Skerre

Skerre
Pronunciation	[/skɛr/]
Created by	Doug Ball
Date	1994

Skerre, [skɛr], is a constructed language whose invention began in 1994 and continues to the present. The language has been inspired by many natural languages over its history, but the language presented herein is perhaps most inspired by Philippine languages like Tagalog, Oceanic languages like Tongan and Nêlêmwa, Pacific Northwest Coast languages like Coast Tsimshian, Lushootseed, and Siuslaw, and Caddoan languages like Wichita.

Introduction

The fictitious speakers of Skerre are small in number and live in the forests of the foothills of the western side of the Western Interior range. They are hunter-gatherers. Dialect variation among the different bands is not significant and is largely confined to lexical differences. The language appears to be an isolate, with no known congeners.

Phonology

Orthography

Skerre is written using the roman alphabet. The symbols employed follow expected IPA values, excepting that /kʷ/ is qu, /ɾ/ is r, /j/ is y, and /ɑ/ is a. (Additionally, /t͡s/ is always written without the tiebar.) Long vowels are written as double vowels.

Consonants

The consonant phonemes of Skerre are given in the chart below:

	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Labio-Velar	Glottal
Stop	t	t͡s ⟨ts⟩		k	kʷ ⟨qu⟩	ʔ
Fricative		s				h
Nasal		n
Liquid		ɾ ⟨r⟩
Glide			j ⟨y⟩		w

Notes:

• Stops and affricates are voiced after nasals; pre-consonantal nasals assimilate to the place of the following sound.
• The phonemes /s/, /t͡s/, and /n/ all palatalize before /j/.
• The precise articulation of /h/ depends greatly on the following vowel (or preceding one, if none follows).

Vowels

The vowel phonemes of Skerre can be divided into two classes, long and short. The two sets of vowels vary both in terms of length (predominantly) and quality. There are no diphthongs and no tonal contrasts.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	ɪ iː
Mid	ɛ ɛː		o oː
Open		ɑ~a ɑː

Stress

Stress regularly occurs near the right edge of words. Words with a final short vowel (with or without a final consonant) are stressed on the penultimate syllable, e.g. /ˈkisi/ ‘ghost’. while words with a final long vowel (again, with or without a final consonant) are stressed on that vowel, e.g. /heˈtiː/ ‘sibling’s child’.

Phonotactics

Roots are almost all CVV(C) or CV(V)CV(V)(C) in shape (parentheses indicate optional sounds; VV indicates a long vowel). Consonant clusters occur (especially initially), but only at morphological boundaries.

Morphology

Skerre is a mildly synthetic language, though a number of important grammatical categories are expressed through function words. The syntax is strongly head-initial, with heads appearing before all kinds of dependents.

Nouns

Skerre has no grammatical gender and, in fact, nouns have no obligatory inflection. They can be simple, compound, or derived, with a fair number falling in the last category.

Number

Skerre nouns are not obligatorily marked for number, yet there are two number(-like) categories present: the distributive and collective. The distributive is marked with partical reduplication: the reduplicant consists of the base’s initial syllable with a long vowel, e.g. kina ‘bird’ – kiikina ‘various birds’. The distributive signals a number of individuated entities distributed over space, time, or types. The collective is marked with the prefix tin-, as in tinkina ‘flock of birds’. The collective signals that the group is to be considered as a whole.

Prenominals

Syntactic relationships between nouns and other parts of sentences are signaled by function words before the noun, which have been called prenominals. These function words encode both status (proper or common) and syntactic function (including what adpositions normally encode). The forms are:

	Proper	Common
Absolutive	a
Ergative	tsa
Genitive	i	e
Locative	hi	te
Dative	ye	ya
Ablative	soo	sowa
Comitative	ni	ne

As indicated above, the proper–common distinction is neutralized in the absolutive and ergative prenominals. Some example noun phrases:

(1)

ye Tsotar.
DAT.P (name)
to Tsotar.

(2)

ya sakar.
DAT.C child
to the child.

Adjectives

“Adjective". In attributive function, “adjectives" are morphologically invariant. They follow the relevant noun:

(3)

a yese quiko.
ABS dog wet
"a wet dog."

In predicative function, “adjectives" precede the noun (phrase) of which they are predicated and are morphologically indistinguishable from verbs:

(4)

quiko a yese.
be.wet ABS dog
"the dog is wet."

In general, there is not much evidence in Skerre for sharply differentiating between adjectives and verbs.

Pronouns

Personal

There are several series of personal pronouns, depending on the function of the pronoun. The independent emphatic pronouns only have forms for the first and second person:

	sg.	pl.
1st person	hari	owe
2nd person	naya	rake

These are comparatively rare; subjects and objects are most usually encoded by bound pronouns, typically appearing on the verb. Independent emphatic third persons are provided by the demonstrative pronouns. The object-marking bound pronouns attach to the verb and are:

	sg.	pl.
1st	-Vh	-(ʔ)o
2nd	-Vn	-Vr
3rd	-Ø	-Ø

(The V slot is filled by a after a consonant, by length after a short vowel, and not filled if following a long vowel.)

The subject-marking bound pronouns usually attach to the verb (further away from the stem than the object markers), though they can appear on other words as long as that word (or phrase) is initial in the sentence. The forms for the subject-marking bound pronouns are:

	sg.	pl.
1st	-ha	-wo
2nd	-na	-ra
3rd	-Ø	-ti

An example of a verb with both subject and object-marking bound pronouns is given below:

E-kosa-an=ha

POT-wash-2SG.OB=1SG.SU

‘I will wash you.’

Possessive personal pronouns are also encoded as bound forms, these on nouns. The forms are:

	sg.	pl.
1st	-he	-we
2nd	-ne	-ri
3rd	-sa	-te

Some example possessed nouns include wiyet-he ‘my boat’; ana-sa ‘her mother’.

Demonstratives

Skerre has a three-way distinction in demonstrative pronouns and adjectives (identical forms are used for the two classes of function):

Demonstratives
proximal	tii	this (associated with 1st person)
medial	tena	that (associated with 2nd person)
distal	taar	that, that yonder (associated with 3rd person)

Interrogatives

The three most central question words in Skerre are sina ‘who’, tseyi ‘what’, and rowa ‘where’. The last usually appears with a location/direction-related prenominal.

Numerals

Number	Skerre
1	yaat
2	haas
3	siya
4	quee
5	yaan
6	yaan-yaat
7	yaan-haas
8	yaan-siya
9	yaan-quee
10	waar
11	waar-yaat
12	waar-haas
20	ari

As is evident from the use of yaan ‘five’ and waar ‘ten’ as bases for higher numbers, Skerre has a biquinary number system.

Syntax

Constituent order

Verb-initial sentences are the norm. Verb–Subject–Object (VSO) orderis the most common, though VOS is also possible; permutations of S and O do not change the meaning in the ‘who-does-what-to-whom’ sphere. Thus, both sentences below have the same gloss:

Okaan tsa srahan a sakar.
see.PFV ERG hunter ABS child

Okaan a sakar tsa srahan .
see.PFV ABS child ERG hunter
"The hunter saw the child."

Example texts

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1

Enar a yiket e riyos tsire ri riki te oowaatitaari ne
be.born ABS all GEN.C person free and equal LOC.C respectfulness COM.C

oosiʔan. Hihena-ti a tsaats ne oosekos ri eʔaka-ti
justice IPFV.share-3PL.SU ABS thought COM.C morality and POT.do-3PL.SU

ye kari-te tsonar te sita e isorit.
DAT self-3PL.POSS mutually LOC.C manner GEN.C agreement

"All persons are born free and equal in respectfulness and justice. They share thought and morality and should mutually act towards themselves in the manner of harmony."

Other resources

• A Concise Grammar of Skerre
• 100-Word Swadesh List
• Texts, Examples of the language
• Ethnographic Data About the Speakers of Skerre
• The Script to the Play Done in Skerre
• Behind the Scenes, history of the development of Skerre
• Skerre Elsewhere on the Web