Laceyiam

Laceyiam, or Chlegdarimė hėnna ("language of the Chlegdarims"), or, in its modern standard version, Laltīmāhei hėnna ("language of Laltīmāhia") is the most spoken language on the planet of Calémere (Lac.: Lillańjānna). It is the official language of Laltīmāhia, the liturgical language of the Yūnialtia, and a lingua franca in many areas of the continent of Isungatsuaq (Lac.: Kaissmūhai). Despite the fact that local vernaculars in most of Laltīmāhia are in fact daughter languages of Laceyiam or Laceyiam-based creoles, Laceyiam is a fully living language as every Chlegdarim is bilingual in it and in the local vernacular, and in fact in the last half century Laceyiam itself has been replacing some vernaculars as internal migrations have become more and more common. About 1,4 billion people on the planet define themselves as native Laceyiam speakers, more than for any other Calémerian language.

Terminological note: hereafter I'll use Laceyiami as an adjective for things related to the language, Chlegdarim for things related to the Chlegdarim people, Laltīmāhei for things related to the nation of Laltīmāhia and Yūnialtei for things related to the Yūnialtia, the religion of the Chlegdarims. (Still, keep in mind these definitions often overlap)

External history

Laceyiam is an a priori language I (lili21) started creating - in this current version - in January 2016, but actually it is the latest version of the conlang for my main conculture. I started sketching conlangs back when I was 9 or 10 but only started interesting myself into linguistics seven years later - in 2014 - and since then I started doing more "serious" conlangs (the earlier ones were more like relexes of my native language, Italian). Ideally, Laceyiam is the refined version of all of these languages, but except for a few recurring words (like maila (water) or hulyn (woman)) it is only comparable to those languages I have been creating since July 2015 - in fact, the nearest previous version, which I began in October 2015, was already called Laceyiam.

Anyway, while being a priori, there are definitely many noticeable influences from natlangs. Sanskrit, Lithuanian, and Icelandic are the most obvious ones, and also Danish, PIE, Old Tupi, and Japanese had a moderate influence. However, I tried to do something that while having much in common with all of these languages, is also strikingly different (the Austronesian morphosyntactic alignment, morphological expression of evidentiality and more broadly the particular emphasis on moods probably being the most noticeable things). Laceyiam is mainly thought for my conworld, but more than any other conlang of mine it is quite on the border between an art- and a heartlang.

Classification

Laceyiam is a member of the Cis-Tahianshima language family (Lac.: Yaivnemiði hėnnai), which originates from an ancestral people whose homeland was located on some island groups east of the island of Tahianshima (Lac.: Tāhiańśīma), the second-largest on Calémere (roughly comparable in size, geographical characteristics, and location to New Guinea).

Laceyiam is the closest language to Proto-Cis-Tahianshima (PCT; in Lac.: Indayaivnemiði hėnna), but that's likely because the first attestation of Laceyiam dates to 2000 years before the second-oldest attested Cis-Tahianshima language (Tarueb on the other side of the planet); in fact that's a longer time frame than the 1100 to 1300 years that, according to most Calémerian linguists, divide late common PCT from the earliest attestations of Laceyiam.

As Laceyiam evolved while the Chlegdarims migrated east and then southeast from their original Cis-Tahianshima homeland, they had contacts with lots of other peoples with whom they also mixed to some extent. This, in addition to the loss of contact with the other speakers of Proto-Cis-Tahianshima dialects (that in fact went through a phase called "Late Eastern PCT", marked by some sound changes shared by all Cis-Tahianshima languages except Laceyiam), resulted in a series of huge changes in morphology and especially vocabulary that set Laceyiam apart from most other Cis-Tahianshima languages. Taruebic and Pakpatic languages underwent a similar history through a later migration from the Cis-Tahianshima homeland in the opposite direction; the other two Cis-Tahianshima branches, Mid-Oceanic and Upper Oceanic have had less outside interactions as they only spread across islands in the Great Ocean (Lac.: Nemiðārṭya).

Vernaculars, pronunciations, and dialects

Being a classical language first spoken some millenniums ago, Laceyiam today does not have true “dialects”. As said before, the most informal form of Laceyiam is usually a local vernacular, daughter language of Laceyiam, but in usual terminology they are not truly distinguished: the term Chlegdarimė hėnna, often used to refer to Laceyiam, may be used for any language spoken by Chlegdarims, thereby including the vernaculars. All vernaculars are usually known as Chlegdarimė hlūðė hėnnai (singular: — hlūði hėnna), literally “local Chlegdarim language(s)”, and people colloquially call their vernacular speech with the name of their village, city, or region, as opposed to the Laltīmāhei hėnna - the common language of all of Laltīmāhia, that is standard Laceyiam. The diglossia between them often has blurry borders, as two people speaking may keep code-switching depending on the topic, a common example being in schools: teachers and professors teach their lessons in Laceyiam, but they usually speak in vernacular language of any other topic even with the students.

While Laceyiam does not have local dialects, there are speech varieties; Laceyiam terminology just calls them ńäytharaṃsai (singular: ńäytharam), “pronunciations”, but differences are also lexical and, in some cases, even grammatical; the written form is based on Classical Laceyiam (Chløyęe Laceyiam), but no modern pronunciation follows it. Standard Laceyiam - the Laltīmāhei hėnna - is based on a typical Southeastern pronunciation, formally the one of Kaylamārśikha, capital of Laltīmāhia, around year 60 of the Fourth Era; today the pronunciation of Kaylamārśikha has diverged somewhat and the closest “natural” pronunciation to Standard Laceyiam is the one of Līlta, in the South, the third largest city in the country. 

The main pronunciation differences are the “digraphs” <hv hj hr hl> and the high vowels <i ī y ȳ>; these were /ɦv ʑ ɦʀ ɦɴ̆ i iː y yː/ in Classical Laceyiam; to make some examples, Standard Laceyiam has respectively /f ɕ ʁ ʕ̯ ʲi ʲiː i iː/ while the Northern Plains pronunciation (the one with the most speakers) has /kf ʃ ʁ ɴ̆ i iː y yː/. Some other differences include:

• the merger of Classical and Standard /ʂ ɕ/ (and usually also Classical /ʑ/ which often merged into /ɕ/ like in the Standard) into a single /ʃ/ - this happens for example in the Northern Plains, but also throughout most of the North and some lone areas like Kahimithan diocese in the Southwest;
• the pronunciation of /ʀ/, which often has up to four allophones depending on context, all geographically varying - for example word-initial /ʀ/ may be one of [ʝ ʀ r ɾ ɻ] depending on the area;
• the pronunciation of various vowels, like for example /aː/ as [ɔː] in the Central Plains pronunciation or /eː/ as [ɛə̯] in most of the Western Deserts.

Speaking strictly of Laceyiam dialects, there has been, historically, an unattested dialect called murta dialect (murta ga viṣandaira), contrasting with Classical Laceyiam which, in these contexts, is called marta dialect (marta ga viṣandaira). The murta dialect is attested through some doublets in Laceyiam where one word has been derived apparently irregularly from Proto-Cis-Tahianshima: the most famous one is the one that gives the name to these dialects, marta/murta, both meaning “city” - “marta” is by far the most common term in Laceyiam, but “murta” is widely used in toponyms: this word is an evolution from PCT *kʷʰə₁rta (closed area), where *ə₁ became /a/ in the marta dialect (later Archaic and then Classical Laceyiam, probably *ə₁ > *o > a) but /u/ in the murta dialect; PCT *ə₂ likewise became marta /e/ but murta /i/. Some notable other differences include:

• PCT *ā₁ > marta /au̯/ but murta /aː/;
• PCT palatovelars, velars and labiovelars all merged into /k kʰ g gʱ/ in the murta dialect; the marta dialect regularly reflects palatovelars as /c͡ɕ c͡ɕʰ ɟ͡ʑ ɟ͡ʑʱ/, velars as /k kʰ ɦ gʱ/ and has various reflexes for labiovelars, most commonly /ɦv m g m/;
• PCT *sk > marta /sk/ but murta /ʂ/;
• PCT word-final *jə is usually lost in marta (but leaves i-umlaut on a preceding vowel if possible) but becomes /e/ in murta;
• PCT word-initial prevocalic *s remains /s/ in murta, while marta has many possible reflexes depending on the following vowel (probably *s > *tsʲ > various), compare e.g. PCT *sā₁skjə (bird) > regular marta täyska (bird; through intermediate *täysk) and murta-word sāṣe (flying creature).

History

Proto-Cis-Tahianshima

The history of Laceyiam is tightly linked with the one of the Chlegdarim people and it is usually divided in the following periods:

• Proto-Cis-Tahianshima (PCT for short);
• Pre-Laceyiam;
• Pre-Classical or Archaic Laceyiam (with the first attestation);
• Classical Laceyiam;
• Post-classical developments.

The oldest stage we can be sure of is Proto-Cis-Tahianshima, or Indayaivnemiði hėnna, the latest common ancestor of all Cis-Tahianshima languages. It was most probably spoken 4000 to 3600 years ago in some island groups east of Tahianshima (Lac.: Tāhiańśīma, the second-largest island on the planet), in the middle of the Greater Ocean (Nemiðārṭya). Note that the term Cis-Tahianshima has a Western Calémerian origin, and it means “on this side” of Tahianshima for Western people (Evandorians); from a Chlegdarim perspective it’s the other side — anyway, Laceyiam and its descendants are the only Cis-Tahianshima languages spoken west of the island. The Laceyiam term for Cis-Tahianshima is Yaivnemiði, meaning “of the whole Nemið ocean”.Note also that no Cis-Tahianshima language is native of the island of Tahianshima itself, even though today the island’s lingua franca is Laceyiam and the local vernacular is a Laceyiam-based creole.

Through reconstructed vocabulary we can also hypothesize which kind of society the Proto-Cis-Tahianshima people had. They were primitive but due to their insular location were skilled navigators; their atolline and insular habitat is confirmed by the huge number of words relating to it, like *tuŋa₁ (atoll), *ħō₁nə (lagoon), *ta₂fā (islet), three terms distinguishing different depths of lagoon water (*dotepō₁kə, *ve₁mpeg, *ną₂gnos); they also had the word *ja₁ŋwī for large boats (probably used for travelling through different islands) and *na₂sət for smaller ones; *ŋotirō₁ is a wave (and possibly also “solar ray”), *kurū₂m (guano), and no word at all for “mountain” or “hill”. They had rudimentary weapons like the *gʷūm₂poxim (harpoon) and the *kōɣəndsą₁(s) (knife). They lived in villages called *ɟō₂n-bʱeg with leaders called *ɟun-bʱi-spā₁r. Military leaders were called *šimvā₂tə (reconstructible from Mid-Oceanic languages and Laceyiam) or *spār-dū₂s (from the other branches), and also extremely important were *šjā₂mejə, guardians of boats - this latter root even became the verb “to save” in Pakpatic and Taruebic languages and the standard honorific yāmei in Laceyiam. The primitiveness of their society is stressed by the fact that they didn’t wear any clothes - there is no reconstructible word for any type of clothes, and also some oceanic islanders didn’t use clothes by the time - 200 years ago - they first had contact with Western civilizations. Still there are three reconstructible body ornament words (none of these survived into Laceyiam, though): *dū₁stes (necklace — only in Mid- and Upper Oceanic), *pōnā₁bə (branch or stick inserted into an ear), and *fode₁g (penis sheath). This latter object probably was a status symbol, as Pakpatic and Taruebic languages reflect it as “family leader”.

Proto-Cis-Tahianshima speakers moved mostly eastwards, colonizing (or conquering) most of the islands in the Ocean east of Tahianshima, and northwards up to the island-continent of Écáreton, and these dialects later split into four different branches:

• the Mid-Oceanic languages are spoken on most of the islands of the Great Ocean, mostly spread longitudinally for two thirds of the way from Tahianshima to the Western continents of Védren and Evandor on the east side of the ocean;
• the Upper Oceanic languages are spoken in those island groups north of the Middle Oceanic languages, and also in the southern part of Écáreton;
• the Taruebic and the Pakpatic languages’ speakers migrated east and eventually reached first northwestern Védren - where the Pakpatic languages are now spoken - and southwestern Evandor, current homeland of the Taruebic languages.

The fifth dialectal group of PCT was spoken by those speakers who moved westwards, eventually reaching Tahianshima itself: these are the ancestors of the Chlegdarim people and their PCT dialect was the earliest stage of what today is Laceyiam (in a Western perspective, this stage may be called Proto-Dryadic or Proto-Imuniguronian, Imúnigúrona being the common Western name for Laltīmāhia).

Pre-Laceyiam

Laceyiam had (like also Taruebic and Pakpatic on the other side of the world) peculiar developments that set it apart from most other Cis-Tahianshima languages, but given the different geographical area its developments were pretty much unique. Laceyiam is also often closer to PCT in its consonants than any other known sister language, but that’s easily explainable because of its early attestation: the first written examples of Laceyiam date to roughly 3000 years ago, about seven centuries after it supposedly split from other fellow PCT dialects; in comparison, the second oldest attested Cis-Tahianshima language, Old Tarueb, was only attested about 1000 years ago; other Taruebic languages were only clearly attested in the last 500 years and other branches in the last 150.

The Laceyiam split from PCT happened earlier than for all other branches, as all other branches underwent a late-PCT reworking of the pitch accent system, adding another (but in most cases allophonic) tonal distinction and losing the phoneme *ə. This stage is usually known as Late Eastern PCT; PCT as reconstructable from all languages, including Laceyiam, has only a two-tone pitch accent system, written as *V₁ (low-mid tone) and *V₂ (high tone); the lack of a subscript number means that vowel is unstressed. No Cis-Tahianshima language keeps this tone system today, but most of them reflects the different accents with different vowel qualities. Laceyiam is particularly helpful in reconstructing it, not just because it didn’t undergo the Late Eastern PCT pitch accent system reworking, but also because most pitch-accented vowels have different reflexes (except for high vowels). For example, PCT had six [a]-phonemes: *a₁ *a₂ *a *ā₁ *ā₂ *ā. Laceyiam reflects them as such: *a₁, *a > a — *a₂ > ai — *ā₁ > au — *ā₂, *ā  > ā.

Laceyiam, anyway, extensively modified its vowel system through regressive umlaut and assimilation of *j and *w glides, and also the loss of *ə created lots of consonant clusters and consonant-final words, which were all later simplified in some way. Another notable change is the loss of the various [o]-phonemes into another, mostly into /a/. Syncope and the loss of phonemic stress led to different derivations of a same PCT root being often obscured in Laceyiam.

As for consonants, Laceyiam is the only Cis-Tahianshima language (excluding its own descendants) that kept the four-way contrast in stops (unvoiced and voiced, plain and aspirate) and four out of five PCT points of articulation: labials, dentals, palatals and velars were kept, but labiovelars merged into different phonemes depending on nearby vowels. However Laceyiam gained a new fifth point of articulation for stops, the retroflex one, mostly from sequences of a dental consonant plus *r. Laceyiam is also the only language in its family that reflects directly the PCT phoneme *ħ, whose realization is still unclear but was most probably [ħ], [ʜ], or [ʕ]: in the vast majority of cases, PCT *ħ corresponds to Laceyiam <l>, the peculiar nasal (post-)uvular flap /ɴ̆/. This latter phoneme, the most common consonant in Laceyiam, is a reflection of four PCT phonemes: *ħ, *l, *ŋ, and *ŋʷ, as well as other sources like *r word-initially and in dissimilation, or changes like *kr *kʰr > kl. The common cluster /c͡ɕʰɴ̆/ <chl>, as in the word Chlegdarim, arose both from *cr, *cʰr and also from various simplifications after schwa syncope. The three common PCT phonemes *x, *ɣ, and *h were most often deleted but left their trace in the breathy-voiced phonation of the preceding vowel.

Prehistoric language contact

Perhaps more important than phonological changes in the differentiation of (Pre-)Laceyiam from PCT is the extensive language contact it underwent after the migrations began and these speakers lost contact with fellow speakers of other PCT dialects. As said before, these latter dialects soon underwent other changes before linguistic unity broke apart, but these changes didn’t spread to Pre-Laceyiam speakers. On the other hand, their language was heavily influenced by Proto-Mǎng Tì (PMNg for short; Lac.: Indamälti hėnna), spoken by people of present-day Mǎng Tì pọk, a country on the eastern third of the island of Tahianshima (as a side note, Laceyiam is extremely important in the reconstruction of Proto-Mǎng Tì phonology). Lots of PMNg roots entered Laceyiam, not only in order to fill lexical gaps but also replacing meanings of inherited PCT roots that either went lost or changed meaning. PMNg borrowings are thus found even in daily vocabulary, for example weather conditions like duṃda (fog), basic concepts like daya (thing), geographical features like memai (river delta), and even body parts like piāh (elbow). Among body parts that only partially replaced the inherited term, the Laceyiam word for “mouth”, dehān, is a PMNg borrowing, while the inherited PCT term, hairū, came to mean “jaw” (semantic shifts like this one are very common in PCT-descended Laceyiam roots).

PMNg reconstructions and Laceyiam often have 1:1 matches, but these loans help date PCT to Laceyiam sound changes. For example [ɣ] was clearly not a Laceyiam phoneme anymore, as PMNg *ɣ is consistently reflected as Laceyiam /g/ (while PCT *ɣ became /ɦ/ word-initially, breathy-voiced phonation in codas, and /g/ plus breathy-voiced phonation of a preceding vowel when intervocalic). On the other hand, Laceyiam still had phonemic [o], as PMNg *o shows the same development of PCT *o₂/*o. PMNg loans caused the introduction of a new phoneme - the glottal stop - and added many occurrences of voiced aspirated stops (from PMNg implosives) and retroflex consonants (from PMNg *Cr clusters).

During this prehistoric period, the original Proto-Cis-Tahianshima morphology was also radically changed. PCT was moderately agglutinative but used lots of particles and analytic forms; a few different apparently synonymous particles are also reconstructed, but it was definitely much more analytic than Laceyiam is. Laceyiam, in fact, fused together many inherited morphemes and created that way most fusional noun declensions and synthetic verb tenses (for example the future is PCT infinitive + *i₁š- (to take); most tenses are actually verb endings attached to various PCT participles).

PCT also relied a lot on ablaut variations: inflectional ablaut was already somewhat uncommon (but regular) in PCT, but derivational ablaut was extremely common. Laceyiam keeps ablaut much more than all other Cis-Tahianshima languages, but even there in verbs it’s mostly a relic, while ablauting nouns (which also used different endings) were dumped into the fourth declension, and Laceyiam even added some mostly by analogy. Anyway the combination of different evolutions like the *o > a merger, extensive vowel syncope, umlaut that often added even more vowel alternations, the increasing use of the simpler suffixing-only inflections, and, most importantly, the loss of phonemic and movable stress, led to the loss of ablaut as a productive inflectional and derivational system.

Proto-Mǎng Tì itself had two main influences on Laceyiam grammar. The first is the addition of the abessive and substitutive cases - the most regular ones in Laceyiam - by attaching the PMNg postpositions *tyak “without” and *myaŋ “instead of” to the accusative case forms. The second, and by far most important one, is the origin of the exterior and interior verb forms. This feature wasn’t borrowed directly, but made from inherited PCT elements as a kind of “calque” of some PMNg structures, particularly the pairing of static or “uncontrolled” meanings with the reflexive voice. Laceyiam interior endings are in fact derived by the “normal” exterior verb endings with added *nəs, a clitic form of PCT *nō₁ns, a reflexive pronoun.

The arrival on Isungatsuaq

Despite probable intermixing and this extensive contact with the Mǎng Tì-s, the Chlegdarims didn’t remain long on or near Tahianshima island and soon moved westwards into the large archipelago in the southern part of the Sea of Tahianshima (Tāhiańśīmi jāri); this area (roughly cut in half by the Equator) takes about three quarters of the sea between Tahianshima and the continent of Isungatsuaq (to the extent that, while geologically this archipelago and Tahianshima itself already lie on the Oceanic plate, nowadays they are geographically often considered an extension of Isungatsuaq). The Chlegdarims’ last stop before the continent was most possibly Luldakimū island on the 4th parallel south, the southwesternmost main island and largest of the archipelago, and also the nearest to the continent. From there, they probably reached the islands on the continental ridge off today’s Leitāvaja before settling on the Sāńjāyaṇa peninsula - the southernmost tip of Isungatsuaq - and the cay chain south of it.

The Chlegdarims quickly spread across southern Leitāvaja, making contact with a new habitat, mostly made of rainforests and swamps (even more than on Tahianshima) and other civilizations: first of all the so-called Nanaklāri peoples, whose languages have never been directly attested. Their name derives from Nanaklāra, a borough in Kaylamārśikha (Laltīmāhia's capital city and the largest city on the planet) whose name is a toponym linked to a "Nanaklāri" origin. Old Hjøtūchilāmi isn't usually set apart from Nanaklāri languages, but unlike "proper Nanaklāri" it is attested in sparse inscriptions and texts both in Laceyiam and Dzams-bltyod; it was however spoken further west (in present-day Hjøtūchilām) but was another major source language for many loans into Laceyiam, including a huge number of proper personal names. Apropos personal names, the fact almost no common Laceyiam given name is PCT-derived and a good majority is of either Old Hjøtūchilāmi or Nanaklāri origin, most anthropologist think that the Chlegdarims absorbed Nanaklāri and Old Hjøtūchilāmi cultures easily by intermarriage so that ethnic identity “borders” between them became blurred and vanished. The other main influence was Ancient Lelīmuyāńi, the language of Lelīmuyāńa (a historical distinct region, today in northern and northeastern Leitāvaja and extreme southern Lanturlīṭa dioceses), which at the time was the most advanced civilization of the area. Ancient Lelīmuyāńi already had written texts, and in fact the first attestation of the Chlegdarims’ presence is found in an Ancient Lelīmuyāńi text, probably aimed at travelling merchants, which talks about “people of the west” living in the “forested low coastal areas”, which call themselves Cuḷeketazhi (approximation of Chlegdarim) in the language we (the Ancient Lelīmuyāńi people) call “laccaiyam”. The word Laceyiam is in fact an Ancient Lelīmuyāńi borrowing, meaning “voice (iyam) of the sunset (lacca)”, where “sunset” means “west”.

Despite the prehistory of Laceyiam and its descendance from Proto-Cis-Tahianshima being now certified and accepted scientifically, Laceyiam’s date and place of birth are considered respectively the time of the Chlegdarims’ arrival on Isungatsuaq and southern Leitāvaja. This area is in fact the homeland of Chlegdarim civilization, and it is only here that Chlegdarim culture and traditions shaped themselves - including language. The most obvious and most important trace of this in Laceyiam is the huge number of words that entered the Chlegdarims’ daily life: obviously they had the need to describe the nature they found themselves in, a jungle- and swamp-centric environment, most features of which were completely unknown in their previous, sea-based habitat. In fact, most words for equatorial plants, animals, and geographical features are of either Nanaklāri, Old Hjøtūchilāmi, or Ancient Lelīmuyāńi origin (e.g. jaja “igarapé”, māra “mango”, kāmbava “water lily”, ėmīla “tiger”, kėmbe “toucan”, naʔikė “flooded clearwater forest”, heita “durian”, kalńi “sound of a tree branch falling into water”); only few of them have Proto-Mǎng Tì origin (e.g. kami “rose”, dalakām “bamboo”, humba “spice”, tiuʔa “palm”), and only those most related to coastal areas are inherited from PCT (e.g. tėti “island”, jhāva “reef”). Also borrowed are lots of wordsrelated to activities and products (e.g. mānska “glass”) and, most importantly, cultural (e.g. buldhām, the typical Chlegdarim burial and the relative ceremony; talengim, ritual tattoo) and religious terms, most of which have probable Nanaklāri origins. In fact, the Leitāvaji society of the First Era was extremely multicultural, and Nanaklāri languages in the west and Ancient Lelīmuyāńi in the east (the latter being the only written language) were the lingua francas; Laceyiam became more important and ultimately drove the others to extinction mainly for two reasons: the cultural intermixing mentioned before and also because Lėliðaṇīṭa, the Great Prophet of the Yūnialtia, was a Chlegdarim and her language began to be considered holier; the amount of Nanaklāri instead of Ancient Lelīmuyāńi words in Yūnialtei terminology points to her native village, and the areas of her first teachings, being located west of the Kaicedhīma mountains.

Laceyiam up until this point in time is normally defined as Pre-classical Laceyiam: its limit is the late First Era, around the lifetime of Lėliðaṇīṭa, with Nanaklāri and a few Old Hjøtūchilāmi loans being already established, but without substantial Ancient Lelīmuyāńi influence; in the earliest Laceyiam texts (Archaic Laceyiam) we can for example already find the root numbers of Nanaklāri origins (tulūʔa “six” and jaibha “fifteen”) but the number system itself is still hexadecimal (the Classical decimal one was borrowed from Ancient Lelīmuyāńi). Anyway, except for the hexadecimal numeral system, Laceyiam had grammatically already reached its classical and present state.

From Classical Laceyiam to the present day

Classical Age is a vague term in Chlegdarim history, but it embraces the period between the last century of the First Era and the first third of the Second Era. There are four important historical milestones:

• Laceyiam, under Ancient Lelīmuyāńi influence, begins to be a written language;
• The Chlegdarim Inquisition (Høgyṃhjøðaṃlīne), supreme body of the Yūnialtia, is founded;
• The Conquests begin: driven by religious zeal and economical needs, the Chlegdarims begin to conquer neighboring civilizations;
• In the late Classical Age, regional spoken varieties begin to evolve as new vernaculars.

Laceyiam, during the Classical Age, begins to become exactly how it is today. Ancient Lelīmuyāńi loans begin to enter the language en masse, including the new decimal numeral system (which is however formed by a mix of inherited hexadecimal roots and decimal Ancient Lelīmuyāńi and Nanaklāri ones); Ancient Lelīmuyāńi roots remain still today a huge source of learned vocabulary. Classical Age explorations and conquests enriched Laceyiam with knowledge of new habitats, new languages, and related words: in two millenniums, the Chlegdarims unified under a single culture and religion (and politically from the beginning of the Fourth Era, 133 years ago) a huge territory extending for about 40 degrees of latitude and 90 degrees of longitude, about a third of the continent of Isungatsuaq. Attested languages such as Dzams-bltyod, Ancient Varṣāthi, and Ancient Vgorrādńi provided words related to administration, astronomy, politics, warfare, and architecture; unattested languages from the Southwest were also a rich source of words on nature and geography.

In the late Classical Age Laceyiam begins to be a standardized language, in the form that has been Yūnialtei peoples of Chlegdarim culture’s lingua franca ever since, also because of the gradual development of newer vernaculars in the regions of most ancient Chlegdarim hold. Since then the language has mostly only gained new vocabulary - both for geographical and scientific discoveries -, with the only few grammatical “innovations” in certain areas (like the Northern use of infinitive + “to want” instead of the desiderative mood) being actually “contaminations” by vernaculars or adstrata.

Phonology

Consonants

Standard Laceyiam has a slightly above average consonant inventory with, in the most common analysis, 39 phonemes. The consonant analysis followed here does not follow the exact points of articulation, but is the traditional analysis done by native grammarians, grouping consonant phonemes in mostly regular groups. The Laceyiam word for consonant, hīmbeyālia, is a compound of hīmba "colour" and yālia "sound".

	Labials	Dentals	Retroflexes	Palatals	Velars	Laryngeals
Nasals	m	n	ɳ	ɲ		N*
Voiceless plosives	p pʰ	t̪ t̪ʰ	ʈ ʈʰ	c͡ɕ c͡ɕʰ	k kʰ	ʔ
Voiced plosives	b bʱ	d̪ d̪ʱ	ɖ ɖʱ	ɟ͡ʑ ɟ͡ʑʱ	g gʱ
Sibilants		s	ʂ	ɕ
Non-sibilant fricatives	f v	θ				ɦ ʁ
Flaps						ʕ̯
Nasal flaps						ɴ̆
Approximants		ð̞				ʀ
Semivowels				j

Some analyses differ slightly from the one above: the laryngeal flap /ʕ̯/ is sometimes included among the non-sibilant fricatives (susatiak pańjńybessai), and nasal flaps, approximants and semivowels are all grouped as approximants (mūgyālieniai). These analyses focus more on the actual behaviour of consonants in different environments rather than on their actual articulation.

Please note that, to avoid cluttering transcriptions, /t̪ t̪ʰd̪ d̪ʱ ð̞/ will be transcribed simply as /t tʰ d dʱ ð/.

Important notes about consonant phonemes:

• /N/, written <ṃ>, is realized as an uvular nasal before laryngeal consonants or as a nasalization of the preceding vowel before other consonants (especially /d dʱ/). Note that <ṃ> may also appear representing a different nasal phoneme (usually /m/) in other morphologically conditioned environments. /n/ is realized [ŋ] before velar consonants and is written <n> except for the root cāṃkra- (to end, to finish, to border).
• The consonants written <hj hv hr hl> were clusters in Classical Laceyiam, but they are the phonemes /ɕ f ʁ ʕ̯/ in the modern standard (/ɕ/ is written either as <ś> or <hj> depending on the word). Some analyses of Standard Laceyiam do not count them as separate phonemes, but as realizations of the clusters /ɦɟ͡ʑ ɦv ɦʀ ɦɴ̆/ due to their behaviour in compounding, c.f. ni- prefix (/nʲi/) plus the root hjøðam "hand" (/ˈɕøðam/ or /ˈɦɟ͡ʑøðam/, pronounced [ˈɕøðam]) > nįjøðemė "weapon" (/ni̤ˈɟ͡ʑøðemeː/ [ni̤ˈɟ͡ʑøðemeː], with the usual morphological process where /ɦ/ vanishes, giving breathy-voiced phonation to the preceding vowel, when in coda).
• /θ ð/ only contrast intervocalically, after nasals, and before /ʀ ɴ̆/; otherwise they're in complementary distribution, with /θ/ word-initially and adjacent to voiceless consonants and /ð/ anywhere else.

Vowels

Laceyiam has a large vowel inventory consisting of 17 monophthongs and 9 diphthongs, for a total of 26 vowel phonemes. The word for vowel, camiyālia, is a compound of cami "great(er), important, supreme" and yālia "sound", reflecting how a vowel is the obligatory part of a syllable nucleus in Laceyiam.

	Front	Central	Back
High	ʲi ʲiː i iː i̤		u uː ṳ
High-mid	e eː ø
Low-mid	ɛ̤		ɔ
Near-low	æ
Low		a aː	ɑ̤
Diphthongs	ai̯ ei̯ æi̯ øʏ̯ a̤i̯ ɛ̤i̯		au̯ ui̯ a̤u̯

Standard Laceyiam has, for most vowels, a three-way distinction between oral short, oral long, and breathy-voiced: this applies to the [a], [e], [i], and [u] vowels. The other vowels do not have this distinction due to their historical development.

Please note that, for sake of simplicity, /ɛ̤ ɑ̤/ will be transcribed as /e̤ a̤/.

Notes about vowel phonemes:

• The distinction between palatalizing and non-palatalizing [i] sounds is peculiar of Standard Laceyiam and all Southern pronunciations. It is a result of the unrounding of Classical Laceyiam /y yː/, that made phonemic the then-allophonic palatalization of consonants before original /i iː/ (but not /i̤/). Most modern pronunciations actually keep the distinction between /y yː/ and /i iː/ (with or without allophonic palatalization). In Standard Laceyiam and all pronunciations with unrounding, however, retroflex and palatal consonants aren't distinguished anymore before Classical /y yː/ or /i iː/, as they didn't have allophonic palatalization.
• There is an additional diphthong /ɔu̯/ which is not considered phonemic due to it appearing only in Chlou, the (borrowed) name of the 14th largest city of Laltīmāhia, and derived/compounded words.