Rokadong

Rokadong Rokadong
Progress: 74%
Type
Agglutinative
Alignment
Austronesian
Head direction
Initial	Mixed		Final
Primary word order
Subject-verb-object
Tonal
No
Declensions
No
Conjugations
Yes
Genders
None
Verbs conjugate according to...
Voice		Mood
Person		Number
Tense		Aspect

Rokadong (IPA: [ɾokadoŋ]) is a Nentan language spoken in western Quillan. As one of the primary languages of the Quill Kingdom, Rokadong is spoken by over 50,000,000 people, mostly Kana kanvas, as a first language.

Kanvas are a species of cat-like anthropomorphic beings unique to Spectradom, the world in which Rokadong is placed, and Rokadong reflects that in some ways. However, the language is 100% human-compatible, as the virtually-identical-to-human figure and sketch species also use it.

Introduction

Rokadong is my first conlang, first started in 2020 as part of my worldbuilding projects. Specifically, it is linked to my project "Drawn to AfterLife," though the language itself may see use in my other projects. It is one of the three notable languages of DTAL, alongside the as-yet very incomplete Nentan language Kairitelan and Gomensayan language Liðakuin.

Rokadong, like all of my serious conlangs, is meant to be similar to natural languages in terms of scope. It is primarily inspired by Malay, but also draws significant inspiration from Spanish and Japanese.

This is a work of love and I ask any readers that, outside of grammatical mistakes, they do not make any edits without my premission. This work is protected by copyright, and I do plan on using it in monetized material; this wiki is a service both for myself and for any future fans.

Etymology

Rokadong is a contraction of "dong to rokasela," meaning "Rokasela's language." Rokasela refers to the six major islands of the Acrylla Archipelago, where Rokadong originated, and apocryphally, may also refer to the six extensions from the core of a kanva's body: two arms, two legs, a head, and a tail.

Phonology

Main article: Rokadong phonology

Consonants

Consonant phonemes

	Labial		alveolar		Post- alveolar/ palatal		Velar		Uvular		Glottal
Nasal		m		n		ɲ		ŋ
Stop	p	b	t	d	t͡ʃ	d͡ʒ	k	ɡ			ʔ
Fricative	f	v	s	z	ʃ						h
Approximant				(ɹ)		j		w
Lateral				l
Trill				(r)						(ʀ)		(ʢ̠ᵐ)
Tap				ɾ

Notes

• /ɾ/ is a highly variable sound, with exact realization depending on dialect and surroundings:
  • [r], the "long r", is usually found morpheme-initially as well as in clusters of /ɾ l/.
  • [ɹ], the "vowel r", is found morpheme-finally in some dialects.
  • [ʀ], the "growl r", is marginally phonemic, as some words in some dialects retain it instead of it merging. It may also appear in imperative or otherwise forceful speech as an allophone of /ɾ/.
  • [ʢ̠], the "purr r", is usually also labialized, if not produced with an entirely closed mouth, which is why it appears as ʢ̠ᵐ in the chart. This sound is true glottal, and thus is not possible for humans to reproduce, as the only method humans have of producing a glottal trill is through vowels, which are produced with an open mouth. However, it can be imitated through a variety of means if desired, and often is merged with one or more of [r ʀ m], even for kanva speakers.
• Nasal consonants lose their contrast before stop consonants. However, they still contrast in morpheme-final position, so /ŋ/ is still considered phonemic.
• /h/ is frequently elided between unlike vowels.
• /s, z, (t)ʃ, dʒ/ palatalize to [ʃ~ɕ, ʒ~ʑ, (t)ɕ, dʑ]] before /i, j/, though in some dialects this is rarer for /s, z/.
• In Pahang Rokadong and Oceanic Rokadong dialects, [s, z] may vary with non-sibilant equivalents [θ, ð], especially morpheme-finally. The latter used to be phonemic, but merged with the former, now only appearing as an allophone of it. These dialects are described as "tékuhasa" ("all S"). In Continental Rokadong dialects, assibilation of /θ/ is complete, and only [s, z] remain.

Vowels

Vowel phonemes

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i iː		u uː
Mid	e eː	(ə)	o oː
Open		a aː

Notes

• /e, o/ may be realized as [e̞, o̞].
• /i, u, e, o/ may be opened in the final syllable of a morpheme if it is closed, to any of [i~ɪ~e~ɛ, u~ʊ~o~ɔ, e~ɛ, o~ɔ] respectively, though this is substantially more common for /i, u/ than for /e, o/.
• Morpheme-final short /a/ becomes [ə] in most dialects, but some perform this change on all unstressed short /a/.

Prosody

Rokadong is generally described as mora-timed, with short vowels and coda sonorants each providing one mora to the syllable, and long vowels and diphthongs providing two moras. However, timing may sway toward syllable-timing in certain dialects and speaking styles. Particularly for Sanenyandoka, the dialect most well-known for syllable timing, this phenomenon is known as "raisendoka" (literally "gun speech").

Stress and pitch

Rokadong is a dynamic-accent language. Accented syllables may be both louder and pitched up compared to unaccented syllables. For the rest of this section, the volume part will be referred to as "stress" and the pitch part will be referred to as "pitch". Accent is phonemic in Rokadong.

Stress is usually on the syllable containing the penultimate mora. As such, the ultimate syllable usually receives the stress if it is closed or has a long vowel, else the penultimate syllable does. In compounded words, only the final accented syllable is stressed. Since morphemes are comprised of up to three syllables, this is generally described as stress falling on one of the last three syllables of a word.

Rokadong does have pitch accent to some degree, however, usually the stressed syllable is also the one that begins a pitch accent (that is, its pitch is heightened). The difference, however, is that pitch will affect the next vowel if the vowel of the accented syllable is short, as the entire accented mora will have high pitch, the pitch only falling on the subsequent mora (which may be another syllable). Additionally, in compounded morphemes (where a word consists of two or more morphemes), the pitch part will not be neutralized, even though the stress will almost always be neutralized. Instead, compound words generally only contain one pitch-change (that is, once the first pitch-accented mora is reached, the pitch stays high until the final pitch-accented mora), though some words will receive the pitch accents they would normally have as single words, which is randomly distributed. Some morphemes, usually those that are monosyllabic, will not have any pitch accent whatsoever, and are referred to as nikjairi (zero sound).

In the Contionary sections on Rokadong, syllables that receive a pitch but not stress will be marked as secondary stress.

Phonotactics

Rokadong is a (C)V(C) language for the most part, though the final C in a word may also be clusters of a stop followed by /ɾ/. V can be a short vowel, a long vowel, or a diphthong. A more full description of Rokadong's syllable structure would be (C)(j)V(ː/C/Pɾ), where C is a consonant, j is /j/, V is a vowel, and Pɾ is a stop-/ɾ/ sequence. The /ɾ/ in an Pɾ sequence can be presumed syllabic, however, because in addition to being phoned as [Pɾə] in most dialects, whenever a syllable ends in a stop and the next syllable starts with /ɾ/, the preceding syllable is defective and cannot receive pitch accent. In other Nentan languages, similar things occur whenever two stop consonants (or a stop consonant and a consonant that evolved from a stop in that position) are adjacent, so /ɾ/ is sometimes analyzed as a stop consonant.

/h ʔ/ are in complementary distribution, with the former only being permissible in the onset of syllables, and the latter only being permissible in the coda of syllables, and only before consonants or at the end of words. Additionally, /ŋ/ merged with /n/ at the start of syllables, while the opposite occured with /ɲ/. Therefore, /ɲ ŋ/ are also in complementary distribution when not assimilated.

Rokadong's diphthongs are /aj aw oj ja jo ju/. Only the latter three may appear with a syllable coda after them.

When a morpheme's initial vowel is preceded by another vowel, the boundary is often realized as hard attack. However, /h/ almost never causes hard attack, even if it gets elided.

The following strings of phonemes that may occur due to affixes or compounding are not allowed:

• Any phoneme followed by itself; if a conflict occurs, one is dropped for consonants. Vowel handling under this rule differs between dialects, though usually either they combine to a long vowel, or the latter vowel is given hard attack.
• Two consecutive consonants that differ only in voicing; if a conflict occurs, then the voiced vowel is kept unless the prior vowel is short and unstressed, then the unvoiced consonant is kept.
• Two nasal consonants; if a conflict occurs, then the coda nasal is dropped. However, in many dialects, this does not apply when the second nasal is /m/ and the first nasal is not.
• The sequences /ji, wu, wo, uw, ow, uo, and ou/ are not allowed unless there is a syllabic break between them. If needed, the semivowel is dropped or becomes /v/.

Orthography

Main article: Rokadong orthography

Rokadong may be either written using the Latin alphabet or the native Rokadong abugida.

Romanization

Rokadong consonants are written as seen in the IPA, with the following exceptions:

• /ɲ/ is written as ny, except when before <c> or <j>, in which case the y is dropped.
• /ŋ/ is written as ng
• /tʃ/ is written as c
• /dʒ/ is written as j
• /ɾ/ is written as r (this includes all of its allophones)
• /ʃ/ is written as sh
• /j/ is written as y in the onset (and in i-on-glide diphthongs) and i in the coda (in i-off-glide diphthongs)
• /w/ is written as w in the onset and u in the coda (in diphthongs)
• /ʔ/ is written as h

Rokadong short vowels are written as they are seen in the IPA, while long vowels are written with an acute accent over the short vowel being lengthened. The diphthongs /aj, aw, oj/ may be confused with the syllable-boundary monophthong pairs /a.i, a.u, o.i/, so in situations where the latter is preferred, the syllable boundary is written with an apostrophe. Assimilated nasals are written as they are spoken, except when separated by a dash.

Native script

IPA Name P p [p] pa B b [b] ba T t [t] ta D d [d] da C c [t͡ʃ] ca J j [d͡ʒ] ja K k [k] ka G g [g] ga " ' h [ʔ] ahha F f [f] fa V v [v] va

IPA Name S s [s] sa Z z [z] za Q sh [ʃ] sha H h [h] ha L l [l] la Y y [j] ya W w [w] wa R r [ɾ] ra M m m [m] ma N n n [n] na { [ ny [ɲ] nya

IPA Name } ] ng [ŋ] ang Diacritics (on ka) K KA a á [a aː] iK IK i í [i iː] iK IK u ú [u uː] iK IK e é [e eː] iK IK o ó [o oː] KiA Kau KoiA ai au oi [aj aw oj] Kx no vowel

Morphology

Nouns

Root noun morphemes are usually one to three syllables long. There are many derivational affixes in Rokadong as well, including but not limited to:

• jan- - instrument of the root (occasionally also fills the role of -sona)
• -sona - actor or someone characterized by the root
• vota- - collectivity, similarity, instrument of the root
• -an - object or place characterized by the root (occasionally also fills the role of vota-)
• i(t)-/-(k)il - quality or abstraction of the root, often used to derive adjectives
• fen-/fer- - abstraction, place (especially with -an), goal, or result

Nouns do not decline for gender. In fact, many Rokadong nouns for animals or people do not have a natural gender by default, especially for native words. Nouns also do not decline for plurality, using numerals instead if context demands it. Full reduplication, or numeral-like determiners like unya and tékuha, could also be used to pluralize. However, full reduplication does not always result in a plural word.

Particles

Particles generally are applied to nouns. An unmarked noun is said to be in the direct case - as Rokadong uses Austronesian alignment, both the agent and object of a verb may be unmarked if it is syntactically redundant. The other cases are marked by a particle preceding the noun (and its measure word and numeral, if present):

• Genitive to, used for possession, apposition, origin, reference, and description
• Ergative ká, used for the agent of a verb
• Accusative pá, used for the patient (direct object) of a verb
• Locative and instrumental gun, used for the location of a verb and the means by which it was performed
• Dative laki, used for the indirect object or the benefactor of a verb

These particles become prefix-like proclitics when they apply to pronouns, with gun and laki shortening to gu and la. However, they could be considered proclitics in all cases, as they frequently are pronounced as if they are prefixes, especially given that outside of careful pronunciation, the final vowel of these case particles replaces the starting vowel of nouns that start with /a/.

Syntax

Constituent order

In transitive sentences, Rokadong tends to place the agent before the verb and the objects after the verb. However, Rokadong does not have a subject in the Indo-European sense, so this word order is notated "AVO" rather than "SVO". Additionally, the verb can be moved from agent trigger into patient trigger with the prefix ká. Both the agent and direct object can also be marked individually as such with ká and pá respectively. As a result, the word order of Rokadong is relatively free, though AVO is the most common word order, although OVA is common too, and VAO is rare but not unheard of. The first of the three is the topic of the sentence.

Noun phrase

Adjectives and determiners follow the noun they apply to. Much as in the natural language Spanish, numerals are often considered adjectives, but are placed before the noun, rather than after it. This means that even though tékuha and unya express an amount of something, they are determiners and not numerals, as they follow the noun. Prepositions and case particles precede the noun they apply to.

When placed in the genitive, a noun is considered an adjective, and is placed after the noun it applies to. That is, the phrase "cup of sugar" translates to ruhung to kairi, not kairi to ruhung.

Verb phrase

Adverbs are considered a form of adjective, and follow the verb they apply to. However, unlike adjectives, adverbs take on the same tense affix as the verb they apply to. This is likely a holdover from when all adjectives were stative verbs.

Other resources

• Rokadong on Star Dragon's Den