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 space colony 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

Too gibby? Let's keep the 3 lengths + some grammatical features but change the phonology a bit; it shouldn't have the spirantization

Phonology

Ditab has

• 4 consonants:
  • voiced rostral/labial stop, or voiced choanal/uvular stop: b~G
  • voiced apico-palatal/postdental stop: d
  • voiceless apico-palatal/alveolar stop: t
  • voiceless lamino-palatal/velar stop: c~k
• a large inventory of vowels: 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 (for humans: [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 củ-, 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. Cleft constructions are common.