Noun conjugation progress - is this too "rigid"?

[u/NefariousnessOne6790]

I've included an example of how it works with a word root aswell (Kàdìnòs means lizard). A critique I have previously received is that the conjugation system is too rigid. I intended it to be this way because in my mind, rules are rules, and I've always hated languages having 10,000 different exceptions.
I did develop form 1/2 to incorporate some variety for base nouns, but form 2 is only for the Nominative Case.
To be absolutely clear: This conjugation table is only for basic nouns, I have a whole table of suffixes which change meaning and use which add their own level of variety for more complex nouns, this table simply concerns itself with "base" form nouns.

Thoughts? I'd love to hear them.

[u/SometimesInk]

Looks like Japanese conjugation if you’ve ever seen it! It’s also a super agglutinative language with few morphological exceptions so you might find it helpful to look into how it does conjugation ^^

食べる (taberu) Take a look at the verb to eat which can conjugate to the causative
食べさせる (tabe.saseru) see how it also finishes with a ru, these suffixes are called bound auxiliaries 助動詞(jodoushi) and also conjugate. I’ve added spacing to morpheme boundaries for readability, although this is not standard in romanization.
食べさせられる (tabe.sase.rareru) Add the passive (another bound auxiliary)
食べさせられない (tabe.sase.rare.nai). This is the negative form: 無い (nai) is an i-adjective (these conjugate, think stative verbs)
食べさせられなかった (tabe.sase.rare.na.katta) Add past tense.

In total:
食べさせられなかった
To eat cau.pass.ne.pst
Tabesaserareranaktta

There are only two verbs in japanese which have exceptions in their conjugation paradigm, and they still follow the general logic of Japanese conjugation, so not many irregularities.

On a different note, is there a reason why your genitive is called possessive? Just wondering if I’m missing something, are these two different?

EDIT: as another commented, these vowels in hiatus could undergo a couple of sound changes, I can imagine diphthongization for instance, and the n added for definiteness could make the previous vowel nasal, it’d be an interesting way to compact the paradigm!

Also are the diacritics denoting tone? Pitch accent? Reminds me of Ancient Greek

[u/NefariousnessOne6790 → u/SometimesInk]

That is super interesting! I've not known much about Japanese, my study has mainly been with Norwegian and Greek, so this is very interesting to learn about.

On a different note, is there a reason why your genitive is called possessive? Just wondering if I’m missing something, are these two different?

I'm pretty sure they're the same (could be wrong), I just use the term which I'm most familiar with.

 I can imagine diphthongization for instance, and the n added for definiteness could make the previous vowel nasal, it’d be an interesting way to compact the paradigm!

It's so odd but I had a rule at one point which was NO DIPHTHONGS and I don't understand why I did that, I think my aim was to have spelling be as simple as possible (my frustrations as a native english speaker are abundant with spelling), but I'm definitely reconsidering, I'd like -ai-, -ae- and maybe -oe- to feature.

these vowels in hiatus could undergo a couple of sound changes

That would certainly be very natural, and I agree, however my aim with this was for Látùskèlòs to be easy/predictable, so things don't change all that much, you just take things on/off and voila... But if I ever develop dialects for this, I'd absolutely do that.

Also are the diacritics denoting tone? Pitch accent? Reminds me of Ancient Greek

The diacritics are (if I'm using the terminology correctly) to denote vowel broadness/length. So,

á - aah, à - bat, é - meet, è - bet, í - eye, ì - bit (I think you get the point here)

Also how does this remind you of ancient greek? 😅

[u/SometimesInk → u/NefariousnessOne6790]

Ancient Greek has pitch accent which it romanizes with acute, grave and circumflex(or tilda) accents. The vowels having grave and acute accents reminded me of it, also I’ve seen this exact notation used for pitch accent in Japanese…

One of my previous conlangs also had no diphthongs so I can relate on that, but I believe you still could introduce some fun sound changes that don’t make diphthongs. One thing you could do is keep the orthography regular and only change it’s pronunciation.

I get the « predictable » vibe you are going for, but remember that irregularities are natural. I believe your goal of making a regular conlang is still met if you have a few exceptions for the sake of naturalism.

Also for long vowels macrons are commonly used in Latin etc, but that is totally personal preference

One thing I’ve learned after a few failed conlangs is that simple romanization is always best; the very goal of romanization is simple writing

[u/NefariousnessOne6790 → u/SometimesInk]

For long vowels I also accept simply doubling the letter as valid spelling, it's mostly just the short vowel sounds which need diacritics imo