Balog

Balog [ˈbɐɫɔɡ̚] is the main language of the Balog people of Ub as well as the most widely used lingua franca on that planet.

Phonology

Consonants

Manner	Phonation	Bilabial	Dentolabial Labiodental	Dental/Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	voiced	/m/ 1,2 ‹m›		/n/ 2,3 ‹n›			/ŋ/ 2 ‹ŋ / ng›
Plosive	voiced	/b/ 4 ‹b›		/d/ 3,4 ‹d›			/ɡ/ 4 ‹g›
	voiceless	/p/ 5 ‹p›		/t/ 3,5 ‹t›			/k/ 5 ‹k›		/ʔ/ ‹q›
	ejective			/tʼ/ 3,6 ‹tq›			/kʼ/ 6 ‹kq›
Affricate	voiced			/d͡z/ 7 ‹dz›	/d͡ʒ/ 7 ‹dž / dzh›
	voiceless			/t͡s/ 7 ‹ts›	/t͡ʃ/ 7 ‹tš / tsh›
	ejective			/t͡sʼ/ 6,7 ‹tsq›	/t͡ʃʼ/ 6,7 ‹tšq / tshq›
Fricative	voiced	/v/ 8 ‹v›		/z/ ‹z›	/ʒ/ ‹ž / zh›		/ɣ/ 9 ‹ğ / gh›
	voiceless	/f/ 8 ‹f›		/s/ ‹s›	/ʃ/ ‹š / sh›		/x/ 9 ‹x›
Trill / Flap	voiced			/r/ 10 ‹r›
Lateral	voiced			/l/ 3,11 ‹l›
Semivowel	voiced					/j/ ‹y›	/w/ 12 ‹w›

1. /m/ assimilates to the articulation of a following /v/ or /f/, being pronounced bilabially [m] by speakers with bilabial pronunciations of /v/ and /f/ ([β] and [ɸ]), dentolabially [ɱ͆] by speakers with dentolabial pronunciations of /v/ and /f/ ([v͆] and [f͆]) and labiodentally by speakers with labiodental pronunciation of /v/ and /f/ ([v] and [f])
2. Nasal consonants may be pronounced syllabically when not adjacent to a vowel. Their syllabic pronunciations are always short and unstressed.
3. The alveolar/dental consonants /n d t tʼ l/ are pronounced with dental articulation by some speakers and alveolar articulation by others. This varies chiefly by region and/or native language.
4. The voiced plosives /b d g/ are frequently pronounced as implosives post pausa: [ɓ ɗ~ɗ̪ ɠ]
5. The voiceless plosives /p t k/ are generally unaspirated although aspirated pronunciations may be found, especially by L2 speakers: [pʰ tʰ~t̪ʰ kʰ]. The glottal plosive /ʔ/ is never aspirated.
6. The ejective consonants /pʼ tʼ kʼ t͡sʼ t͡ʃʼ/ are frequently pronounced irregularly by L2 speakers who lack ejective consonants in their native languages. As there are many minimal pairs that can result in dangerous misunderstandings if the ejective consonants are not pronounced, many L2 speakers who are unable to pronounce the ejectives substitute them with sequences of a plain plosive or affricate, a weakly articulated schwa and then a glottal stop: [pə͉ʔ tə͉ʔ kə͉ʔ t͡sə͉ʔ t͡ʃə͉ʔ].
7. The affricates are not distinguished phonetically from equivalent sequences of plosive and fricative that come together by compounding processes or even across word boundaries. They are ascribed phonemic status due to their phonotactic patterning.
8. The majority of Balog pronounce the fricatives /v/ and /f/ dentolabially: [v͆] and [f͆]. Due to anatomical differences, the majority of non-Balog pronounce these labiodentally as [v] and [f]. Speakers of certain regions, both Balog and non-Balog, may pronounce them bilabially as [β] and [ɸ].
9. The fricatives /ɣ/ and /x/ may be pronounced either at the velum as [ɣ] and [x], or at the uvula as [ʁ] and [χ]. Speakers with uvular pronunciations of /ɣ/ may frequently pronounce it as a trill [ʀ].
10. The consonant /r/ is generally pronounced as a tap or flap [ɾ] with trilled pronunciations generally restricted to emphatic speech. When geminate, the pronunciation is always as a trill.
11. The lateral /l/ may be, as discussed in point 3., either be dental or alveolar, however there is always a strong velar or pharyngeal coarticulation: [ɫ~ɫ̪]
12. The semivowel /w/ is generally pronounced unrounded by Balog speakers due to anatomical differences. It is, however, pronounced with lip compression that results in a similar auditory effect: [w͍]. Non-Balog who speak it as an L2 may pronounce it with rounding: [w].

Vowels

Header text	Front	Back
High	/i/ [ɪ] ‹i›	/u/ [ʊ͍] ‹u›
Mid	/e/ [ɛ] ‹e›	/o/ [ɔ͍] ‹o›
Low	/æ/ [æ] ‹ä›	/a/ [ɐ] ‹a›

Morphology

Bases

Bases are the equivalent of verb, nouns and pronouns in other languages. There is no lexical distinction into classes of nouns and verbs, with every base able to be used both in predicates and as subjects without change in meaning. This is distinguish from the type of extensive zero-derivation that English employs, whereby the verbal and nominal meanings relate to each other unpredictably und must therefore be regarded as lexical units in their own right (for example, a spy spies but a fish doesn't fish and a burger doesn't burger) The relationship between the verbal and nominal meanings of Balog bases is always that the verbal meaning is "be [noun]" and the nominal meaning is always "entity that [verb]s".

Base	Nominal Translation	Verbal Translation
balog	orc	be an orc
dauz	tree	be a tree
magaz	one that falls over	fall over
dek	one that dies without obvious cause	die without obvious cause
bad	large one	be large

Semantic Particles and Prefixes

Semantic particles and prefixes modify bases to give them new shades of meaning. For example, particles indicating tense and aspect optionally stand before a base and give temporal information about the base. These are not restricted to use with semantically verb-like bases, nor are they restricted to

In the following example, the imperfective particle hi indicates that the action of dying is not spoken about as a completed whole, but, rather, an action seen from the middle, thus "is dying" (or according to context, "was dying" etc.). The past tense particle do appears before garag '(be) neighbour' to indicate 'one who was a neighbour', thus 'former neighbour'.

Hi zowak aqaddo garag wenniiž.
[hɪ ˈzɔ͍w͍ɐk ɐʔɐdːɔ͍ ˈɡɐɾɐɡ wɛnːiːʒ]
hi	zowak	aqa(ː)-	do	garag	we(ː)-	ni(ː)-	ž
IPFV	die.of.protracted.illness	SPEC(B)-	PST	neighbour	ESS-	GEN-	1S
"A former neighbour of mine is dying (of a protracted illness)."

Syntactic Clitics

Subject Markers

Subject markers appear at the beginning of every phrase denoting a grammatical subject. They indicate not only that the following base phrase is the subject of the preceding predicate but also convey information about definiteness (whether the addressee is expected to know which exact entity), specificity (whether the speaker knows which exact entity) and an inflectional dimension integral to Balog called status.

Subject Markers

Status (Gloss)		Definite Specific (DEF)	Indefinite Specific (SPEC)	Indefinite Non-Specific (NSPC)
Entities
"Powerful"	(A)	u-	uqu-	uhu-
"Dominant"	(B)	a-	aqa-	aha-
"Intermediate"	(C)	o-	oqo-	oho-
"Subordinate"	(D)	e-	eqe-	ehe-
"Powerless"	(E)	i-	iqi-	ihi-
Propositions
Propositional	(P)	ä-	äqä-	ähä-

Status

All referents are assigned a status any time they are appear as the subject of a clause. Status is not a permanent attribute of a referent but rather a context-dependent assignment within a discourse that depends on the speaker's perceived and expressed relations between the referent and other referents. When a single referent is mentioned, the status used depends only on the speaker's perception of the referent, however when there are two or more referents, statuses may be assigned that would otherwise not be used in order to differentiate between multiple referents within a discourse and rank them relative to one another.

A useful way to conceptualise the typical assignment of status is to use the question "Who would win in a physical fight?" as the deciding metric. Physically larger, stronger and more active referents are assigned a higher status than smaller, weaker referents. The highest status, A, the "powerful" status, indicated with the vowel u, is an exception, dependent not only physical strength but rather social, financial or political power. A referent marked with u is not necessarily physically dominant over other referents, but a conflict with an individual could lead to more significant consequences for referents of lower status than the physical prowess of the A-statused referent alone would afford them. "Weighty" abstract concepts may sometimes be referred to with the A-status when there is no person in the discourse assigned to this status.

Syntax

One of the most unusual features of Balog is its complete lack of grammatical objects. Every verb is monovalent (intransitive), meaning it can refer to only one noun at a time. For this reason, it is essentially impossible to describe the morphosyntactic alignment of Balog. It can, however, be noted that there is a preponderance of unaccusative verbs to describe actions, with semantic agents generally appearing in clauses containing

Complementiser

The propositional subject markers ä-, äqä- and ähä- function as a complementiser akin to "that", attaching to the beginning of the predicate of a clause and marking it as the subject of the matrix clause. Ä- and ähä- are frequently used with the former referring to definite facts and events and the latter referring to the generalised idea. The following examples should elucidate the difference.

M'oož nam ämmelets eel.
[ˈmɔ͍ːʒ ˈnɐm æmˈmɛɫɛt͡s ɛːɫ]
m	o(ː)-	ž	nam	ä(ː)-	melets	e(ː)-	l
feel.emotionally	DEF(C)-	1S	appeal	DEF(P)-	be.happy	DEF(D)-	2S
"I'm glad you're happy." "I like that you're happy."

M'oož nam ähämmelets eel.
[ˈmɔ͍ːʒ ˈnɐm æhæmˈmɛɫɛt͡s ɛːɫ]
m	o(ː)-	ž	nam	ähä(ː)-	melets	e(ː)-	l
feel.emotionally	DEF(C)-	1S	appeal	NSPC(P)-	be.happy	DEF(D)-	2S
"I like the idea of you being happy."