Yrkyr: Difference between revisions

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.

  | style="text-align:center" | t͡ɬ<ref group=note>Merged with /r/ in the South due to Mtari influence.</ref>

  | style="text-align:center" | (ɬ)<ref group=note>In Yrhu dialect /ɬ/ is still a separate phoneme, while elsewhere it merged with /l/ due to Mtari influence.</ref>

  | style="text-align:center" | h (ɦ)<ref group=note>In Yrhu dialect [ɦ] is present everywhere, except word finally, while in Yrkyr [h] is more common.</ref>

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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.

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.

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.

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.

Verbs are the most complex element of the Yrkyr morphology. They are composed of a stem to which inflectional or derivational prefixes are added. The stem itself is composed of a root and an aspect marker. Sometimes there is also a thematic suffix fused to the stem. The affixes that occur on a verb are added in specified more or less rigid order according to affix type. Positions of those types are called templates. A verb doesn't need to have all templates filled, but every verb must have at least one full template. Below is a table of all the Yrkyr verb templates:

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| aŋ-/iŋ- || 3rd person indirect object

*In Yrkyr noun declensions usually give enough information about which noun is the subject and which is the object. But this was not the case in Proto-Yrharian, which marked this distinction on the verb only. Modern Yrkyr inherited this system and innovated the other one so now it is marked twice. Animacy plays an important part in Yrkyr morphology. Generally, the most animate noun in a sentence should be the agent while the noun with lesser animacy is a patient. If both nouns are of an equal animacy then the roles are inferred from noun cases only. In all other cases an inverse marker '''-sw'''/'''-ru''' is used to indicate that the action is performed by someone of lower animacy. For example: both ''Eŋahn čilh lyteje'' and ''Čilh Eŋahn lyteje''means "Enga listens to the jay", and in order to say "The jay listens to Enga" an inverse marker is used, since the jay is a bird and thus has lower animacy and can not be in the ergative case: ''Eŋahn čilh lytiswi''. This can also be translated as "Enga is being listened to by the jay".

Yrkyr uses postpositions, some of which can be attached to nouns in the locative case, to mark various spatial and temporal relations. If standalone, all prepositions must take a person suffix, which is the same as possessive suffixes of nouns. For example: ''neke'' "away from it", ''kʷaŋ'' "towards me", ''čittyšihaskʷa'' "towards that stone".

Words for hundreds and even higher numbers are formed in the same way (''-kehm'' is added to make hundreds, ''-mek'' - for tens of thousands and ''-kyrom'' - for millions). In the compound numerals the lesser numeral is simply put after the bigger one: ''sylkanihs ahm'' - "twenty six". In order to make an ordinal numeral, the prefix ''tla-'' is added to the corresponding cardinal numeral. Exceptions are ''lapyn'' - "first", ''tlakʷa'' "second" and ''tlaš'' - "third".