Ditab

Ditab /diθ̠av/ is a language of Méich Bhaonnáiqh inspired by Iau, Proto-Lakes Plain and Semitic languages (particularly chanted Tiberian Hebrew). It's the ceremonial language of the city-state Bădháchôth. It is intended to be speakable by both humans and birds.

Todo

A reading tradition of Ditab with a Modern Hebrew accent: no tones or vowel or consonant length (so there will be a lot of ambiguity; Ditab isn't actually spoken that way)

• odhubh cabhechoth (fill in tones and vowel lengths) -> oduv kvekhot

Phonology

Ditab has

• 5 consonants:
  • rostral/labial stop: b
  • voiced apico-palatal/alveolar stop: d
  • voiceless apico-palatal/alveolar stop: t
  • voiceless lamino-palatal/dorsal stop: c~k
  • syringeal/glottal stop: 2
• a large inventory of vowels (about as many as Khmer): i ị e ẹ a ạ ọ o ụ u /i ɪ e ɛ æ ɑ ɔ o ʊ u/ + nasalized, -j, -w counterparts + ă (shva na3, by default /ä/)
  • birds pronounce /ɔ o ʊ u -w/ as their unrounded counterparts
• 6 pitch accent patterns (level, rising, falling, falling-rising, rising-falling, one like Swedish tone 2) (they should be loosely modeled after tropes) (long and overlone tones should be different; some tones have two nuclei like pashtayim and qadma v'azla)

There is a three way length distinction as well, in both consonants and vowels.

All four stops have fricative allophones /v ð̠ (post-dental) θ̠ (alveolar) χ/ after vowels, unless they're geminated.

Word structure

Final stress like Tiberian Hebrew

Most words are underlyingly either open syllable -V:, or "closed syllable" with nucleus -V: and allowed "codas" -C, -V, -VC, -(unstressed syllable)

Orthography

Ditab has an ASCII friendly orthography in addition to the 'default' one, where some vowels are written with consonant letters. It also has a Hebrew orthography with cantillation marks for tones and weird matres lectionis (like nun, mem, samekh, ayin etc.)

Morphology

Ditab morphology is entirely suffixing except for adjectives. Adjectives are a small closed class and work by infixing and/or changing the vowels in the noun according to a predictable umlaut pattern.

There is no grammatical gender, and two declension classes:

• Class one nouns mark the construct state with the suffix -bẽ́.
• Class two nouns mark the absolute state with -bẽ́.

Verbs inflect by aspect but not tense. Curiously, the imperfective and perfective forms are interchanged when the verb follows the interrogative particle kủ-, the negative particle bách- or the conjunctive particle adhùbh-, or other preverbs/conjunctions, reminiscent of Old Irish verb allomorphy.

Ditab is borderline polysynthetic in that some verbs have to incorporate their objects. Ditab also uses bipersonal inflections.

Syntax

Ditab is strictly OVS.