User:Madrigalg/sandbox

Nivkh is an agglutinating synthetic language. It has a developed case system, as well as other grammatical markers, but no grammatical gender. The basic word order of Nivkh is subject–object–verb, the subject being frequently omitted in speech.^[9] Nivkh is notable for the high degree of incorporation between words. For example, those morphemes which express spatial relationships (prepositions or postpositions in many other languages) are incorporated into the noun to which they relate . Words consist of easily definable roots and productive grammatical morphemes, most of which are suffixes. Nivkh has no adjectives, but rather verbs that describe a state of being. There are two verb tenses: non-future and future. The non-future form may combine with adverbials, as well as context, to indicate a time frame.

As Russian has become the dominant language in all spheres of life, Nivkh grammar has changed in the last century. For example, Nivkh has begun to mark plurals on counting nouns and pairs; while incorrect in Nivkh before language contact, this is a rule of the Russian language. However, it has been postulated that due to the vastly differing grammatical structures of the two tongues, grammatical interference has not been extensive. Simplification has occurred past borrowed Russian structure, though; due to disuse of the language and a changing culture, many of the complex morphological aspects of Nivkh have been simplified or fallen out of use. Things like the distinction between the morpheme for counting sledges and the morpheme for counting fishnets have disappeared, with speakers opting to use more general categories of counting numbers or other descriptors.