Mestian

General information
Mestian (natively Mástā) is the language of the dragon-herding peoples in the central lowlands and on the Dragonforge. It is part of the lowlands Sprachbund.

Vowels
Mestian features distinctive stress and a pitch accent system: short vowels can either be stressed, marked with an acute accent such as in <ú>, or unstressed (unmarked), while long vowels can have either a peaking or dipping intonation when stressed. Dipping is marked with a tilde diacritic, such as <ũ>, and peaking is marked with a circumflex, such as <û>. The dipping and peaking diacritics replace the macron of long vowels.

Nouns
Mestian has a moderately complex fusional noun system that distinguishes ten cases and three numbers. Mestian nouns are grouped based on their declension patterns -- the suffixes they take -- and their accentual paradigms -- how their accent shifts when they inflect.

They have five genders: ignic, aquatic, animate, inanimate and neuter. The division into these gender classes is largely arbitrary.

The ten cases of Mestian are:
 * Nominative
 * Accusative
 * Partitive
 * Possessive¹ (inalienable)
 * Possessive² (alienable)
 * Dative
 * Vocative
 * Commitative
 * Lative
 * Locative

Accentuation Patterns
Nouns generally fit into one of four large accentual patterns:


 * Short
 * Mobile -- most frequent
 * Static -- very rare
 * Long
 * Mobile -- common
 * Static -- slightly uncommon

While each of the patterns has its irregularities, the most common type of motion is relocation of stress in the direction of extension when the stem gets extended. Mobile long nouns generally either leave behind a long vowel upon relocation (either tone) or geminate the following consonant (only dipping). Static-stressed short nouns are overwhelmingly those that have a stressed short vowel followed by an unstressed long vowel: stress in these cases doesn't shift to the long vowel.

Many long nouns occasionally change their tone between paradigms.

(I) A-Stems
Mestian a-stems make up the first declension class in the language. By definition they are nouns with an <-a> in the nominative, optionally followed by a single consonant. A-stems can be in any of the five genders. The declension class has two subtypes: The two subtypes differ minimally in the suffixes they take.
 * Hard a-stems -- ending in a hard consonant followed by <-a>
 * Soft a-stems -- ending in any one of {š ž tš dž j} followed by <-a>

The three main suffix classes are:
 * a-class
 * as-class
 * an-class

The as-class nouns merge the nominative and accusative singulars and plurals, while an-class nouns merge the nominative and commitative cases in all numbers. The most common accentuation patterns of the a-stems are the short mobile-stressed nouns that make up the bulk of its lexical mass, as well as both mobile-stressed and static-stressed long nouns.

Neuter and inanimate nouns merge the two possessive cases.

An example aquatic a-class noun -- pírka, pirkássa (fish, aqu):

An example inanimate a-class noun: rhýka, rhykássa (pebble, ina):

An example animate an-class noun: itáran, itarássa (swan, ani):

An example ignic as-class noun: apákas, apakássa (breath, ign):

(II) UR-Stems
Mestian ur-stems make up the second declension class in the language. They are nouns that end in <-ur> in the nominative. They are most often ignic, inanimate or neuter. They do not have subclasses.

Neuter and inanimate nouns merge the two possessive cases.

An example ignic noun: ĩkur, ikkússa (snake, ign):

An example neuter noun: âghur, āghússa (egg/ovum, neu):

(III) Ā-Stems
Mestian ā-stems make up the third declension class in the language. They are nouns that end in <-ā> in the nominative, and are almost exclusively neuter. All nouns of the class merge the two possessive cases, regardless of gender.

The ā-stems come in two subclasses:
 * regular-class
 * džā-class

The džā-class category specifically includes abstract nouns derived from adjectives using the derivational <-džā> suffix. These nouns have their own unique declension that doesn't quite line up with the regular declension of this declension class, although similarities are too great to be ignored.

An example regular neuter noun: qásā, qasášša (sound, neu):

An example regular neuter noun (different stress paradigm): elétā, elétašša (table knife, neu):

An example džā-class neuter noun: tándžā, tandžâšša [tán(es)-džā] (tension, neu):