Tinnermockaar

ttỳnaamokkəər
Pronunciation	[/ˈtʼɪˀ.naː.mo.kʼɝː/]
Created by	–
Date	2024
Language family	Isolate

Tinnermockaar (natively ttỳnaamokkəər /ˈtʼɪˀ.naː.mo.kʼɝː/, which translates as 'the language') is an a priori conlang with an agglutinative grammar where most words are formed either by adding vowel-initial prefixes to CVC root to form a verb or verb-like element or by adding vowel-final suffixes to a root to form a nominal (noun or noun-like element). As a result, most Tinnermockaar words either start with a vowel and end in a consonant or vice-versa.

The language features a somewhat challenging phonology, including ejective stops, a three-way contrast in voicing and glottalized vowels based on Danish stød.

In addition to the Latin script orthography that will be used throughout this article, Tinnermockaar might be written in its own alphabet. The native orthography is moderately phonemic but it includes some etymological contrasts that are no longer observed in the spoken language.

Phonology

Consonants

The following table shows the consonant inventory for Tinnermockaar. Note that the rows and column in the table may indicate historical realizations that are no longer descriptive of the current realization of the respective consonant, as is the case for palatal 'stops' which have long shifted into affricates.

Tinnermockaar consonants

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Ejective stop		tt //t̪ʼ/	cc /tʼ/	tts /tsʼ/	kk /kʼ/
Plain stop	p /p/	t /t̪/	c /t/	ts /ts/	k /k/
Partially voiced stop	b /b̥/	d /d̪̥/	đ /d̥/		g /ɡ̊/
Voiced stop	bb /b/	dd /d̼/	đđ /d/
Fortis pre-nasalized stop	mp /mp/	nt /nt̪/	nc /nt/		ńk /ŋk/
Lenis pre-nasalized stop	mb /mb/	nd /nd̼/	nđ /nd/	z /d̥z̥/	ńg /ŋɡ/
Nasal	m /m/		n /n/		ń /ŋ/
Fricative		s /s̻/	ś /s̺/	x /ç/	h /h/
Approximant				j /j/
Lateral			l /l/

Notes:

• Alveolar consonants, as well as the affricates tts and ts tend to have an apical realization.
• Velar consonants are allophonically uvular when following /u/ or /ʊ/.
• There are no traces of the language ever having an ejective labial stop. It should be noted however that many languages with ejectives also lack /pʼ/ (less acoustically distinctive from its plain counterpart than other ejective plosives), so such a gap is not unexpected.
• Unvoiced stops are very mildly aspirated.
• There is some variation in the VOT (voice onset time) for pre-nasalized stops, fortis might range from moderate aspiration to tenuis while lenis might range from almost tenuis to fully voiced.
• Pre-nasalized stops in final position might result in the allophonic nasalization of the preceding vowel. For instance, amb /amb/ might be realized as something closer to \[ãb̥\].
• The phoneme z /d̥z̥/ is listed under the lenis prenasalized series since it comes from a historical /ɲɟ/, but its current realization is closer to that of a partially voiced counterpart to ts.
• A fully voiced /ɡ/ was dropped except before front vowels, where it turns into /j/ instead.
• An (intrafictionally) earlier form of the language had a palatal series that has mostly shifted to other points of articulation.
  • First, its partially voiced and fully voiced stops (presumably /\ɟ̊/ and /\ɟ/ ) merged with the corresponding velars /ɡ̊/ and /ɡ/ (before the latter was lost to further sound changes). This change seems to have happened early enough that the distinction is not attested even in the earliest forms of Tinnermockaar writing.
  • Then historical /cʼ/ and /c/ shifted into /tsʼ/ and /ts/.
  • Historical pre-nasalized /ɲc/ and /ɲɟ/ first experiences a similar shift, turning briefly into /nts/ and /ndz/ before a second shift turned them into pure affricates, with /nts/ merging with /ts/ while /ndz/ became z /d̥z̥/.
  • The palatal nasal /ɲ/ turned into /j/. A later change would drop it before front vowels.
• A single coronal nasal n /n/ seems to have developed from a merger between a historical dental /n̪/ and an alveolar /n/. Orthographic evidence (in the native Tinnermockaar script) suggests that the two sounds might have first adopted a complementary distribution before being outright merged in a generally alveolar \[n\].
• It is unclear whether the language ever had a labial fricative (/f/ or /ɸ/), if it did, it must have long dropped or merged with another consonant (likely h).
• The 'dental' fricative s is a laminal /s̻/ while the 'alveolar' ś is an apical /s̺/, with speakers commonly pronounced it as a postalveolar \[ʃ\], especially in word-final position.
• The 'palatal' fricative x /ç/ often shifts to \[x\] before back vowels.
• The 'velar' fricative h is realized either as a glottal fricative /h/ or outright dropped (especially between non-high vowels).
• A glottal stop \[ʔ\] and a rhotic alveolar approximant \[ɹ\] might occur as allophonic pronunciations for glottalized and rhotacized vowels, respectively.

The native orthography in the Tinnermockaar script still makes some distinctions that are not preserved in the spoken language:

• Distinction between /ts/ from historical /c/ and historical /ɲc/ (transcribed as nts).
• Distinction between /j/ (and null onsets from a historical dropped /j/) from historical /ɲ/ (transcribed as ñ) and historical /ɡ/ (transcribed as gg).
• Two characters that might have once corresponded to a historical dental /n̪/ (sometimes transcribed as n̈) and a historical alveolar /n/ (transcribed as n) now generally present a complementary distribution, with dental n̈ usually being found before back vowels although multiple exceptions to this rule can be found.

Vowels

Tinnermockaar has the following vocalic inventory:

Tinnermockaar vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i /i/		u /u/
Upper	y /ɪ/		v /ʊ/
Mid	e /e/, [e̞]		o /o/ [o̞]
Lower		ə /ɜ/
Low		a /a/, [ä]

Note that the vowels y and v are considered to be 'front' and 'back' (respectively) despite actually having a more centralized realization.

All vowels can be short or long (indicated by doubling the vowel).

Five diphthongs are allowed, all of them falling: ae /ae̯/, av /aʊ̯/, ey /eɪ̯/, ov /oʊ̯/ and əi /ɜi̯/. No length distinctions are observed on diphthongs.

All diphthongs and all non-high vowels (short or long) might be glotalized, with a realization similar to Danish stød. This is marked with a grave accent diacritic on the (last) letter as in v̀ for /ʊˀ/, aà for /aːˀ/ and əì for /ɜi̯ˀ/.

The vowels a, e, o v, y and ə (short or long) and the diphthongs ae, av and əi might be rhotacized, marked with an \<r\> after the vowel: ar for /a˞ /, yyr for /ɪ˞ ː/, avr for /aʊ̯˞ /. Since the hook diacritic used in IPA to mark rhoticity is often hard to read if not completely absent in most fonts, these will be notated with a /ɹ̆/ as in /ʊːɹ̆/ for vvr rather than /ʊ˞ː/.

Only a short ə is allowed to be simultaneously rhotacized and glotalized: ə̀r for /ɜˀɹ̆/. Historically, v̀r /ʊˀɹ̆/ was also allowed, although it later merged with ə̀r (the distinction is preserved in the native orthography, though).

Some speakers (particularly those in the peripheries of the language, in contact with non-native speakers who might struggle with rhoticity and glottalization) might pronounce rhotacized vowels as plain vowels followed by a rhotic such as \[ɹ\] or \[ɾ\] and pronounce glotalized vowels as plain vowels followed by a glottal stop \[ʔ\].

Phonotactics

Tinnermockaar allows for (C)V(V)(C) syllables, which is to say, an optional onset composed of a single consonant, a mandatory nucleus composed of a vowel or diphthong (possibly bearing glottalization or rhoticity) and an optional coda consonant.

Notice that prenasalized stops and affricates are counted as single consonants and that rhoticity and glottalization are not regarded as adding codae, thus a syllable such as ttsə̀rmp'' /tsʼɜˀɹ̆mp/ conforms to the allowed CVC pattern.

Codae are only allowed in word-final position. As a result, consonant clusters are not allowed to occur within a word. Vowel clusters (ie sequences of onset-less syllables) are allowed freely, with a hyphen being used to separate syllables in these cases as in enav̀-aakvvr ('they heated it').

Ejectives are realized as plain stops in word-final position (such that att and at would both be pronounced /at/) while fully voiced stops are realized as partially-voiced ones (abb and ab would both be pronounced /ab̥/). The original pronunciation surfaces when a suffix is added.

Although no phonotactical rule requires it, the fact that Tinnermockaar morphology often revolves around CVC roots which take either vowel initial prefixes or vowel final suffixes makes it so a vast majority of Tinnermockaar words either begin in a vowel and end in a consonant (V...C) or vice-versa (C...V). These two possibilities also relate to Tinnermockaar parts of speech, with verbals being overwhelmingly vowel-initial (and consonant-final) whereas nominals tend to be consonant-initial (and vowel-final).

Suprasegmentals

The language does not have phonemic tones nor stress. Word tend to be stressed on their first syllable.

Morphology

Tinnermockaar constructs most of its words out of roots, sequences which cannot be used as words on their own. A Tinnermockaar root typically has a CVC structure such as √ttỳn /tʼɪˀ.n/ for 'speaking', although a limited number of roots are composed of a single consonant C, some can only be analyzed as having a CVCVC structure and a considerable number omit one or more consonants, possibly due to the historical loss of certain consonants.

Roots often have verb-like main meanings (as seen previously with √ttỳn, 'speaking') but they might also be mainly noun-like as with the root √havp 'copper'. Regardless of this, most roots have the potential to be used both in noun-like and verb-like derivations, as evidenced by ttỳnaamokkə (language, a noun derived from √ttỳn) or eerbbihavp for 'they are made of copper' (a verb derived from √havp).

It is also relatively common for roots to have different forms or have small 'families' of roots differing only in their vowel or some suprasegmental aspect thereof (such as root pairs differing only in vowel length or glottalization). These differences can mostly be attributed to irregular sound change and seldom show any consistent patterns.

These roots (which can be termed 'primary roots') are often extended into 'secondary roots' by adding a prefix, usually of the form CV-. These prefixes often relate to some vague form of locative meaning such as ma- roughly corresponding to 'around', transforming the core meaning of the root √ńvm related to movement to √mańvm for with meanings of 'roaming' or 'walking around'. It should be noted, however, that the semantic derivation resulting from these affixes can be fairly unpredictable. For instance, applying the same prefix to √ttỳn (speaking) yields √mattỳn with a rough meaning of 'fame' (presumably because people around the famous person would speak about them) while applying it to √nin (to breathe) results in √manin meaning 'to sneeze' in a rather unclear derivation. These derivational prefixes are remarkably similar to the 'preverbs' found in Indo-European languages (such as the 'for' in 'forgive'), although the resulting meanings of might differ.

Tinnermockaar words are derived through the addition of affixes (prefixes or suffixes) to these roots (be they primary or secondary roots). For the most part, these derivations follow one of two patterns corresponding to a main division in the language: verbals (mostly derived with vowel-initial prefixes) and nominals (exclusively derived with vowel-final suffixes).

Note: that the morphological classes I refer to as 'verbals' and 'nominals' in Tinnermockaar might not correspond to other usages of those words in linguistics (such as Chomsky's notion of 'nominals'), they are just meant as a convenient term for this conlang in particular.

Verbals

Tinnermockaar verbals mostly correspond to verbs describing a past, generic or habitual state; present and future-tense verbs are handled instead through a construction involving an auxiliary verbal a nominal instead. Since Tinnermockaar's equivalents to adjectives are verb-like, they are often handled as verbals as wells.

Verbals usually present the following structure:

Tinnermockaar 'verbal' structure

Component	Optional / Mandatory	Default (if not explicit)
Mood marker	Optional	Realis
Subject/theme agreement	Mandatory	-
Aspect marker	Optional	Atelic
Secondary root prefix	Optional	-
Root	Mandatory	-
Voice marker	Optional	Active voice

The fact that most (not all though!) mood and agreement markers begin in a vowel and that most roots and all voice markers end in a consonant makes it so that verbals are overwhelmingly vowel-initial and consonant-final. In fact, certain words of dubious classification are considered verbals in Tinnermockaar tradition solely on the basis that they have this phonetic structure, as in the genitive particle əl.

Mood

Tinnermockaar verbs might carry a mood prefix for non-realis usages, this is to say, when describing a situation which is (or was) not an actual fact in the present or past. Non-realis moods include:

• Interrogative (INT, prefix kkaah-) - required for polar questions.
• Potential (POT, prefix ax-) - indicates a possibility (like English 'can' or 'may').
• Interrogative-potential (INT.POT, prefix àkkaah-) - asks bout whether something might happen (or have happened).
• Optative (OPT, prefix eyt-) - used for wishes, hopes.
• Jussive (JUS, prefix əcaant-) - indicates a mandatory state (like English 'must' or some usages of 'shall').
• Irrealis (IRR, prefix ind-) - other hypothetical situations, conditionals, etc.

For instance

Mood examples

Mood	Example	Translation
Realis	Enav̀ccəń.	They hunted it
Interrogative	Kkaahenav̀ccəń ?	Did they hunt it?
Potential	Axenav̀ccəń.	They might have hunted it
Interrogative-potential	Àkkaahenav̀ccəń ?	Could they have hunted it?
Optative	Eytenav̀ccəń !	Let's hope they hunted it
Jussive	Əcaantenav̀ccəń.	They must (are required to) have hunted it
Irrealis	Indenav̀ccəń ...	(If) they hunted it...

The jussive mood is not to be confused with the imperative (commands issued to the listener), which are formed through a separate construction.

Subject and theme agreement

Tinnermockaar has what is known as polypersonal agreement, with transitive verbs (verbs featuring both a subject and an object) being mandatorily marked for both arguments, while intransitive verbs (thus with a single argument, also known as 'subject' in English but referred to as 'theme' in Tinnermockaar) taking a different set of prefixes to mark their one argument. Voice suffixes, as discussed later on, might be used to allow transitive verbs to behave as intransitive ones and vice versa.

Both forms of argument agreement indicate the grammatical person of the argument as well as some other distinctions such as animacy and number for third person referents. The following cases are contrasted:

• First person exclusive (1.EXCL) - usually refers to the speaker (I, me) but it might also be used to refer to 'exclusive we' (the speaker and others, not including the listener).
• First person inclusive (1.INCL) - 'inclusive we', the speaker, the listener and, possibly, others.
• Second person (2) - the listener or listeners (you) and possibly others.
• Animate third person singular (3s.ANIM) - a human (or a being that acts like a human, such as a personified god) other than the speaker and listener; corresponding to English 'he', 'she' or singular 'they'.
• Animate third person plural (3p.ANIM) - more than one person.
• Inanimate third person singular (3s.INAN) - one object/animal or a group of uncountable objects (such as 'the sand'); 'it'.
• Inanimate third person plural (3p.INAN) - more than one distinct objects or animals. Not distinguished from 3s.INAN for transitive subjects.

Further distinctions in number (such as contrasting 1.EXCL as used for singular 'I' or for plural 'we \[me and others\]') might be made by including an overt pronoun (as discussed within the section for nominals) but that is relatively uncommon.

Definiteness is contrasted for third person inanimate themes, contrasting sentences such as enav̀kàccəń ('they hunted it', where the animal that was hunted refers to a known individual) and eenəkàccəń ('they hunted one', where the animal that was some previously undefined individual).

In the following tables, prefixes for each combination are given with the subject being indicated by the column and the theme or direct object by the row. For suffixes whose Tinnermockaar script spelling is not predictable, the appropriate spelling is provided between brackets.

Agreement markers

Subject (columns):	None (Intransitive)	1.EXCL	1.INCL	2	3s.ANIM	3p.ANIM	3.INAN
1.EXCL	əńee-	-	-	tsəńỳ-	ème-	aàmy-	àńav-
1.INCL	ańyỳ-	-	-	-	èmyỳ-	aàmyỳ-	ə̀rńyỳ-
2	iì-	ijee- (iñee-)	-	-	ənce- (aàntse-)	aàtse- (aàntse-)	ə̀rttsə-
3s.ANIM	i-	ayńè-	yyrńè-	ətsè-	əmba-	aàmba-	àśe-
3p.ANIM	əmà-	əńkà-	yyrnkà-	ətsà- (əntsà-)	əmpeè-	aàmpa-	əśaà- (vśaà-)
3s.INAN.DEF	oo-	avńga-	əənga-	ətsə-	ovr-	enav̀-	av̀-
3s.INAN.INDF	vr-	əńvr-	əərńvr-	vtsə-	ey-	eenə-	ə̀r- (v̀r-)
3p.INAN.DEF	eer-	əńeer-	yrńeer-	ətseer-	ə-eer (əggeer-)	aàńga-	eèr-
3p.INAN.INDF	eer-	əńyỳ-	yrńyỳ-	ətsyỳ-	əńka-	aàńka-	eèr-

Bear in mind that the reflexive and reciprocal voices (explained in the Voices section below) are required for actions where the subject and theme coincide.

Citation forms for verbs

While in English the citation form of a verb (ie the form usually listed in dictionaries and used to refer to the verb) is the infinitive, the preferred citation form for Tinnermockaar verbs is a verbal with no optional affixes presenting agreement prefixes for third person arguments. These prefixes depend on whether the verb is transitive or intransitive and on whether its expected arguments are more likely to be humans or inanimate objects.

Intransitive verbs which are more likely to have a human theme take the 3s.ANIM prefix i- as in iđđun (they slept) for 'to sleep'; if the theme is judged more likely to be non-human, the 3s.INAN prefix oo- is used instead as in oobbihavp (it is made of cooper) for 'to be made of cooper'. Cases where both a human or a non-human theme are possible vary, by they tend towards the former as in ideìkvvr (they are hot) for 'to be hot', although an inanimate citation form oodeìkvvr (it is hot) could occasionally be used should the context make it clear it is meant to apply to a non-human.

A similar situation occurs for transitive verbs, which take a prefix corresponding to third person singular arguments whose animacy was determined by their most likely referents although with a clear bias towards preferring animate subjects and inanimate topics. As a result, the citation form of most transitive verbs tends to bear the ey- prefix (animate subject, inanimate theme), even though əmba- (animate subject and theme), ə̀r- (inanimate subject and theme) and, rarely, àśe- (inanimate subject, animate theme) are also possible options:

Citation forms

	Intransitive	Animate subject	Inanimate subject
Animate theme	i-	əmba-	àśe-
Inanimate theme	oo-	ey-	ə̀r-

Aspect

Tinnermockaar contrasts three aspects, indicated though suffixes between the agreement marks and the main stem (root and secondary root prefixes).

By default, verbs take the unmarked atelic (ATEL) aspect which indicates an event without a specific endpoint. For instance, atelic iccəńàk, 'he hunted', indicates that the action is conceptualized as being a prolonged state (as implied in 'they were out hunting') without a specific goal that would mark its endpoint.

On the other hand, the prefix kà marks a verb as telic (TEL), which indicates an action with a defined endpoint. For example, telic ikàccəńàk, which we might also translate as 'he hunted', actually indicates that there was a goal that was accomplished and which marked an endpoint for the action (in the example, the hunter probably chased after one particular game).

There is a commonly used rule of thumb in linguistics for telling apart whether a phrase is telic or atelic: if the action can be given with a time frame (as in 'within an hour), it is telic (the endpoint is pinpointed as being achieved within the timeframe) while an atelic phrase will usually require a time-span instead such as 'for an hour.

Meanwhile the prefix zi- is used to indicate an inchoative (INCH) aspect, which marks the beginning of a state. Thus iziccəńàk corresponds to 'they started hunting'.

Voice

Verbals corresponding to transitive verbs might take a suffix to indicate a change in grammatical voice, which is to say, an unexpected behavior in the argument of the transitive verb.

By default, such verbs are found in their active voice which includes a distinct subject and an object. For instance, enav̀kàccəń ('they hunted it') is marked as having a human third person subject and a definite non-human third person object.

A reflexive voice marker -as is required to indicate that the subject and object coincide, that the subject does the action to itself. The resulting verb is only marked for its theme, as in ooccəńas for 'it hunted itself'.

The reciprocal or mutual marker -ubbàm has a similar usage except that it indicates that individuals within a group do something to each other (but not to themselves). For instance, əmàccəńubbàm translates to 'they hunted each other'. This would indicate that there were at least two parties, one hunting the other and vice-versa, as opposed to reflexive əmàccəńas 'they hunted themselves'. Informally, however, it would be relatively common for native Tinnermockaar speakers themselves to use both forms interchangeable, indicating that this distinction is seemingly falling out of use.

For verbals with a distinct subject and object, the passive and antipassive voices allow for one of those arguments to be dropped. Passive -it converts a transitive verb into a syntactically intransitive one with the original object as its theme as in ookàccəńit for 'it was hunted', '\[someone\] hunted it'. Conversely, antipassive -àk allows the subject alone to to be marked, also becoming the theme of a syntactically intransitive verb as in ikàccəńàk for 'they hunted \[something]'.

Verbals corresponding to an intransitive verb might take the causative marker -eeś which turns them into a transitive verb where the subject influences the theme to reach the state normally marked by the intransitive verb. For instance, oodeìkvvrm 'it was hot' might be used to derive enav̀deìkvvrmeeś, 'they made it hot'. It should be noted, however, that many intransitive verbs have a transitive counterpart that will usually be preferred to a causative form; thus to specify an agent responsible for the state of being hot indicated by oodeìkvvrm a separate transitive verb, enav̀-aakvvr, 'they heated it'.

The attributive verbal an

The word an is a verb-like element with two main uses: - Acting as a copula verb (like English 'to be') for equaling two nominals, as in 'X is Y'. - Being used as a particle to introduce relative clauses.

Unlike ordinary Tinnermockaar verbs, an presents an irregular paradigm. It might only be conjugated for mood (taking the usual mood prefixes) and for argument agreement (through completely irregular forms). Despite the fact that an takes two arguments when used as a copula verb, its conjugation only references the grammatical person for single argument, without any number or animacy distinctions for the third person:

Conjugation of an

Person	Form of an
1.EXCL	əńaàn (spelled as əhanàn in Tinnermockaar script)
1.INCL	amyńan
2	tsaan
3	an

In addition to not being permitted to take aspect and voice markers, an might not appear in present or future tense constructions; its tense is unless a time adverb is added.

See the sections on noun copula and relatives under the Syntax header for more information.