Ornu

Overview
Ornu is a somewhat Fusional Language that still incorporates systems of inflection concerning nouns and adjectives, and scant conjugation of verbs. It follows a Focus-Topic, V2 word order where the verb always comes second in the sentence. 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 of the sentence.

Nouns are mainly created derivation from a root by use of a system of ablaut or by inflectional morphemes to the root creating a stem; some nouns can be derived from roots without any sort of inflection or ablaut, i.e some roots stand as nouns. A noun will fall under a class, gender, and declension type. The 2 classes are Animate and Inanimate. The three genders are Masculine, Feminine, and Neuter. Animate nouns may take the Masculine or Feminine only, with some Animate nouns being able to have either gender; such as nouns of profession or concerning a person. The declension of a noun can be weak or strong and this is dependent on its derivation process. If a noun followed the ablaut process of derivation, it will be a strong noun, whereas any other form a derivation will make a weak noun; it should be noted that animate nouns are always strong nouns. Gender is often determined by a word's phonological makeup, or its derivation process, but otherwise there is no real pattern to some nouns belonging to whatever gender they may take.

Verbs in Ornu are extremely simple and have no other conjugation aside from their aspect. They are marked with either the imperfective, perfective, or stative aspects which depend upon the semantics of the verb itself. However, verbs can be prefixed with certain morphemes to show a particular mood or that something occurred in the past (hwe-).

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.