Namari language

The Namari language (Namari: なまいことば namaikotoba) is a language spoken in Likkra. It is one of the two official languages of the Kingdom of Namari, and an official language of the Kingdom of Likkra.

Namari is related to Japanese and the two languages share a significant portion of their vocabularies. However, the two languages have, at best, only partial mutual intelligibility, due to the divergent grammar of Namari, significant sound changes which set the two languages apart and the preference towards native words in Namari.

History
Records of the early history of the language are largely non-existent. As such, the early language must be reconstructed, based on what little contemporary evidence there is, as well as evidence from the modern language, Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages. It is hypothesised that Namari split from Japanese at around the third or fourth century, well after eastern Likkra was inhabited by the predecessors of the Namari people.

The Old Namari period is considered to be between c. 650 and 1180. While inscriptions and writings in Namari can be found before 650, they are too few to be of any use, and were often written in scripts ill-suited for Namari (e.g. Chinese script). During this period, the language had six vowels (/a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, /o/ and /ə/), two diphthongs (/aj/, which merged with /e/ in c. 900, and /aw/, which merged with /o/ in c. 750), and 17 consonants (consisting of the nasals /m/ and /n/, the rhotic /r/ (which is hypothesised to have been unconditionally palatalised), semivowels /w/ and /j/ and sets of four voiceless (/p/, /t/, /s/, /k/), voiced (/b/, /d/, /z/, /g/) and nasalised (/ᵐb/, /ⁿd/, /ⁿz/, /ᵑg/) obstruents). Consonants were palatalised before /e/ and /i/. The voiced obstruents merged with their voiceless counterparts word-initially in c. 750, and with their nasalised counterparts word-medially in c. 800. /w/ was lost before /e/ and /i/ (due to palatalisation) in c. 900. Finally, /ə/ merged with /o/ in c. 1050. Old Namari syllables were strictly CV (V representing both vowels and diphthongs), with V syllables only occurring word-initially and vowel hiatus removed either by elision (merging the two vowels into a single vowel or diphthong) or epenthesis (adding a consonant such as /s/ between the vowels). Nasalised obstruents and /r/ never occurred word-initially, with all exceptions being found in loanwords.

The language during the Old Namari period greatly resembled Old Japanese, and may have been a dialect of Old Japanese. Some of the dialectal differences found in Old Namari include differences in words due to regional sound changes, and differences in grammar (e.g. the use of the Old Namari past tenses). As an example, western Old Namari dialects used yoki for "snow", while eastern dialects, reflecting their proximity to the Portal Monolith leading to Japan, used yuki, which is identical to the Western Old Japanese word for "snow" and reflects a historical sound change which raised the Proto-Japonic mid vowels */e/ and */o/ to /i/ and /u/ respectively in non-word-final positions. Another example can be found in the use of perfect forms between Old Namari dialects. Eastern dialects had two suffixes denoting the perfect (infinitive + -nu and infinitive + -ta), while western dialects only had the -ta perfect.

While this was a gradual process, Chinese loanwords appeared in Old Namari. Unlike in Japanese, these loanwords did not displace native words in most cases, and were often used side-by-side. The introduction of Chinese loanwords resulted in a change in the phonological inventory and phonotactics of Namari, introducing a set of aspirated stops alongside the voiceless and voiced/nasalised stops, and allowing a wider range of syllables to occur. These loanwords may also be indirectly responsible for the transition of Old Namari from a syllable-timed to a mora-timed language.

The Old Namari period ended upon the completion of the Likkran invasion of Namari. The period from 1180 to 1612 is considered to be the Middle Namari period, which was marked by significant changes in grammar, phonology and vocabulary. It was this period in which intervocalic /p/ was lost, paralleling a similar sound change in Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages. Influence from Guruni and Nodaimese, both Continental Nodaimic languages, resulted in a significant change in verbal morphology, introducing the nine-tense system still in use today, and reinforced the use of dual and plural markers as number markers (as opposed to collective markers, although in the modern language the dual can still be used as a collective). The case markers were reanalysed as suffixes.

One of the most significant changes which distinguished Namari from Japanese occurred in the Middle Namari period. In c. 1300, all palatalised /r/ changed unconditionally into /j/. This, combined with the fact that in Old Namari, all /r/ in native words were palatalised, meant that /r/ was completely lost in native words and /r/ could only be found in loanwords where /r/ was never palatalised (i.e. not before /i/ or /j/). Also, in c. 1400, intervocalic /w/ was lost. Namari morphophonology began to change as well, with perfect and participle forms in athematic (quinquegrade) verbs undergoing sound changes.

The Middle Namari period ended upon the end of the Second Likkran War. Modern Namari is considered to begin in 1612. In this period the language began to resemble its current form. Final /i/ and /u/ after /n/ was lost (unless the /n/ was geminated), resulting in changes in the declension of nouns which had ended in -nu (it went into the second declension, with nominative -ni and genitive -nuno/-nuga, nouns ending in -ni were unaffected; this came about because -i was a nominative marker for athematic nouns), and the verbal conjugation system regularised, eliminating the n-irregular category and merging monograde verbs with polysyllabic roots into their bigrade counterparts.

The standard variety of the modern language can be considered a koiné. Maintained by the Likkra-Namari Joint Language Academy, the standard language combines aspects of dialects spoken throughout Likkra and Namari and was first codified in 1919. The academy has, among other things, modernised the orthography to align it with actual pronunciation (e.g. oshiu, meaning "to teach/to tell", was originally written as をしふ woshipu; in the modern orthography, it is now おしう), and eliminated the use of Han characters, instead mandating that all texts be written entirely in kana.

Consonants

 * Namari /w/ is labiovelar in articulation.
 * Namari /r/ is an unusual consonant; while it is an alveolar or postalveolar flap, its laterality is undefined (both [ɺ] and [ɾ] occur in free variation).
 * The moraic nasal (denoted as /ɴ/ and written as  or ) does not have a defined place of articulation. It is [m] before labial consonants, [n] before alveolar stops, /θ/ and /r/, and [ŋ] before velar consonants. For other cases, it forms a nasal vowel (see the section on nasal vowels).
 * Namari /θ/ is dental in articulation.
 * Namari [ð] is dental in articulation.
 * Namari [h] is an allophone of /x/ and /ɸ/ before /a/.
 * Namari [ç] is an allophone of /x/ before /i/.
 * Namari [t͡s] occurs in free variation with [s].
 * Namari [d͡z] occurs in free variation with [z].
 * Namari [d͡ʑ] occurs in free variation with [ʑ].

Namari traditionally split the stops into three categories: voiceless (Namari: naoto), aspirated (Namari: ikioto) and voiced (Namari: aioto). In the modern language, though, the aspirated consonants have become fricatives (/x/, /θ/, /ɸ/) and in many cases the voiceless consonants are aspirated and the voiced consonants voiceless (the original pronunciations are preserved only after /ɴ/). The following table details the actual pronunciation of voiceless, aspirated and voiced stops in each environment:

All consonants except the semivowels /j/ and /w/ can be palatalised. Note that aspirated consonants revert to their voiceless counterparts when they are palatalised.

However, note the following special cases: Additionally, some dialects palatalise /k/ and /x/ to /t͡ɕ/ (instead of /kʲ/) and /g/ to /ʑ/ (instead of /gʲ/).

The consonants /s/, /z/, /t/, /θ/ and /d/ are always palatalised before /i/ (except in very recent loanwords for /t/, /θ/ and /d/).

Namari originally had labialised consonants (/kʷ/, /xʷ/ and /gʷ/), however, they have changed to labial consonants (/p/, /w/ and /b/).

Vowels
A distinctive feature of Namari is its large vowel inventory. While Japanese only has five vowels and for much of its history never had more than six, extensive monophthongisation in Namari resulted in a large vowel inventory, especially for long vowels. Namari has five short vowels, ten long vowels, five overlong vowels, six short diphthongs and six long diphthongs.

Short vowels
Namari has five short vowels (along with one allophonic variant of /u/):

[ɯ] is an allophone of /u/ after /j/. Some speakers pronounce /a/ as [ɑ].

Long vowels and diphthongs
Long vowels: Note that the vowel denoted as [ɛː] (from /ai/) is often pronounced closer to [æː] by many speakers, and [ɤː] (/eu/) may be closer to [əː] to many speakers. Some speakers pronounce /aː/ as [ɑː]. [ɯː] is not considered a phoneme because it is only found after [j] or palatalised consonants, and [uː] is never found after [j] or palatalised consonants.

Overlong vowels:

Namari has six diphthongs, all falling: [ai̯], [ui̯], [oi̯], [au̯], [iu̯], [eu̯]. The [j] in [jɯː] (/iu/) is not considered part of the vowel (it triggers palatalisation instead).

The long vowels and diphthongs are formed according to the following table (a "." is a syllable boundary):

The formation of long vowels and diphthongs normally occurs from the beginning of the word to the end (e.g. oei is [oi̯.i], not *[o.eː]), however, the formation of long and overlong vowels from repeated vowel phonemes is prioritised (e.g. oeeu is [o.eːu̯], not *[oi̯.ɤː] and would be written oēu). If a long vowel resulting from repeated vowels is then followed by /i/ or /u/, it may form a long diphthong (e.g. ōi is [oːi̯]). The six long diphthongs are [aːi̯], [uːi̯], [oːi̯], [aːu̯], [iːu̯] and [eːu̯].

For sequences of repeated vowels:
 * 1 vowel: short vowel (a is [a])
 * 2 vowels: long vowel (aa is [aː] and written as ā)
 * 3 vowels: overlong vowel (aaa is [aːː] and written as â)
 * 4 vowels: two long vowels (aaaa is [aː.aː] and written as āā)
 * 5 vowels: overlong vowel followed by a long vowel (aaaaa is [aːː.aː] and written as âā)
 * For more vowels, they will be written as follows: ââ, âāā, ââā, âââ, ââāā, etc.

Nasal vowels
In Namari, vowels are nasalised with compensatory lengthening if a syllable ends with a nasal either at the end of a word or before /j/, /w/, /s/ and /z/. Note that even if the nasalised vowel is not preceded by a consonant, it does not participate in vowel assimilation with the preceding vowel (e.g. ae /ae/ would be pronounced [ai̯] but aen /aeɴ/ would be pronounced as [a.ẽː]). Note that long and overlong vowels are not nasalised, and the moraic nasal after the vowel will be realised as [ŋ] (aēn would be pronounced as [a.eːŋ]).

Vowel harmony
While vowel harmony is absent from most Namari dialects, including the standard language, some western dialects, including the Haguya dialect, possess it. In these dialects, the vowel inventory can be split into three categories:

In this system, the front and back vowels are in opposition with each other. The phoneme /a/ also presents neutral properties when short. Vowel harmony is induced by the first non-neutral vowel phoneme (short /a/ does not induce vowel harmony), beginning from the beginning of the word. If the first non-neutral vowel is a front vowel (/ø/, /y/ or a long or overlong /aː(ː)/), all back vowels in the word become their corresponding front vowels. Likewise, if the first non-neutral vowel is a back vowel (/ɔ/, /o/ or /u/), all front vowels (including short /a/) become their corresponding back vowels. If the word is entirely composed of neutral vowels, then pronunciation follows orthography.

Note that the orthography is unaltered even if vowel harmony occurs.

Phonotactics
Like Japanese, Namari phonotactics is constrained by orthography. The syllabry used only provides for open syllables and syllables ending in a nasal.

The general syllable structure of Namari is (C)V(N), where C is a consonant, V is a vowel, and N is the moraic nasal. There are no constraints on the number of vowels which may occur together without an intervening consonant; however, monophthongisation and coalescence of vowel sequences into diphthongs may eliminate many instances of hiatus between vowels.

Pitch accent
Most dialects have a pitch accent system. A significant percentage of these dialects (although, notably, not the standard language) have lexical pitch accent. A number of pitch accent systems are used by different dialects; this section will only detail the one used by the standard language.

In the standard language, the pitch accent used is similar to that used in Tokyo Japanese. The pitch starts low (unless the first mora is stressed), rises until it reaches high pitch at the stressed mora, before dropping back to low pitch after the downstep, located between the stressed mora and the first posttonic mora (provided it exists; if it does not, the word ends at high pitch). If there is no stressed mora, the pitch rises steadily from low to high. While many dialects vary the stressed mora, in the standard language, the stressed mora is consistently the first mora of the penultimate syllable of the fully inflected word, including all suffixes and clitics. Monosyllabic words do not have stressed morae.

Sandhi
In Namari, there are a number of phonological processes which occur across morpheme boundaries. Collectively, these processes are referred to as sandhi (Namari: つなえ tunae).

Consonant gemination
When two morphemes are combined, if the first morpheme ends in a -ku, -tu or -pu it can assimilate with the initial consonant (k-, s-, t-, n-, p-, m- and palatalised, voiced and aspirated versions of these consonants can be geminated) of the second morpheme, forming a geminated consonant. This only occurs in derivational morphology. Note that geminated voiced consonants are actually realised as -ng-, -nd-, -mp- and -nz-. Application of this process is not consistent, and often there are variations with and without assimilation.

Intervocalic voicing
When two morphemes are combined in derivational morphology, it is possible that the initial consonant of the second morpheme will become voiced, in a process referred to as rendaku (Namari: tunaenigoshi). While for some morphemes the form used in compounds is always voiced (e.g. ひよい piyoi (clear) will always become びよい -biyoi) and some morphemes become voiced depending on the intended meaning, others follow a set of rules as to whether voicing occurs: Note that these rules are not always adhered to (however, for compounds which are not names, the above rules state exactly when voicing does not occur). In particluar, names often have variations with and without voicing.
 * If the second morpheme contains any voiced obstruent in any location, voicing does not occur (this is referred to as Lyman's Law). A voiced obstruent is any of /g/, /z/, /d/ and /b/ and any palatalised forms of these consonants.
 * If the second component consists of two or more morphemes, only the first morpheme in the second component is considered. All other morphemes in the second component are ignored.
 * If the final mora of the first morpheme contains a voiced obstruent or /s/ (or its palatalised form), voicing does not occur. If the first morpheme ends in a consonant, rendaku does not apply as another sandhi rule (cross-morpheme assimilation of consonants) takes over.
 * If the resulting word is a copulative compound (e.g. やま yama (mountain) + かー kā (river) → やまかー yamakā (mountains and rivers), cf. やまがー yamagā (mountain's river)) then voicing does not occur.

Cross-morpheme assimilation of consonants
If the first morpheme ends in a non-nasal consonant, this can create a geminated consonant at the morpheme boundary. In most cases, the initial consonant of the second morpheme determines if this occurs, and what the resulting consonant will be (e.g. k- can result in either -kk- or -ng-, g- always results in -ng-, y- results in a palatalised version of the first morpheme's final consonant). Assimilation cannot occur if either consonant at the morpheme boundary is /r/ (unless the first morpheme ends in -r and the second morpheme begins with y-, in which case -ry- will be formed), the final consonant of the first morpheme is aspirated (note that final /j/ and /w/ are considered vowels, not consonants) or the final consonant is voiced and the initial consonant of the second morpheme is aspirated. In this case, an epenthetic /u/ is inserted at the morpheme boundary instead.

If the first morpheme ends in a nasal, this final consonant becomes the moraic nasal without altering the second morpheme unless the initial consonant of the second morpheme is /j/ (in which case -my- or -ny- will be formed).

This rule is particularly important for third declension (athematic) nouns.

Orthography
Namari is primarily written using kana (Namari: かんな kanna) script borrowed from Japan. Like in Japanese, Namari uses two different sets of kana: hiragana (Namari: ひやがんな piyaganna) and katakana (Namari: カタカンナ katakanna). Hiragana is the main script used in Namari, with katakana only used in the same way italics are used in English (unlike in Japanese, where katakana is also used to denote loanwords from more recent sources such as English, Portuguese and Mandarin Chinese).

In the past, Han characters (Namari: か゚んじ hanji) or Chinese characters were also used in writing, in much the same way as in Japanese (e.g. 書く for kaku, 見い for mī, 赤かい for akakai and 人が for pitoga). However, orthographic reforms undertaken by the governemts of Likkra and Namari in the early 20th century have all but eliminated the use of Han characters in the language. By the early 21st century, Han characters are only used for disambiguation in formal documents, and only if the document text must be unambiguous. Note that in Namari, character education is still undertaken due to Japanese being compulsory at schools.

Kana
Both sets of kana can be arranged in a 10x5+1 grid. This arrangement is referred to in Namari as esone. Each consonant represents a "row" (although they are columns in the following tables, they can be arranged so that the consonants run top-to-bottom instead of right-to-left) named after the first kana in each row (a-row, ka-row etc.), and each vowel represents a "section" (represented as rows running top-to-bottom in the following tables; they can instead be arranged as columns left-to-right).

Hiragana:

Katakana:

The /ji/, /wu/ and /je/ spaces are not filled, as they are equivalent to /i/, /u/ and /e/, respectively. The /wo/ kana (equivalent to /o/) are in brackets as they are only used in the old orthography (using Han characters), and only as an accusative case marker.

Diacritics
There are two diacritics used for kana: the dakuten (Namari: だくてん dakuten, だくてむ dakutem-) and the handakuten (Namari: はんだくてん pandakuten, はんだくてむ pandakutem-). The dakuten is used to denote voiced consonants (/g/ from /k/, /z/ from /s/, /d/ from /t/ and /b/ from /p/), while the handakuten is used to denote aspirated consonants (/x/ from /k/, /θ/ from /t/, /ɸ/ from /p/).

Aspirated consonants:

Voiced consonants:

Small kana
There are five small kana in use in Namari: っ, ゃ, ゅ, ぇ and ょ. The っ kana (a small /tu/) indicates that the following consonant is geminated, while the other four (small /ja/, /ju/, /e/ and /jo/) represent palatalised consonants followed by their corresponding vowel when placed after a kana in the /i/ section (e.g. ちょ for cho, きゅ for kyu).

Other characters
The prolonged sound marker (ー) denotes long and overlong vowels. Long vowels are marked using one marker (e.g. かー for kā), overlong vowels using two (e.g. かーー for kâ). Note that long and overlong vowels can also be represented by repeating the vowel (using the kana in the a-row and the section corresponding to the vowel to be lengthened, e.g. かあ for kā).

Han characters
Han characters were once used to write Namari. However, after the orthographic reforms of 1919, they became all but obsolete. When they are used, they are used in a manner similar to how the characters are used in Japanese. Each character has at least one reading, and sometimes several. Almost all characters have a Sino-Namari reading (Namari: おとの　よみ otono yomi) and many have "native" readings (Namari: おしえが　よみ oshiega yomi). The Sino-Namari readings are loanwords derived from Chinese, while "native" readings usually derive from words native to Namari (although some "native" readings are actually loanwords, typically from Japanese).

Before the 1919 reforms, people were expected to know at least 3,000 different characters to achieve literacy.

For more information on the characters themselves, see Chinese characters.

Romanisation
The following romanisation system is in place:
 * With the exception of long and overlong vowels, all vowels are written separately (with , ,, ,  representing /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/ and /o/ respectively). Long vowels are marked with a macron (ā) and overlong vowels are marked with a circumflex (â).
 * /ɴ/ is written as  unless a /p/, /ɸ/ or /b/ follows, where it is instead written as . If a vowel or /j/ follows /ɴ/, it is written as .
 * /x/ is written as , unless it follows /ɴ/ where it is instead written as .
 * /θ/ is written as, unless it is palatalised or an /i/ follows it, where it is instead written as  (representing /t͡ɕ/).
 * /ɸ/ is written as , unless /a/ follows it (and the /ɸ/ does not follow /ɴ/), where it is instead written as  (e.g. the topic marker, ぱ, is romanised as ha, however, あんぱ is romanised as ampha). All instances of /ɸ/ following /ɴ/ are written as .
 * /k/ is written as 
 * /g/ is written as <g>
 * /s/ is written as, unless it is palatalised or an /i/ follows it, where it is instead written as <sh> (representing /ɕ/).
 * /z/ is written as <z>, unless it is palatalised or an /i/ follows it, where it is instead written as <j> (representing /ʑ/).
 * /t/ is written as <t>, unless it is palatalised or an /i/ follows it, where it is instead written as <ch> (representing /t͡ɕ/).
 * /d/ is written as <d>, unless it is palatalised or an /i/ follows it, where it is instead written as <j> (representing /ʑ/).
 * /p/ is written as.
 * /b/ is written as <b>.
 * /r/ is written as <r>.
 * /n/ is written as <n>.
 * /m/ is written as <m>.
 * /j/ is written as <y>.
 * /w/ is written as <w>.
 * All palatalised consonants, unless otherwise mentioned above, are romanised with <y> following the consonant (e.g. kya for きゃ, sha for しゃ).

Nouns
Nouns in Namari decline for case (12 cases) and number (singular, dual and plural). In addition, nouns have topic and focus markers. Nouns can be split into three general declensional classes, depending on how they construct the nominative case. The first two declension classes are thematic (vowel-stem), while the third is athematic (consonant-stem). The first declension has unmarked nominatives, while the second declension constructs the nominative (and vocative) by changing the final vowel. The third declension marks the nominative with a suffix.

List of cases (Namari: おてがた otegata):
 * The nominative case (Namari: なおてがた naotegata) marks the agent of the verb. It can either be unmarked, marked with -i, or marked by a change in the final vowel (-a → -e, -o → -e, -o → -i, -e → -i, -u → -i). Note that in some cases, the nominative is marked using the genitive case.
 * The accusative case (Namari: むかいおてがた mukaiotegata) marks the direct object of the verb. It is typically marked with -o.
 * The vocative case (Namari: よびおてがた yobiotegata) indicates that the noun in question is being addressed. It is only used in formal and poetic language, having largely been replaced by the nominative and short vocative in colloquial language. It is marked with -yo.
 * There is also the short vocative (Namari: いみよびおてがた imiyobiotegata). In most cases it is identical to the nominative, however, for athematic (third declension) nouns, its form differs, as the final -i is removed. If the final consonant is a nasal, then the short vocative is simply 〜ん -n (where the nominative is 〜み -mi or 〜に -ni). If the nominative ends in 〜ゐ -wi, then the short vocative ends in 〜う -u. If the nominative ends in 〜い -i with no preceding consonant, it remains unchanged. For all other cases, the -i becomes -u (e.g. 〜ち chi becomes 〜つ -tu). The short vocative remains in common use and is obligatory (in fact, the honorifics 〜ちゃん -chan and 〜くん -kun only possess a short vocative form, these honorifics are dropped in all other cases).
 * The genitive case (Namari: もちおてがた mochiotegata) indicates that the noun in question modifies another noun. It is typically used to signify possession. It corresponds to the English preposition 'of'. Inanimate nouns are marked for the genitive with -no, animate nouns with -ga.
 * Note that infinitive forms of verbs are considered "animate", in order to prevent confusion with the negative attributive form of the verb (since in some verbs the imperfective form, from which the negative derives, and the infinitive form are identical).
 * The dative case (Namari: もやいおてがた moyaiotegata) marks the indirect object of the verb, or a beneficiary. It corresponds somewhat to the English preposition 'to'. It is marked with -n for thematic nouns and -ni for athematic nouns.
 * The instrumental case (Namari: みちおてがた michiotegata) marks the means by which the verb is performed. It corresponds to one sense of the English preposition 'with'. It is marked with -de.
 * The comitative case (Namari: ともないおてがた tomonaiotegata) marks any noun which accompanies the agent in the action. It corresponds to the other sense of the English preposition 'with'. It is marked with -to.
 * The ablative case (Namari: かやおてがた kayaotegata) marks the origin of an action. It corresponds to the English preposition 'from'. It is marked with -kaya.
 * The allative case (Namari: ゆきおてがた yukiotegata) marks the destination of an action. It corresponds to the English preposition 'towards'. It is marked with -mpe for thematic nouns and -pe for athematic nouns.
 * The comparative case (Namari: ゆかいおてがた yukaiotegata) marks a noun by which a comparison is made. In this sense it very roughly corresponds to the English preposition 'than'. It is marked with -yoi.
 * The terminative case (Namari: はておてがた pateotegata) marks the limit of an action. It is marked with -made
 * The locative case (Namari: とこよおてがた tokoyōtegata) marks the location in which the action is performed. It is marked with -nde for thematic nouns and -nite for athematic nouns.

Due to the nature of Namari grammar, two more cases are sometimes postulated, the ergative (Namari: うごきおてがた ugokiotegata) and the absolutive (Namari: たちおてがた tachiotegata) cases, however, these "cases" use forms derived from other cases (the "ergative" uses genitive forms, while the "absolutive" uses nominative forms).

Other markers:
 * The focus marker (-zu, Namari: こがえかた kogaekata) indicates the focus of the sentence. Note that the existence of a focus marker in the main clause of a sentence forces the predicative verb into the attributive form; this process is referred to as kakari-musubi (Namari: かかいむすび kakai-musubi).
 * The topic marker (-ha for thematic nouns in the nominative case and all nouns in cases other than the nominative, accusative or dative, -a for athematic nouns in the nominative case, -ba in the accusative case, -mpa/-nya in the dative case) indicates the topic of the sentence (Namari: はなしかた panashikata).
 * The dual (-na, Namari: ふたつの　いくかた putatuno ikukata) and plural (-ya, Namari: やっつの　いくかた yattuno ikukata) markers modify the number of the noun.
 * The honorific (Namari: うやまいかた uyamaikata) markers make the noun honorific. There are a number of markers which can turn nouns into their honorific forms, such as mi- and o-, and some nouns (such as みち michi "road") are inherently honorific. If a noun is honorific, it causes all adjectives and genitive nouns which modify it to become honorific, and if in the nominative case, it changes the verb into an honorific form.

Declension of ひと pito (person):

Declension of あめ ame (rain):

Declension of はちまち pachimichi (honey):

Comparison of declensional suffixes with Old Namari noun markers
In Old Namari, case, number, topic and focus marking was done similarly, however, the markers used were invariant and not considered part of the word. None of the markers in Old Namari either changed their form or altered the base noun. Alterations such as ama~ame were often arbitrary and did not possess any significant meaning.

However, some of the declensional suffixes used in the modern language can be traced back to markers in Old Namari:

Origins of other markers:
 * The instrumental case marker (〜で -de) may be a borrowing from Japanese. Old Namari used -se and -shi, which survived in some dialects as -ji.
 * The allative case marker (〜んへ/〜へ -(m)pe) was originally -pe for all nouns and was originally not used as an allative, but a locative marker for verbs of motion. As Old Namari intervocalic /p/ underwent a sound change ([p] → [ɸ] → [h] → [∅]), the /p/ was reinforced by an inserted moraic nasal.
 * The locative case marker (〜んで/〜にて -nde/-nite) may be a borrowing from Japanese, with the same etymology as -de. Old Namari, and some modern dialects, do not have a dedicated locative case. Instead, this role is taken by the accusative case (for verbs of motion), the dative case (for stative verbs) and the instrumental case (for all other verbs).

In Old Namari, both the nominative and genitive shared three markers (a null marker, -no and -ga) and their respective unique markers -i and -tu were only used for disambiguation (in fact, -i also made the noun the topic). The nominative and genitive split in Middle Namari, with the genitive exclusively using -no and -ga, and the nominative mainly using the null marker and -i. However, in some cases, such as in attributive clauses with two or more core arguments and in sentences where there are two or more nominative arguments (e.g. potentials), the subject takes -no and -ga in order to distinguish itself from the other arguments. As a result, attributive clauses show tripartite behaviour and the potential voice (which always converts the patient into the nominative case, regardless of its original case) shows ergative behaviour.

Personal pronouns
Namari has personal pronouns for all three persons and numbers. It also distinguishes between inclusive and exclusive 'we'. Note that the table below only lists nominative and genitive forms; the other forms are regularly derived from these two forms.

Other pronouns
The table below lists the demonstratives and the interrogative pronouns. Again, only nominative and genitive forms are provided.

A rough translation of the non-human interrogative listed above would be "which", not "what". The word used for "what" in Namari is nani.

Other correlatives (with nominative and genitive singular forms):

Note that the -mo suffix occurs after case markers (as seen in the genitive forms above) and replaces the topic and focus markers (this also prevents kakari-musubi).

Namari lacks relative pronouns. This is because any clause can modify a noun phrase simply by putting the verb in its attributive form and placing itself before the noun phrase to be modified.

Numerals
Namari has two sets of numerals. One set is native to Namari, the other is borrowed from Chinese.

Cardinal numbers:

The native numerals used above are for counting. To denote an amount of an object, one needs a classifier attached to the numeral. The resulting compound is a noun, meaning it must be in the genitive case in order for it to modify a noun. Unlike most nouns, these compounds obviously do not have dual and plural forms, with their meanings being inherently singular, dual or plural depending on the numeral used. In addition, nouns modified by numeral-classifier compounds do not use dual or plural forms, instead remaining in the singular.

In Old Namari, the numbers 7, 8, 100 and 1000 often had the meaning of "many". While this is no longer the case in the modern language, the old meaning can still be found in certain fossilisations (e.g. ななつの　いくかた nanatuno ikugata and やっつの　いくかた yattuno ikugata refer to the paucal and plural grammatical numbers respectively despite using the numerals for 7 and 8; ちとせ chitose, which normally has the meaning of "millennium", can also mean "an exceptionally long period of time").

The use of numeral-classifier compounds varies by dialect. Eastern dialects use numeral-classifier compounds extensively when modifying nouns, paralleling their use in Japanese. Western dialects, on the other hand, rarely use numeral-classifier compounds to modify nouns. Instead, they often attach the bare numeral directly to the noun to be modified (e.g. よだね yodane instead of standard よっつの　たね yottuno tane for "four seeds"), or use the generic classifier near-exclusively, treating numerals derived from the generic classifier as adjectives (in some western dialects, the generic classifier has even morphed into a verb). As an example, the Haguya dialect only has two classifiers which can modify nouns: the generic classifier つ -tu, and the classifier たい -tai to refer to people. Both these classifiers have changed into verbs in the Haguya dialect (with imperfective forms た -ta and たや -taya respectively).
 * The Yaezora dialect, which the standard language is largely based on, is largely intermediate between eastern and western dialects in its use of numeral-classifier compounds. A wide variety of classifiers are still in use, but they can only be used to form standalone nouns. The only classifiers which can be used to form numeral-classifier compounds which modify nouns are the generic classifier つ -tu used for all inanimate nouns, the classifier もの -mono for non-human animates, and the classifier たい -tai for humans.
 * Some eastern dialects allow the numeral-classifier compound to occur after the noun, instead of before the noun in the standard language. When this occurs, the numeral-classifier compound is declined in the same case as the noun it modifies, agreeing with the noun (the main exception being the Yamaguchi dialect, where the numeral-classifier compound is unmodified instead).

The numeral zero does not take any classifier. To denote zero of a noun, the adjective なかい nakai may be used in its conclusive (なかい nakai), attributive (なけ nake) or infinitive (なく naku) forms (the counting numeral nashi derives from an old conclusive form of nakai).

While older forms of the language had a larger inventory of classifiers, the classifier inventory has been reduced in the modern language, with most nouns using the generic classifier. The compounds derived from the classifiers つ -tu (generic), たい -tai (used for people), あ -a (used for leaves and words) and うか -uka (used for days) show irregularity.

Classifier つ -tu (generic): As seen above, the generic classifier is only used for some numerals, and for those numerals, its form differs. In addition, for 3, 4, 6 and 8, the initial consonant of the classifier is geminated.

Classifier たい -tai (used for people): Like with the generic classifier, the compounds for 3, 4, 6 and 8 show gemination. In addition, the compounds for 1 and 2 show a reduced form of the classifier (-i).

Classifier あ -a (used for leaves and words): While the classifier is nominatively -a, rendaku applies to many of the numerals, forming -ba (the classifier was historically -pa). In addition, numerals 3, 4, 6 and 8 show an extra -tu-.

Classifier うか -uka (used for days): While the classifier is nominatively -uka, sound change has affected its actual pronunciation, as well as the pronunciation of numerals 2, 7 and 20. The compound for 50 has a special form. In some cases, the compound for 1 is inexplicably identical to that using the classifier for layers. For multiples of ten above 20, hundreds and thousands, the classifier is -ka.

Classifier え -e (used for layers): While this classifer is otherwise regular, the compound for 10 shows a short /o/ instead of a long /oː/ as would be expected.

Other classifiers used include たび -tabi (used for iterations), とせ -tose (used for years), つき -tuki (used for months), よ -yo (used for nights), はしや -pashiya (used for gods and spiritual tablets), こと -koto (used for words, sentences and concepts), とーい -tōi (used for combinations/ways/solutions) and とき -toki (used for specific periods of time, typically hours in the modern language).

To form ordinal numerals, the suffix め -me is attached to the end of the numeral-classifier compound (e.g. ふたつめ putatume means "second [object]", みたびめ mitabime means "third time" or "third place"). Unlike Japanese, where the -me suffix is in many cases optional (and is not the only way to form ordinals), the use of -me in Namari is required to form ordinals. As a result, Namari has no equivalent of the Japanese suffix -kan to denote time periods (as any numeral-classifier compound denoting time always denotes a period of time in the absence of -me). Instead of using the regular ordinals for 1 and 2, the words はじめ pajime and おつぎ otugi can be used instead.

Distributives are formed with the ずつ -zutu suffix attached to the numeral-classifier compound (e.g. ひとつずつ pitotuzutu means "one-by-one", ふたいずつ putaizutu means "two people at a time"). In some dialects the suffix is instead づつ -dutu.

When Arabic numerals are used in writing (instead of having the numeral written out), the number is followed by the actual form of the classifier (e.g. 3っつ for みっつ, 5つ for えつつ, 1あ for ひとあ, 4つば for よつば, 7ば for ななば). The exception is うか -uka; this classifier is always denoted as か regardless of the number (e.g. 1か, 2か, 4か, 8か), with the sole exception being if ひとえ pitoe is used instead of ひとか pitoka (in this case it is written as 1え rather than 1か).

Verbs
Verbs in Namari possess a variety of different forms to indicate tense, mood and voice. All of these forms build upon six basic forms:
 * The imperfective root (Namari: しなもとがた shinamotogata)
 * The infinitive root (Namari: さだなもとがた sadanamotogata)
 * The conclusive root (Namari: おあいばもとがた oaibamotogata)
 * The attributive root (Namari: かーいもとがた kāimotogata)
 * The perfective root (Namari: すえいもとがた sueimotogata)
 * The imperative root (Namari: しみもとがた shimimotogata)

Verbs may be intransitive or transitive. Intransitive verbs only have one core argument (which may be omitted), which is always declined in the nominative case. Transitive verbs have two core arguments, the subject and the direct object. The subject of a transitive verb is always declined in the nominative case (with three exceptions, the verbs しゆ shiyu "to know" and わかゆ wakayu "to understand", and the potential voice, which decline the subject in the genitive case instead). The case of the direct object depends on the verb; the verbs with genitive subjects use the nominative case for the direct object, most verbs use the accusative case, and a number of verbs (such as なゆ nayu "to become") use the dative case.

The copula や ya is a special case. Instead of being considered a standalone verb, it behaves as a clitic, attaching directly to the patient. This is sometimes called the copulative case (Namari: むすびおてがた musubiotegata).

Tenses
In Namari, what are called tenses (Namari: ときがた tokigata) are not strictly tense conjugations. Instead they combine tense and aspect.

The current nine-tense system was borrowed from Middle Nodaimese, and the meanings of each tense have been all but preserved in Namari up to the present day (modern Continental Nodaimic languages often merged some of the tenses or shifted their meanings).

Namari has the following tenses: Because of the largely recursive nature of Namari conjugation, there are more possible tenses than listed. However, the nine listed above are the most common.
 * The present tense (Namari: いまどきがた imadokigata) refers to events which occur in the present timeframe, without any reference to past or future state (English equivalent example: "I do"). This is the default tense of all verbs.
 * The aorist tense or simple past (Namari: まえどきがた maedokigata) refers to events which occur at a point in the past, without any reference to the state at other times (English equivalent example: "I did"). This is marked by combining the perfective root with -i (r-irregular conjugation).
 * The future tense (Namari: あとどきがた atodokigata) refers to events which occur at a point in the future, without any reference to the state at other times (English equivalent example: "I shall/will do"). This is marked by combining the imperfective root with -mī (for consonant-stem verbs) or -kemī (for vowel-stem verbs). Both markers conjugate as an r-irregular verb.
 * The perfect tense (Namari: はてどきがた patedokigata) refers to events which were completed at or before the present timeframe (English equivalent example: "I have done"). This is marked by combining the infinitive root with -ta and applying the appropriate euphonic changes (for consonant-stem verbs). This marker conjugates irregularly.
 * The progressive tense (Namari: つっけどきがた tukkedokigata) refers to events which are ongoing in the present timeframe (English equivalent example: "I am doing"). This is marked by combining the infinitive root with -toi and applying the appropriate euphonic changes (for consonant-stem verbs). This marker conjugates as an r-irregular verb.
 * The imperfect tense (Namari: まえづっけどきがた maedukkedokigata) refers to events which were ongoing at some point in the past (English equivalent example: "I was doing"). This is marked by combining the infinitive root with -toei and applying the appropriate euphonic changes (for consonant-stem verbs). This tense combines the progressive with the aorist.
 * The pluperfect tense (Namari: おーばてどきがた ōbatedokigata) refers to events which were completed at or before a certain point in the past (English equivalent example: "I had done"). This is marked by combining the perfective root with -tta. This tense combines the aorist with the perfect.
 * The future perfect tense (Namari: あとばてどきがた atobatedokigata) refers to events which will be completed at or before a certain point in the future (English equivalent example: "I shall/will have done"). This is marked by combining the imperfective root with -mitta (for consonant-stem verbs) or -kemitta (for vowel-stem verbs). This tense combines the future with the perfect.
 * The future progressive tense (Namari: あとづっけどきがた atodukkedokigata) refers to events which will be ongoing at some point in the future (English equivalent example: "I shall/will be doing"). This is marked by combining the imperfective root with -mittoi (for consonant-stem verbs) or -kemittoi (for vowel-stem verbs). This tense combines the future with the progressive.

The nine-tense system, as used in Continental Nodaimic languages, combined three tenses (past, present, future) with three aspects (aorist, perfect, progressive). In Namari, the tenses are arranged as follows:

The default (unmarked) aspect of most verbs is the aorist. However, for some verbs, including all verbal adjectives and all r-irregular verbs, the progressive aspect is the default. As such, these verbs cannot be conjugated into a progressive form (e.g. *あっとい *attoi for あい ai is not valid), and the meanings of their tenses are shifted so that the aorist tenses actually have a progressive meaning (e.g. the aorist tense of あい ai, あえい aei, actually has an imperfect meaning). To conjugate these verbs in the aorist aspect, a special construction is needed (verbal adjectives use the measurable degree form -sa with the r-irregular suffix -i, e.g. たかさい takasai, かなしゃい kanashai; all other verbs simply add す su "to do" to the infinitive), which is most often used in its past tense form (e.g. たかさえい takasaei, かなしゃえい kanashaei, あいすえい aisuei).
 * The aorist aspect denotes an event viewed in its entirety, or an event at a singular point in time, without any reference to any other point in time. For the three tenses, it indicates that either the entire action was completed within the specified timeframe (only in the past, only in the present, or only in the future), or the action occured at a specific point within that timeframe and not at any other point in time. It roughly corresponds to the perfective aspect in traditional grammar, but is labelled "aorist" to avoid confusion with the perfect aspect.
 * The perfect aspect denotes an event which occurred and was completed before the specified timeframe, but remains relevant to that timeframe.
 * The progressive aspect is actually a combination of the continuous, progressive and habitual aspects. It denotes an event which is ongoing in the specified timeframe. By default, this aspect has a progressive meaning for transitive verbs and a continuous meaning for intransitive verbs, however, the habitual meaning can be implied via context (e.g. ひとかごとん　あいいとい pitokagoton aītoi "I walk every day"). This aspect roughly corresponds to the imperfective aspect in traditional grammar.
 * The default aspect is a lexical property and cannot be altered by conjugational suffixes. As a result, all conjugational classes have valid conjugations for both the marked aorist and the marked progressive aspects (e.g. the marked progressive suffix -kutoi, which is part of the verbal adjective conjugational class, is only found in the desiderative mood).

Moods
Verbs in Namari can also be marked for mood (Namari: のっといがた nottoigata).

Namari has the following moods: Namari does not have a subjunctive mood.
 * The indicative mood (Namari: なおのっといがた naonottoigata) indicates a factual statement. It is the default mood of all verbs, thus it can be conjugated for all tenses.
 * The optative mood (Namari: のぞみのっといがた nozominottoigata) indicates a statement one desires to be true. It is derived from the provisional verb forms and has six tenses, two for each aspect (present: imperfective + -bakai, past: perfective + -bakai). The marker conjugates as a verbal adjective.
 * The imperative mood (Namari: しみのっといがた shiminottoigata) indicates a command. It uses the imperative root directly and only has three tenses (present, perfect and progressive). The prohibitive (negative imperative) is formed by combining the attributive root with -na.
 * To form third-person imperatives and prohibitives, the imperfective root is used instead. To compare, the second-person imperatives are かけ kake, which means "Write!", and かこな kakona, which means "Do not write!". The third-person imperatives are かか kaka ("May he write.") and かかな kakana ("May he not write.").
 * Negative forms of verbs and verbal adjectives do not possess imperative forms.
 * The perfect and progressive forms of the imperative do not convey any temporal information; they only distinguish aspect. The main difference between the aspects in the imperative is that the present imperative, representing the aorist aspect, implies only a single action (e.g. とびやお　しめよ tobiyao shimeyo "Close the door!"), while the perfect suggests a state is to be desired (e.g. とびやお　しめたえ tobiyao shimetae "Leave the door closed!") and the progressive implies something which must be done continuously, iteratively or habitually (e.g. とびやお　しめとえ tobiyao shimetoe "Close the door every time [you leave the room]!").
 * The hortative mood (Namari: かんがえのっといがた kangaenottoigata) indicates a statement that is intended to occur. Alternatively, it can be considered a first-person imperative. It only has three tenses (present, perfect and progressive). It is formed by combining the imperfective root with -mu (consonant-stem verbs) or -kemu (vowel-stem verbs). This marker conjugates as a quinquegrade (consonant-stem) verb. The negative hortative is formed by combining the attributive root with -makai, which conjugates as a verbal adjective.
 * Like with the imperative mood, the hortative mood's tenses only distinguish aspect.
 * The conditional mood (Namari: ただいのっといがた tadainottoigata) indicates a statement that would be true if a given conditional statement is also true. It only has three tenses (present, perfect and progressive). It is formed by combining the infinitive root (verbs) or bare stem (adjectives) with -gayu. This marker conjugates as a quinquegrade verb.
 * Like with the imperative mood, the conditional mood's tenses only distinguish aspect.
 * The desiderative mood (Namari: ほしのっといがた poshinottoigata) indicates a statement of desire by the subject and can be conjugated for all tenses. It is formed by combining the infinitive root with -takai. This marker conjugates as a verbal adjective.

Voices
In Namari, there are several voices (Namari: きめがた kimegata) which determine the relationship between the verb and its arguments.

Namari has the following voices:
 * The active voice (Namari: あたいきめがた ataikimegata) is the default voice of all verbs. In this case, the subject (in the nominative case) represents the agent of the verb. Any direct objects, if they exist, are marked for the verb's corresponding direct object case (usually the accusative).
 * Example sentence: みさき　えぬお　つかまゆえい Misaki enuo tukamayuei ("Misaki caught the dog")
 * The passive voice (Namari: うけぎめがた ukegimegata) promotes the patient into the subject position, putting it into the nominative case. The agent of the verb, if it is mentioned, is demoted into a non-core argument (using the dative case).
 * Example sentence: えぬ　みさきん　つかまえやゆえい Enu Misakin tukamaeyayuei ("The dog was caught by Misaki")
 * There is a second type of passive in Namari, the adversative passive. Like the standard passive, the adversative passive demotes the agent into a non-core (dative) argument. However, the patient (if it exists) remains in the verb's corresponding direct object case, while another argument is introduced to denote something which is adversely affected by the action. The adversative passive has the same form as the standard passive.
 * Stative verbs (including all verbal adjectives and r-irregular verbs) do not have passive forms.
 * The causative voice (Namari: つかいきめがた tukaikimegata) introduces another argument, namely the actor which makes the original agent perform the action (the causer). The causer is put in the nominative case, while the original agent is demoted into a non-core argument (using the dative case). The original patient (if it exists) remains in the verb's corresponding direct object case (usually the accusative).
 * Example sentence: ゆみ　みさきん　えぬお　つかまえさすえい Yumi Misakin enuo tukamaesasuei ("Yumi made Misaki catch the dog")
 * The potential voice (Namari: できぎめがた dekigimegata) is considered a voice, despite not altering the verb's valency. It instead denotes whether the agent is capable of performing the action. It is considered a voice because it alters the relationship between the verb and its arguments. Like in Japanese, Namari potentials always place the patient in the nominative case. However, unlike Japanese, agents of transitive verbs (and only transitive verbs) are placed in the genitive case (while the sole argument of an intransitive verb remains in the nominative), meaning that Namari potentials possess ergative behaviour.
 * Example sentence: みさきが　えぬ　つかまえうえい Misakiga enu tukamaeuei ("Misaki was able to catch the dog")
 * If the verb uses dative direct objects, it is treated as if it were an intransitive verb. The direct object remains in the dative case.

All voices other than the active voice can be combined. However, they can only be combined in a specific order (causative + passive + potential).
 * The causative passive is similar to the causative, except the cases of the causer and original agent are swapped (the original agent is promoted back into the nominative case, while the causer is denoted using the dative).
 * Example sentence: みさき　ゆみん　えぬお　つかまえさせやゆえい Misaki Yumin enuo tukamaesaseyayuei ("Misaki was made to catch the dog by Yumi")
 * The causative potential is simply a potential form of the causative. Like the potential, it possesses ergative behaviour, and like the causative, it denotes the causer as the subject.
 * Example sentence: ゆみが　みさきん　えぬ　つかまえさせうえい Yumiga Misakin enu tukamaesaseuei ("Yumi was able to make Misaki catch the dog")
 * The passive potential combines the potential with the passive. For standard passives, the arguments are marked identically to the passive, while for adversative passives, it shows ergative behaviour.
 * Example sentence: えぬ　みさきん　つかまえやえうえい Enu Misakin tukamaeyaeuei ("The dog was able to be caught by Misaki")
 * The causative passive potential combines all three marked voices. It possesses ergative behaviour, like the potential.
 * Example sentence: みさきが　ゆみん　えぬ　つかまえさせやえうえい Misakiga Yumin enu tukamaesaseyaeuei ("Misaki was able to be made to catch the dog by Yumi")

Non-finite forms
Verbs in Namari also have several non-finite forms:
 * The infinitive (Namari: さだながた sadanagata) is a noun form of the verb, formed by using the infinitive root directly. Its meaning is that of either a single instance of the verb (e.g. aiki can mean a walk) or an abstract expression (similar to the to-infinitive of English).
 * The infinitive is considered "animate" (meaning its genitive uses -ga instead of -no). This is to prevent confusion with the attributive negative in many verbs.
 * There are two types of participles in Namari. The adjectival participle, often referred to as the attributive (Namari: かーいがた kāigata), is used to modify nouns or noun phrases and uses the attributive root directly. The adverbial participle (Namari: わけがた wakegata) is formed by adding -te to the infinitive root and applying the appropriate euphonic changes (for consonant-stem verbs). This form is mainly used as a base for auxillary verbs and to denote additional actions (as in "I did X and he did Y" type sentences, e.g. Panaya saite, pachiya soeyampe tobu meaning "The flowers bloom and the bees fly towards them").
 * When the attributive is used as an attributive (that is, it is not part of a kakari-musubi construction), it behaves as if it has tripartite alignment. The sole core argument of an attributive clause (for intransitive verbs) will be in the nominative case, but the subject of a transitive verb behaving as an attributive will be in the genitive case. Verbs with dative direct objects use the nominative case for the subject.
 * The adverbial participle itself is a defective verb, possessing only an infinitive (-te) and imperative (-teyo). The imperative form is used as a more polite version of the plain imperative.
 * The gerund (Namari: なことばかた nakotobakata) is another noun form of the verb, formed by combining the attributive root with -no. Its meaning is largely the same as that of the English gerund.
 * The nominative and genitive forms of the gerund are identical. This is because, as an inanimate noun, the gerund would use -no as the genitive suffix. This results in -nono, which reduces to -no by haplology.

Additional forms
There are additional forms which Namari verbs can take:
 * The topic form, used when the verb is topicalised, and also used as a base for the polite conjugation. Historically, this was simply the infinitive followed by the topic marker, however, for consonant-stem verbs, the topic marker is merged with the infinitive to form a -ya suffix which attaches directly to the root. This suffix was later generalised to the vowel-stem verbs.
 * The polite form (Namari: やすかた yasukata) is used to make one's utterance more polite, and is the equivalent of the Japanese -masu suffix. It is marked with the -bei suffix, which conjugates as an r-irregular verb, and takes the negative and perfect conjugations (all other tense suffixes are added before the politeness suffix, even if they are part of a pluperfect or future perfect construction; in this case, the past/future suffix occurs before the politeness suffix and the perfect suffix after, e.g. aeyabetta, the polite pluperfect of ai).
 * The honorific form is used whenever the nominative argument of the verb (when acting as a predicate) or the noun the verb modifies (when acting as an attributive) is either inherently honorific or in an honorific form. This is marked by the o- prefix.

Euphonic changes
In Namari, athematic verbs show euphonic changes when forming the participle or perfect form. Normally, the participle is formed by adding the -te suffix to the infinitive, and the perfect by adding the -ta suffix to the infinitive. However, for athematic verbs, this induces changes in pronunciation, resulting in a seemingly irregular form.

The following euphonic changes are observed:

Example conjugations
Full conjugation tables can be found here.

For the conjugation tables, long vowels which cross morpheme boundaries are written as double vowels for clarity. Normally they would be romanised as a single vowel with a macron.

Conjugation of かく kaku (to write), an athematic (quinquegrade) verb:


 * The expected form would be kakande, however, the older, unchanged form is used due to the changed form being identical to a negative participle.

The existential verbs あい ai (for inanimate nouns, imperfective あや aya) and おい oi (for animate nouns, imperfective おや oya) and the copula や ya (imperfective やや yaya) have irregular conclusive forms (as shown in the lemma), but otherwise conjugate identically to other athematic verbs (with the exception being that the regular attributive of ya is not used). Note that the regular negative of ai (ayan) is not used, with a separate verb being used in the negative.

The following tables only list the base forms and a subset of derived forms.

Conjugation of あい ai (to be/to exist), an irregular (r-irregular) verb:


 * As an existential verb, ai lacks a passive.
 * The negative of ai is formed using a suppletive verb なあん nān, which conjugates irregularly. All forms of nān are conjugated as if it was negated (e.g. present なあん nān, aorist なえやん naeyan, perfect なあんだ nānda) and it possesses an irregular participle (ないで naide, rather than the expected なうて naute).
 * Similarly, the copula also uses a suppletive verb やなあん yanān. It conjugates identically to nān.

Conjugation of おく oku (to rise), a thematic (upper bigrade) verb:

Conjugation of なぐ nagu (to throw), a thematic (lower bigrade) verb:

Conjugation of みい mī (to see), a thematic (monograde) verb:


 * The expected attributive form of monograde verbs is -yo. The -yu suffix (borrowed from eastern dialects) is used to prevent confusion with the imperative form -yo in kakari-musubi constructions.
 * The regular causative of mī shown above is not used; instead the verb みす misu (imperfective みせ mise) is used.
 * The potential of mī is not to be confused with みゆ miyu (imperfective みえ mie), despite sharing the same imperfective, infinitive and imperative forms. The latter verb means "to be visible".

Conjugation of す su (to do), an irregular verb:
 * The potential form of su is suppletive. Both the passive and causative forms are irregular.

Conjugation of く ku (to come), an irregular verb:

Conjugation of たかかい takakai (to be tall), a verbal adjective:


 * All verbal adjectives have two additional forms to denote degree. These are marked by the -sa marker to denote measurable degree, and the -mi marker to denote immesurable degree. Both markers attach to the stem of the verbal adjective.
 * Verbal adjectives with stems ending with -shi may have irregular conclusive forms (e.g. うえし ueshi, to be happy, imperfective うえしけ ueshike). Such verbs also have irregular -sa forms, replacing the -shi with -sha (e.g. うえしゃ uesha).
 * Verbal adjectives do not possess separate comparative forms. Comparison is either implied, or a reference point is given in the comparative case (e.g. わえ　かえでよい　たかかい Wae Kaedeyoi takakai means "I am taller than Kaede"). Superlatives are formed by prefixing the adjective with sugi- (e.g. ようこ　すぎたかかい Youko sugitakakai means "Yoko is the tallest").

Comparison with Old Namari and other Japonic languages
The verb morphology of the modern language shares many similarities to Old Namari, but also has many differences.

The following is a comparison of the suffixes of the six basic forms of Namari verbs:


 * * These suffixes palatalise certain consonants. /rju/ and /ri/ formed from these suffixes become /i/.

For the Proto-Japonic forms, the considerable variations in forms can be explained by a vowel harmony system which may or may not have existed. Traces of these variations can still be found in the modern languages (such as the negative infinitive -zu in Japanese, the r-irregular category and the attributive forms of verbal adjectives in Japanese and Namari). The uncertainty of the imperfective suffix in Proto-Japonic is because the imperfective is not a standalone form and the apparent imperfective suffixes may have been epenthetic vowels which only exist due to phonotactics. The suffixes given are hypothetical, especially the ones with question marks (these forms may not have existed at all). These suffixes are written assuming Proto-Japonic had a six-vowel system; there are theories that the vowel /ə/ in Proto-Japonic was actually two vowels /ə/ and /ɨ/, however, this hypothesis is not widely accepted, and even if it were true, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish them (the only difference which may have survived to the present day would be */əi/ → /e/ and */ɨi/ → /i/, with the former likely to have been raised to /i/).

These basic forms can be used to form principal parts, which are the word forms if, which known, allow one to form a complete set of conjugations for the verb. In Modern Namari, there are two principal parts (the imperfective or imperative and conclusive forms, examples かか kaka, かけ kake and かく kaku respectively). Japanese can be considered to have two principal parts for verbs as well (the conclusive and imperative forms). For Classical Japanese, three principal parts (conclusive, attributive and imperative) are sufficient to distinguish all verbs except す su. The six basic forms apply only to Japanese languages; they can neither be used for Ryukyuan languages, nor for Proto-Japonic. This is shown by the meanings of the principal parts of Okinawan verbs: the imperative (e.g. かき kaki), the conclusive (e.g. かちゅん kachun) and the participle (e.g. かち kachi, corresponding to the Namari participle and the Japanese -te form).

Namari has five conjugational classes of verbs (quinquegrade, upper bigrade, lower bigrade, monograde and r-irregular), two conjugational classes of verbal adjectives (ku-adjectives and shiku-adjectives), and two irregular verbs (す su and く ku) which do not fit into any conjugational class. In comparison, Japanese only has two conjugational classes of verbs (quinquegrade and monograde), one conjugational class of verbal adjectives and three verbs which do not fit into any conjugational class (する suru, くる kuru, and the auxillary verb 得る uru). Okinawan has three conjugational classes of verbs, one conjugational class of verbal adjectives and a number of irregular verbs (including, but not limited to, いちゅん ʔichun, and ちゅーん chuun).

In Proto-Japonic, the participle and all derived forms were created by attaching -te to the infinitive of the verb (e.g. *kak-i-te, *anka-i-te, *kə-i-te, se-i-te). This situation remained unchanged in Old Namari and Early Middle Japanese, however, in the modern languages, euphonic changes occurred which fused the endings together in consonant-stem verbs. The following table compares the outcome of these forms:

In Proto-Japonic, it is presumed that all verbs were part of the same conjugational class, regardless of whether they were athematic (consonant-stem) or thematic (vowel-stem). The only difference between athematic and thematic verbs was in the imperfective "form", where the former used an epenthetic vowel to split consonant clusters (*kak-a-n-u or ip-ə-n-i as opposed to *anka-n-u or əte-n-i). The following table outlines the reflexes and conjugational classes of each verb ending in the modern languages:

The principal parts shown for Namari are the conclusive and imperfective. For Japanese, they are the conclusive/attributive and imperative. For Okinawan, they are the conclusive, imperative and participle. An asterisk beside a form in a modern language indicates that the form is unattested/impossible. The numbers indicate the conjugational class of the verb:
 * Namari and Japanese class 1 represents quinquegrade verbs.
 * Namari classes 2a, 2b and 2c represent upper bigrade, lower bigrade and monograde verbs, respectively. Class 2 also includes the irregular verbs す su and く ku (both being placed in class 2d).
 * Japanese classes 2a and 2b represent uppper and lower monograde verbs, respectively.
 * Namari class 3 represents r-irregular verbs.
 * Japanese class 3 simply holds irregular verbs which do not fit any conjugational class.
 * Okinawan class 1 represents verbs whose imperative stems do not end in -r. This corresponds to most Namari and Japanese quinquegrade verbs. Some Namari and Japanese vowel-stem verbs may also be in this class (as d-stem verbs).
 * Okinawan class 2 represents verbs whose imperative stems end in -r and whose conclusive forms end in -yun/-in. This corresponds to Namari and Japanese p-, r- and vowel-stem verbs.
 * Okinawan class 3 represents r-irregular verbs, whose conclusive forms only end in -n.
 * Okinawan class 4 only contains ちゅーん chuun "to come". This verb does not fit into the normal conjugational classes, with the imperative and imperfective forms being identical (くー kuu; all other verbs distinguish the imperfective from the imperative).

Adjectives
In Namari, there are three classes of adjectives: verbal adjectives, nominal adjectives and attributives or true adjectives. These three classes differ in their behaviour. Verbal adjectives can be conjugated like verbs, while nominal adjectives behave exactly like nouns and must be placed in the genitive case in order to modify noun phrases (in Old Namari, nominal adjectives used a special form of the copula -no instead of the genitive marker -nə, however, the two forms merged at the end of the Old Namari period). Attributives are a closed class of words which can only act attributively (that is, they can neither act as a predicate nor be conjugated or declined). Attributives are effectively determiners and thus will not be mentioned in this section.

What distinguishes adjectives from other word classes is that they have special forms to denote degree, as well as a superlative form. They can also form adverbs using the appropriate form. For all verbal and nominal adjectives, measurable degree is marked with -sa (e.g. takasa means "height") and immeasurable degree is marked with -mi (e.g. kanashimi means "sadness"), with both markers forming nouns. The adverbial form is formed differently between verbal and nominal adjectives. For verbal adjectives, it is the infinitive (unlike all other verbs, which use the dative case to form adverbs, infinitives of verbal adjectives act directly as adverbs in the nominative case), while for nominal adjectives, it is the dative case. Both classes form superlatives with the sugi- prefix.

Adjectives do not possess comparative forms (i.e. they do not have the equivalent of the Englsh "-er" suffix). All comparisons in Namari are implied if a point of comparison (a noun in the comparative case, or a noun phrase with the head in the comparative case) is not provided. However, the adverb motto can be added to the sentence to form an explicit comparative, provided that it has been established that the point of comparison possesses the property in question.

Irregular adjectives
Namari possesses one major irregular adjective, えい ei (to be good, imperfective よけ yoke). Its conjugation is shown in the table below: In addition, ei possesses an irregular superlative (もっとかい mottokai) and no immeasurable degree form (i.e. よさ yosa is a valid form, but not *yomi).

Some other adjectives possess minor irregularities. For example, わゆかい wayukai ("bad", imperfective わゆけ wayuke) has an irregular superlative (おーいなわかい ōinawakai)

Syntax
Namari sentences are typically in subject-object-verb (SOV) order, although there is some flexibility in the word order due to inflection. Its phrases are exclusively head-final (meaning the head of a phrase is always at the end) and its sentences are exclusively left-branching.

Word order
The typical word order in Namari is:
 * The topic
 * The subject/agent
 * Any indirect objects
 * The patient/direct object
 * Adverbs derived from nouns, verbs, adjectives and numerals
 * Particle-like adverbs (such as もー mō "already/no longer", まだ mada "still" and また mata "again")
 * The verb

The only hard rules are that the topic is first and that the verb, if not topicalised, is at the end of the sentence. In formal language, it is considered improper to topicalise the verb, hence the verb will always occur at the end.

Namari is head-final. This means that the head of a phrase (whether it be a noun or a postposition) always follows its modifiers. Examples:
 * ゆかりが　はな Yukariga pana "Yukari's flower" (an example of a genitive phrase; the head is the noun はな pana)
 * みちの　うえん michino uen "on/over the road" (an example of a postpositional phrase; the head is the postposition うえん uen)
 * かなでよい　たかかい Kanadeyoi takakai "taller than Kanade" (an example of a comparative; the head is the comparative adjective たかかい takakai)
 * くよけ　ねこ kuyoke neko "the black cat" (an example of a noun modified by an adjective; the head is the noun ねこ neko)

Example texts
An excerpt from Magical Kurumi-chan:

くるみ「さなちゃ〜ん！」

さな「あ、くるみちゃん. きた. 」

くるみ「さなちゃん、なん　なにかお　おしえたかい. 」

さな「きのうお？」

くるみ「えー. くるわな　おしうえよか？」

さな「えー. 」

くるみ「さー、まほうせうにょやと　しっとい、ね. 」

さな「えー. やっても、たたかいがた　わかやん. 」

くるみ「さなちゃん、おしえう. はじまいん　こあかいと　しっといけーど、なお　てつだあみい. 」

さな「うん、あいがたくあい、くるみちゃん. 」

Romanisation:

-Kurumi: Sana-cha~n!

-Sana: A, Kurumi-chan. Kita.

-Kurumi: Sana-chan, nan nanikao oshietakai.

-Sana: Kinouo?

-Kurumi: Ē. Kuruwana oshiueyoka?

-Sana: Ē.

-Kurumi: Sā, mapouseunyo-ya-to shittoi, ne.

-Sana: Ē. Yattemo, tatakaigata wakayan.

-Kurumi: Sana-chan, oshieu. Pajimain koakai-to shittoi-kēdo, nao tetudāmī.

-Sana: Un, aigataku-ai, Kurumi-chan.

Translation:

-Kurumi: Sana!

-Sana: Ah, Kurumi. You've come.

-Kurumi: Sana, I want to tell you something.

-Sana: Is it about yesterday?

-Kurumi: Yes. Did Kuruwana tell you?

-Sana: Yes.

-Kurumi: Then, you know you're a magical girl, right.

-Sana: Yes. However, I don't know how to fight.

-Kurumi: Sana, I can teach you. I know it's scary at first, but I'll help you.

-Sana: Ah, thanks, Kurumi.

Phrases and vocabulary
General phrases:
 * およえ　おいーや Oyoe oī-ya – Hello (literally means "it is a good day today" using honorific prefixes; いー ī "today" comes from earlier いひ ipi and is only found with honorific suffixes)
 * そえよーややば Soe-yō-yayaba – Goodbye (literally means "if it is like that"; related to Japanese さようなら sayōnara)
 * This is only used if one does not expect to meet again.
 * また　ね Mata ne – See you later (literally means "again, right")
 * Longer forms include また　ああみい Mata āmī ("We will meet again"), また　こけみい Mata kokemī ("I will come again") and また　こよ Mata koyo ("Come again").
 * あいがたくあい Aigataku-ai or あいがたあやべい Aigataku-ayabei – Thank you (a form of あいがたかい aigatakai "to be hard", inspired by the Japanese equivalent ありがとうございます arigatō gozaimasu; note that Namari lost honorific conjugations in the Middle Namari period)
 * まぬがえさせよ Manugaesaseyo – Sorry (literally means "let me/us avoid [punishment]")
 * すまん Suman or すみゃべやん Sumyabeyan – Excuse me (cf. Japanese すまない/すみません sumanai/sumimasen)

Other phrases:
 * こうとい Koutoi – I love you (progressive form of こう kou "to love")
 * やえぞやかや　くえよか？ Yaezoyakaya kueyoka? – Did you come from Yaezora?
 * やまとことば　わかっとい Yamatokotoba wakattoi – I understand Japanese

Idiom translations:
 * ししゃしゅしゃんや Shishashushan-ya – Used to refer to something considered "incomprehensible", similar to the expression "It's all Greek to me" used in English. The word used is meant to sound like Mandarin Chinese.
 * すな　ふっとい Suna puttoi – Literally means "it is raining sand", used to refer to very heavy rain. Typically one might say あめ　おーきく　ふっとい ame ōkiku puttoi to refer to heavy rain.

Vocabulary: See also Namari Swadesh list
 * むや muya – village
 * まち machi – town
 * みやこ miyako – city
 * こに koni – land/nation/state
 * せま sema – island
 * おみ omi – sea
 * かー kā – river
 * やま yama – mountain
 * もい moi – forest
 * The meanings of the above two words are indicative of Namari's relationship with Japanese; in many Ryukyuan languages, the meanings of these two words are swapped or otherwise altered.
 * あめ ame – rain (genitive あまの amano)
 * よき yoki – snow
 * ひ pi – sun
 * くも kumo – cloud
 * えよ eyo – colour
 * しよかい shiyokai – to be white (imperfective しよけ shiyoke)
 * くよかい kuyokai – to be black (imperfective くよけ kuyoke)
 * あかかい akakai – to be red (imperfective あかけ akake)
 * あおかい aokai – to be blue (imperfective あおけ aoke)

Additional information

 * Sino-Namari vocabulary — Information on Sinitic loanwords in Namari, as well as the Han characters which were used to write the language in the past.
 * /Feature summary — a summary of the features of Namari, based on the categories used by The World Atlas of Language Structures.