Ish

Ish
Created by	User:Prinsessa
Language family	? Ish

Introduction

Ish is the anglicised exonym of a language mostly spoken around coastal areas. Its speakers are in close contact with speakers of Ash, who are relative newcomers to the area, but this dates back many centuries and has led to a great deal of cultural and linguistic exchange between the two. Most speakers of either language has at least some degree of familiarity with the other, and pidgin forms exist.

Phonology

Ish has a small phonemic inventory but allows consonant clusters. The maximum syllable structure is /CɰVCɰ/. Stress is phonemic and falls on the first syllable unless otherwise marked (by an acute accent, e.g. á) in the romanisation.

Vowels

There are four phonemic vowels, romanised like their IPA counterparts.

	Front	Back
Oral	/e/	/a/
Nasal	/ẽ/	/ã/

The back vowels are sometimes rounded to [ɒ] and [ɒ̃] by an adjacent /ɰ/ and are then romanised as o and õ. Likewise the front vowels are fronted to [i] and [ĩ] and then romanised as i and ĩ.

Consonants

	Coronal	Dorsal
Plosive	/t~ɾ/ d	/k/ c
Aspirate	/tˢ~s/ t	/kˣ~x/ q
Sonorant	/l~ɾ/ l~d	/ɰ~w~j/ w~y

The phoneme /ɰ/ is palatalised to [j] by a nearby /e/ in which case it is romanised as y.

Lenition, fortition, and nasalisation

Consonants except for aspirates may be nasalised by a nearby nasal vowel. Nasality can also spread from roots to affixes. Between oral vowels consonants may also voice or change in other ways. Word-final changes in pausa also occur.

Initial

	/k/ / #_V	/t/ / #_V	/l/ / #_V
Oral	[k] c	[t] d	[l] l
Nasal	[ŋ] ŋ	[n] n

Medial

	/k/ / V_V	/t/ / V_V	/l/ / V_V
Oral	[g] c	[ɾ] d
Nasal	[ŋ] ŋ	[ɾ̃] d

Final

	/k/ / V_##	/t/ / V_##	/l/ / V_##
Oral	[k̚] c	[t̚] d	[l̚] l
Nasal	[ŋ̚] ŋ	[n̚] n

Labiovelar ligatures and palatalisation

One of the most salient features of the phonology is the free variation in pronunciation of labiovelar clusters (i.e. /Cɰ/), romanised with additional letters. These occur before the vowel /a/ or its nasal counterpart /ã/.

Initial

	/kɰ/ / #_V	/tɰ/ / #_V	/lɰ/ / #_V
Oral	[kʷ~pᶭ] ȹ (c + p)	[tᶭ] d	[lᶭ] l
Nasal	[ŋʷ~mᶭ] ɱ (m + ŋ)	[nᶭ] n

Medial

	/kɰ/ / V_V	/tɰ/ / V_V	/lɰ/ / V_V
Oral	[gʷ~bᶭ] ȹ	[ɾʷ~ⱱᶭ] ȸ (d + b)
Nasal	[ŋʷ~mᶭ] ɱ	[ɾ̃ʷ~ⱱ̃ᶭ] ȸ

Final

	/kɰ/ / V_##	/tɰ/ / V_##	/lɰ/ / V_##
Oral	[k̚ʷ~p̚ᶭ] ȹ	[t̚ᶭ] d	[l̚ᶭ] l
Nasal	[ŋ̚ʷ~m̚ᶭ] ɱ	[n̚ᶭ] n

In /Cɰ/ clusters before /e/ and /ẽ/ the suprasegmental becomes [ʲ] instead of [ʷ]~[ᶭ] and no labialisation occurs.

Grammar

Words in Ish do not have a lot of morphology besides a very productive affinity for compounding. Most content words do not fit neatly into any particular class of words, but are either verbs or nouns depending on their syntactic position, making word order somewhat rigid. However there are function words, some of which are fused.

Syntax

The basic word order in sentences with a pronominal participant is VOS (verb-object-subject) where the object is preceded by a particle expressing whether it is direct or indirect, the latter sometimes also expressing involuntary action, and requiring a prefix on the verb.

tayí doyyi
[tˢaˈji ˈtɒj.ji]
/tˢaɰe=e(k) taɰ=ɰe/
see=DIR fire=PROX
I looked at the fire.

attaya doyyi
[ˈat̚.tˢa.ja ˈtɒj.ji]
/VC-tˢaɰe=a(t) taɰ=ɰe/
NDIR-see=NDIR fire=PROX
I saw the fire.

Particles and determiners are both clitics that attach to the preceding word and may change its exact form or even surface merely as a change in stress. They are therefore romanised as part of the word to which they are attached. Roots therefore appear to have many allomorphs depending on the grammatical context.

tẽɱo qayi
[ˈtˢẽ.mᶭɒ ˈkˣa.ji]
/tˢẽkɰ=ɰa kˣaɰe/
be=DET water
There is water.

tĩŋi qayí
[ˈtˢĩ.ŋʲi kˣaˈji]
/tˢẽkɰ=e(k) kˣaɰe=ɰe/
be=DIR water=PROX
I made the water.