Nillonan language

The Nillonan language (Nillonan: lemba nellonēse) is a language spoken in the central region of the continent of Nodaima. It is one of the four official languages of the Kingdom of Cedysna.

Nillonan is descended from Latin.

Consonants
All consonants can be geminated (lengthened), except /j/ and /w/. A geminated /ɾ/ is realised as [r] (a trill). Note that all intervocalic /s/ is geminated (short intervocalic /s/ had changed to /z/ centuries ago), meaning any occurring between vowels actually represents /ss/.

The following consonants can be palatalised by morphological suffixes:
 * /n/ > /ɲ/ ()
 * /l/ > /ʎ/ ()
 * /s/ > /ɕ/ (<š>)
 * /z/ > /ʑ/ (<ž>)
 * /k/ > /tɕ/ (<č>)
 * /g/ > /dʑ/ (<ǧ>)
 * /t/ > /ts/ ()
 * /d/ > /z/ ()
 * /v/ > /j/ ()

Stress
In Nillonan, the syllable in which stress falls is determined by the following rules, from top to bottom: Note that consonants followed by a semivowel, /l/ or /ɾ/ are considered to be part of the following syllable, meaning it does not increase the length of the preceeding syllable for purposes of stress determination. Conversely, geminated consonants are considered to be part of both syllables. Diphthongs are considered to be long vowels for the purposes of stress determination.
 * Monosyllabic words do not have stress.
 * Disyllabic words always have the stress on the first syllable.
 * If the penultimate syllable is bimoraic (either having a long vowel or ending in a consonant cluster) or trimoraic (having both), it is stressed.
 * Otherwise, if the antepenultimate syllable is bimoraic or trimoraic, it is stressed.
 * If neither the antepenultimate nor the penultimate syllable are bimoraic or trimoraic, stress falls on the antepenultimate syllable if a hiatus (no consonant) separates the penultimate and final syllables.
 * Otherwise, stress falls on the penultimate syllable.

Nouns
In Nillonan, nouns (Nillonan: lo nome, lo nome soťťantivo, pl. la nomia, la nomia soťťantiva) can decline for four cases and two numbers. In general, they can be split into three declension classes.

Nillonan nouns have the following cases (Nillonan: el kazo, pl. eli kazi): Some nouns, particularly names, may have a vocative case (Nillonan: vokativo) separate from the nominative.
 * The nominative case (Nillonan: nomenativo), which denotes the subject of a clause.
 * The accusative case (Nillonan: akkuzativo), which denotes the direct object.
 * The genitive case (Nillonan: ǧenetivo), which denotes a possessor or modifier.
 * The dative case (Nillonan: dativo), which denotes an indirect object.

First declension
In some dialects, the accusative singular is marked with -ā instead of -a. The suffix -ā is older, having descended from Latin -am, while -a descends from the Latin ablative singular suffix -ā.

Second declension
Declension of a masculine second declension noun:

In some dialects, the nominative singular is -os and the accusative singular is -ō. These suffixes are older, having descended from the Latin nominative and accusative singular suffixes -us and um, respectively; -o descends from the Latin ablative singular suffix -ō. The dative singular suffix -e is by analogy with the first declension; the old suffix was -o, which was identical to the nominative and accusative singular suffixes.

Declension of a neuter second declension noun:

In some dialects, the nominative and accusative singular suffix is -ō.

Third declension
Some nouns have irregular nominative singular forms (e.g. omo for "man", where the genitive is omenes). In some dialects, the nominative singular suffix is -(i)s (which descends from the Latin nominative singular -(i)s) and the accusative singular suffix is -ē (which descends from the Latin accusative singular -em), instead of -e (which descends from the Latin ablative singular -e).

Neuter third declension nouns decline as follows:

This represents the typical declension of neuter nouns in the third declension. Some nouns have irregular nominative and accusative singular forms. In older forms of the language, one may find nominative and accusative plurals ending in -a instead of -ia.

Within the third declension, there is a subclass of neuter nouns known as "s/r neuters". These nouns are characterised by ending in -s in the nominative and accusative singular, but having an -r- stem in other forms. An example is shown below:

In the past, there were some s/r masculines and feminines as well; however, they have since been levelled into the regular declensional pattern.

Currently being reworked

Personal pronouns
Clitic forms:

Disjunctive forms:

The clitic forms are only used when they directly precede (or follow, if the verb is an imperative; compare [jo] lo lis dedī "I gave it to them" to dālo-lis! "Give it to them!") a verb (i.e. there is nothing between the pronoun and the verb other than other clitic pronouns), while the disjunctive forms are used when the pronoun needs to stand alone or be part of a prepositional phrase.

The first and second person pronouns and the reflexive pronoun also have special instrumental case forms (1s: mekō, 1p: nošō, 2s: tekō, 2p: vošō, refl.: sekō), which may or may not be accompanied by the particle kon (in formal language, the addition of the particle is proscribed).

Prepositions
Nillonan possesses a large number of prepositions, which indicate the role of nouns in a sentence. Each preposition can take nouns in a particular case, which differs depending on the preposition.

Accusative prepositions
The preposition a denotes an allative (indicating the direction of an action) or the agent of a passive clause. As such, its role is largely different to its cognates in non-Nodaimese Romance languages, where it is a general dative marker. Note that this preposition has different forms depending on where it occurs: Historically the definite forms declined for gender (fem. s. & neut. pl. alla, neut. s. allo, fem. pl. allas); however, these forms have since disappeared.
 * Before a consonant: a
 * Before a vowel: ad
 * Fused with the singular definite article: al
 * Fused with the plural definite article: ais

Currently in progress

Genitive prepositions
Currently in progress

Dative prepositions
Currently in progress

Ablative prepositions
Note that in Nillonan, the ablative (ablativo) is not a separate case. Rather, prepositions taking the "ablative" take the accusative in the singular and the dative in the plural.

The preposition de indicates an ablative. In rare cases, it can be used to indicate a genitive (currently, in the modern language, this is limited to indeclinables and titles of works). Like a, de can fuse with the definite article, giving these forms: Like with a, gendered forms (fem. s. della, neut. s. dello) originally existed, but have since disappeared. Unlike with a, the plural never had gendered forms.
 * Singular definite: del
 * Plural definite: deis

Currently in progress

Adjectives
There are two classes of adjectives, depending on how they are declined. The first and second declension declines similarly to nouns in the first and second declension, while the third declension corresponds to nouns of the third declension.

Currently being reworked

Adverbs
All adjectives (with two exceptions) have two adverbial forms, a short form and a long form. For both declensions, the short form is denoted by replacing the ending of the adjective with -e. First and second declension adjectives form their long form with the suffix -amente, while third declension adjectives use -emente.

The adjectives bono (good) and malo (bad) only have short forms; the short form of bono is irregular (instead of *bone, it is bene).

Determiners
Note that the indefinite article does not have plural forms. If one needs to refer to an indefinite plural, either the article is omitted or the partitive article is used.

The partitive article is etymologically derived from de + definite article. The particle de itself, however, has all but fallen out of use as a genitive in Nillonan, as it serves the same function as the genitive case (it is still used as an ablative).

Cardinal numerals
The numerals from 1 to 10 are as follows:

The numerals for 1, 2 and 3 decline as an adjective. The numerals for 1 and 2 decline irregularly, although they resemble that of the first and second declension. The numeral for 3 declines as a regular third declension adjective. See above for the declension of 1.

The declension of 2 is shown below:

The numerals from 11 to 20 are as follows:

The numerals from 30 to 2000 are as follows:

A thousands system is used in Nillonan, and the long scale is used for large numbers. 1,000,000 is miljone, 1,000,000,000 is miljardo, 1,000,000,000,000 is biljone etc. Note that all cardinal numerals from a thousand onwards are nouns (of the third declension), not adjectives or determiners, which means that the noun to be quantified must be given in the genitive plural.

Ordinal numerals
Most ordinal numerals are formed directly from their corresponding cardinal numerals, with the main exceptions being the numerals for "first" and "second" (which are suppletive). All ordinals decline as a first and second declension adjective.

Ordinals from 1st to 10th:

The ordinals from 11th to 16th are formed similarly to that of 10th, while the ordinals from 17th to 19th correspond to those of 7th to 9th.

Ordinals from 20th to 2000th:

For additive compounds, only the final component is converted into an ordinal.

Verbs
Verbs in Nillonan conjugate for person, number, mood and "tense". They can also form an infinitive, participles and a gerund.

Verbs have four principal parts. They are: Both the present and perfect stems fall into one of three conjugational classes. Although they usually fall into the same class, this may not always be the case. To determine which conjugational classes a verb falls in to, the first and third principal parts are to be looked at:
 * The infinitive
 * The first-person singular present indicative
 * The first-person singular past indicative
 * The past participle
 * First conjugation: infinitive in -are, first-person singular past indicative in -ai or -ei
 * Second conjugation: infinitive in -ere, first-person singular past indicative in -ui
 * Third conjugation: infinitive in -ire, first-person singular past indicative in -ī

The present participle is a third declension adjective. The past participle is a first and second declension adjective. The gerund is a second declension neuter noun. Depending on the auxillary verb used, the participles may or may not agree with the subject or object.
 * Historically, if the auxillary is avere, then the past participle agrees with the object, if it exists. However, in the modern language, the neuter singular form is almost exclusively used.
 * For sere and ťare, the participle agrees with the subject.

Second conjugation
The second principal part determines whether palatalisation occurs.

Third conjugation
Verbs in this conjugational class will always cause palatalisation with certain suffixes if the root-final consonant can be palatalised.

Irregular verbs
The verb sere is irregular: The forms in parentheses are archaic forms.

The verb avere is irregular:

The verb volere is irregular:

This verb is also used to form desideratives. The imperative forms of these verbs are used in conjunction with the infinitive to form polite requests.

The verb potere is irregular: This verb is used to indicate ability to perform an action. The present forms are derived from sere, while the future and conditional forms are irregular.

Passive voice
The passive voice is a voice in which the subject is the patient of the verb, with the agent either being omitted or given as a prepositional phrase using a (used with the accusative). The passive voice is formed by using sere followed by the past participle of the verb, which agrees with the subject (i.e. it is in the nominative case and has the same gender as the subject). Note that while this form coincides with the perfect forms of a number of verbs, the verbs which use sere for the perfect do not have passives.

An example of the passive voice, using lavare:

Currently being reworked

Middle voice
The middle voice is a voice in which the the subject has properties of both an agent and a patient. The middle voice in Nillonan is mainly used to denote reflexives.

The middle voice is formed by placing the corresponding reflexive pronoun directly before the verb (e.g. m-ōzo for "I hear myself", mi-lavo for "I wash myself").

An example of the middle voice is found below, using lavare:

For ōdire:

Currently being reworked

Compound forms
Not all verb forms in Nillonan are purely represented by inflections. Some forms require the use of auxillaries such as sere (to be) and avere (to be, to have).

Currently being reworked

Days of the week
Note that the Nillonan-speaking area is only incompletely Christianised, so the old names for Saturday and Sunday are still used (compared to real-life Romance languages, where they were replaced). All names are feminine.

Months of the year
All names are adjectives. When used alone, the neuter forms are used.

Verbal morphology
Nillonan conjugates verbs for up to five "tenses", four moods (including the conditional), person and number.

For the Vulgar Latin (Nodaimese) reconstructions, a grave accent (/è/, /ò/) represents low-mid stressed vowels and an acute accent (/é/, /ó/) represents high-mid stressed vowels. In the Nodaimese dialects of Vulgar Latin, unstressed low-mid and high-mid vowels had merged.

Comparison with Umirian
First conjugation (amare, amair):

Second conjugation (tenere, tenier)

Copula (sere, jesser):

The verb "to have" (avere, avier):