# Introduction
Naasai is an artificially constructed a priori language, developed in order to gain a better understanding (on my part) of how linguistic features can interact with each other.
The language follows an nominative-accusative morpological alignment in combination with direct-inverse marking and a proximate-obviative distinction. Nouns lack case and are solely inflected for number; verbs lack tense marking and are inflected for personal agreement, aspect and mood.
# Sketch
- Number
- There are two grammatical numbers in the language: singular and plural.
- Gender
- There are four grammatical genders in the language: masculine, feminine, neuter, and inanimate. Gender generally is assigned along semantic grounds, though many "culturally significant" entities such as celestial bodies and certain natural phenomena have neuter gender rather than inanimate gender.
- Aspect: perfective, habitual, continuous, gnomic
- Mood: indicative, imperative, subjuctive, conditional
- Morphological Alignment
- A direct-inverse morphological alignment is found, in combination with a proximate-obviative distinction; the animacy hierarchy can be found below. As the language is predominantly head-marking, the direct-inverse alternation is marked on the verb itself.
# Example Sentences
(1)
naasai lat sakteňa
person fire 3masc.sg-see.dir
"The man sees the fire."
(2)
naasai lat sakteňam
person fire 3masc.sg-see.obv
"The fire sees the man."
(3)
naasee laat šoni haa hekteňa
person-pl fire ignite.cvb 3neu.pl 3neu.pl-see.dir
"The people ignited the fire, and then saw it [the fire]."
(4)
*naasai laate šoni saa hekteňam
person fire-pl ignite-cvb 3masc.sg 3neu.pl-see.obv
"The man ignited the fires, and then saw they [the fires] saw him."
The last sentence is invalid as the subject of the first clause (the man) is not the subject of the second clause. To produce a valid sentence, the final verb must be put in the passive voice.