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. A noun in the definite is conjugated slightly differently from a noun in the indefinite, as the definite requires the addition of /-r/ in the absolutive and /-m/ in the oblique and instrumental. There is some disagreement as to whether or not the definite and indefinite inflections should be considered two different declensions or not. Furthermore, the high variation among dialects of Adyghe means that the oblique is sometimes marked in the indefinite, and sometimes not.

Cases

There's a shorter tag for instrumental. -JNW

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

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

Prepositions

Don't forget to add this to the appropriate wiki category. -JNW