Katäfalsen

Introduction

Katäfalsen (pronunciation: [ˈkɑtɑːfɑlsɛn]) is an apriori language, which is partially inspired by Basque, Hebrew and Latin. The aim was to construct a language with simple phonology along with unorthodox grammar and syntax. Katäfalsen is highly synthetic and features a free word order and ergative-absolutive alignment.

Phonology

Consonants

The consonant phonemes of Modern Katäfalsen are as follows:

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m /m/	n /n/
Stop	voiced	b /b/	d /d/		g /g/
	voiceless	p /p/	t /t/		k /k/	/ʔ/
Fricative		f /f/	s /s/		h /x/
Approximant			r /ɹ/	j /j/	w /w/
Lateral approximant			l /l/

Vowels

The vowel inventory of Katäfalsen is quite symmetrical as there are each three front, back, rounded and unrounded vowels.

	Front		Back
	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
Close	i /i/	y /y/		u /u/
Mid	e /e/			o /o/
Open			a /ɑ/

The only vowel that distinguishes length is /ɑ/ contrasting phonemically with /ɑː/. The long vowel is represented by ⟨ä⟩. The sequences /ɑj/, /ɑw/, /ɑːj/ and /ɑːw/ are realised as diphthongs, while adjacent vowels are usually pronounced in hiatus.

Alphabet

The Latin alphabet used for Katäfalsen therefore contains the following letters. Uppercase letters are used for the first letter of a sentence and proper nouns.

a	b	d	e	f	g	h	i	j	k	l	m	n	o	p	r	s	t	u	w	y	ä
A	B	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	R	S	T	U	W	Y	Ä

Phonotactics

The syllable structure in Katäfalsen is KV(K), where K denotes a consonant and V a vowel. The syllable onset is allowed to be a glottal stop /ʔ/ but only intervocalically in hiatus and word initially, i.e. after a break. This is not represented in the orthography.

Metathesis and epenthesis

Metathesis occurs in Katäfalsen when a suffix beginning with a consonant is added to a word. If the word ends with a vowel or diphthong, the morphemes are simply concatenated. The suffix -n, which creates female forms, is used for examples here.

ki + n → kin
kaj + n → kajn

However, if the word ends with a consonant instead, metathesis of this consonant and the preceding vowel occurs.

fales + n → falsen

In words that are either monosyllablic or feature a closed penultimate syllable (although very rare), an epenthetic vowel /ɑ/ is inserted.

sen + n → asnen
meslip + n → mesalpin

In addition, there is a class of words that ended with /ɑ/ but dropped the ending later. When taking suffixes, this vowel emerges again.

kat + n → katan instead of aktan

The epenthetic /ɑ/ occurs also before words which consist of a single consonant and disappears when the word takes suffixes beginning with a vowel.

aj
aj + an → jan

Vowel mutation

Old Katäfalsen had the additional phoneme /ħ/, which has disappeared in Modern Katäfalsen but has left still observable effects. We already know that the sequences /ɑj/, /ɑw/, /ɑːj/ and /ɑːw/ yield diphthongs. Moreover, whenever one of the phonemes /j/, /w/ and /ħ/ are syllable codae, they melt into the preceding vowel and cause the mutations summarised in the following table:

Sound changes from Old Katäfalsen

A lot of the complexity of Katäfalsen arises out of the sound changes from Old to Modern Katäfalsen. So it is reasonable to consider these before occupying oneself with morphological processes in Modern Katäfalsen. In the following, we shall leave the exact pronunciations out of consideration.

Old Katäfalsen had six vowel phonemes: /ɑ, i, u, ɑː, iː, uː/. The consonant inventory was very similar to Modern Katäfalsen but had two additional phonemes /ħ/ and /ʔ/. In contrast to Modern Katäfalsen, the syllable structure was KV(K), i.e. onsets were mandatory. Due to previous loss of word final vowels, words always had to end with a consonant, the only exception being word final /ɑ/.

The sound changes took place in different phases:

Phase 1: Loss of geminated consonants

CC > ħC

Phase 2: Lowering of short vowels, loss of word final ɑ, fusion of syllable final ħ, j, w

i > e

iː / iħ / iy / iːħ / iːy > i

u > o

uː / uħ / uw / uːħ / uːw > u

ɑħ / ɑːħ > ɑː

ɑːj > ɑj

ɑːw > ɑw

iw / uy / iːw / uːy > y

ɑ > ∅ (word final)

Phase 3: Loss of ħ and ʔ