Ornu

Overview
Ornu is an Analytical Language that still incorporates Fusional Elements such as systems of inflection for nouns and adjectives; however, there is scant conjugation of verbs. It follows a Focus-Topic word order and is Topic Prominent. The alignment is ergative-absolutive, but may appear as if it is nominative-accusative at times; this is due to the Focus-Topic structure and how Ornu treats the Focus when in focus word order.

Words are created through derivational systems that derive new words from a singular root. There are different classes of roots that each derive differently. This can also involve the addition of inflectional morphemes onto nouns and adjectives. Derived nouns will fall into an Animacy Hierarchy being either Inanimate or Animate, a gender of masculine, feminine, or neuter, and will be of a Strong Class or a Weak Class; nouns follow different declension patterns. Adjectives agree with their noun in gender and whether the noun is strong or weak. Verbs do conjugate at all aside from a prescribed Aspect, Imperfective, Perfective, Stative, that is associated with verbs semantically and represented through a suffixed bound morpheme; however, verbs may be associated with more than one aspect.

Orthography
This page is written in the Wyd dialect of Ornu; â and ā̂ are representing sounds in the Gaati dialect.

Roots and Stems
Everything in Ornu can be said to begin with the Root. The Root is the core and is the central unit of meaning to any morphemes that derive from it; derivations from the root are called Stems. Most Stems are created through some sort of derivational process from a root and some Roots can stand as a noun stem with no derivation. Alongside this, Ornu employs the use of prefixes and suffixes where the latter are bound, more grammatical affixes, and the former are some form of Root that can be prefixed to help add meaning.