Hùtta

Compositions

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THIS IS ALL PLACEHOLDER Hùtta is a predominantly agglutinating language, and is an inflectionally, derivationally, and syntactically head-initial, with ergative/absolutive alignment. It features a complex system of evidentiality and mirativity constructed from extended chains of morphemes. The word order is somewhat free, but there is a preference for Verb-Initial default and subject agreement on the verb (whether subject is agent or patient).

Verbs

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The Main Verb

The verb inflects firstly for tense, and then also agrees with the "subject" in person and number. There is an epenthetic χ between vowels that introduces allomorphs of both the tense and person affixes.

The Tenses

The tense system is fairly straightforward. There is a Past, Present (unmarked), and Future tense.

The Aspects

Hùtta

Evidentiality, Mirativity, and Mood

There is an unmarked Active voice and Passive voice marked with an allomorphic suffix. The distinction between the voices is this: In the Active voice, the verb agrees with its Agent with a fusional affix, and the Patient, (alternatively "Object") is a free morpheme. In the Passive voice, the verb agrees with with it's Patient with a fusional affix - and the free morphemes are used for the Agent, which is treated like an Object. This alternation of the verb's agreement introduces an irregularity in the construction of single-argument verbs, since depending on the verb's voice they could be the Agent or Object of a verb. This introduces a morphosyntactical alignment split between a Nominative-Accusative Active voice; and an Ergative-Absolutive Passive voice. All verbs are ambitransitive, and can, in a sense, be labile through the passive voice.

While there is no proper morphological mood in Hùtta, the uninflected verb infinitive is used for commands. Jussive information is conveyed lexically.

Nouns

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The Noun

Nouns are moderately inflected. There are two series of initial mutations, Lenition and Fortition. Lenition is used to mark plurality, and Fortition is used to mark the Genitive case - on the possessum. Genitive case marking is also obligatorily marked to agree with the possessor's grammatical person. Compounding is frequent, derivational suffixes are readily accepted.

The Case Marking

Very little is done to mark case morphologically on nouns and none on pronouns. Genitive is distinct in that it is marked with an initial mutation.

The Article

There is no indefinite article and definite article does not agree with its noun in any category.

Pronouns

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Hùtta has both free and bound pronouns, and allomorphs of the bound forms.

Adjectives and Adverbs

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Adjectives and Adverbs are conflated entirely in Hùtta. They come in three forms, discrete morphemes unto themselves, and those derived from either nouns or verbs. Multiple derivational morphemes can be present.

Adpositions

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Hùtta uses postpositions. They immediately follow that to which they relate.