can interpret of the language's pronouns suggests that pronominal genitives follow the traditional Indo-European head-marking, so it is entirely possible that the interpretation of /kundɚ/ as a marked dependent is incorrect; it could be a contraction of a noun and a preposition, or indeed it could be an entirely different etymon altogether that only coincidentally resembles English "kind". Beyond this confounding example, there is no discernible evidence of case inflection on nouns.
There are two nouns in the corpus that are glossed as plurals: /kanˈtɛstas/14 "contestants", and /seˈgand/29 "seconds". The former would seem to end in /-s/, indicating this is at least one productive plural ending, though whether it is the dominant ending as in English or merely one of several endings as in German cannot be deduced. The latter does not seem to have a plural ending at all; it is quite possible that this language, much like German, does not typically use plural endings on nouns being used as measure words, though it should be noted German doesn't typically extend this quirk to units of time.
Pronouns
A handful of pronouns are reconstructible. The 2sg pronoun /du/ appears multiple times;2,38,43 the host's repeated /də/ after /torks/9 and /horz/20,22,24 is probably an unstressed variant. The word /ɛsən/ appears twice, both times glossed in English as "it".39,47 The word /dust/44 is clearly a pronoun, and likely translates as "this". All of these pronouns would seem to be in nominative positions.
The word for "what" appears in multiple forms: /wat/ as a nominative,27 /wʌts/ as an accusative,38,43 and /wʊt/ in an adjectival form "(what kind of meat") in a question;46 this last appearance could be nominative ("what kind of meat is it") or accusative ("what kind of meat do you feel"). As noted in a previous post, it's possible that [ʌ] is an allophone of /a/, though it may be a phoneme in its own right. It may also be possible that /wʌts/ is a contraction of /wʌt/ and a verb form ending in /-s/, which would have other potential implications explored in the sections on verbs and syntax.
Adjectives
There are five interpretable (non-pronominal) adjectives in the corpus, all occuring in attributive positions: /ˈnɛdɚlændɚ/11,12,29 "Dutch", /prɛmiˈɛr/17 "first", /sɛˈkundɚ/18 "second", /viɛtnaˈmiz/51 "Vietnamese", and /trein/29 "twenty". Of these, only /sɛkundɚ/ seems to have any inflectional ending, and even this is uncertain; if it is indeed inflected, the ending /-ɚ/ would seem to correspond to the masculine gender, though the case is ambiguous (see the section on articles below). If the phone /ɚ/ is indeed analyzable as /ər/ as speculated elsewhere, this would seem to indicate that the Germanic weak adjective declension has disappeared, or at least is not used with definite articles. The only adjective with multiple attestations in the corpus is /nɛdɚlændɚ/, which does not vary despite apparently appearing in two or three different cases. This is consistent with similar geographic adjectives in German, but it is frustrating for our efforts to decipher a declension system or even whether that one exists.
(Though this doesn't relate to morphology specifically, it is interesting to note that the word for "twenty" begins with /tr-/, which we would expect to see in a word for "thirty" instead.)
Articles
It's impossible to construct a complete article system from this short corpus. However, the language clearly has both definite and indefinite articles, and given the variation in forms the articles are likely to agree with the noun in gender and probably case and number as well.
Definite article
Multiple forms of definite articles are present in the corpus, but analysis is difficult. The announcer uses the article /di/ with the word /tʃampiɔn/16 and /dɛr/ with /tʃalɛndʒɛr/,18 despite both of these phrases clearly appearing in the same case, both clearly being singular, and both presumably in masculine gender. It's possible some morphological quirk overrides the natural gender for one of these words, much like the diminutive suffix -chen renders German Mädchen "girl" a neuter noun, though it isn't clear why this would be the case.
Another tricky example is the word /kwajɚ/. The hostess uses the article /dɚ/11 (likely an unstressed variant of the announcer's /dɛr/; the announcer tends to enunciate more distinctly than the other speakers, and seems to avoid /ə/ where possible), while the host uses the article /di/,12 both in positions that appear to be nominative. Two possible solutions to this problem suggest themselves:
- An oblique case may be used when no predicate is present. A similar phenomenon occurs for pronouns in conversational English and in French, and it may very well be the case that this rule applies to other case-marked parts of speech in this language as well.
- Alternatively, verbless introductions ("The Dutch Foot Choir, ladies and gentlemen!") may by convention use the accusative case, filling in an implied "May I present to you" or something similar.
There are also some appearances of ambiguous words that may or may not be definite articles. Firstly, the host uses the phrase /da.u kantɛstas/.14 The word /da.u/ may be a plural article (if so, it is the only one decipherable in the corpus), it may be a contraction of an article and some other word, or it may not be an article at all.
Secondly, the announcer introduces the first challenger with /date prɛmiɛr tʃalɛndʒɛr/17 but the second with /dɛr sɛkundɚ tʃalɛndʒɛr/.18 It's possible that /date/ is an article (it certainly resembles dat found in many West Germanic varieties outside of the High German areas), but, given the completely different form found in nearly the exact same context in the immediately following sentence, it seems more likely that /date/ is some other determiner instead; it has been glossed here above as "his" (though this is not without its own problems).
The word /abdʒɛkt/ is preceded twice27,28 by the word /dai/, both in positions where we would expect a nominative. It's possible this may mean "his", but it's equally possible that it's another singular definite article.
Lastly, the word zün33,34 may be a contraction of a preposition and a definite article, presumably ending in -n. However, it may be a simple preposition used without an article at all, in an example of "headlinese".
To summarize, the only clearly nominative definite articles are /dɛr ~ dɚ/11 and (if it is an article at all!) /dai/.27,28 The form /di/ serves at least in part as an oblique or prepositional declension of /dɛr ~ dɚ/, though the two forms also contrast in at least one grammatical environment.16,18 And there is a possible plural definite article, /da.u/;14 if this is indeed a plural article, it is likely accusative.
Indefinite article
By contrast, only two forms are attested for the indefinite article, with almost all attestations appearing in nominative positions: /in/ is used with /painæpəl/,28 and /ain/ is used with the nouns /prak/,30 /hɛʃta/,30 /pip/,39 /klakən/,40 and /mit/.44 The article /in/ is also used for the noun /pɪg/51 in the accusative case, but this word is not attested in the nominative. No indefinite plural is attested.