High Eolic word of the day: ngíyel

ngíyel (noun), accusative form ngíya: sand.

ngíyel-ut cuttús ca-ravácamec
sand-DEF exist.IMPERF.NON1 my-shoe.INESS
“there is a grain of sand in one of my shoes”

There are two interesting aspects to the word for ‘sand’ in High Eolic. First, it is an inherently mass noun, meaning that using it with the definite suffix produces the meaning ‘a unit of’ (as in the example above) – in the case of sand, the appropriate unit is a grain of sand. Second, it belongs to a class of nouns (most of which end in -l) that have an irregular accusative form. Thus, rather than *ngíyelal, the accusative form of ngíyel is ngíya:

már upávam ngíya
he/she move.IMPERF.TRANS sand.ACC
“he/she is moving sand [around]”