Urum/Grammar

This is the page for the grammar documentation of Urum.

General information

Parts of speech: Nouns, adjectives, numerals, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, postpositions, conjunctions, particles, interjections, imitative words.

Cases: Nominative, genitive, dative-locative, accusative, locative, ablative, instrumental.

Structure of a noun: Lemma + plural + possessive + case.

Sentence order: Adverbial + SOV.

There exists no grammatical gender. There are no distinctions between animate and inanimate forms.

Morphology

Vowel Harmony

In Urum, vowels in suffixes - for example, in number or case suffixes - depend on what the last vowel of the stem of the word was. The last vowel of the word stem can be:

1. high (а, о, у, ы)
2. low (a, o, y, ы),
3. rounded (o, y, ö, ÿ)
4. unrounded (a, э, ы, и).

There are two types of suffixes (check the last vowel that comes BEFORE):

First: if the last vowel is wide, the suffix will be “a” if high, the suffix will be “э”

1. If low, the suffix will be “a”

Second:

1. If low and unrounded, “ы”
2. If low and rounded, “у”
3. If high and unrounded, “и”
4. If high and rounded, “ÿ” (after)

The Suffix of Plurality

• лар/лер

If the base ENDS WITH A м/н CONSONANT, л CHANGES TO н

Cases (Nominative and Accusative)

CASES (NOMINATIVE AND ACCUSATIVE)

Lemma + (plural suffix) + suffix of a case

There is harmony of consonants: if a word ends at -x, -к, -п, And if the suffix starts at a vowel, Then х - г, к - ґ, п - б change

Syntax

Grammar points

Plurality

Rule:

• лар after [а, о, у, ы] in lemma;
• лер after [и, э, ӧ, ӱ] in lemma;

Notes:

1. if the lemma ends at a nasal sound, we will use -нар or -нер
2. if the lemma ends at -ь, -ь is removed

Morphological Analysis:

пычах <n><pl> пычахлар
хыз <n><pl> хызлар
хурйух <n><pl> хурйухлар
от <n><pl> отлар
эль <n><pl> эллер
тиш <n><pl> тишлер
кöз <n><pl> кöзлер
гÿль <n><pl> гÿллер

• алма<n><loc> ↔ алмада
• кол<n><loc> ↔ колдо
• көз<n><loc> ↔ көздө
• бел<n><loc> ↔ белде
• баш<n><loc> ↔ башта
• чок<n><loc> ↔ чокто
• күч<n><loc> ↔ күчтө
• иш<n><loc> ↔ иште

References

• Урумский язык, Урум дили (приазовский вариант), Учебное пособие для начинающих с аудиоприложением, Смолина М., 2008. (The Urum language (Azov region version), Tutorial for beginners with audio tapes, Smolina M., 2008)
• "Языки мира. Тюркские языки." Российская академия наук, институт языкознания. Издательский дом, Кыргызстан, Бишкек. ("Languages of the world. Turkic languages." Russian Academy of Sciences. Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek)