Standard grammar
This is an overview of Azurian standard grammar, with some notes on dialect variations. Click on the links for more in-depth articles on the various features.
Noun morphology
Azurian nouns are marked for number, definiteness, and case. They are divided into various classes, each with their characteristic inflections, and the classes are grouped into neuter, feminine and masculine gender groups. Numbers are singular and plural. Dual is preserved only in a small number of traditional phrases. Definiteness also is twofold: definite and indefinite. The standard language knows three cases: nominative, genitive, and dative, but the dative today is found only in definite forms of the nouns. Various dialects have a richer case system.
Morphology of adjectives
Adjectives have a similar inflection to nouns. They too are divided in a number of classes and agree with nouns in number and gender in various ways depending on the class.
Verb morphology
Verbs are marked for tense, aspect, mood, and number. Until the reforms in 1954 and 1958, it was also allowed to mark the verbs for person, but this is not done any more in the standard language, as the feature is not used in spoken Azurian today, except for the northernmost dialects. Verbs are classified mainly in the strong and weak classes, with further subdivisions.
Morphology of adverbs
Adverbs do not have a rich morphology, except that those of degree or manner are subject to comparison like the adjectives. There is a number of adverb categories with different functions.
Pronoun morphology
Azurian knows personal, reflexive, possessive, demonstrative, interrogative and indefinite pronouns.
Prepositions
Prepositions are uninflectable words used to mark relations between words or clauses. Prepositions rule the case of the nouns they are prepositional to, but in the modern standard language, this applies only to definite forms of the nouns, and there are only the nominative and dative to choose from. Some northern dialects have a richer system.