Valian: Difference between revisions

|+Vowel phonemes of 17aug

|+Consonant of 17aug

There is only one series of plosives in 17aug. These are the unaspirated, unvoiced stops {{IPA|/p t k/}} which may be realised differently depending on where they occur.

Like other languages by [[User:Chrysophylax|Chrysophylax]] 17aug seems to have a strong dislike for syllable-initial consonant clusters - that is, no onset consonant clusters have been discovered so far.

Vowels in 17aug are a straightforward process to write. They are written with 9 different graphemes which correspond one-to-one to 9 different vowels. ⟨a e i o u⟩ all represent {{IPA|/ɑ e i o u/}} while for the more unusual vowels {{IPA|/æ ɤ ø/}} ⟨ä ë ö⟩ are used. As vowels may be long, so too may the graphemes be doubled to indicate this, e.g. ''tää'' 'snow' {{IPA|[tæː]}}.  

The "weakened" variants of ''p, t, k'' (see [[{{FULLPAGENAME}}#Phonology#Consonants|17aug phonology]]) encountered after certain consonants and intervocalically are written as ''b, d, g'' something which may confusion at first as they are not fully voiced sounds (unlike say English).Like the vowels, the basic (non-weakened) consonants can all be doubled for the long versions of the consonants. Note, this means that there are no double ⟨b d g⟩ at all. The voiced labial fricative ⟨v⟩ is counted among the "weakened" consonantal sounds as it too cannot be doubled even though there is no 'full' form of it.

Nouns in 17aug can be inflected for number, gender, and possession. Unlike the pronouns, they are not inflected for case ever. Instead, 17aug requires noun-heavy sentences to obey a quite fix word order to mark objects and subjects.

Words in 17aug can belong to either a masculine {{sc|(m)}}, a feminine {{sc|(f)}} or a neuter {{sc|(n)}} gender. This is grammatically determined and does not always correspond to natural gender. For example, ''siit'' 'hope' is masculine, ''vilya'' 'cloud' is feminine, and ''aegast'' 'needle' is neuter. Generally, it can be said that nouns that end in a stop often are masculine, while nouns with final vowel sounds often are feminine. While there are some exceptions, this holds true in more than 70% of the cases. Determining if a noun is neuter is much more difficult as they may appear similar to both feminine and masculine nouns. The only sure way of knowing if a word is neuter is by memorising it.

The singular is the default, unmarked form of the noun. It is worth noting that there are many nouns which cannot be pluralised in standard 17aug such as ''{{term|pää}}'' 'snow'.

The dual is used only for things that naturally form pairs such as eyes, twins, etc. It is thus not very common outside a very specific semantic area. Nevertheless, it is often utilised when referring to body parts. Care must be taken to remember that only the dual is correct here. The dual marker ''-id'' may seem a bit strange at first to those who have delved into the phonology of 17aug. It is not too surprising when one takes into account that this is a relatively new development – the old dual was ''-idü'' – traces of which can be seen in certain set phrases such as "''{{term|riimidüinä}}!''", 'an attractive person, a hottie'.  

Pronouns are quite distinct from nouns in morphological analysis. For one, they decline for three cases: nominative ({{sc|nom}}), genitive-dative ({{sc|gen-dat}}), and oblique({{sc|obl}}). They are also inflected for number, but unlike true nouns they never receive marking for possession nor gender. This means that pronouns are one of the freer elements in 17aug and sentences composed primarily of pronouns need not follow the otherwise so rigid subject-verb-object word order.

!style="background:#699BB0" colspan="10"| 17aug personal pronouns

Verbs in 17aug are inflected for three tenses (distant past, past, present, although some analyses point to a future tense in the passive voice), three moods (indicative, optative, imperative), two voices (active, passive), polarity, number and person. Furthermore, many verbal stems alternate between several vowel qualities depending on things such as mood, voice and tense. They can also be marked for verb objects, similar to Georgian and Spanish.