Sã/Nouns

=Structure=

Sã nouns still follow the same basic structure that Sangi nouns do, but their is less in the way of stem gradation, the cases have collapsed, no definiteness and the size suffixes are no longer productive and exist merely as the stem.

Stem
The stem can undergo two rounds of stem weakening at most, matching the old genitive and stative stems. The nominative and locative stems have merged into a single stem, which is the basic ungraded stem. The genitive stem is formed, as before, by weakening the stem, and one more round of weaking creates the stative stem.

For example:

Cheese: [tʃik]>[tʃig]>[tʃij]

Vocalic and glottalic stems do not undergo stem mutation so the previous V>Vt/Vc stems are purely vocalic.

Nominative Stem
The Nominative stem is the basis of eight cases:

As the cases collapsed, so did the stems. The causal-passive uses the resulting stem from the original causal stem, and the four locative/temporal stems come from the original basic locative/temporal with meanings of "position at". As a result of sound changes any suffix with [a], [e] [u] or [i] in it will take an "irregular" stem. For example, if a stem in Sangi ends in ([e]C][a] the nominative will have the structure ([a]C)[a] (notice the change in sound of the penultimate vowel. However, if it were to take the causal-passive suffix [me] it would god from ([a]C)[ame] to ([e]C)[eme]. This happens because affective vowel changes occur only in the last two syllables of a Sangi word, so the original [e] which became [a] before the final [a] is now in the antepenultimate syllable and immune from the change to [e] that the [a] caused while the [a], as a result of the following [e] would raise to [e]. This process happens regularly in Sã.

Genitive Stem
The genitive stem is the basis of just five cases, most of which require the postposition "sant" to distinguish their secondary meaning from their primary one.

As with the nominative stem, as a result of the case collapse, the stems also collapsed, so genitive-instrumental comes from the genitive, the benefactive from the benefactive (unsurprisingly) the regardive-sociative from the regardive, the partitive-comitative and the anti-... case come from the anti-comitative. Also, as is with the nominative stems, cases with [a], [u] or [i] will cause a change in the stem's vowels in the way mentioned above.

Stative Stem
The stative stem is the basis of a mere four cases:

The Locative is actually the same case as the adessive case but it is instead used with those stems which were nasal final in the nominative.

Possessive Suffixes
The possessive suffixes collapsed into just four suffixes, one of which is a null suffix:

- - 2nd person singular and 3rd person plural

-[(i)ʔ] - 3rd person singular and 1st person plural

-[(i)s] - 2nd person plural

-[(i)n] - 1st person singular.

-[s] and -[n] do not necessarily require anjy clarification but the other two suffixes require that the noun be followed by the matching personal pronoun in the genitive case.