2estävät

2estävät is a fictional term introduced in discussions of constructed languages to describe a hypothetical verbal paradigm. The term is not attested in natural languages and is used in theoretical exercises about how multiple grammatical distinctions might be encoded in a single morphological marker.

It originated in online conlang communities in the 2010s as a thought experiment to test the limits of affix stacking. In the imagined system, 2estävät comprises a dual layer suffix that encodes two independent features on the verb: aspect and evidentiality. The "2" in the name signals that the marker carries two concurrent meanings rather than a single one.

In practical terms, a verb root would take the 2estävät suffix to indicate a specific combination such as perfective aspect with witnessed evidence, or irrealis with reportative evidence, depending on the designer's rules. The system assumes a fixed word order and requires subject agreement markers elsewhere in the clause. Because 2estävät is hypothetical, there is no stable consensus on exact values for the two features; different authors propose different pairings.

As a conceptual tool, 2estävät helps illustrate the complexity of multiplexed grammatical marking and the cognitive implications of multi-feature morphemes. It has appeared in introductory texts and forum discussions as a model for how to stack grammatical information. Critics note that such constructions can become opaque for learners and may not be easy to reconcile with natural-language typology.