Nouns in Meriteji have no gender or plurality. Historically, there was a paucal and plural suffix system, however this only survives in pronouns today. Nouns do, however, decline under 6 cases, changing the end of a noun based on its position and purpose in a sentence. The cases (explained below) are as follows, and in this order:
Nominative (NOM), Accusative (ACC), Genitive (GEN), Particular (PRT), Vocative (VOC), and Intransitive (INT).
An important concept to Meriteji its its detatchment of the intransitive subject from the familiar nominative-accusative system’s transitive agent, or in even more fancy linguistic words, tripartite alignment.
The Nominative case is the actor or agent of a transitive verb. It must be paired, at least implied, with something in the Accusative case, which is the recipient, patient, direct object, etc. of a transitive verb. The Genitive case is used to show possesion, attribution, or noun phrase apposition. The Particular case (may be more familiar if incorrectly described as the Prepositional case) is used in tandem with Meriteji’s various postpositions, commonly called particles in this grammar system. In absence of a particle, the particular case functions as a daitive case, acting as an indirect object. The Vocative case is a rare and special case whose exclusive purpose is to describe the addressee of a sentence, i.e. who the speaker is talking to. Finally, the Intransitive case. This case is relatively unique to Meriteji, and it has unique properties of its own. It is used for the subjects of intransitive verbs, as described above. It can also be used for reflexive, transitive verbs, for when the subject and object are the same, for the subject and predicate on both sides of the verb le (to be), and for reciprocal (”each other”) constructions.
Nouns are presented in their absolute (linguistic term) or dictionary (what I call it) form, as described, in dictionaries, or when talking about a word as a word, or when saying a word out of context or independently. From this state, different categories of nouns take different methods of becoming declined to the proper case. All nouns have a defined class, listed alongside dictionary definitions, and learning them is essential. There are 5, and only 5, D1, D2, D3, D4, and D5. Their systems are explained below.
<aside> <img src="/icons/info-alternate_green.svg" alt="/icons/info-alternate_green.svg" width="40px" /> …are the most common category. In this category, the final vowel of a word changes to match the case. Any codas will remain following the changed vowel.
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<aside> <img src="/icons/info-alternate_green.svg" alt="/icons/info-alternate_green.svg" width="40px" /> …occur only in words that end with open vowels (no coda). They decline by adding different codas to the end.
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