Scellan

Äivö (jaaþime-rin-äivö) is a close relative of Bhadhagha with vowel harmony.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Coronal	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m /m/	n /n/		ŋ /ŋ/
Stop	voiceless	p /p/	t /t/		k /k/
	voiced	b /b/	d /d/		g /g/
Spirant	voiceless	f /f/	þ /θ/		x /x/
	voiced	v /v/	ð /ð/
Sibilant			s /s/			h /h/
Liquid			r /r/
Approximant			l /l/	j /j/

Vowels

	Front				Back
	unrounded		rounded
	short	long	short	long	short	long
Close	i /i/	ii /iː/	y /y/	yy /yː/	u /u/	uu /uː/
Close-mid	e /e/	ee /eː/	ö /ø/	öö /øː/	o /o/	oo /oː/
Open	ä /æ/	ää /æː/			a /ɑ/	aa /ɑː/

There are also many diphthongs, among them äi äy ai au ie yö uo.

Morphology

Äivö has no grammatical gender and no grammatical mutation. Äivö is also more agglutinative than its close relatives.

Nouns

The definite article is -me for nouns ending in a V or a resonant and -ime otherwise. It's placed after the plural suffix: duuvooŋ 'a teacher', duuvooŋme 'the teacher', duuvooŋa 'teachers', duuvooŋame 'the teachers'.

Historically feminine nouns undergo lenition: xuuþ 'an animal', xuuþime 'the animal'.

The plural is marked as follows:

• -a/-ä for nouns ending in a C
• -n for nouns ending in a V

Äivö has innovated new possessive suffixes, unlike Tíogall or Bhadhagha: skänänä, skäner, skänyy (his), skänii (her), skänäk (its), skänäy, skänäner, skänäd, skänäär

In the plural, these suffixes are: skänäränä, skänärer, skänäryy, skänärii, skänäräk, skänäräy, skänäräner, skänäräd, skänäräär (if the plural uses n, the n is changed to r).

For "of (a noun)", the ezâfe construction is used, with the word ri (rin before V) between the nouns: xaunskänme-ri-Leemi = 'Leemi's girlfriend'.

My girlfriend = xaunskänme-ri-naa or xaunskänänä

My tall girlfriend = xaunskänme-rin-aarde-ri-naa

Adjectives

Adjectives must inflect for number. However, predicative vs. attributive is handled differently than in Tíogall: Textime aarde means "The child is tall", while Textime-rin-aarde means "the tall child".

Copula

Äivö has a copula lä- which inflects regularly in the present tense.

As in Welsh, the copula is also used with progressive verbs: Lää duuvooŋme de ientäx. "The teacher is sleeping."

Verbs

The Äivö verbal system is very different from Tíogall, and much closer to Bhadhagha.

Äivö analogized the analytic forms of verbs to all persons, and fused the personal pronoun with the verb.

Äivö is not split-ergative, unlike Tíogall.

Perfect tenses use the construction tänn followed by the verbal noun.

Present

molaigh ná -> molana "I thank"
molaigh fiar -> moler "thou thankest"
molaigh -> moluu/molii/molak "he/she/it thanks", mola (for non-pronominal subjects)
molaigh gámh -> molau "we (exc.) thank"
molaigh ná ag fiar -> molaner "we (inc.) thank"
molaigh séid -> molad "ye thank"
molaigh hár -> molaar "they thank"
Impersonal: molaav "one thanks"

Analogously for front-vowel verbs (the following example is synem 'tune'):

synmänä, synmer, synmyy/synmii/synmäk, synmä, synmäy, synmäner, synmäd, synmäär, synmääv.

Past

The past tense is marked by the particle go or g' which is used before the verb. This comes from a construction that translates to "it was the case that ...", which was used in pre-modern Bhadhagha.

Future

The future tense is derived from the Old Tíogall future tense:

moltana, molter, molta, moltaner, moltad, moltar, moltaav

Verbal noun

The verbal noun is much more regular than in Tíogall, and is consistently marked with -ax/-äx.

Syntax

Äivö uses SVO order.

Vocabulary

Äivö vocabulary is much more purely Talmic than that of either Tíogall or Bhadhagha; however, a handful of words are from an unknown substrate language, such as önsvä 'knot'.