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Direct Objects and the Nasal Mutation

In the fictional internal history of FairyLang, direct objects used to be indicated by the preposition Vn, where V is the gendered vowel of the noun (an cara, en carhe, un garu, on qaqro). Over time, the n migrated onto the front of the noun. In the case of nouns begining with a vowel, this simply means that an n is tacked on. On nouns starting with a consonant, it causes an initial nasal mutation. The rules are:

- unvoiced plosives, affricates and fricatives become voiced (including the demonic voiceless lateral fricative ls becoming a voiced lateral fricative lz and qh becoming qr)

- voiced plosives, affricates and fricatives get a corresponding nasal tacked on (including qr becoming ngqr)

- r and rh both become nr

- l and lh both become nl

- nasals are unaffected

When using a standard word order, where the meaning is clear, the preposition can be dropped entirely, espcially in informal speech.

an cara -> a gara -> gara
un datsu -> u ndatsu -> ndatsu
Tags: conlang, consonant mutation, direct object, grammar, nasal mutation
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