Ithkuil/Basic Morphology

Ithkuil words can be divided in three parts of speech: Formatives, Adjuncts, and Referentials.

Formatives

Formatives function as both nouns and verbs depending on context, derive from the same root and are expanded with various affixes adding different grammatical information, such as case, number etc. The morphological structure of formatives can be described by a simple formula

$$(C_{C}+V_{V})+C_{R}+V_{R}+(C_{S}V_{X}...)+C_{A}+(V_{X}C_{S}+V_{N}C_{N})+V_{C}/V_{K}+[stress]$$

Where CR is the root of the word and and all other morphemes are affixes composed either of a vowel form (shown as V), a consonant form (shown as C) or a combination of both. Some affixes that are shown by parentheses are optional, so the smallest formative will consist of just 5 morphemes: CR + VR + CA + VC/VK + stress. Each particular morpheme will be discussed in Formatives chapter, but for now let's look at an example word: láţa, meaning "a group of different people (adults)".

The root (CR) of the word is "-l-", meaning "a human being". Before the root, a null affix in VV slot is used to show the default first stem of the word, "an adult human". VR shows us the formative's Function, Specification and Context which have values of Static, Basic and Existential respectively (we'll go over all of those in the next chapter). The CA slot can be responsible for numerous things, but in this case it only shows us the number of the formative: multiplex, dissimilar, separate. If you look at the tables you will see that such configuration gives us affix "-ţ-", and finally, the "-a" ending in VC slot gives us Thematic Case