Ardari takes a different approach for its word derivation. Instead of compounding, like Isian does, Ardari likes stacking derivational affixes. That doesn’t mean it totally lacks compounds, just that they take a bit of a back seat to affixes. Therefore, we should start with the latter.
Ardari’s three main parts of speech—noun, verb, and adjective—are mostly separate. Sure, you can use adjectives directly as nouns, and we’ve got ky to create infinitives, but there are usually insurmountable boundaries surrounding these three. The most regular and productive derivation affixes, then, are the ones that let us pass through those boundaries.
Making nouns
To make new nouns from other types of words, we’ve got a few choices:
- -önda creates abstract nouns from verbs (luchönda “feeling”)
- -kön makes agent nouns, like English “-er” (kwarkön “hunter”)
- -nyn creates patient nouns from verbs, a bit like a better “-ee” (chudnyn “one who is guarded”)
- -ymat takes an adjective and makes an abstract noun from it (agrisymat “richness”)
All of these are perfectly regular and widely used in the language. The nouns they create are, by default, neuter. -kön and -nyn, however, can be gendered: kwarköna denotes a male hunter, kwarköni a huntress.
Two other important nominal suffixes are -sö and -ölad. The first switches an abstract or mass noun to a concrete or count noun, while the second does the opposite. Thus, we have ichurisö “a time of peace”, oblasö “a drop of water”, sèdölad “childhood”, or kujdölad “kingship”. (Note that a final vowel disappears when -ölad is added.)
Ardari also has both a diminutive -imi and an augmentative -oza. These work on nouns about like you’d expect: rhasimi “puppy”, oskoza “ocean”. However, there is a bit of a sticking point. Diminutive nouns are always feminine, and augmentatives always masculine, no matter the original noun’s gender. This can cause oddities, especially with kinship terms: emönimi “little brother” is grammatically feminine!
The other main nominal derivation is po- (p- before vowels). This forms antonyms or opposites, like English “un-” or “non-“. Examples include poban “non-human” and polagri “gibberish”.
Most other derived nouns are, in fact, adjectives used as nouns, as we’ll see below.
Making adjectives
First of all, adjectives can be made by one of three class-changing suffixes:
- -ösat makes an adjective from an abstract noun (idyazösat “warlike”)
- -rät makes an adjective from a concrete noun (emirät “motherly”)
- -ròs creates a “possibility” adjective from a verb (dervaròs “livable”)
Diminutives and augmentatives work as for nouns, but they take the forms -it and -ab, and they don’t alter gender, as Ardari adjectives must agree with head nouns in gender. Some examples: pòdit “oldish”, nejab “very wrong”.
We’ve already seen the general adjective negator ur- in the Babel Text. It works very similarly to English un-, except that it can be used anywhere. (The blended form u- from the Babel Text’s ulokyn is a special, nonproductive stem change.)
Most of the other adjective derivations are essentially postpositional phrases with the order reversed. Here are some of the most common:
- nèch-, after (nèchidyaz “postwar”)
- jögh-, before (jötulyan “pre-day”)
- olon-, middle, centrally (olongoz “midnight”)
- är-, above or over (ärdaböl “overland”, from dabla)
- khow-, below or under (khowdyev “underground”)
Many of these are quickly turned into abstract nouns. For instance, olongoz is perfectly usable as a noun meaning “midnight”. Like any other adjective-turned-noun, it would be neuter: olongoze äl “at midnight”.
Making verbs
There are only two main class-changing suffixes to make verbs. We can add -ara to create a verb roughly meaning “to make X”, as khèvara “to dry”. The suffix -èlo works on nouns, and its meaning is often more nuanced. For example, pämèlo “to plant”, from pämi “plant”.
Repetition, like English “re-“, is a suffix in Ardari. For verb stems ending in a consonant, it’s -eg: prèlleg- “to relearn”. Vowel-stems instead use -vo, as in bejëvo- “to rethink”.
Ardari also has a number of prefixes that can be added for subtle connotations. The following table shows some of these, along with their English equivalents.
| Prefix | Meaning | English | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| ej- | for, in favor of | pro- | ejsim “to speak for” |
| èk- | against | anti- | èksim “to speak against” |
| jès- | with | co- | jèzgrät “to co-create” |
| nich- | wrongly, badly | mis- | nichablon “to mishear” |
| ob- | after | post-/re- | opsim “to reply” |
| sèt- | before | pre- | sètokön “to precut” |
| wa- | into | in- | wamykhes “to inquire” |
| zha- | out of | ex- | zhalo “to expire” |
Making compounds
Compounds aren’t as common in Ardari as they are in Isian, but they’re still around. Any noun can be combined with any other noun or adjective, with the head component coming last, as in the rest of the language.
Adjective-noun combinations are the most regular, like chelban “youth, young person”. Noun-agent is another productive combination: byzrivirdökön “bookseller”. Noun-noun compounds tend to be idiosyncratic: lagribyzri “dictionary”, from lagri “word” and byzri “book”.
Reduplicated adjectives are sometimes used for colloquial superlatives: khajkhaj “topmost”, slisli “most beautiful”.
A few words derived from nouns or verbs sit somewhere between compounds and derivational morphemes. An example is -allonda, from allèlönda “naming”. This one works a bit like English “-onomy”: palallonda “astronomy”. Another is -prèllönda, more like “-ology”: ondaprèllönda “audiology”. Finally, -benda and -bekön, from bejë-, work like “-ism” and “-ist”: potsorbekön “atheist” (po- + tsor + -bekön).
Make some words
As before, these aren’t all of the available derivations for Ardari. They’re enough to get started though, and they’re enough to accomplish our stated goal: creating lots of words!