Old Sedayith
Nouns

Case | Definitivity, Demonstrativity, and Possession | Gender | Number



Gender
In the examples of Old Sedayith available to us, purely grammatical gender appears to be rare and mostly archaic. The only gender markers encountered in the Old Sedayith written record are the following suffixes:
Masculine
 Feminine
 Neuter
-a
 -ü
 -(o)



Case
There are fourteen different cases in Old Sedayith. The Illative and Ellative cases were derived from the Locative combined with the Allative and Ablative respectively.
Case
 Suffix
 Usage
Nominative
 -na
 Subject of a sentence.
Possessive
 -nej
 Possession.
Genitive
 -nj
 Origin, composition, authorship.
Dative
 -ra
 Indirect objects.
Benefactive
 -ŵa
 Purposes and beneficiaries of the verb's action other than the indirect object.
Accusative
 -la
 Direct objects.
Illative
 -šmej
 Motion into/onto.
Elative
 -smej
 Motion out of/from or off of.
Allative
 -ša
 Motion towards.
Ablative
 -sa
 Motion away from.
Instrumental
 -þa
 The means by which an action takes place or is completed.
Passive Agent
 -ða
 Performer of action of a passive or passively used verb.
Locative
 -mej
 Location.
Vocative
 -yej
 Object of direct address.




Definitivity, Demonstrativity, and Possession
There is no indefinite article in the Sedayith language. Nouns are considered indefinite by default. The equivalent to a definite article is provided in the form of an affix attached to the word immediately following the case ending and preceding the number inflection. Demonstrative forms are built from the definite form and their affixes include the definite "particle". The possessive affixes are used exclusively apart from definite and demonstrative affixes. (Possessive forms are considered to imply definitiveness.) In cases where definitivity or demonstrativity must be included with a possessive, the definite or demonstrative form is used, followed by the appropriate pronoun in the genitive case.
State Affix Explanation
Indefinite - Indefinite, default state. (Ex: 'kälpejna', 'turkey' or 'a turkey'.)
Definite -va Equivalent of a definite article. (Ex: 'kälpejnava', 'the turkey'.)
"1st Person" Demonstrative -vaya Equivalent to "this" or "these" depending on the number.
"2nd Person" Demonstrative -vassa Equivalent to "that" or "those" depending on the number.
"3rd Person" Demonstrative -valla Equivalent to "yonder".
Possessives
Person Singular Dual Plural Group
  M F N M/N F - -
1st Person -yassa -yakka -yanna -yaffa
2nd Person -tassa -takka -tanna -taffa
3rd Person -måjssa -müssa -mossa -makka -mükka -manna -maffa



Number
There are four observed grammatical numbers.
Number
 Suffix
 Usage
Null
 -m
 Negates a noun. None of something. (Ex: 'kälpejnam', 'no turkey(s)' or 'not a/any turkey')
Singular
 -
 One object.
Dual
 -k
 Two objects.
Plural
 -n
 Any number of objects greater than two.
Group
 -f
 Either a form of singular referring to a group or a form of plural used when making generalizations.