Teivo

South-East Moran language
Teivo qii
Pronunciation	[/ˈteɪ.βo.ʔiː/]
Created by	Raistas
Setting	planet Morev
Ethnicity	Jyrwutyr
Native speakers	34 000 (271 local year)
Language family	Moran South-East Moran language
Early form	Proto-Moran

Teivo (native name: teivo qii) is an Eastern Moran language spoken by the people, living on the islands of Tau and Imano - the eastern part of the Mora archipelago. The language is closely related to North-East Moran and even share its name with it (both teivo hia and teivo qii mean "language of the east").

The Teivo language, like its relatives, lacks an established orthography. Mtari scholars documented these languages using their own variations of the Mtari script, but the natives rarely know how to write. Nowadays the orthography of Gvahor is used for all Moran languages, created for his papers about the Moran culture and language and was the first to do a research on Moran grammar.

History

The Eastern Moran subgroup started developing after the Moran people had settled on the archipelago. Approximately 1,000 years ago they migrated to the Takimia islands where Teivo slowly developed into a separate language and about 500 years ago it split into Teivo Hia and Teivo Qii, so they still share a large degree of mutual intelligibility. South Moran is their closest common relative, which they share a few common innovations with.

Phonology

Teivo, belonging to the Eastern branch, has a quite distinct phonology from other Moran subgroups. Its phonetic inventory is the smallest among the Moran languages. Teivo retains typical Moran syllable structures of CV and VC. The CVC type is very uncommon, just like in proposed Proto-Moran.

Consonants

An unusual feature of the Eastern branch is the lack of sibilant fricatives. South-East Moran lacks fricatives all together, except for "v", which can be pronounced in a wide range of [β~v~w~ʊ] and some speakers do not pronounce it at all near rounded vowels, so "teivo" would become [ˈteɪ.o].

Consonants

	Labial	Dental	Velar	Glottal
Stop	p	t	k	ʔ
Affricate		t͡s
Nasal	m	n
Approximant	w~β	r~ɾ~l

All Teivo consonants, except for /w/ and /ʔ/ (written as "v" and "q" respectively) can be geminated, but they are considered consonant sequences and not separate phonemes.

Vowels

Teivo vowels can be short and long. Long vowels are pronounced for approximately twice as long as their short counterparts. They can be considered as either sequences of the short vowels, or counted separately as phonemes. The difference in quality between long and short vowels is very small.

Vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i, iː	u, uː
Mid	e eː	o, oː
Open	a, aː

The Teivo diphthongs are not counted as separate phonemes, since they are historically sequences of two vowels and some speakers still pronounce them this way.

Phonotactics

Teivo phonotactics is often described using a term "mora" instead of a "syllable", which is a combination of a short vowel and a preceding consonant (if present). Long vowels, diphthongs and syllables with coda consonants are counted as two moras. With these units it is easier to set up morpheme boundaries and show conjugation patterns.

Historical phonology

Proto-Teivo (a hypothetical ancestor of two Eastern Moran languages) is reconstructed having 14 distinct phonemes (or 15 if */ð/ had not elided by the the time of the split). Geminate consonants had already been present, while long vowels and diphthongs began developing in already separate North and South dialects of Proto-Teivo.

A table below shows common regular sound changes, that happened in Eastern Moran. "Ø" indicates elision.

Proto-Teivo

/p/

/t/

/k/

/q/

/ɣ/

/x/

/ɸ/

/h/

/ð/

/m/

/n/

/β/

/l/

/s/

/t͡s/

Teivo Hia

/p/

/t/

/k/

/h/

/ɣ/~Ø, Ø

/ɸ/

Ø

/m/

/n/

/β/

/l/

Teivo Qii

/p/

/t/

/k/

/ʔ/~Ø

/w~β/

Ø

/m/

/n/

/w~β/

/r~ɾ~l/

/t͡s~ɾ~l/

In South-East Moran /ɸ/ merged /h/ and disappeared with vowels before them became long, while /x/ merged either /ɣ/ or /h/ with consonant gemination, if a consonant followed. When more than three vowels occured in a row, syncopation took place: Proto-Moran *ajaksuʁa > Proto-Teivo *iaxoa > Teivo Qii iau, Teivo Hia iaɣo "tide". Since the phonetic inventory shrinked, many homophones have been formed and to redo such changes, many words show an irregular development: kapu- "to cook" which came from *kaʁβu- and should have become kau, which already exists and means "to breathe".

Orthography

	Consonants									Short vowels					Long vowels
Phoneme	/p/	/t/	/k/	/ʔ~Ø/	/m/	/n/	/t͡s/	/w~β/	/r~ɾ~l/	/a/	/e/	/i/	/o/	/u/	/aː/	/eː/	/iː/	/oː/	/uː/
Orthography	p	t	k	q	m	n	c	v	r	a	e	i	o	u	aa	ee	ii	oo	uu

Morphology

The Teivo language is classified as having two major classes, substantives (nouns and pronouns) and verbs, with one minor class consisting of particles. Adjectives behave exactly like verbs, while adverbs are similar to verbs or can be classified as a separate category, depending on the analysis. Agreement morphology is extensive in Teivo and agreement morphemes are often polysemous, i.e. animacy and number (in nouns) or person and number (in verbs) are indicated within the same affix, often fused completely to the root (usually in case of nouns). Sometimes nouns are inflected for animacy (either animate or inanimate), but it is not always compulsory. Verbs are inflected to match the animacy of its arguments. Animacy is a separate grammatical construct for noun classification, but unlike in Proto-Moran, in Teivo it doesn't play a major role in noun inflection. The animacy classification is similar to the one of Yrharian languages and may have formed due to an ancient sprachbund between these families in a distant past.

Nouns

Noun classes are split based on grammatical gender into two categories: animate and inanimate. Additionally, all nouns must be marked for their number (singular, dual, paucal or plural). Noun declension patterns are shown in the table below:

Animate						Inanimate
	Singular	Dual	Paucal	Plural		Singular	Dual	Paucal	Plural
Direct	-i	-vi	-ci	-tu		—	-ve	-cie	-tu
Indirect	-o	-(v)o	-cio	-tto		-e	-(v)o	-cce	-(i)ute
Locative	-u	-u	-iciu	-itu		-iu	-io	-icio	-ito

The direct form of nouns is used to mark subject and direct object (for transitive verbs), while indirect form is used for indrect object, if it's present in the sentence. Locative form is used to mark locations and directions and are typically turned into verbs or adverbs by attaching the adverbial marker -ia to a noun stem.

When a sentence contains two or more particular animate gender nouns as arguments proximate and obviative 3rd person markings are used to disambiguate instead of the direct marking. The further obviate is rarely used to mark even less salient referent. When an obviate person is the subject of a sentence - an inverse marking is used on a verb.

Proximate	—/-i
Obviate	-ea
Further Obviate	-(i)na

• If all nouns in the sentence are inanimate, then the verb must be inflected as having an unspecified subject. Inanimate nouns may use instrumental marker -re/-r-, which is similar to prepositions "with" and "by" in English. Animate nouns can only use the commitative marker -va, but its meaning is different.
• Possessedness is marked by the suffix -(i)u on the possessed noun, unlike English, which marks the possessor instead: Ammi imiru "Ammi's flower". These suffixes are added after a number suffix. If a possessed noun is animate, a honorific suffix -ci(n)- is sometimes added, when a speaker wants to show respect to that noun (usually a person: emiciri "my mother"). The suffix can be used without the possessive marker, but it is uncommon. In Teivo hia and formerly in Teivo qii also an inalienable possessive marker -o had existed, but it became obsolete nowadays even in Teivo hia.

Possessive suffixes

	Singular	Dual	Paucal Plural
1st	-ri	-ii	-cii
2nd	-ru	-ovi	-rci
3rd proximate	-iu	-viu	-itu
3rd obviate	-u	-vo	-to

Verbs

All Teivo verbs are inflect according to the following structure:

Prefix			Stem							Suffixes
-3	-2	-1	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
adverbial	negation	interrogative	root	valence	applicative	verb type modifier	subaspect	aspect	mood	inverse marker	indirect object	direct object subject	impersonal

It may seem complicated, however no verbs actually fill all of the given templates. A single verb typically has three to five templates full simultaneously (at least root and any person marker template must be present in order to make a verb).

There are four main types of verbs: impersonal (no determinate subject), intransitive (one subject only), transitive (both subject and direct object), ditransitive (one subject and two objects). Not every verb can belong to all types, some (like unuara "to sleep") belong only to one type (in this case - intransitive, but technically it can be turned into transitive with a causative suffix: unutunara "to cause to sleep").

• Impersonal or avalent verbs are used in sentences with no determinate subject or if both the agent and the patient are inanimate, so neither can be a subject of such a sentence. An impersonal marker -e is put after a stem to make a verb avalent.

Oqaakaieci	naare	kervecie
O-qaa-u-k-ai-eci	nac-r-e	kerve-cie
already-cut-INTR-CPL-PERF-IMPRS.PL	axe-INS-INAN.SG	branch-INAN.PAU
"The axe has cut off a few branches".
"By means of an axe, a few branches have been cut off".

• Intransitiive verbs have no direct object. Person suffixes are attached to the stem of these verbs. In order to turn a transitive verb into intransitive (or impersonal), a suffix -u is added next to the root, however some verbs do not take this suffix.

Intransitive

unuara - to sleep	Marking	Example
1st singular	-i	unui
2nd singular	-u	unuu
3rd singular	-a	unua
1st dual	-iva	unuiva
2nd dual	-ua	unuua
3rd dual	-evi	unuevi
1st plural	-era	unuera
2nd plural	-onna	unuonna
3rd plural	-eci	unueci

• Transitive verbs accept one object. Most Teivo verbs are transitive by default, but a suffix -t is added to some intransitive verbs in order to make them transitive. The suffix probably comes from the causative suffix -tun.

Transitive

Object→ Subject↓	1st singular	2nd singular	3rd singular	1st dual	2nd dual	3rd dual	1st plural	2nd plural	3rd plural
1st singular	—	-ne	-qe	-vei	-noi	-oi	-are	-nne	-ute
2nd singular	-ao	—	-qo	-veo	-noo	-oo	-aro	-nno	-uto
3rd singular	-aa	-na	-a	-via	-nua	-ua	-ara	-nna	-uta
1st dual	-rau	-nau	-qau	—	-nou	-oau	-arau	-nnu	-utau
2nd dual	-ava	-rva	-qa	-vea	—	-oa	-arva	-unna	-uca
3rd dual	-aai	-nai	-ai	-veai	-noai	-oai	-arai	-nnai	-utai
1st plural	-attu	-nettu	-ettu	-vettu	-nottu	-ottu	—	-urtu	-uttu
2nd plural	-ratu	-nertu	-rettu	-rvetu	-nortu	-rattu	-ruttu	—	-ortu
3rd plural	-kaci	-necci	-keci	-vecci	-nocci	-koci	-acci	-nucci	-kucci

• Ditransitive verbs take a subject and two objects. There are two subtypes of these verbs: direct (two direct objects) and indirect (one direct and one indirect object), almost all verbs belonging to the second subtype, while direct verbs are iviara "to make", eatumara "to turn into", rammanara "to name" and some resultative verbs. Since indirect object suffixes are attached close to a verb root, they often influence it by changing vowel length or eliding final consonants, even though most of such instances had been regularized by now.

Indirect Object

taara - to give	Marking	Example
1st singular	-ri-	taari-
2nd singular	-tu-	taatu-
3rd singular proximate	-o-	tao-
3rd singular obviate	-e-	tae-
1st dual	-ro-	taaro-
2nd dual proximate	-tuo-	tatuo-
3rd dual obviate	-vo-	taavo-
3rd dual	-ei-	taei-
1st plural	-ret-	taret
2nd plural	-tot-	tatot-
3rd plural proximate	-tto-	taatto-
3rd plural obviate	-tte-	taatte-

Technically, tritransitive verbs exist, but they are rare and are formed differently, typically either using benefactive or applicative voice:

Kirvapoteetoqe	rekiru
Kirva-po-tee-t-o-qe	rekiru-Ø
write-PFV-3S.BEN-TR-3S.IO-3S.DO.1S.S	letter-INAN.SG
"I wrote him/her a letter for you".