Khaz

Phonetics and phonology

Consonants

Consonantal phonemes of Khaz

		Labial	Dental	Palatal	Velar	Uvular
Nasal		m	n
Stop		p pʰ b bʱ	t d		k kʰ g gʱ
Fricative		f	s z	ʃ		(χ) (ʁ)
Trill			r1			(ʀ)
Approximant				j

1. The /r/ phoneme may be realised as either an alveolar trill (r), a uvular trill (ʀ), a voiced uvular fricative (ʁ), or a voiceless uvular fricative (χ).

Vowels

Vowel phonemes

	Front	Central	Back
Closed	i		u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

All vowels come in both long and short variants. Long vowels are written with a caron (â, ê, î, ô, û). The length distinction is phonemic, e.g. azbâzún (‘I write’) versus azbazún (‘That I may write’)

Grammar

Morphology

Verbal morphology

Verbs are inflected for tense (present, past, future), mood (indicative, optative, imperative), and voice (active, passive). Generally, verbal roots are of the fashion CVC- which are then built on to form the relevant mood-inflected stem either by a process of vowel lengthening or by aspiration of the final consonant. These are the conjugated finitely by affixing voice, person and tense markers.

Finite verbs

Firstly, to construct the verb, the appropriate stem has to be derived from the root. The indicative stem is formed by lengthening the root vowel (CVC- → CVːC-) whereas the optative mood is formed by aspirating the final consonant (CVC- → CVCʰ-). After this step has been performed, if the verb is desired to be passive, an a- will be prefixed. Finally, the relevant person prefixes are added together with the appropriate tense suffix.

The person prefixes are the same across all categories save the imperative and are given in this table.

person	singular	plural
1	az-	karaz-
2	uz-	karuz-
3	iz-	kariz-

The tense suffixes are invariable. For the present (pres) add -ún, the future (fut) -án, and for the past (pst) -át.

The imperative mood is marked by prefixing tar- for the second person singular and kar- for the plural to the optative mood stem. No tense markers are added.

Thus, a fully inflected or finite verb may look like this:

azabakhún ‘I wish to be seen’ from √bak-

tarmah ‘Know!’ from √mah-

Infinitive verbs

There are several kinds of infinitives, firstly the simple ones, which formally correspond to the stems of the finite verbs and then the complex ones, which are usually formed from the root itself.

The simple infinitives are of the same form as the voice inflected stems, i.e., they are identical to finite verbs stripped of their person and tense markers. E.g., bāk ‘to see’, bakh ‘wish to see’, abāk ‘to be seen’ (< √bak-).

The complex infinitives is a class made up of two kinds of infinitives. One is the verbal noun which denotes the verbal action pure and simple, the other the infinitive of purpose.

The verbal noun (vnoun) is formed by adding -ín to the root. It denotes the action pure and simple and does not engage in verb syntax. As it readily exposes the root, it is also used as the lemma form for all verbs.

bakín ‘the act of seeing’

The infinitive of purpose (prps) is formed by adding -áyim to the root. This form is used in conjunction with verbs of motion to indicate purpose.

zirakáyim azfârún êbuyâkhrôm ‘I travel to the fortress to explore’

Nominal morphology

Nouns are marked for both case and number. The inflections always fully harmonise with the final vowel in the word stem with the exception of the possessive case, which only does so partially. There is an opposition between front (e, i) and back vowels (a, o, u) which is reflected in the final vowel of the polysyllabic suffixes (a/u vs. i). All but the final vowel harmonises with the vowel of the last syllable in a word. A word with a nominative ending in -â will in the accusative plural have -amaz. Likewise, a word ending in -ô will have -omaz as its accusative plural.

Noun declension
case	singular	plural
Nom.	-Ø	-Vz
Acc.	-Vm	-VmVz
Poss.	-Vlun	-Vlunaz
Cons.	-VzVl	-VkVzVl

ânaya silver
case	singular	plural
Nom.	ânaya	ânayaz
Acc.	ânayam	ânayamaz
Poss.	ânayalun	ânayalunaz
Cons.	ânayazul	ânayakazul

êkêš vessel
case	singular	plural
Nom.	êkêš	êkêšez
Acc.	êkêšem	êkêšemiz
Poss.	êkêšelun	êkêšelunaz
Cons.	êkêšezil	êkêšekezil

Derivational morphology

Augmentatives and diminutives

Nominal augmentatives are formed with the infix -nV-, where V stands for a short echo vowel. Generally, it is spliced in before the last syllable, as in the following examples.

êbuyâkhrô (‘fortress’) and êbuyânakhrô (‘castle’, ‘great fortress’)

arûza (‘mound’) and arûnuza (‘hill’).

Nominal diminutives are formed by suffixing -mô. Occasionally the stem is clipped, as in the second example.

têph (‘drop’) and têphmô (‘droplet’), as found in the flower name ašitêphmô (‘snowdroplet’).

efâyamri (‘sea voyage’) and efâyamô (‘short naval excursion’)