Khattish

Khattish Zupett [zɯpət'] is the language of Khat region in Grundet. Khattish derives from Proto-West-Herookuan languages. Although Khattish is a cousin language of Sceptrian, the strong influence from Kher languages has made it hard to recognize the shared traits.

Phonology

Consonants

The IPA symbol is shown after the romanization if they aren't the same.

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar	Uvular
Nasal		m	n		ng ŋ
Plosive	Voiceless	p	t		k	kg q
	Voiced	b	d		g	gg ɢ
Fricative	Voiceless	f ɸ~f	s	ss ʃ	h x
	Voiced	v β~v	z	zz ʒ	x ɣ
Ejective		pp p'	tt t'		kk k'
Affricate		pf pɸ	c t͡s	cc t͡ʃ	kh kx
Trill		pr ʙ	r			rr ʀ
Approximant		w w~ʋ		l ɹ~l	j ɰ~j

• /f/, /v/ and /ʋ/ are allophones of /ɸ/, /β/ and /w/ with close vowels
• /l/ and /j/ come with front vowels while /ɹ/ and /ɰ/ are used with back vowels

Vowels

		Front	Central	Back
Close	Unrounded			u ɯ
	Rounded			ú u
Mid		é e	e ə~ɵ
Open-mid	Unrounded			a ʌ
	Rounded			á ɔ

• 'vowels can be long: aa /ʌ:/, áa /ɔ:/
  • If diacriticts are marked in the native abjad, long vowels are shown simply with double marks.
• /ɵ/ appears as an allophone of /ə/ after voiced consonants

Phonotactics

Word-final schwa is not pronounced, unless preceded by an approximant

• Onset
• Nucleus
• Coda

Orthography

Formal Khattish uses featural abjad script Cekara shown above with its romanization. Diacritics are marked in educational materials and words out of context, sometimes in place names as well. Older systems indicated stress with "strong" diacritic dashes as opposed to dot-like "weak" diacritics. The diacritics have evolved into elaborate decorations in the Razáfian calligraphy.

There is some controversy of the creator of Khattish script due to a great loss of historical records during the years under Western Tyranny of the sixth era:

Lightlisteners name shinesharer saint Gunda Tliwirshu as the designer, based on the remaining parts of his chronicles written on the island of Guard already in the third era, around 470. They claim that she had to create a translation of the Book of Light and even a new script "for those living in the darkness; poor natives to whom, alas, our beautiful language [Rinapri] is nothing but birds' singing".

Since the language has changed much during these millennia, supporters of the Lafan school believe that the script was coined in 4th era around year 400 by Narrif Tsero, one of the most productive Khat linguists, who used Kher and Northern runic scripts (not used anymore) as the base. The new script managed to spread just in time before the decline of Khat culture and was finally revived after the of the collapse of Western Tyranny in the sixth era more than two thousand years later by Teke Kále. Much later, in the seventh era 290, the founder of New Khat Empire, Sekkute I, used the script as a national romantic example of pure Khattish culture, not contaminated by this Westlang.

See also the modern script whose one variation uses β-grapheme for v and its left-mirrored version for f, 8-grapheme for pf, b-grapheme for z and d-grapheme for s.

Morphology

• roots slightly similar to semitic roots: voiceless bi- and triliterals (while Kher have only quadriliteral roots)
  • voiceless→voiced & ejective→affricate & voiced→approximant as one derivation process: √p-p → b-p and p-b
  • derivation with affixes as well

Noun

Nouns of Khattish have two grammatical genders, animate (AN) and inanimate (IN), which are characteristic to words and not explicitly shown. Animate class contains all living creatures and their body parts while inanimate

Nouns have two numbers, singular and plural, and the plural is formed by voicing the consonant of the stressed syllable (second or last).

Case

Noun cases:

• Absolutive (ABS): Subject of intransitive verbs and direct object of transitive ones
  • base form (consonants and medial schwas)
• Ergative (ERG): Agent of transitive verbs (before object); causative (after object)
  • final ée
• Dative (DAT): Indirect objects; for the benefit of (BEN)
  • final u with AN and k with IN
• Genitive (GEN): possession (his head); with most adpositions; adjective-forming
  • last syllable nuclaus = syllabic l
• Instrumental-comitative (INS-COM): using something or in company of someone (compare "with"); adjacent location (ADE)
  • final s with AN and h with IN

Adjective

• noun GEN where the last internal e becomes a
• agree with gender: na-suffix with animate nouns
• only agrees with ergative case: -áa for AN and -é for IN

Verb

• partially conjugated for subject/object person & number (1SG, 1PL)
• rather small set of auxiliary clitics for tense & aspect
  • developed similarly to Sanskrit participial periphrastic phrases
  • "he cat see-touch" (he is watching a cat), "he dog see-leave" (he saw a dog), "he horse see-meet" (he will see a horse)
• apophony for negation
• first consonant voicing for subjunctive mood
• stress changes for other moods

Adposition

postpositions and circumpositions

Derivational morphology

Suffixes:

• -enú origin, characteristic

Numeral

decimal base

Syntax

ergative-absolutive alignment, word order SV, AOV, OAV or O₁AO₂V (verb-final), head-medial

Antipassive construction uses SV(O)