Adwan

The Adwanic language, (English: Adwan, French: Adouanne, Spanish: Aduana, Pacardian: Adwana, Adwan: Aðwana) is an inflecting, isolated language. It is the language of the Adwanic People, or the Chiðauma Aðwani.

Features:
 * Adwan is a fusionally synthetic language. This means that words change depending on their usage (I am would be það, yet you are could either be þus or þuš, depending on the number).
 * Verbs in Adwan are conjugated to three persons, two numbers, three tenses, two aspects, three voices, and four moods.


 * While Adwan expresses traits for a pro-dropping language, personal pronouns are commonly used epenthetically.
 * Adwan declines nouns for number, grammatical gender, and grammatical case.
 * Adwan has 7 cases; nominative, genitive, accusative, dative, ablative, locative and vocative, and 2 numbers; singular and plural.
 * Adwab lacks possessive pronouns, instead making great usage of the genitive case.
 * Adwan is a syllable-timed language. Every syllable in Adwan gets about the same amount of length -- except for the rare syllables that follow geminates.
 * Loanwords to Adwan are generally rare; about 25-30% of Adwan's vocabulary is shared with other European languages (while mesa means table in Spanish, it means island in Adwan).
 * Coordinating conjunctions have two, very different forms, which depend on what they're connecting. While clauses use traditional, separate conjunctions, listed items use proclitics, or morphemes that work like affixes and depend on the word they're attached to, but are grammatically independant.
 * Stress is always put on the penultimate syllable unless stated otherwise (acute accents over vowels show irregular stress rules, which are incredibly common).

Lexicon
The Adwanic Lexicon can be found here.

Phrases
Adwanic Phrases can be found here.

Irregular Verbs
Irregular Verbs can be found here.

Phonology
Adwan employs 36 consonants, 7 vowels and 13 diphthongs.

Consonants
Allophones are in parenthesis. Adwan's phonology varies, for there are a certain number of allophones for each consonant.

Adwan makes a distinction between aspirated and unaspirated plosives, rather than a voiced and unvoiced distinction (Adwan only has one voiced plosive, [d], and its dental counterpart [d̪]). The plosive /ɡ/ is an allophone of [ɣ]. Adwan also makes a distinction between alveolar nasals [n], and velar nasals [ŋ], and, unlike many languages, [n] and [ŋ] are not allophones. Alveolar nasals are never velarized before velar consonants. Palatal nasals only ocurr before vowels, ususally intervocalic, and are always syllable-first. Palatal plosives /c/ and /ɟ/ are allophones of [t͡ʃ] and [d͡ʒ], respectively. Due to lenition, it's incredibly common -- almost colloquial -- for the voiced palatal plosive, /ɟ/, to replace the voiced post-alveolar affricate, [d͡ʒ], when in initial position and generally before vowels, though it is also rare before consonants, thus leaving the conception that [d͡ʒ] is used before consonants and /ɟ/ before vowels.

The phoneme [t] comes in three variants, while [d] comes in two. Both alveolar plosives have dental counterparts, which are often phonemically distinguished (the distinction is disappearing). The voiceless alveolar plosive comes in aspirated and unaspirated forms, just like the bilabial and velar plosives. The voiceless alveolar fricative, [s], comes in two forms; apical and domed, and make somewhat of a distinction. The distinction between a domed [s] and an apical [s̺] is as strong as the distinction between dental plosives: not too strong. Dental and apical consonants have been proposed to be labled allophoned, but are technically phonemic, as switcihng a domed [s] and an apical [s̺] would change the pronunciation of preceding alveolar trills, [ɾ]. However, voiceless laminated alveolar fricatives also exist in Adwan, though in the form of an allophone to [z].

The consonants /ɕ/ and /ʑ/ are allophones of [ʃ] and [ʒ], respectively.

Alveolar trills are allophones to alveolar flaps and taps, and again, both alveolar trills and flaps make a distinction between voiced and voiceless. Adwan also possesses the alveolar lateral fricative, a some-what rare consonant, only seen in few languages (only one European language has it -- Welsh), though alveolar lateral fricatives are commonly pronounced as voiceless alveolar lateral (voiceless l's, [l̥]).

Adwan has two semivowels, [j] and [w], and are orthographically never intervocalic, instead represented by ‹gh› and ‹wh›, respectively.

Vowels

 * [e] is an allophone of [ɛ], and [o] is an allophone of [ɔ]
 * Rounded vowels are often called "round vowels" or "soft vowels", while unrounded vowels are often called "boxy vowels" or "hard vowels."

Diphthongs
In diphthongs, the phoneme [ɛ] changes to [e], and [ɔ] changes to [o].

Phonotactics
Syllables in Adwan follow a relatively simple set of rules in formation. Usually, they follow a CV pattern, though it is not uncommon to see CCV, CCCV, and CCVCC. Typically, the generalized rule for syllables in Adwan is (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C).

Note, diphthongs and digraphs that represent one phonemic sound are considered one vowel and one consonant, respectively.

Alphabet & Orthography
The Adwanic alphabet consists of 33 letters:

A C Ċ Č D Ð Ď E F G H I J K L M N Ň O Ö P R S Š Þ U V W Y Z Ż Ž Note: Þþ is collated right after Šš.

The letters Bb, Qq, and Xx do not exist in Adwan, neither in the alphabet or in loanwords. Instead, [b] tends to become [v] or [p], [kw] is written as cw, and [ks] is written as gs. Like the phoneme [b], [gz] does not exist in Adwan.

Diacritic and etc. notes:


 * Dots were used to affricate alveolar fricatives.


 * Háčeks were used over alveolar consonants to represent post-alveolar consonants.


 * 1) In digraphs representing post-alveolar consonants, ‹c› is used to represent post-alveolar fricatives, and ‹g› to represent post-alveolar affricates.
 * Accented vowels do not count as separate characters, for they do not represent new phonemes, therefore vowels with accents are not in the alphabet.
 * Digraphs are not represented in the alphabet.
 * In the thorn's name (þ, þor), the ‹n› was dropped due to nasals never coming after r, unless they belong to another syllable.

Stress
Stress in Adwan is grammatically phonemic, as Adwan utilizes stress as a grammatical tool, rather than a lexical one. Unlike many languages, however, Adwan's stress is hardly consistent. There are two typical rules to Adwan's default stress. Stress is marked by an acute accent (or a double acute for the umlaut-o) when irregular. Therefore, while the penultimate stress in wúďum, locative of wuď, is marked, the penultimate stress in afkra isn't, because general rules already specify that, since afkra does not end in a nasal consonant, the stress is on the penultimate syllable. Adwan is like Spanish and Portuguese, in this perspective.
 * Stress falls on the last syllable if the word ends in a nasal consonant (n [n], ň[ŋ], and m[m]), therefore, many declensions, such as the sixth one, change the entire stress position of a word.
 * Stress falls on the penultimate syllable if a word ends in a vowel or any other consonant.

While the acute accent is used for stress indication in most words, many single-syllable words from closed-class word classes utilize them for vowel length. Vowel length is not phonemic in Adwan, though it is typical for stressed vowels to also be long. Monosyllabic words such as ví, "in", use the acute accent to mark a longer vowel than it normally would be. Most words of single syllables are stress-less, though longer prepositions such as dgeňcwí use a regular stress-marking acute accent because it's not monosyllabic.

As stated before, stress is phonemic in Adwan. An example, common in declensions, is the use of stress to differentiate between number. The sixth declension's genitive ending for the singular is -ist, while the plural is -íst, thus, stress in a word may simply change number. Apart from the many stress changes in declensions, stress also affects orthography, for certain letters are used before stressed vowels, such as f, which before an unstressed vowel represents [f], but before stressed vowels represents [v]. The same occurs for f, ff, p, pp, s, sk, ss, and t. Certain things in Adwan also follow certain stress patterns, such as the future and past tense in verbs, which always has stress on the last syllable of the conjugated verb.

Geminate Orthography
Geminates in Adwan occur more in inflections than they do in uninflected words. As a result of Adwan's orthography utilizing double consonants to represent certain sounds, it is a rule that all geminates be indicated with double consonants and an accute accent over the preceding vowel. The only exception to this is in certain consonant doubles, such as n, p,s, and t, which when doubled and word final, are geminated.

Geminations in Monophthong/Diphthong Separators
Seldomly do separators have to geminate, but it's quite possible. However, geminations in separators do not exist, instead lenghthening the vowel by double, or even triple the actual length. The "h" in separators are doubled.

For example:

Colhu /ko̯u.u/, "Flood", geminates in the Locative singular to Cólhhus, which is pronounced /ko̯uw:us/

Cwydhu, "Wales", geminates in the Locative singular to Cwýdhhus, which is pronounced either /kwɪ:us/ or /kwɪʔ:us/

Fortunately as it is, the need for monophthong and diphthong separators are a relatively literary feature, for most words that use them and have adjacent vowels are literary words (compare the three words for organization: scýskyma, organiseišön, and łowhogha).

Syntax & Morphology
Adwan is an inflecting language, where many words change their form depending on their function in a sentence. This may pose a problem for many English speakers, Chinese speakers, or other speakers of analytical languages, for analytical languages depend on word order to convey their meaning, as opposed to morphology.

Adwan, as an inflecting language, inflects verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and numbers depending on their function in a sentence, or their case (or person, mood, voice, tense and aspect, for verbs).

Word Order
Because of the inflections that go on in Adwan, word order is generally a lot freer than it would be if it didn't have all those inflections. Adwan generally follows an SVO word order, hough many word orders are feasible due to Adwan's extensive inflectional system. However, unlike many inflecting languages, word order does not establish mood in Adwan, but is merely used as a tool of avoiding epenthesis. Word order in Adwan is, for lack of a better word, shallow and moderately unimportant, though the use of SVO, SOV and VOS is all too commonly used and recommended.

Below are some general rules the tend to confuse learners, as they don't follow typical SOV word orders.
 * Accusatives tend to go before the verb, while accusative 3rd person pronouns always precede the verb.
 * Dative personal pronouns always precede conjugated verbs.
 * Dative, Ablative and Locative nouns tend to go after the verb.
 * If the subject is a personal pronoun, the personal pronoun is usually omitted, unless the personal pronoun is in the 3rd person.
 * Personal pronouns always precede accusatives. She sees the dog --> Ena pöžin vle.
 * In a sentence without accusatives, the verb is second-to-last, with a personal pronoun following it. I'm sorry in Adwan, I'm with you, is written With you am I, or Zuð tenu það jag.
 * When a relative pronoun is in the accusative, the whole relative clause precedes the conjugated verb. She likes that everyone eats her food --> Saż að tuði migu iła mozcim ena þaure. --> That all food of her (they) eat she likes.

WH Fronting
Due to influence, Adwan, like other Indo-European languages, experiences WH Fronting, or the positioning of interrogative pronouns, interrogative adverbs and interrogative conjunctions to the beggining of the sentence. However, as common as it is to see what, or scað/sað in the beginning of a sentence as it is to see it in the middle of a sentence, or even at the end. For example, note the two ways to say what is that?:

With WH Fronting: Scaż þyð sitð?

Without WH Fronting: Sitð þyð scaż?

Place Manner Time
Place manner and time order is not strict at all in Adwan, except for one rule: time must always go after the verb. The usual order in Adwan is time place manner, although quite literally, there is no restriction to order, as long as the time goes after the verb. When dealing with Place manner time, the verb always precedes the temporal phrase, therefore word order depends on the position of the temporal phrase.

Time Place Manner Time Manner Place Place Manner Time Place Time Manner Manner Time Place Manner Place Time Taréi (Tarei) -> I will go; mač --> tomorrow; šússkena (loc of šuska) --> (to, at) school; zuð --> with, via; swacgé (abl of swač) --> car.
 * I will go tomorrow to school by car.
 * Taréi mač šusko zuð swacgé.
 * I will go tomorrow by car to school.
 * Taréi mač zuð swacgé šusko.
 * To school by car I will go tomorrow.
 * Šusko zuð swacgé taréi mač.
 * To school I will go tomorrow by car.
 * Šusko taréi mač zuð swacgé.
 * By car I will go tomorrow to school.
 * Zuð swacgé taréi mač šusko.
 * By car to school I will go tomorrow.
 * Zuð swacgé taréi mač.

Cases
Adwan has seven cases to which decline its nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and numbers. They are the nominative, the genitive, the accusative, the dative, the ablative, the locative and the vocative, and are always given in that specific order. While Adwan shares the same cases as many European languages, some uses are quite different. Like other languages, however, a noun's case is determined by two factors: a verb and a preposition, though certain cases aren't governed by anything (nominative, vocative) and some are mainly governed by prepositions (dative, ablative, locative).

Nominative
The nominative case isn't ever governed by anything, for it is the subject of a sentence. All verbs agree with the nominative, and participles change their form according to the noun in the nominative's gender and number. However, nominatives, if personal pronouns, are not so commonly used due to Adwan's extensive conjugation system. Unlike other languages, the use of the nominative is not used for emphasis, but rather, it is used in the same way word order is used: as an epenthetic tool to ease a sentence. This mainly happens in relative clauses that require the relative pronoun sað, where a nominative pronoun is placed after the verb so as to not cause ellision. Note: Łoraċ jag saż mozcöð is an example, where the lack of jag would have caused the ċ in łoraċ to elide with the s in saż.

All nouns, pronouns and adjectives are given in the Nominative in dictionaries. Note, however, that adjectives have 6 nominatives (two numbers times three genders) while other nons and pronouns simply have two (singular and plural). In a declension, the nominative tends to share the same ending as the vocative.

An example of a noun, pronoun or adjective in the nominative is shown below.

''Jack sees [that] his dog run[s] around the fence. Petr and Katerina are siblings. My parents are at work. The quick, brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.''

Unlike other languages, predicates are NOT in the nominative.

Accusative
The accusative is the case governed the most by verbs, with the dative not far behind. The accusative is also governed by the verb to be, therefore leaving all predicates to be in the accusative, which is quite different from many languages, which govern the nominative. A noun in the accusative is also a direct object to a verb's action, and thus, no preposition can govern the accusative. The accusative is only governed by verbs, and is even dubbed "the verbal case" by some enthusiasts. In declensions, the accusative never shares the same ending as a nominative that's in the same declension except for in adjectives.

One phenomenon that occurs in Adwan is the breaking of its usual right branching system, where objects in the accusative precede whatever they are governed by. While grammatically correct, it sounds rather inconvenient to place the accusative after a verb. This stands for relative clauses too, and, since most relative clauses are caused by a relative clause in the accusative, full relative clauses tend to proceed a verb. Shown below are examples, in English, of accusatives placed before the verbs.

''Jack that his dog runs around the fence sees. Petr and Katerina siblings are. I a movie watched today with my friends. I that you eat want.''

Note, that only in relative clauses do other cases follow the accusative other than the verb. In a regular phrase, such as I watched a movie today with my friends, the prepositional phrase with my friends does not follow a movie. An exception is the use of genitives, which always follow whatever they possess, though if the possessor is not a pronoun, a possessive adjective form of a noun is used instead, though it doesn't follow the accusative. Typically, the ordering for a sentence with an accusative and a preposional phrase is order as so:


 * [subject/nominative] [direct object/accusative] [verb] [prepositional phrase: preposition, noun:dative/ablative/locative].

Genitive
The genitive is the case of posession, both active and static. The use of the genitive is somewhat not as common as other cases, as it only works for possession, though verbs do govern the genitive if the quantity of the object is partitive; this always replaces the need for the determiner some, etc. The genitive always comes after whatever noun is in possession, as a noun in the genitive is like saying of ___. No preposition governs the genitive. Genitives are most commonly used with possession than possessive adjectives are, where genitives are generally used, possessive adjectives are only used if the item of posession is in the accusative and therefore the possessor needed to be in the accusative, too. Shown below are sentences in English that use possessive adjectives and their rewordings to fit genitives.

''That's Amelia's dog --> That is dog of Amelia. Where is Carpenter's street? ---> Where is street of Carpenter? She is a creature of the night.''

And below is the partitive use of the Genitive:

''We drank some water. ''

Dative
The dative is one of three cases that deal with prepositions. Generally, the dative case denotes movement towards other objects in preposition, and is, by default, paired up with the preposition to. However, the dative is also governed by many verbs. Many verbs actually govern several different cases, such as to be. In the locative, it expresses that one is at a place or a location. In the dative it expresses the same usage as to go, therefore I am [to] park essentially has the same use as I'm going to the park. The dative case in English is bolded below:

''I gave [to] Peter his presents. I threw the ball at Katerina. I brought this gift for you. I'm going to school. ''

Ablative
The ablative is the second of three cases that deal with prepositions. Generally, the ablative case expresses use of instrument and marks motion away from something. The ablative, essentially, has the same usage as the instrumental case with many Slavic languages, and shares a certain distinction with Latin's ablative case. Not as many verbs govern the ablative as they do the dative, though it is still not uncommon. Verbs in the passive voice govern the ablative case, completely getting rid of the preposition by in static passives. Therefore I was eaten by a dog would be I was eaten dog ([Jag] Þera mozcago pözcem), when translated into Adwan. The ablative takes on the preposition from by default, such as ''This present is from your sister. Note, however, that the preposition from has two uses one locative denoting origin (such as I'm flying from London to the USA) and the other denoting motion from (that ball came from nowhere!''). Shown below are sentences in English with prepositions and nouns in the ablative bolded:

''I'm driving to school with a car. Because of my homework, I didn't sleep last night. I explained to my parents in a nice manner, but they didn't listen. ''

Locative
The locative is the third and final of the three cases in Adwan that deal with prepositions. The locative is not as commonly governed by verbs, but takes up literal meanins with prepositions, thus making the locative quite common with prepositional uses. The locative in Adwan denotes location, therefore prepositions dealing with location, address, or direction are all in the locative. Such distinction is made between the preposition for in, or ví, where going in somewhere requires the locative, while being in a manner of a speaking or with a manner of speaking uses the ablative. The ablative is defaulted with the preposition at, therefore I'm at school would be Jag það šússkena. Nouns and prepositions in the locative are bolded below:

''I walked around the forest. Let's drive to somewhere [that is] far [from] here. One's front yard is in fronf of their house. ''

Vocative
The vocative is not as used as much as other cases, though its use is still widely seen, mainly in narratives and literature. The vocative expresses dialogue or direct calling, therefore a person calling out another person's name would be in the vocative. The vocative is seen in many greetings, as much as in dialogues. The vocative, in some declensions, may share the same endings with either the nominative or the accusative. Below are examples of nouns in the vocative in English:

'O! Father! '''Where are you? Hello Petr! Oh, my dear cat, what have you done?''

Prepositions
Prepositions in Adwan can be quite tricky, for not only are there a good number of them, but many of them are incredibly dependant on cases. A preposition can have up to three different meanings, some even more; the distinction between each meaning lies in the case used, however.

For example: the preposition After, or Dgengcwí, means After in the ablative, and behind in the locative. While a connection between the two can be made, there are still even more ambigious prepositions.

Thus, it is vital to know which case goes with not only which prepositions, but with which prepositional meanings.

Prepositions and their Cases Table
Below is a table showing an overview of the Adwanic and English prepositions and the cases they belong to.

Nouns
Nouns in Adwan are categorized into one of three genders which are commonly found in other European languages. Masculine, Feminine, and Neuter. However, unlike many languages, genders do not necessarily hold special endings, therefore, the gender of a noun must be memorized. It is, possible, however, to determine the gender of a noun by its declension paradigm. Nouns in Adwan are declined according to grammatical case, number, and gender. However, it must be noted that, in Adwanic nouns, numbers are on a steady collapse, leaving number to be highly dependant on adjectives and determiners for many classes.

Apart from genders, nouns are divided into other subclasses. These classes depend on their ending, i.e. Migo would be declined differently than Pőž, even if they are both masculine.

The different classes of nouns are shown below, each class retaining its own declensional pattern. However, one thing must be noticed. Nouns in Adwan are distributed in a less arbitrary fashion, with nouns actually having some sort of connection to their gender. This does no prove true to all nouns, but it holds steady for the majority. Along with that, all living things are either masculine or feminine. Note, when verbs change into nouns, their class of verb determines the gender.
 * Masculine
 * 1) First Declension (c, cð, ch, č, ð, f, gh, k, l, ł, n, ň, s, š, tð)
 * 2) Second Declension (ċ, d, ď, ff, g, m, p, pp, r, sð, ss, t, tt, v, z, ż, ž)
 * 3) Third Declension (e)
 * 4) Fourth Declension (o)
 * Feminine
 * 1) Fifth Declension (c, cð, ch, č, ð, f, gh, k, l, ł, n, ň, s, š)
 * 2) Sixth Declension (ċ, d, ď, ff, g, m, p, pp, r, sð, ss, t, tt, v, z, ż, ž)
 * 3) Seventh Declension (a)
 * 4) Eighth Declension (u)
 * Neuter
 * 1) Ninth Declension (c, cð, ch, ċ, č, d, ð, ď, f, ff, g, gh, k, l, ł, m, n, ň, p, pp, r, s, sð, ss, š, t, tð, tt, v, z, ż, ž)
 * 2) Tenth Declension (i)
 * 3) Eleventh Declension (y)

First Declension
Nouns ending with a smooth consonant (c, cð, ch, č, ð, f, gh, k, l, ł, n, ň, s, š, tð).

Second Declension
Nouns ending with a rough consonant (ċ, d, ď, ff, g, m, p, pp, r, sð, ss, t, tt, v, z, ż, ž).

Third Declension
Nouns ending in a boxy vowel (e)

Fourth Declension
Nouns ending in a round vowel (o)

Fifth Declension
Nouns ending with a smooth consonant (c, cð, ch, č, ð, f, gh, k, l, ll, n, ng, ngc, s, š, tð).

Sixth Declension
Nouns ending with a rough consonant (ċ, d, ď, ff, g, m, p, pp, r, sð, ss, t, tt, v, z, ż, ž).

Seventh Declension
Nouns ending in a boxy vowel (a)

Eighth Declension
Nouns ending in a round vowel (u)

Ninth Declension
Nouns ending with a smooth consonant and a rough consonant (c, cð, ch, ċ, č, d, ð, ď, f, ff, g, gh, k, l, ł, m, n, ň, p, pp, r, s, sð, ss, š, t, tð, tt, v, z, ż, ž).

Tenth Declension
Nouns ending with a boxy vowel (i)

Eleventh Declension
Nouns ending in a boxy vowel (y) Note, nouns may go through certain phonetic changes. For example, two consecutive i's or e's are considered illegal in declensions, so if the last syllable has an ‹i› and the declension adds another syllable with an ‹i›, the ‹i› in the syllable before the new syllable changes to a ‹y›. For example, the accusative for textured neuter nouns adds a ‹í›; therefore, adding that to a word like piċ would change the ‹i› to a ‹y›, therefore leaving the noun to be pyċí.

With e's, the first e is just deleted, like in veder. The locative of the neuter textured nouns declensions adds ‹em›, so adding this to a noun that already has an ‹e› in the last syllable causes the ‹e› in the syllable that precedes the ending to drop, leaving veder in the locative to be vedrem, not vederem.

Note, however, that these changes only occur if an extra affix is being added. If a final vowel changes, nothing is omitted.

Adjectives
Adjectives in Adwan have three declensions. Adjectives aren't given a specific gender, and must agree with the gender of whatever they're describing. Adjectives are typically given in the neuter (-y) in dictionaries, however, an adjective can have up to three different nominative singular forms. Note the three singular nominative forms for the adjective rory, or big.
 * Pöž rore
 * Miwa rora
 * Cryt rory

Nominalizing Articles
Adwan's nouns do not carry articles, and neither do adjectives... for the most part. Nominalizing articles exist in Adwan for the purpose of treating an adjective and a verb like a noun, therefore, when a noun is needed, the nominalizing article comes in before any adjective or verb and modifies it into a noun, whilst letting it keep its adjective declension should it be an adjective. Nominalizing Articles only come in one form, though it is not definite or indefinite, merely an oblique form.

Nominalizing articles replace the use for the noun "ones" or "things" in most cases, so to say She ate the blue thing, one would simply say She ate the blue (Ena mozcegí yð jeðy.). The neuter gender is generally used when the gender of the item is unspecified.

Nominalizing articles also replace the usage of the nouns "person", "man", "woman", "boy", "girl", or "child". For example, to say An old man eats, one could simply omit man and decline old to the masculine, therefore leaving the sentence to be An old eats (Að šöno mozce.).

Along with the other usages provided, nominalizing articles could allow speakers to omit objects if they were already specified before, and if each object had an adjective (if two objects have the same adjectives but different genders, then the same process could be applied, however, if they are of the same gender and have the same adjectives, this cannot work). If someone was to ask Did the big cat eat the little mouse? Cat and mouse, since they were already stated, and they have their own adjectives, big and little, then the objects could be omitted and the reply would be Yes, the big ate the little (Ö, að rora mozcegí að ina.) instead of Yes, the big cat ate the little mouse.

Nominalizing articles are the least declined parts of speech in Adwan; while declining for gender, number and case, gender and case distinctions are only made in the genitive and vocative. Nuber distinction is only made in the vocative, and in the genitive plural of the neuter. Along with modifying adjectives, nominalizing articles are also used for gerunds, as shown later on in the article.

Word Formation
Word formation in Adwan takes one of two ways, ususally following a derivational agglutination. Adwan has a relatively small number of affixes, and makes up most compound words by way of compounding. However, unlike other compounding, which simply merges two words, many Adwanic words go under ellision and other means of phonetic changes, though these are ususally limited to commonly used words and words with odd consonant clusters.

Consider the regular formation for the word "airport", éropleinvioška, or airplane-house to the irregular formation of a study, such as biology, or viðadhurssði.

In éropleinvioška, the words éroplein and vioška are simply merged, with the head always in the beggining. However, phonetic changes occur in the word urði, such as the devoicing of the r and the ð (the r and ð are always unvoiced when used in compounds, and the ending changes to fit the original gender of a noun) and the lack of diphthong formation between the two words.

Affixes
Nouns and Adjectives in Adwan carry a number of derivational morpheme markers that add or change meaning. Like many affixes in other languages, they slightly add on to the meaning of a noun. For example, the affix -čna means in essence of, very much like the affix -ness in English. However, many affixes in English all go back to this same affix in Adwan. In the English word Brotherhood, the affix -hood has the same meaning as -ness; in Adwan, to say brotherhood, one would say brother, or povlo (note, brother is an irregular noun that does not follow the same gender pattern as most nouns) and add on the affix, leaving it to be povločna, or brotherness. Affixes are added on to the undeclined noun, for the noun is declined after the affix has been added on.'''

Below is a list of affixes -- mostly suffixes -- used to alter meaning in Adwan. Note: do not confuse derivational affixes with diminutives and augmentives.

Note, gemination does NOT occur with affixes. Double consonants are both pronounced. Adjective comparisons function by use of prefixes, which are also shown below.

Compounds
Nouns in Adwan form most commonly by way of compounding. Where in languages such as English or Spanish, where many things are provided by affixes, Adwan compounds nouns in the same format.

Forming compounds in Adwan is relatively easy, though irregularities do occur. Compounds in Adwan are formed head initially. The head goes last while modifiers go first; along with that, compounds in Adwan only consist of noun to noun compounds, whereas compounds that require prepositions and/or adjectives would be phrasal nouns, rather than compound nouns.

Below are a few general phonetic rules that head nouns go through in changes.ff, kk, ll, pp, ss, sð and tt


 * c, ð, f, l, p, s, and t become kk, sð, ff, ł, pp, ss and tt if after an r. i.e. in urði, ð becomes sð.


 * Diphthongs do not form in compounds, therefore dh must be placed between adjacent vowels.


 * tð becomes ċ if an unstressed vowel follows, ż if a stressed vowel follows, ty if the next word starts with an ċ, s, z or ż and is in an unstressed position, and ti if the next word starts with an ċ, s, z or ż and is in a stressed position.


 * If two identical consonants are adjacent to eachother, or they will cause ellision or gemination, a e is inserted if the preceding consonant is rough, and a a if the proceeding consonant is soft. (This does not always apply)


 * s and z before ċ and ż are completely ellided.


 * If the last letter of one word is g and the first letter of another is a consonant, then g becomes gg, unless the first consonant in the next word is a plosive, where it then becomes ch.


 * If the last letter of the first word is a vowel, and the first letter of the next is j or w, and a vowel follows it, j and w becomes gh and wh, respectively.


 * If the last letter of the first word is t and the first letter of the next is l, tl becomes łt.

Possessive Pronouns/Adjectives
Adwan does not possess posessive pronouns uses the genitives instead. However, nouns are able to convert to posessive adjectives in the event of an accusative word order change. Typically, affixes are added to a noun to convert it into a posessive adjective. Possessive adjectives are formed with three affixes: -eło if the item of possession is masculine, -usa if feminine, and -yði if neuter. The newly formed adjective is then declined according to case (which in the case of posessive adjectives is usually always the accusative).

Relative Pronouns
Relative pronouns in Adwan, like pronouns, are irregularly declined. They decline for case only and not for gender or number, and follow a rather regular pattern (though the declensions in themselves are quite irregular as they don't follow the regular patterns).

Adwan has one relative pronoun, and its declination works something like the French relative pronouns of qui and que, and Latin's declension, where it declines according to its part of speech function rather than the noun its connecting or relating to. The relative pronoun in Adwan is Sað, and it has all the functions of English's relative pronouns that, which, who, whom, etc.

Interrogative Pronouns and Adverbs
Interrogative pronouns pose questions while taking form of what would be nouns. However, most words that do pose questions are actually reversed adverbs, where rather than going after the verb, the precede the verb. Adwan's structure does not depend wholly on this, however, as simply using intonation is enough to pose a question.

Adwan has rather odd interrogative pronouns, that, although not found in English typically, can be found in other languages. However, like other Indo-European languages, what is identical to the relative that in Adwan.

All Adwanic interrogative pronouns end in að and follow the same declension pattern as sað. Note, adverbial forms of each interrogative pronoun are listed next to each pronoun. (Pronouns have an asterisk next to them)

How: Łuvi

How many: Gwacgi

What: Sað*

What kind: Flöð

Where: Chað*

When: Feðyr

Who: Stað*

Why: Scyr

Demonstratives
Demonstratives, words such as this, that, those, these, etc. Adwan differentiates between two distances, near me (zuð zcam) and far from me (sað zcam), or more properly known as proximal and distal.
 * 1) Proximal demonstratives mark objects that are near to the speaker. The equivalent to this in English is the demonstrative this and these.
 * 2) Distal demonstratives mark objects that are far from both the speaker and the addressee. English has the demonstratives that and those, and archaically had yon and yonder, but those aren't used as much anymore.

Demonstratives in Adwan are declined for number, gender and case, although the declensions they go through are, typically, irregular and don't follow the rules of typical declensions.

Proximal: Þa/Þo/Þid - This
Þa, the proximal demonstrative in Adwan, marks objects that are close to the speaker. It is the equivalent to this and these in English.

Distal: Sa/So/Sy - That
Sa, the distal demonstrative in Adwan, marks objects that are far from both speaker and addressee. It is the equivalent to that and those in English.

Numbers
Numbers in Adwan are quite simple and consistent. They utilize an easy set of affixes that change with each place. Adwan only provides numbers from 0-9, with the rest using affixes to change numbers. Adwan declines all its numbers for gender, though only 1-9 is shown.

Verbs
Verbs in Adwan have gone through the most drastic changes in Adwan, going from relatively agglutinative to relatively synthetic, although traces of agglutinative conjugating can still be found. Adwan is a heavily inflected language, in nouns and in verbs, and ironically, while Adwan does not agglutinate its verbs like it used to, its conjugation system is pretty hefty. Note, however, the simplification and reduction of agglutination in Adwan, compared to Old Adwan:

Old Adwan

Haétuìklyígnanþaùlyíðaù zeávjoškað.'' Ha-é-tuì-klyígnan-þaù-ly-íðaù zeá-vjoška-ð''.

ha.jɛtu̯i.klɪ.jiɡ.nan.'θa̯u.lɪ.ji.ða̯u zɛ.ja.'vjɔʃ.kað

1.sg.-past-perfective-clean-inceptive-opinionative-conditional.sg 1st.posessive-house-accusative.sg

I would (have) wanted to start cleaning my house.

Modern Adwan

(Jag) Łorád peghan aðe sapane vioški myn.'' '' (Jag) Łor-ád pegh-an að-e sapan-e viošk-i myn.   (ja:ɣ) ɬɔ.'ɾaːð 'pɛː.jan 'a.ðɛ sa.'pa:.nɛ 'vjɔːʃ.ki mɪn

(1.sg) want-1.sg.past-conditional clean-infinitive nominalizing.article-accusative.sg clean.gerund-accusative house-genitive me-genitive.

I would (have) wanted to start the cleaning of the house of me.

Conjugation
Verbs in Adwan conjugate to number (sungular and plural), person(first, second and third), tense(past, present and future), aspect(perfective, and imperective), mood(indicative, subjunctive, conditional and imperative), and voice(active, passive and middle). However, unlike its old counterpart, many Adwan does not agglutinate anymore. Everything is conjugated into a verb except for aspect and mood, which utilize auxilliary verbs and participles.

Adwan has two declension paradigms. A verb's declension paradigm depends on its infinitive ending. Verbs in Adwan have two infinitive endings; -an and -en. Along with its declension paradigm, a verb's noun form can be figured out with a given gender and its verb form.

Aspect
Aspect in Adwan is expressed by means of an auxilliary verb and the verb's aspectual participle. The auxiliary verb to do, "goran", express the imperfective In Adwan. This verb is conjugated and then a verb's participle is used. However, simply knowing what verb to conjugate is not the only thing one must know. Most verbs in Adwan generally use the perfective aspect, which expresses that the action was performed once. However, the imperfective is also used just as much, which expresses an action that habitually occured. In general, the perfective is somewhat close to the simple, indicative tenses in Romance languages in English, while the imperfective is similar to the imperfect tenses in Romance languages, or the continuous in English. Adwan lacks a perfect aspect, or a pluperfect tense.

I watched a movie yesterday. --> (Jag) vulát entofá fimu = (I) watched yesterday movie.


 * While not explicitly stated that the action was completed or not, one knows that a movie was watched and the action occured once. The perfect states actions that an action occured once and was not a habitual action.

Yesterday, I was watching a movie. --> (Jag) orái entofá vlag fimu = (I) did yesterday watch movie.


 * The auxiliary helping verb for the imperfect is to do, which causes some confusion, for to do tends to be an affirmative particle in verbs rather than an auxilliary verb expressing aspect. This expresses that the aspect was ongoing or habitual.

-AN Verbs
Note: The past participle used below is in the masculine.

-EN Verbs
Note: The past participle used below is in the masculine.

Mood
Verbs in Adwan conjugate to mood, apart from aspect, tense and person. The conjugation of moods themselves is not hard, but rather knowing when to use them. Adwan has four moods: the indicative, the subjunctive, the imperative, and the conditional.

Unlike its past form, where mood was simply indicated by a select number of affixes, Adwan conjugates its verbs in a synthetic manner, changing up the whole endings rather than simply adding on to them. For example:


 * I would eat --> Mozcysa. Compare this to the simple I eat, mozcas.

Note, however, that the conditional is a very weak mood, and is sometimes split into two tenses, as there is only a past conditional and a present conditional. In addition, Adwan's past conditional is purely in the past, as oposed to many languages' use of the perfect to use the past conditional.

A verb's conjugation and its mood change depends on the mood. The indicative, for example, does not change up a verb at all, for the default conjugations given are in the indicative. The subjunctive works something like the conditional, only working more with vowel changes, and the imperative simplifies the ending.

Subjunctive Mood
The subjunctive mood expresses, like in many other languages, wishes, hypothetical statements, and uncertainty. The subjunctive is formed in Adwan by ablaut, save for diphthongs, which are moderately irregular. Note, the subjunctive for some persons -- the third, to be specific -- looks similar either to its noun counterpart, or the verb's participle (which coincidentally, is identical to the verb's adjective form). Context is used here to differentiate. Also, third person pronouns are generally used, thus avoiding any confusion between a verb and its noun counterpart.

-AN Verbs
Note: The past participle used below is in the masculine.

-EN Verbs
Note: The past participle used below is in the masculine.

Voice
Voice is an important part to Adwan's verbs, for each voice carries a great amount of information depending on its usage. Adwanic verbs are able to be conjugated to three different voices; the Active, the Passive, and the Middle. Like other grammatical functions in a verb, Voice is distinguished by the use of affixes. With that said, the affix used depends on the number of the subject.

Infinitive
The infinitive marks an uninflected verb. Infinitives are always given in dictionaries, and in Adwan, they end in -an, and -en.

For example: We should eat, "eat" is in the inifnitive in English, Spanish, and even French. However, in Adwan, the verb is conjugated with the modality and person, leaving we should eat to be dwamozcesk. Another form of the infinitive seen in many language is the Supine, which is discussed below.
 * Debemos comer.
 * Nous devrions manger.

Supine
The supine in Adwan is distinct from the Supine in many languages, just in the fact that it doesn't utilize the infinitive. In Adwan, the supine is formed by adding the prefix Dgy if the verb starts with a consonant, and Dgyk if it starts with a vowel.

The supine is the verbal form used in a noun phrase. In English, it is formed by using the particle "to" which forms the inifnitive.

In the phrase I want to go home to sleep, sleep is in the supine. The supine forms a verb that acts as the cause for the previous verb.

Below, the supine is bolded, to help get a stronger understanding of the supine. Spanish puts the preposition a or para, while French puts pour before the infinitive verbs.
 * I walk outside to run.
 * I go to school to learn.
 * I sleep to rest.

Essentially, the supine is like saying So i can..., though it is not limited to person. Verbs in the supine are still conjugated for person, which indicates the person in the so i can... translation.

Gerund
A gerund in Adwan is a noun form of a verb's action. Unlike a verb's noun form, a gerund nominalizes, essentially, the process of the verb, rather than its original counterpart. For example, the gerund for the noun "a walk" is "walking", in the sense that "walking" is an object, rather than an action, i.e. I like walking, etc. A gerund in Adwan is used as often as an infinitive is, as they have similar uses in many aspects. A verb however, does not have a gerund form, but rather, uses a nominalizing article. For example, since "to walk" is a neuter verb, it takes up the neuter nominalizing article, so to say I like walking, one would say Þauras yċ teldanin.

When forming a gerund, a nominalizing article must precede the infintive form of the verb and the infinitive form must be declined according to noun declension rules.

Irregular Verbs
To see the irregular verbs in Adwan, along with conjugations, view the Irregular Verbs article.

Adverbs
Adverbs in Adwan are not declined. They have no specific ending, although many of them may share suffixes which are used to use adjectives as adverbs.

However, one thing that does restrict adverbs is their placement. While nouns and adjectives don't have specific placement rules, adverbs must ALWAYS follow the part of speech they describe, which is, in most cases, the verb.

For example:
 * She ate a very big meal --> She ate a big very meal.
 * She gracefully fell from her bicycle --> She fell gracefully from her bicycle.

Formation
Adverbs in Adwan are generally formed by adding an adverbial affix to a noun or adjective, though the contruction of adverbs is very much radical. The second most common way is to use the preposition zuð with the noun or an adjective and a nominalizing article. Other forms include using conjunctions and relative clauses. Below is a few ways to say quickly (assuming the neuter gender for other constructions). Another much more complicated way is through the use of a relative clause. This, however, requires much more inflecting. Below is an example, assuming the subject is in the third person neuter. The next formation is like the one above, only put into the subjunctive. Note, as adverbs always come after what they describe, such clauses above would follow the same rule. Also, adjectives generally take up the neuter, though in adverbial constructions, they take up the gender that the subject is in, even if they're not explicitly describing them. However, relative constructions are different. Typically, constructions in the indicative come before the phrase or after the phrase they're describing, while the subjunctive, the most commonly used, follows the same rules as adverbs and comes after whatever it descrives. Note the placement of the indicative clause. Indicative phrases tend to come before rather than after the clause. Note next how the subjunctive is able to be placed in the middle of the whole clause.
 * Mólyďvi; quickly
 * Zuð að molyš; with quick
 * Zuð mólyčnei; with quickness
 * Efőr sað eni þyð moly; while that it is quick
 * Efőr sað eni þyð zuð að molyš; while that it is with quick
 * Efőr sað eni þyð zuð að mólyčnei; while that it is with quickness.
 * Efőr sað eni þiða moly; while that is is quick
 * Efőr sað eni þiða zuð að molyš; while that it is with quick
 * Efőr sað eni þiða zuð að mólyčnei; while that it is witch quickness.
 * Ena telde mólaďvi šusko iła. --> She walks quickly to her school.
 * Ena telde zuð að molaš šusko iła --> She walks with quick to her school.
 * Ena telde zuð mólačnei šusko iła --> She walks with quickness to her school.
 * Efőr sað ena þyð mola, ena telda šusko iła --> While that she is quick, she goes to her school.
 * Efőr sað ena þyð zuð að molaš, ena telda šusko iła --> While that she is with quick, she goes to her school.
 * Efőr sað ena þyð zuð mólačnei, ena telda šusko iła --> While that she is with quickness, she goes to her school.
 * Ena telde efőr sað ena þiða mola šusko iła --> She walks while that she is quick to her school.
 * Ena telde efőr sað ena þiða zuð að mola šusko iła --> She walks while that she is with quick to her school.
 * Ena telde efőr sað ena þiða zuð mólačnei šusko iła --> She walks while that she is with quickness to her school.

Tag Question Particle
A trait shared by many languages, Adwan also features the use of an interrogative particle. Not exactly asking where, when, or why, the interrogative particle acts much like the French particle est-ce, the Polish czy, and the English particle do; it poses a yes or no question.

The particle, Je, is usually introduced at the beggining or at the end of the question. Traditionally, it's quite common the the subject pronoun to also be added for emphasis and to even out the tag question particle, however, this only happens if the particle is introduced at the beggining of the sentence. However, the particle indeed can be negated. Rather than negating the verb, Adwan negates the particle to pose a question with a predisposed doubt.
 * Łoruš piċu, je? = Do you want pizza?
 * Je þu þauruð łachav myn? = Do you like my music?

Note the use of posessive adjectives rather than genitive personal pronouns. Usually, if a tag question particle is used, a sense of informality is established, which means that posessive adjectives are more accepted than the slightly formal genitive pronouns.
 * Jeta þu þauruð ta afkruň neiċinuň myn? = Do you not like my apples and oranges?

Conjunctions
Conjunctions in Adwan are famous for being odd, especially the Coordinating Conjunctions.

Coordinating Conjunctions
Coordinating Conjunctions are quite odd, as they work in a rather agglutinative form. Coordinating conjunctions have two forms: one form for clauses, and one form for items. A coordinating conjunction used with clauses is usually a conjunction that connects two sentences together; however, the item conjunctions are simply conjunctions used for items as they are listed or used in such manner.

While coordinating conjunctions working with clauses use regular, traditional conjunctions, coordinating conjunctions working with items use proclitics, which are morphemes that function like prefixes, but have their own grammatical meaning (comparable to that of -que in Latin). Note: the Clause form of the coordinating conjunction "so" is identical to the subordinating conjunction for "so that".

Subordinating Conjunctions
Note, all subordinating conjunctions are followed by a relative pronoun (sað).

Phrasing
Although grammar is crucial to Adwan, there is still the great question of how to put things together. Below is a quick guide on telling time, telling the weather, etc, etc.

Weather
In many languages, when describing the weather, they simply use the third person singular, and if they are not pro-dropping, they use dummy pronouns. The rules in Adwan are slightly different. In English and French, the dummy pronoun it and il are used to indicate an indefinite noun, usually the weather in context. However, Adwan is slightly different. Rather than not specifying anything at all, Adwan explicitly states what's doing what, therefore to express that it's raining outside, something must take up the subject. In Adwan, everything is referred to using "day" in the general mood, therefore It rains would be The day rains. NOTE: when referring to weather-verbs, the present imperfect is never used, as weather-verbs are never transitive verbs.

The usage of this extend to places, too:
 * It is raining in Rome
 * Žol ví Rómmena ďove, which literally says Day in Rome rains.

Seasons
Unlike many western cultures, Adwan culture, and language by extension, only identifies two seasons out of the years, though influence has let "modern" views on weather fit together with Adwanic culture, too.

In Adwan, the two seasons are cyfált þliso, or "bright season", and cyfált łomro, or "dim season". Furthermore, each season is broken up into cyfáltenta, or startseasons, the beggining of a season. Typically, cyfált þliso begins around April and ends around September, while cy'falt łomro picks up in mid-September and ends in April. When referred to before, it is much more common for seasons to typically be called að þliso and að łomro.

Below is a table with Months and days in Adwan.

Existential Clauses
The usage of the pronoun "there" and "y" in English and French are the subjects for existential clauses in those languages. Along with the verb "to be" and "to have", an existential clause is formed, looking something like there is a dog in my house, or il y a un chien chez moi. However, Adwan exist is much more specific in the placing of the existential object. The verb Łyðen, or "to Exist" is used, followed by the place. General statements with specified location uses the noun poùl, or, which roughly -- but not directly -- translates to "else-where/some-where". Note, it is incredibly common, however, to not only drop poùl, but the replaced "exist" with "to be". Because Adwan's declension rules lead predicates to be in the accusative, however, the most common -- and still grammatically correct -- form of expressing existential clauses is simply to have the subject just be.
 * There is a dog in front of my house.
 * Pöž łyði jego šússkena myn, which literally says Dog exists before my house.
 * There are dogs and cats!
 * Poulá, pözcet neimiwaň łyðum!, which literally says (At) Elsewhere, dogs and cats exist.
 * There are dogs and cats!
 * Pözcet neimiwaň þyla! literally translates to Dogs and cats are!