Jan06 Post B

Jan06 grammar is hierarchical with inverse marking. It also has noun classes.

Common nouns contain a class marker; this allows them to form plurals by changing the class marker. The class markers correspond to the class agreement
affixes on the verb. There's no class agreement with noun modifiers.

For each class, there may be a number of subclasses. There are two kinds of subclasses: lexical and derived. Some of the latter being based on verb roots
including the action nominals and the participant nominals. The latter are:

agent
patient
instrument
product
location

There are other derived subclasses such as

diminutive
augmentive
pejorative
meliorative

Also, ethnic roots combines with classes for language, territory, & people.

The lexical subclasses are (so far)

Description Example Glosses
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human, unknown - stranger
man - man, father
woman - woman, mother
child -
elderly or invalid -
large animal - lion, giraffe, crocodile
small animal - mouse
bird - parrot
water animal - fish, squid
invertebrate - cockroach, snail
other animate - fire, ghost
plant, live - tree, herb
plant matter - wood
parts - leg of person, leg of stool
food -
medicine -
mineral - rock
artifact - knife
structure - house
place -
time/event -
miscellaneous -
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The singular and plural classes, along with their subclass sets, haven't been determined yet.