Rapunzel
Rapunzel is a Luminese language distantly related to Rencadian. It's also in a sprachbund with Rencadian so it has many grammatical features in common with it.
It's inspired by German, Khmer, Estonian, Vietnamese, and an older draft of IlL's Classical Wiobian.
Introduction
Phonology
Orthography
Consonants
Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Medial | Velar | Labiovelar | Glottal | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal | m /m/ | n /n/ | ń /ɲˤ/ | ng /ŋ/ | |||||
Plosive | voiceless | p /p/ | t /t/ | z /cˤ/ | k /k/ | ||||
voiced | ƀ /b/ | đ /d/ | ɟ /ɟˤ/ | g /ɡ/ | |||||
Fricative | voiceless | f /f~v/ | þ /θ~ð/ | ß /s/ | s /ç~ʝ/ | ch /x~ɣ/ | (ḥ /h/) | ||
voiced | (v /v/) | (ð /ð/) | ʒ /z/ | (gh /x~ɣ/) | |||||
Lateral approximant | l /l/ | ĺ /ʎˁ/ | |||||||
Lateral fricative | lh /ɬ/ | ||||||||
Approximant | j /j/ | r /jˁ/ | w /w/ |
The medial consonants vary by idiolect and can be laminal retroflex /ʈʂ, ɖʐ, ʂ, ɳ, ɭ, ɻ/, pharyngealized palatal, or pharyngealized uvular /qˁ, ɢˁ, χˁ, ɴˁ, ʟˁ, ʁˁ/.
Sounds in parentheses are phonemic in Southern Rapunzel. Voiceless fricatives except /s/ and /çˁ/ are voiced intervocalically in Northern Rapunzel.
Vowels
Front | Central | Back | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
short | long | short | long | short | long | |
Close | i /i/ | ih /iː/ | ü /ɨ/ | üh /ɨː/ | u /u/ | uh /uː/ |
Close-mid | e /e~ɪ/ | eh /eː~ɪː/ | o /o~ʊ/ | oh /oː~ʊː/ | ||
Mid | ö /ə/ | öh /əː/ | ||||
Open-mid | ä /ɛ/ | äh /ɛː/ | å /ɔ/ | åh /ɔː/ | ||
Open | a /æ/ | ah /æː/ | ⱶ /ɑ/ | ⱶh /ɑː/ |
As ⱶ is a rare vowel sound in Rapunzel, it's often merged with å into /ɑ~ɒ/. This does not happen in all accents of Rapunzel so the spelling distinguishes the two phonemes.
Rapunzel also allows the following diphthongs: ie üö uo ai ⱶe ⱶo au ⱶü ei åi eu oi äⱶ öi öü öu. The combinations ie uo ei are pronounced as if spelled iö uö äi.
Prosody
Stress
Most of the time, the stress falls on the first syllable. Exceptions are sesquisyllables that result from epenthesis of initial consonant clusters.
Intonation
Phonotactics
The syllable structure is (C)(C)V(C)(C), where V can be a vowel or a diphthong.
Morphophonology
Morphology
Pronouns
(to be added)
Verbs
Verbs conjugate for person and tense. The present tense conjugation is as follows:
Present indicative athematic endings | |||
---|---|---|---|
Singular | Plural | ||
1 | -im | -im | |
2, 3 | -ep | -ep |
For example,
ädahþ 'to speak' | |||
---|---|---|---|
Singular | Plural | ||
1 | ädim | ädim | |
2, 3 | ädep | ädep |
Thematic verbs conjugate differently:
meþahþ 'to sit' | |||
---|---|---|---|
Singular | Plural | ||
1 | meþäm | meþäm | |
2, 3 | meþöp | meþöp |
[add rule here]
The past and future tense conjugations are identical to the present tense conjugation, except the first person forms coincide with the second person present forms.
Syntax
Word order in Rapunzel is SVO. Otherwise it's head-final, which means:
- adjectives and relative clauses precede nouns, so "the man who eats apples" is literally "the apple-eating man"
- postpositions, not prepositions
- complementizers are head-initial (because of the final-over-final constraint)