Adwan

Adwan (amhdha [ˈawðɐ]) is a personal a priori conlang. Primarily inspired by the notion of high density information packing and free word order, Adwan is characterized by a large presence of fricatives and a borderline polysynthetic morphology consisting of enclitic agglutination. Aesthetically, Adwan is heavily inspired by Polish, Welsh, and Portuguese, with an internal structure largely influenced by Basque, Nahuatl, and Latin.

General Characteristics

Adwan is a highly inflecting language, making use of agglutination to the morphosyntactic level. Nouns are the most heavily inflected class, not only inflected for grammatical case but also for the grammatical person of the primary verb argument (with grammatical number of verb arguments generally being ignored). Adwan verb arguments come in tiers corresponding to the valence of said verb. Verbs with only 1 argument (intransitives) require that the verb argument, which is usually in the nominative (but may be in any case other than the accusative), be appended a personal consonant identifying the subject of the intransitive verb. Verbs with 2 arguments require the argument furthest down the canonical list of cases be marked with the a personal consonant identifying the agent of the verb. Because the order in which cases are canonically ordered in declensional tables is

Nominative > Accusative > Genitive > Dative > Locative > Ablative > Instrumental

it follows that verbs with 3 arguments (ditransitives) require the argument in the dative be appended a personal consonant identifying the agent of the ditransitive verb. Notice below that the suffix -m is separate from the transitive verb mys and instead attached to the direct object (in the accusative) purgw (nominative: purga):

Mys purgwm
mys purg-w-m
see.PRES dog-ACC-1
"I see a dog."

Furthermore, notice the third person personal ending -r attached to the noun in the dative below:

Lgos cwenw gobur luga
lgos cwen-w gob-u-r lug-a
tell.PRES story-ACC boy-DAT-3 girl-NOM
"The girl tells the boy a story."

In this respect, one can say that Adwan verb conjugations are partially marked on nouns (for grammatical person, strictly speaking; grammatical number is another story). This is further reinforced by the lack of verbs for to be, to do, to have, to arrive, and to depart, as these verbs are instead expressed by appending a personal consonant to the corresponding noun case ending (i.e., to be something has the noun corresponding to something in the nominative with a personal consonant suffixed to it, e.g., mimham "I am a cat"). Adwan therefore conjugates verb complements for the grammatical person of the verb subject. Moreover, the specific case of a given conjugated noun determines the perceived relation implied by such 'empty' verbs (i.e., in this system we have verb stems separated from conjugation endings; for the verbs mentioned above, we can think of them as belonging to one single verb with an empty stem, with different meanings expressed via variation in the verb argument's morphological case.

1. Nominative: to be (something)
2. Accusative: to do (something)
3. Genitive: to have (something)
4. Dative: to arrive (somewhere)
5. Locative: to be (somewhere)
6. Ablative: to depart (somewhere)
7. Instrumental: to be (somehow)

Phonology

Consonants

The consonants g, and h are used with other a finite amount of other consonants to form further graphemes that represent distinct sounds, where appending g marks historical palatalization, and h lenition/spirantization. For the semivowel consonants representing the sounds /j/ and /w/ are represented by their vowel forms 'i' and 'w' when preceding a vowel and after a consonant, and by 'gh' and 'mh' otherwise, respectively. When preceding 'g', the consonants 'm' and 'n' become nasalized velar and palatal approximants /j̃/ and /w̃/, respectively.

Adwan consonant inventory

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar
Nasal	m /m/			n /n/
Plosive	p /p/, b /b/			t /t/, d /d/		tg /cç/, dg /ɟʝ/	c /k/, g /g/1
Fricative	ph /ɸ/, bh /β/	pg /f/, bg /v/	th /θ/, dh /ð/	s /s/	rh /ʂ/, rg /ʐ/	cg /ç/	ch /x/
Approximant						gh /j/, nh /j̃/2	mh /w/, mg /w̃/2,3
Tap				r /ɾ/
Lateral fricative				lh /ɬ/, lg /ɮ/
Lateral approximant				l /l/

1. Under gemination, /g/ undergoes lenition to /ɣ/ such that the segment /g.g/ > /ɣː/, i.e., /gː/ does not occur.
2. /j̃ w̃/ only occur in falling diphthongs.
3. /w̃/ is realized as [ɰ̃]