Case Markers and Pronominal Forms
The following table shows the case markers of Berlean. These case markers are placed in the front of their associated noun. In the case of the singular and plural pronouns, their suffix forms are used to form a single unit with the case markers. The null accusative case marker is usually phonetically reduced to a syllabic nasal [n̩] that assimilates in place of articulation to the first consonant of the following word.
| Nom. | Acc. | Gen. | Loc. | |
| Null | - | ငတ (na) | မဧ (mie) | ဇဧ (zie) |
| 1S | ပဧ (bie) | ငါယဥ (narf) | မီယဥ (mirf) | ဇီယဥ (zirf) |
| 2S | ဂဧ (gie) | ငါကဥ (nagh) | မီကဥ (miegh) | ဇီကဥ (ziegh) |
| 3S (anim.) | ဝတု (ar) | ငတု (nar) | မဧု (mir) | ဇဧု (zir) |
| 3S (inanim.) | ဂဥ (gr) | ငါဂဥ (nargr) | မီဂဥ (mirgr) | ဇီဂဥ (zirgr) |
| 1P | ပီရဥ (bielr) | ငါယြဥ (navlr) | မီယြဥ (mievlr) | ဇီယြဥ (zievlr) |
| 2P | ဂီရဥ (gielr) | ငါကြဥ (naghlr) | မီကြဥ (mieghlr) | ဇီကြဥ (zieghlr) |
| 3P (anim.) | ဝါရဥ (alr) | ငါရဥ (nalr) | မီရဥ (mielr) | ဇီရဥ (zielr) |
| 3P (inanim.) | ဂထ (grgr) | ငတ ဂထ (na grgr) | မဧ ဂထ (mie grgr) | ဇဧ ဂထ (zie grgr) |
Plurality and Reduplication
Although the plural is often unmarked, there are two ways to mark plurality in Berlean. The first of which is through the suffix -ရဥ (-lr) which may only be suffixed to nouns denoting people. The other method involves reduplication. If a noun has more than one syllable, then the final syllable is reduplicated. Reduplication is most often used to express collectivity as demonstrated below.
မဝု (mur) ‘cloud’ → မေိထ (murmur) ‘clouds, sky’
ဇြဥ (zlr) ‘star’ → ဇြေထ (zlrzlr) ‘stars, sky’
ဝဧု (yir) ‘grass’ → ဝေီထ (yiryir) ‘field’
စာငမဥ (sarnmr) ‘apple’ → စာငမထ (sarnmrmr) ‘apples’
Some cases of reduplication are not so obvious due to historical changes in the language, notably the deletion of word-final -ဥ (-r). Synchronically, there is no absolute environment in which a word follows this second pattern other than when the word ends in a fricative. Instead, this distinction is marked orthographically; if the word ends in a silent -ဥ (-r)—which in Old Berlean would have been a word-final /-əː/—then it follows this pattern of reduplicating the final consonant with an epenthetic /ɚ/. Otherwise, if the rhotic vowel is written with ဝေ- (-r-)—which in Old Berlean would have been a long vowel /iː/, /uː/, or /aː/—then it follows the regular pattern of total reduplication.
ငှါခဥ (nhark) ‘person’ → ငှါဂထ (nhargrk) ‘the people’
Historical Development from Old Berlean
hnak ‘being, exist’ + –əə (dim.)
Resyllabification: hnak-əə → hna-kəə
Reduplication: hna-kəə → hna-kəə-kəə
OB hnakəə → MB nhark
OB hnakəəkəə → MB nhargrk
အာခဥ (thark) ‘tree’ → အာဂထ (thargrk) ‘forest’
Historical Development from Old Berlean
tʰah ‘hard, solid’ + kəə ‘body, frame’
Reduplication: tʰah-kəə → tʰah-kəə-kəə
OB tʰahkəə → MB thark
OB tʰahkəəkəə → MB thargrk
ဝီယဥ (yirf) ‘blood’ → ဝီယထ (yirvrf) ‘bloodline, ancestors’
Historical Development from Old Berlean
hibəə (PB *sij ‘blood’ + *bəw ‘sweat’)
Reduplication: hi-bəə → hi-bəə-bəə
OB hibəə → MB yirf
OB hibəəbəə → MB yirvrf
ဂြေီခ (glirk) ‘lightning’ → ဂြေီခထ (glirkklirk) ‘thunderstorm’
Historical Development from Old Berlean
OB gljaak → MB glirk
OB gljaak-gljaak → MB glirkklirk
ရှောဖ (lharp) ‘cut, scrape’ → ရှောဖထ (lharplharp) ‘trauma’
Historical Development from Old Berlean
OB hlaap → MB lharp
OB hlaap-hlaap → MB lharplharp
Postpositions
The locative case marker often combines with a postposition to create a sort of circumposition. The postposition can be dropped, leaving a general locative interpretation. This is demonstrated below with the most common adpositions in Berlean. The locative marker is dropped when the postpositional phrase is fronted to a preverbal position.
| Postposition | Meaning | Example | |
| - | at, to, in, on | ဇဧ ကေီမ (zie khirm) | at the house |
| ဇဧ ပငှဧု (zie brnhir) | tomorrow (on the next day) | ||
| ယြဧ (flie) | among, between | ဇဧ ကေီမ ယြဧ (zie khirm flie) | among/between the houses |
| ဇဧ ပငှဧု ယြဧ (zie brnhir flie) | over the next few days | ||
| ငီမြတု (niemlar) | approximately, nearby | ဇဧ ကေီမ ငီမြတု (zie khirm niemlar) | nearby the house |
| ဇဧ ပငှဧု ငီမြတု (zie brnhir niemlar) | sometime tomorrow | ||
| ဒါမ (dam) | around, about (regarding) | ဇဧ ကေီမ ဒါမ (zie khirm dam) | around/about the house |
| ဇဧ ပငှဧု ဒါမ (zie brnhir dam) | regarding tomorrow | ||
| ငီအ (nieth) | above, on top | ဇဧ ကေီမ ငီအ (zie khirm nieth) | above the house |
| - | *cannot be used temporally | ||
| ယာမ (fam) | under, below | ဇဧ ကေီမ ယာမ (zie khirm fam) | under the house |
| - | *cannot be used temporally | ||
| ဖီင (pien) | beside, next to | ဇဧ ကေီမ ဖီင (zie khirm pien) | next to the house |
| - | *cannot be used temporally | ||
| ရဧု (lir) | like, as | ဇဧ ကေီမ ရဧု (zie khirm lir) | like a house |
| ဇဧ ပငှဧု ဇီရဧု (zie brnhir lir) | like tomorrow | ||
| စီရတု (sielar) | in, at | ဇဧ ကေီမ စီရတု (zie khirm sielar) | in the house |
| - | *cannot be used temporally | ||
| ခာစဥ (kars) | with, by means of | ဇဧ ကေီမ ခာစဥ (zie khirm kars) | with the house |
| - | *cannot be used temporally | ||
| အဝု (thur) | from, since | ဇဧ ကေီမ အဝု (zie khirm thur) | from the house |
| ဇဧ ပငှဧု အဝု (zie brnhir thur) | starting tomorrow | ||
| မီရတု (mielar) | to, until | ဇဧ ကေီမ မီရတု (zie khirm mielar) | to the house |
| ဇဧ ပငှဧု မီရတု (zie brnhir mielar) | until tomorrow | ||
| ဇေါထ (zarzr) | before, in front of | ဇဧ ကေီမ ဇေါထ (zie khirm zarzr) | in front of the house |
| ဇဧ ပငှဧု ဇေါထ (zie brnhir zarzr) | before tomorrow | ||
| ပေါထ (barvr) | after, behind | ဇဧ ကေီမ ပေါထ (zie khirm barvr) | behind the house |
| ဇဧ ပငှဧု ပေါထ (zie brnhir barvr) | after tomorrow | ||