Grammar

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• Syntax
• Declension
  • Cases
  • Determiners
  • Question words
  • Pronouns
• Conjugation
  • Polarity
  • Person
  • Mood
  • Inversion
  • Tense
  • Evidentiality
  • Order
• Derivation

Syntax

Words can be arranged freely, though there is a default order. This order can be broken for emphasis on a certain word. The following will only describe the DEFAULT arrangement of words. It is not strictly required.

The verb is typically at the start of the sentence/clause, followed by any infinitives.

Nouns default to a certain order based on their cases. The cases go in this order:

1. Nominative

Nouns can be provided with more detail via relative clauses. This is done by adding a regular clause following a noun, separated by a comma/audible pause.
Example: “ħāshagt, kwōħļ ħāgemzhøn” (translation: “the person whose dog I saw”, lit. “the.person, i.saw their.dog”)

Declension

Nouns are declined by definiteness and case, and sometimes gender and number, we will get to that.
Number can be singular, dual, or plural.

Cases

There are 32 cases for nouns in Bakhroshūngz. Below is a table listing all of them, their abbreviations, what they mean in Bakhroshūngz specifically, and their noun suffixes.

Morphosyntactic / Relation:

Location:

Motion:

Other:

1. The nominative suffix appears as zero-marking in Bakhroshəqif as vowels are not written in it (unless vowel diacritics are used).
2. If case is not applicable (e.g., standalone noun), the nominative case is used.

The case suffixes are applied onto the end of the noun to use it. Every noun requires a case!

Determiners

Determiners are prefixes on nouns. They are listed in Lexicon | Determiners.

Question words

Note: This only applies to open-ended questions. For yes/no questions, see Mood | Conjugation.

Open-ended questions are asked by making a statement, with a placeholder word acting as what is supposed to be clarified. (Example: “The event will be where?)
This placeholder word can have any of the 33 cases, and the word is that case's suffix with -t appended at the end (or -ət if the case suffix ends with /t/ or /d/). This placeholder word recieves no article or case marking; case is implied by the word itself.

This benefits from an example, so here is one:
“Līvəs əmt?” (Translation: “What do you like?” | lit. “You like what?”)
“ʕar dat?” (Translation: “Where is it?” | lit. “It is located where?”)

Pronouns

Pronouns prepend an onset to the case suffix that they use. These onsets depend on:

• Person (1st, 2nd, 3rd; placeholder pronouns are also counted here)
• Number (singular, dual, and plural)
• Invlusivity/exclusivity (in 1st- and 2nd-person duals and plurals)
• If the case suffix starts with a vowel or consonant

The pronouns below are formatted as “V-initial case suffix/C-initial case suffix” (e.g., “s/si”).
The inclusive dual/plurals are also non-specifying (3rd person & placeholders) if there is no associated exclusive dual/plural.

1. ħl/ħly is often contracted to 'l/'ly.
2. tħ/tħy is often contracted to t'/t'y.

There are also some irregularities with the case suffixes.

• Case suffixes starting with m- lose said m.
• The third-person dual pronouns for adessive, abessive,…
• “tās” is used for the adessive case instead of “dās”.

Conjugation

Verbs are conjugated based on person (for both subject and object), mood, polarity, tense, and optionally evidentiality.

Polarity

A verb can be negated via the “kə-” prefix. If phonotactics allow it, this may be contracted to “k-” (e.g., “kəlīft” → “k'līft”)

Person

The base form changes based on the person of both the subject and object.
Every word has an “important consonant”, which some pairings affect. For example, līft's important consonant is the ‹f›. If there is no object, then the object is defaulted to third person.
Below will be the table for the changes.

Mood

Bakhroshungz has 6 (7 counting infinitive) moods: indicative, conditional, hypothetical, consequential, imperative, and interrogative.
Below will be a table of what each mood means in Bakhroshungz and how it is applied to the word (the “change”).

Inversion

In the last table, you may have seen the word “inverse” used, without elaboration.
This is an arbitrary morphological process that changes one vowel to another; its “inverse”.
It is systematic and regular; below is the table of these changes.

Evidentiality

As stated before, evidentiality is optional. Below is the table of evidentiality states, their meanings (skipped when self-explanatory), and their suffixes.

Order

In case it is unclear what order the suffixes/prefixes go in; It doesn't matter! Though, below is the default order:

(polarity) (tense prefix) (mood prefix) base (person suffix) (mood suffix) (evidentiality)

Derivation

Any two or more words can be compounded, whether they be nouns or verbs, to derive new words.
The first word is the head. The head also takes all morphology, with the rest of the words usually ignoring it.
With nouns, individual nouns in the compound can have their own cases, all relating to the head noun. The word as a whole in relation to the verb assumes the case of the head.

Note that this eliminates the need for adjectives or adverbs; nouns and verbs can be described as such, respectively:

• “zīgrige” (zīgri (something that is small) + ge (dog)) (“small dog”, lit. “small-thing.dog”)
• “satstjer” (satst (to dance) + jer (to do something easily)) (“to dance easily”, lit. “dance.do-easily”)

Words can take derivational prefixes to change their meaning; these are listed in Lexicon | Derivational Prefixes. These prefixes go at the very start (leftmost) of the word, though after any determiners that it may have.