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Yrkyr: Difference between revisions
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The Yrkyr language has approximately 70 thousand native speakers, most of whom are monolingual and illiterate. Some also learned Mtari due to the modern compulsory education policy, which requires children to get a basic education in boarding schools. | The Yrkyr language has approximately 70 thousand native speakers, most of whom are monolingual and illiterate. Some also learned Mtari due to the modern compulsory education policy, which requires children to get a basic education in boarding schools. | ||
==Yrhu== | |||
Yrhu (''jyrhu'' /jər.ˈɦu/) is a dialect of Yrkyr spoken next to the Shallow Sea. While being intelligible with Yrkyr to some degree, it differ in vocabulary and grammar from the inland language. It shares some more lexical similarity with Yhkagur, while phonologically it is almost identical to Yrkyr. | |||
==Phonology== | ==Phonology== | ||
===Consonants=== | ===Consonants=== | ||
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There are five vowels, four of which contrast in length. The quality of long vowels mostly overlaps with the quality of short vowels, except long ones are pronounced slightly more closed, while short vowels are slightly centralized. The only exception is /aː/ which is fronted noticeably comparing to its short counterpart. Long vowels are denoted with a silent "h" before consonants in the orthography, since the consonant /h/ appeares in this environment, while conjugating various words. In Yrhu the final "h" is pronounced as a weak aspiration, but it is still silent before other consonants, lengthening a preceding vowel. | There are five vowels, four of which contrast in length. The quality of long vowels mostly overlaps with the quality of short vowels, except long ones are pronounced slightly more closed, while short vowels are slightly centralized. The only exception is /aː/ which is fronted noticeably comparing to its short counterpart. Long vowels are denoted with a silent "h" before consonants in the orthography, since the consonant /h/ appeares in this environment, while conjugating various words. In Yrhu the final "h" is pronounced as a weak aspiration, but it is still silent before other consonants, lengthening a preceding vowel. | ||
===Phonotactics=== | |||
Most basic Yrkyr word roots are monosyllabic. Typical syllable structures are '''V''', '''CV''' and '''CVC''', where '''C''' is a consonant and '''V''' is a vowel. The first two types are called light syllables, which take part in vowel alterations and don't receive stress, when there is a heavy syllable of a '''CVC''' structure nearby. There are no limitations to which consonant may appear word-initially or in consonant clusters, which are only possible on syllable boundaries. Root final clusters are not allowed, an epenthetic [ə] being inserted between the consonants, when such a cluster would appear. Vowel sequences are also not allowed, except between different words. Nearby consonants and vowels are affecting each other, creating a comlex system of alterations, some of which became unpredictable with time, for example: ''lyči'' /ˈlə.t͡ʃi/ - "to see", ''lyteŋ'' /lə.ˈtɛn/ - "I see it", where /t/ always palatalizes to /t͡ʃ/ before /i/; ''kʷocawun'' /kʷʌ.t͡sɑ.ˈwun/ - ''while bathing'', ''lykwos'' /lə.ˈkʷʌs/ to wash (something) - kwoskyŋ /ˈkʷʌs.kəŋ/ "I wash up", ''laxkwohŋ'' /lɑx.ˈkʷʌːŋ/ - "I took a bath", where /t͡s/ becomes /s/ and dissappears. | |||
==Morphology== | |||
All Yrkyr words fall into one of three, clearly differentiated, classes; verbs, nominals, and particles. The latter class is a collecting term for various non-inflecting words. Nominals may be derived from verbal stems but apparently no verb is derived from a nominal stem, instead a nominal root is attached to an existing verb - a process, called noun [[w:Incorporation (linguistics)|incorporation]]. Nominals may be derived from verbal stems but. Adjectives and adverbials derive from either verbs or nominals, but all of them behave like stative verbs, so they are not listed as a separate class. Yrkyr is between agglutinative and fusional types of language and inflections are often essential to clear understanding and transmission of information. It is also fairly regular in its nominal morphology, but more irregular in the verb one. There are dozens of old irregular verbs with completely unpredictable conjugation patterns, resulted from various sound changes. Proto-Yrharian is considered to had been far more regular polysynthetic, but over time all of its descendants gained more and more irregularities. | |||
===Nominal morphology=== | |||
Yrharain has two nominal declensions based on [[w:Animacy|animacy]]: animate and inanimate. Each declension has its own set of case markings. Most animals, people, some weather fenomena like thunder, and supernatural entities are animate, while most non-living things, insects, abstract and collective nouns, plants, and sky/weather features are inanimate. Animate nouns typically take the ergative case, while inanimate - either absolutive or instrumental cases, when two are present in a sentence, regardless of their actual role as a subject and an object. | |||
== | Nominals are inflected for seven cases and three numbers (singular, dual and plural). Any animate noun can take dual number, while only naturally paired inanimate nouns can take it. The rest usually take plural. Mass nouns do not have plurals but new nouns can be derived from them by attaching a plural marker. They would still be declined as singular ones, while the plural marker becomes a suffix. This process is called [[w:Suffixaufnahme|suffixaufnahme]]. It can also occure with genitive and dative markers, which become suffixes and can receive new endings. For example, ''toj'' - "side", ''tojiha'' "sideways" (of the side), become ''tojihka'' "to the side", ''tojihcan'' "suddenly" (out from the side). | ||
{| class="wikitable" | |||
|+ Case endings | |||
|- | |||
! colspan=3 style="text-align: center;" | Animate | |||
! colspan=2 style="text-align: center;" | Inanimate | |||
|- | |||
! | |||
! style="text-align: center;" | Singular | |||
! style="text-align: center;" | Dual | |||
! style="text-align: center;" | Plural | |||
! style="text-align: center;" | Singular | |||
! style="text-align: center;" | Plural | |||
|- | |||
! Absolutive | |||
| -Ø || -Ø/-i || -x || -Ø || -x | |||
|- | |||
! Ergative | |||
| -an/-ahn || -yn || -iŋ || -i/-ih || -nyŋ | |||
|-" | |||
! Dative | |||
| -ka || -yŋka || -iŋa || -ki || -nyŋa | |||
|- | |||
! Instrumental | |||
| -o || -(u)jo || -no || -o || -jo | |||
|- | |||
! Genitive* | |||
| -aha(t-) || -yjxa(t-) || -iŋka(t-) || -iha(t-) || nyŋka(t-) | |||
|- | |||
! Commitative | |||
| -oš || -uš || -noš || - || - | |||
|- | |||
! Ablative | |||
| -acaŋ || -ycaŋ || -incaŋ || -icaŋ || -yncaŋ | |||
|- | |||
|} | |||
*Genitive case can serve a locative case function when a '''-t''' suffix is added and then a locative particle is attached to the suffix. | |||
In order to mark possession, genitive case is used. But Yrkyr does not have separate possessive pronouns like English "my" or "her". Instead there are possessive suffixes, attached to the end of a word. Possessive suffixes are almost the same as person markers in verbs, which they are derived from. | |||
{| class="wikitable" | |||
|+ Possessive suffixes | |||
|- | |||
! | |||
! style="text-align: center;" | Singular | |||
! style="text-align: center;" | Dual | |||
! style="text-align: center;" | Plural | |||
|- | |||
! 1<sup>st</sup> person | |||
| -ŋ || -(k)uŋ || -toŋ | |||
|- | |||
! 2<sup>nd</sup> person | |||
| -š || -kus || -x(t)oŋ | |||
|-" | |||
! 3<sup>rd</sup> person | |||
| -(k)e || -we || -kʷoŋ | |||
|- | |||
|} | |||
[[Category:Languages]] | [[Category:Languages]] | ||