Ash

Ash
ahgaa
Pronunciation	[[Help:IPA|ˈʔɑ̞ħˌqɑ̞ː]]
Created by	Ava Skoog
Language family	? Ash

Introduction

Ash (ahgaa, lit. "seaspeak", pronounced [ˈʔɑ̞ħˌqɑ̞ː]) is the anglicised name of a language mostly spoken around coastal areas, notably the town of Appa (ahba). Its speakers are familiar with technological advancements such as nautical vessels and steam locomotives.

The language is mildly synthetic to polysynthetic, largely based around agglutination with fusional elements. There is a great focus on verbs, nominals being mostly uninflected, and significant pro-drop tendencies and a general focus around deixis rather than pronominal distinctions. The word order is heavily SOV.

Phonology

Phonemes

The underlying sounds of Ash are few enough that a simple listing is preferable to a traditional table:

Vocalic	/a~Ø i~j~Ø u~w~Ø/
Plosive	/p~β t~ð k~ɣ/
Affricate	/t͡ɬ~ɬ t͡s~s/
Glottal	/h~ʔ/
Nasal	/m~˜ n~˜ ŋ~˜/

The reasoning for this rather unusual classification is down to phonotactic patterning: these five groups all behave somewhat differently and serve as a more useful distinction than point of articulation when describing the phonology of Ash. The pair or triplet given for each phoneme refers to an alternation between various allophonic realisations despite the relatively low number of underlying sounds, an important feature of the language that makes the variation richer on the surface. For instance, long vowels (romanised by doubling the vowel) and nasal vowels (romanised using a tilde) are not analysed as phonemic.

Romanisation

The romanisation strikes a balance between representing phonemes versus surface realisations and uses the following seventeen letters:

a

ã

e

ẽ

y

o

õ

w

b

d

g

l

s

h

m

n

ŋ

An example of a word with its archiphonemic, phonemic and surface transcriptions as well as romanisation:

//ˈwat.ha.ku//

→ /ˈwah.taˌku/

→ [ˈʔɔ̯ɑ̞ħ.t̠ɐˌɣʊ]

→ oahdago "during the day"

Syllable structure

A cluster cannot exceed two consonants and must be of one of the following configurations:

CC	Both consonants are the same
FP	Fricative followed by plosive
NP	Nasal followed by plosive
PN~FN	Plosive or fricative followed by nasal

Phonological processes

Depending on the underlying nature of a cluster, various processes may take place either on a phonemic (phoneme alternation) or on a phonetic (surface allophony) level. For example, /t/ merges with /t͡s/ on the phonemic level before /i~j/ or a plosive or an affricate, but alternates with [ð] on the phonetic level between vowels.

Alternations before glides

In addition to the aforementioned example, nasals and fricatives will geminate before consonantal glides (i.e. /j w/ when they do not surface as vocalic), assimilating to the glide and eliding it in the process.

	/-j/	/-w/
//N-//	[ɲ.ɲ]	[m.m]
//h-//	[ç.ç]	[ʍ.ʍ]
/t͡s-/	[ɕ.ɕ]	[s̠.s̠]
/t͡ɬ-/	[ɬ.ɬ]

Before a vowel corresponding to the glide, the first consonant is simply doubled and the glide unwritten (e.g. -nne- for /-N.ji-/) but before other vowels the glide remains (e.g. -nya- for /-N.ja-/).

Alternations before plosives and affricates

All plosives alternate phonemically with fricatives or affricates before another plosive or an affricate.

	//-P//
//p-//	/h.P/ [ħ.P]
//k-//
//t-//	/t͡s.P/ [s̠.P~ɕ.P]

Glottal allophony

The phoneme /h~ʔ/ surfaces as a fricative before vowels and glides (geminating in the latter case as outlined in the section on alternations before glides) as well as plosives but as a glottal stop before nasals and affricates.

	//-P//	//-P͡F//	//-N//
//h-//	[ħ.P]	[ʔ.P͡F]	/ʔ.ᴰN/

In addition, each plosive alternates phonemically with the glottal before a nasal, assimilating the nasal to its point of articulation.

	//-N//
//p-//	[ʔ.ᵇm]
//t-//	[ʔ.ᵈn̠~ʔ.ᶡɲ]
//k-//	[ʔ.ᶢŋ]

Affricate alternations

Affricates are simplified to fricatives in much the same contexts as the plosives: intervocalically, before other plosives or affricates, word-finally as well as before nasals which in turn are prestopped.

Prosody and stress

Prefixes are always unstressed. Following the last stressed syllable an iambic pattern of secondary stress on every other underlyingly light syllable follows unless an underlyingly heavy syllable intervenes, resetting the pattern. In addition, unless at the end of a word, stressed syllables are forced to be heavy either by lengthening of the vowel or reduplication of the next syllable's onset consonant if they are not already underlyingly so.

Morphology

Ash does not mark words for number, person or case. With regards to syntactic patterning, only three significant word classes can be posited: verbs, nominals and adverbials. Nonetheless there is a degree of mobility between them.

Verbs

The bulk of all inflection goes on verbs, making them morphemic anchors fundamental to almost any utterance in the language. The general verb template looks as follows:

				Stem
Deixis	Trans./Poss.	Preverb	Incorp.	Class.	Root	Der.	State	Mood/Nom.	Attr.	Adv.	Enclitics

The nominalisation slot creates a deverbal nominal and the adverbialisation slot creates an adverbial and so these two serve to change the class of the word; the possession slot is only used on deverbal nominals and not on regular verbs.

Stems

Each verb has a set of primary stems formed more or less predictably from a combination of affixes. The first stem, the stative indicative, is used as the lemma when citing words, such as oada "to shine":

	Stative	Active	Translative	Causative	Passive
Indicative	oada	oahda	oadna	oasya	oasda
Optative	oase	oadse	oadne	oasse	oasdse

All of these terms are to an extent ad hoc. For instance the passive stem is only used to form deverbal nominals; there is no true passive construction syntactically. Some verbs are inherently stative or active and do not have two distinct stems. The active or stative stems are the ones that are generally prone to being somewhat unpredictable, whereas the other three are formed productively.

Derived stems

Derivational suffixes can be used to extend the root and create a new set of stems, such as the frequentative -(d)s- and the potential -dãã-.

Base	Frequentative
baa "hand; arm"	→ badsa "weave; make"
oo "consume"	→ odsa "gorge; overeat"
doo "smoke"	→ dodso "train; locomotive"

Sometimes stems appear connected through no longer productive processes, such as ohwa "cook", related to oo "consume".

Nominals

Nominals are mostly unmarked; the main kind of affixation, while resembling case marking, results in adverbialisation, thus changing the class of the word. Nominals can however be marked for possession or be incorporated into a verb.

The possessive prefix n- can be preceded by a deictic prefix. Here are the possessed forms of mõõ "head; hair; top":

Neutral	Proximal	Distal
ammõõ	emmõõ	ommõõ

Adverbials

Adverbials are used to denote a place, time or manner. Their formation sometimes resembles case marking or conjunctions more than traditional adverbs, but serves that role as well.

Some prominent adverbialising suffixes:

	Suffix	Example
Locative	-da	mehda "by the fire"
Durative	-go	oadnago "in the morning"
Benefactive	-ba	eaba "in order to see"

Deixis

The language lacks true pronouns and due to its pro-drop tendencies commonly avoids alternatives as well. What does get commonly marked is deixis: whether something is close to or far away from the speaker or a previous referent; unspecified deixis is also possible. On nominals deixis is generally spatial while on verbs it is temporal (proximal working roughly as a present tense and distal as a non-present one); adverbial deixis can be either depending on the characteristics of the adverbial in question.

The deictic stems are as follows:

Neutral	Ø- (unmarked)
Proximal	e-
Distal	o-

Deixis occurs in the form of isolated nominals ee and oo as well as verbal and possessive prefixes e- and o-. Neutral deixis sometimes surfaces epenthetically as a- due to phonotactic constraints, but is not underlyingly explicitly marked.

Syntax

The word order is fairly strictly SOV, with adverbials generally preceding the nominals followed by the verb.

Valency

Transitivity and inversion

Transitivity is explicitly marked and through an inversion marker on the verb the roles of agent and patient can be swapped without a change in word order, the purpose of which is topicalisation, leaving the topic in the subject position. The glosses saying TOP are a simplification of a concept that will be explained in detail in the section on locative verbs.

ao go bahbo ehhea [ˈʔɑːʊ̯‿ɣʊ ˈβɑ̞ħ.pʊ‿je̞çˈçɛ̯ɑː] ao TOP:ACT dog PROX-TR-see.ACT.IND Ao is looking at the dog

ao go bahbo essea [ˈʔɑːʊ̯‿ɣʊ ˈβɑ̞ħ.pʊ‿jɪɕˈɕɛ̯ɑː] ao TOP:ACT dog PROX-INV-see.ACT.IND Ao is being watched by the dog

Inversion is especially important when the subject is being omitted as person markers do not exist.

ehhea [ʔe̞çˈçɛ̯ɑː] PROX-TR-see.ACT.IND I am looking at it

essea [ʔɪɕˈɕɛ̯ɑː] PROX-INV-see.ACT.IND it is looking at me

Incorporation

There is a limit on two unmarked nominal arguments of a verb. There are two ways to introduce more arguments, one of which is to incorporate the third nominal into the verb.

ao go bahbo odsãmmoyya
[ˈʔɑːʊ̯‿ɣʊ ˈβɑ̞ħ.pʊ‿wo̞ʔˈt̠͡s̠ɑ̞̃mˌmʊʝ.ʝɐ]
ao TOP:ACT dog DIST-TR-water-consume.CAUS.IND
Ao gave the dog water to drink

Adverbialisation

The other method is to completely remove the valency of the nominal by turning it into an adverbial, which is why this process sometimes resembles case marking.

ao go bahbo mehda odsãmmoyya
[ˈʔɑːʊ̯‿ɣʊ ˈβɑ̞ħ.pʊ‿ˈme̞ħ.t̠ɐ‿wo̞ʔˈt̠͡s̠ɑ̞̃mˌmʊʝ.ʝɐ]
ao TOP:ACT dog fire-LOC DIST-TR-water-consume.CAUS.IND
Ao gave the dog water to drink by the fire

Animacy

While there is no explicit marking for animacy, an underlying hierarchy ranging roughly from natural forces at the top to people and animals in the middle and inanimates at the bottom governs certain parts of the grammar. The main aspect of this hierarchy is that inanimate referents cannot act as agents which affects how transitive and inverse marking is interpreted in their presence.

	Transitive	Inverse
Animate	bahbo go ahhoo "dogs eat it"	bahbo go assoo "dogs are eaten"
Inanimate	sãã sa ahhoo "water is drunk"	*sãã sa assoo (ungrammatical)

Topicalisation

New non-verbal information is focused by fronting, i.e. introducing the word or phrase earlier in the sentence. This means that the order of subject and object might shift in order to focus on the object. When the object is inanimate inversion is not possible nor necessary, while for an animate object it is. The nominal in focus will also receive a topic marker, explained in detail in the section on locative verbs.

	Normal	Fronted
Animate	ao go bahbo ohhea "Ao was looking at the dog"	bahbo go ao ossea "it was the dog Ao was looking at"
Inanimate	ao go sãã ohhoo "Ao who was drinking water"	sãã sa ao ohhoo "it was water Ao was drinking"

Subclauses

Relativisation is done simply by chaining phrases one after another, with no special marking. Subclauses go before main clauses, in which the deictic context is centered around the subject of the subclause.

[oo oahdago bahbo go ossoyya]¹ [ee oahdago esseana]²
[ˈʔu̯oː‿ˈwɔ̯ɑ̞ħ.t̠ɐˌɣʊ ˈβɑ̞ħ.pʊ‿ˌɣo̞‿wʊs̠ˈs̠ʊʝ.ʝɐ‿ˈji̯eː‿ˈwɔ̯ɑ̞ħ.t̠ɐˌɣʊ‿jɪɕˈɕɛ̯ɑː.n̠ɐ]
[DIST shine.ACT.IND-DUR dog DIST-INV-consume.CAUS.IND]¹ [PROX shine.ACT.IND-DUR PROX-INV-see.TRANS.IND]²
[today I saw]² [the dog that you fed yesterday]¹

Attributes

Attributive verbs are formed using the connector suffix -s and go before the noun phrase.

boonas bahbo go [ˈbu̯oː.n̠ɐs̠‿ˈpɑ̞ħ.pʊ‿ˌɣʊ] grow.TRANS.IND-ATTR dog TOP:ACT a large dog

oadas ao ammõõ bo [ˈʔɔ̯ɑ̞ː.ðɐz̠‿ˈɑːʊ̯‿ʔm̩ˈmũ̯õ̞ː‿ᵐbʊ] shine.STAT.IND-ATTR ao POSS-head TOP:CRESC Ao's fair hair

Locative verbs

An important part of Ash grammar is an extensive set of so called locative verbs which are used almost like a noun classification system and cover location, motion and related concepts while providing specific information about the referent at hand, such as specifying whether liquid is involved.

These are some of those verbs:

Lemma	Gloss	Semantic range
laa	LOC:STAT	General stative (indefinite or permanent)
goo	LOC:ACT	General active (temporary or dynamic)
sãã	LOC:LIQ	Water and other liquids
see	LOC:AER	Air and weather
boo	LOC:CRESC	Growth (hair, plants et c.)
doo	LOC:PART	Particles (powder, sand, dust, smoke, spores et c.)
mee	LOC:PYR	Fire

Disambiguation

One function of locative verbs is to resolve potential ambiguities. When used solely for classification in its unmarked form, a locative verb is unstressed and thereby shortened, resembling a particle. It doubles as a topic marker.

ammõõ bo [ʔm̩ˈmũ̯õ̞ː‿ᵐbʊ] POSS-head TOP:CRESC hair (on the head)

ammõõ la [ʔm̩ˈmũ̯õ̞ː‿ⁿd͡ɮɐ] POSS-head TOP:STAT head (on the body)

ammõõ go [ʔm̩ˈmũ̯õ̞ː‿ᵑɡʊ] POSS-head TOP:ACT head (detached from the body)

Further verbs can be serially connected after indicating the nature of a nominal using a locative verb.

ao ammõõ bo oada
[ʔɑːʊ̯‿ʔm̩ˈmũ̯õ̞ː‿ᵐbo̞‿ˈwɔ̯ɑː.ðɐ]
ao POSS-head TOP:CRESC shine.STAT.IND
Ao's hair is fair

Used this way they nonetheless remain verbs with the accompanying syntactic implications. Since they create subclauses, a nominal specified for category with a locative verb cannot be used in object position and so will always precede any agent.

emmõõ bo ao ehbadsa
[ʔɪmˈmũ̯õ̞ː‿ᵐbo̞‿ˈʔɑːʊ̯‿je̞ħˈpɑʔ.t̠͡s̠ɐ]
PROX-POSS-head TOP:CRESC ao PROX-TR-hand.FREQ.ACT.IND
Ao is braiding my hair

Since the locative verbs are only necessary when introducing new information, this ties neatly into the established system of topicalisation by fronting and so the net effect is that this limitation does not make much of a difference to normal syntax. Nominals can then be unambiguously reüsed without the classifying verb, as the information is thenceforth known from the previously established context. Note that if the classified nominal had been animate in the above example (mõõ is not) inversion would have been necessary in order to specify it as the patient rather than the agent as usual.

Unstressed locatives are only less commonly applied to the pronominal-like nominals ee "this", oo "that", nõõ "what" and mao "none".

Specification

To denote motion, an andative ("going") or venitive ("coming") prefix is placed into the verbal classifier slot.

ao go algoo [ˈʔɑːʊ̯‿ɣo̞‿ʔɬ̠̩ˈku̯oː] ao TOP:ACT AND-LOC:ACT.STAT.IND Ao moves (away)

ao go aŋgoo [ˈʔɑːʊ̯‿ɣo̞‿ʔŋ̩ˈɡu̯oː] ao TOP:ACT VEN-LOC:ACT.STAT.IND Ao moves (hither)

The preverb slot can be used to specify manner, location or direction.

ao go negoo [ˈʔɑːʊ̯‿ɣʊ ɲɪˈɣu̯oː] ao TOP:ACT SUB-LOC:ACT.STAT.IND Ao is below

ao go nelgoo [ˈʔɑːʊ̯‿ɣʊ ɲɪɬˈku̯oː] ao TOP:ACT SUB-MOT-LOC:ACT.STAT.IND Ao moves down

Use with adverbials

Adverbial location is generic and locative verbs can be used to specify the meaning.

ahda sa [ˈʔɑ̞ħ.t̠ɐ‿ˌz̠ɐ] ocean-LOC TOP:LIQ in the ocean; at sea

ahda la [ˈʔɑ̞ħ.t̠ɐ‿ˌɮɐ] ocean-LOC TOP:LIQ by the ocean

Pragmatics

Being a verb-heavy language, Ash often lacks direct nominal counterparts to nouns in more analytic languages, instead expressing many common (and uncommon) concepts descriptively through its rich morphological and derivational verb system rather than by lexicalising deverbal nominals (although this also happens), one key factor again being the locative verbs.

nendsãndsada [ɲᶡɪn̠ˈd̠͡z̠ɑ̞̃n̠.d̠͡z̠ɐˌðɐ] SUB-VEN-LOC:LIQ.FREQ.ACT.IND-LOC by the (bottom of the) waterfall (lit. "where water comes gushing down")

neldsãndsada [ɲᶡɪɬ.t̠͡s̠ɑ̞̃n̠.d̠͡z̠ɐˌðɐ] SUB-AND-LOC:LIQ.FREQ.ACT.IND-LOC by the (top of the) waterfall (lit. "where water goes gushing down")

As this example demonstrates, there is no one lexicalised nominal for the concept of a waterfall, but a fitting verb is used depending on the context. Nonetheless the phrase is possible to nominalise if grammatically necessary and sometimes this does result in lexicalisation.

dodso go nõŋgo oŋgoone?
[ˈd̠o̞ʔ.t̠͡s̠ʊ‿ˌɣʊ ˈn̠õ̞ŋ.ɡo̞‿wʊŋˈɡu̯oː.ɲɪ]
smoke.FREQ.ACT.NOM TOP:ACT Q-DUR DIST-VEN-LOC:ACT.TRANS.OPT
when does the train arrive?

In such cases there may be a clear-cut distinction between such lexicalisations and productive formations.

noldodsada
[n̠ᵈʊɬ.ˈt̠o̞ʔ.t̠͡s̠ɐˌðɐ]
SUP-AND-smoke.FREQ.ACT.IND-LOC
(at the) chimney (lit. "where lots of smoke goes up")