Adyghe/Grammar

Parts of Speech

Adyghe is a polysynthetic language, with heavily inflected nouns and verbs, as well as a system of prepositions, adjectives, and adverbs.

Nouns

Nouns in Adyghe are inflected for case, number, and definiteness. The definite and indefinite case endings were originally not two separate classes, but became so when the morpheme marking the definite merged with the case endings.

Cases

Nouns can be marked for four cases: absolutive, oblique/ergative, instrumental, and adverbial.

кIалэ<n><def><pl><instrumental> ↔ кIалэхэмкIэ