Ubykh was a polysynthetic language with a high degree of agglutination that had an ergative-absolutive alignment.
Nouns
Plurality
Ubykh nouns do not mark plurality and the only case that displays plurality is the relational suffix -. Otherwise plurality is shown either by suppletive verb roots (e.g. 'he is in the car' vs. 'they are in the car') or by verb suffixes: ('he goes'), ('they go').
Definiteness
The definite article is (e.g. 'the man'). There is no indefinite article directly equivalent to the English a or an, but -(root)- (literally 'one'-(root)-'certain') translates French un : e.g. ('a certain young man').
Cases
There are two core cases and four non-core cases in Ubykh. The core cases are: relational, absolutive; the non-core cases are: adverbial, locative, instrumental, and instrumental-comitative.
Relational case
This case displays ergative, genitive, and dative functions. It is marked with - in the singular and - in the plural and is the only case that has a distinction in plurality.
Absolutive case
Marked with the bare root; this indicates the subject of an intransitive sentence and the direct object of a transitive sentence (e.g. 'a man').
Adverbial case
This is marked with - and has the primary function of marking essive and translative functions of nouns.
Locative case
Marked in -, which is the equivalent of English in, on or at.
Instrumental case
Marked with - and was also treated as a case in Dumézil (1975). This is similar to "by means of" in English.
Instrumental-Comitative case
Marked with - and broadly means "with".
Other suffixes
There is also a pair of suffixes that have been noted to be synthetic datives but are not cases in their own right: - ('to[wards]') and - ('for') e.g. 'I will send it to the prince'.
Adjectives
In Ubykh, adjectives do not decline in any way and are suffixed to the noun that they modify: ('pepper') with ('red') becomes ('red pepper').
Pronouns
Free pronouns in all North-West Caucasian languages lack an ergative-absolutive distinction.
The "standard" pronouns are displayed along with variations that particular speakers used due to rapid speech. All speakers condemned Tevfik Esenç's usage of and he even accepted the correction but all recordings of Tevfik contain regardless.
Possessive
Possessed nouns have their plurality marked with the affix .
Verbs
Verb Template
The Ubykh verb template is quite complex with 26 slots for the verb.
Interrogative / subordinative prefixes
absolutive agreement marker or a prefixed interrogative pronoun
Oblique-1 marker agreeing with slot 4
Relational preverb
Incorporated noun or Oblique-2 marker
Local preverb
- or -
Generic preverb
Orientational preverb -
Ergative preverb marker
Negation in the dynamic and imperfect tenses or polite imperative
Causative
stem
Intensifying suffix
Habitual aspect
Iterative aspect
Exhaustive aspect
Excessive aspect
Continual aspect
Potential aspect
Plural marker
Tense
Plural marker for dynamic past, conditional II, and stative present. Negation in all tenses except for dynamic present Affect marker Mood or converb markers Conjunctive elements
Agreement
Oblique 1 markers are limited to marking the agreement of a noun before a relational preverb and Oblique 2 markers are used for not only marking agreement with local and directional preverbs but also the simple oblique, or dative, arguments.
The second-person is an archaic pronoun used to indicate that the person being referred to is a female, or heckling the speaker in some way. It became extinct before the death of the language due to all of the last speakers being male.
The third person agreement markers have a fair amount of variation due to the rules it must follow.
The plural markers exist in the same rules as the singular rules with the exception that singular can be deleted but plural cannot.
Dynamic Verb Conjugation
Dynamic Ubykh verbs are split up in two groups: Group I which contain the simple tenses and Group II which contain derived counterpart tenses. Only the Karaclar dialect uses the progressive tense and the plural is unknown.
The singular-plural distinction is used when the subject, the ergative, is singular or plural.
Square brackets indicate elided vowels; parenthesis indicate optional parts of the stem; and the colon indicates the boundary of a morpheme.