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, or stems, are created through Derivational Systems that derive new, related words from a singular root. There are different classes of roots that each have their own patterns and derivation processes; this can involve the addition of inflectional morphemes onto stems. Derived nouns will fall into an Animacy hierarchy being either Inanimate or Animate, take a gender of masculine, feminine, or neuter, and will be either of a Strong Class or a Weak Class. 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, being either Imperfective, Perfective, or Stative. The aspect is associated semantically with the verb and represented through a bound, suffixed morpheme; however, verbs CAN be associated with more than one aspect, but not either perfective aspects with a stative aspect.

Orthography
''*This page is following the Wyd dialect of Ornu; â and ā̂ are representative of sounds in the Gaati dialect, but are different here. The letter [i] may be written as a letter [y] as the Gaati dialect has phonemic distinctions between /i/ and /y/ where Wyd only has (y) as an allophone of /i/ after voiced consonants.''

Determiners
Ornu employs the use of several types of Determiners that can also operate as pronouns. They are all of a Second Class Root type. These determiners operate just like "this/that" in English. They can operate as "these/those" when used in conjunction with a plural noun. These determiners have a meaning akin to "such" or "such a kind" in English; these are often used to signify titles or specificity on important/of note topics or subjects. While these have more complex usage in other Ornu dialects, in Wyd, they are mostly assigned the meaning of "some" when with plural nouns. However; if used with a singular noun, it may operate as a Partitive. When used as a partitive determiner, it is not uncommon to see 'hwa-' prefixed to the noun, but is usually left out by speakers. These are used mainly as a plural marker for neuter inanimate nouns.

Pronouns
All pronouns are spoken in the Third Person; even the First Person "I" does not exist. The only true personal pronoun that exists could be said to be 'hla' which is a Second Person singular pronoun meaning "you". It is a formal pronoun to stand in-place of the all-purpose, third person 'hy-' pronouns. These pronouns literally translate to "this one" or "that one" depending on the context; however, the ambiguous form, 'hy', is often used to mean the first person in spoken form, but in writing, a proper gendered form is preferred.

It should be of note that the other two determiners may also be used as pronouns respective to their meaning as determiners, except 'my-' which has a different use as a pronoun. As a pronoun it takes on the meaning of "one"

Roots and Stems
Everything in Ornu can be said to begin with the '''[https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_(linguistics)#:~:text=The%20root%20in%20language%20is,be%20reduced%20into%20smaller%20units. 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 '''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_stem#:~:text=In%20linguistics%2C%20a%20word%20stem,of%20the%20language%20in%20question. 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.

Root Classes
Ornu's roots can be divided into 4 Root Classes based on what sort of patterns they exhibit and the stem forms they derive; the phonemic composition of roots play a huge role in what sort of derivational affixes or patterns a root takes to form stems. There are also Sub-Classes of roots which break the main classes into lesser, but still notable, classes.

First Class
Roots belonging to the First Class are those that when derived undergo no alteration to the base root or Ablaut. Derivational affixes may still attach to these roots to create stems; should the root end in a stop, its noun will take the 1st Declension. The gender of noun stems that derived from 1st class roots is often related to the vowels within the root.

Word Order
While the standard word order can be said to be SVO (Subject, Verb, Object); however, it is not the best to view sentences in Ornu as such. A better way to interpret a sentence's structure is based on its Topics and Comments. This means that every sentence in Ornu will have a topic and some sentences will have comments or a Focus. The topic is usually the subject and the focus is something that has a sort of emphasis or focusing attribute placed upon it; it may also be the topic. It can be confusing to understand this system at first since often it appears as if the focus is the object and topic is the subject, but its best to remember that they are not mutually exclusive from one another.

There are 2 main word orders: the neutral, V2 Word Order, or topic word order, where the Finite Verb MUST come second, and there is the focus word order where the verb is final and the focus is in first position. Examples below; topic underlined, focus emboldened, other comments/continuants unmarked:

Neutral order: Hla-nâ stu-k kwūt egūs-ni wem stekūs / You always poke mushrooms with (your) finger / [2S-ERG poke-PERF always mushroom-PL.ABS with finger] / "Hlanâ stuk kwūt egūsni wem stekūs"

Focus order with Egūsni as focus: Egūs-ni Ø hla-nâ wem stekūs kwūt stu-k / You always poke mushrooms with (your) finger / [mushroom-PL.ABS FOC 2S-ERG with finger always poke-PERF] / "Egūsni hlanâ wem stekūs kwūt stuk"

This system of topics and comments is demonstrated by syntax alone rather than by grammatical markings such as particles, inflection, etc. Therefore, Ornu clausework can get rather finicky by the interplay of this system causing all sorts of changes. A good example of this would be in the following example where the focus of the sentence is the adpositional phrase in a subordinate clause:

Neutral order: Hla-nâ sо̄-ku kâbum nekwūt h-ūr, hwahūt plâ-ku wem egūs-ni / You never told him what happened with the mushrooms / [2S tell-PERF again never this_one-MASC.ABS, what.ABS happen-PERF with mushroom-PL] / "Hlanâ sо̄ku kâbum nekwūt hūr, hwahūt plâku wem egūsni"

Focus order with Egūsni as focus: Egūs-ni Ø wem hla-nâ h-ūr hwahūt plâ-ku kâbum nekwūt sо̄-ku / You never told him what happened with the mushrooms [mushroom-PL.ABS FOC 2S-ERG this_one-MASC.ABS what.ABS happen-PERF again never tell-PERF] / "Egūsni wem hlanâ hūr hwahūt plâku kâbum nekwūt sо̄ku"

* note that when a phrase takes focus, the Head Directionality changes to be Head-Initial.

Head Direction
Most phrases use a Head-Final order, this means that the head, or the noun, will come last in a phrase. However, the head directionality will switch to head initial for a head that is in focus position. Below are some examples to demonstrate various orders with different parts of speech.

Adposition Order
''*The -(m) is the lative case marker, but it is not always needed. Since the adposition 'kum' is not a Stranded Adposition, the noun does not need marking in the same case.''

Stranded Adpositions
Stranding the adposition means to 'stretch' it over a phrase rather than have it stand as a single morpheme. Many adpositions that come with a lative or locative marker and dual adpositions, which take two objects, typically strand themselves. If an adposition has a detachable lative or locative marker, it will detach it and place it upon the noun if it can; likewise dual adpositions will detach and place the marker on the second object, but since some locative adpositions typically do not have a marker, the second object takes the locative case, which is to say it takes the marker anyways. It is also of note that even single object adpositions may sometimes use two objects like dual adpositions. Examples below, adpositions underlined and their markers are emboldened:

Lative example in neutral order: hūr sag-ni âb(Ø) egūs-ni-m / he walks over the mushrooms / [3S walk-IMP over(LAT) mushroom-PL-LAT] / "hūr sagni âb egūsnim"

Lative example in focus order: egūs-ni Ø  âb-um  hūr sag-ni / he walks over the mushrooms / [mushroom-PL FOC over-LAT 3S walk-IMP] / "egūsni âbum hūr sagni"

Dual locative undetachable example in neutral order: hy-nâ hrâ-ni nu suku âbu bânūr âkūr-is / I count some salts in my hand every hour / [3S.Ambig.-ERG count-IMP DET salt.ABS over.LOC hand hour-LOC] / "hynâ hrâni nu suku âbu bânūr âkūris"

Dual locative undetachable example in focus order: âkūr âbu bânūr-is hy-nâ nu suku hrâ-ni / I count some salts  in  my hand every hour / [hour over.LOC hand-LOC 3S.Ambig-ERG DET salt.ABS count-IMP] / "âkūr âbu bânūris hynâ nu suku hrâni"