Tulvan

Tulvan
Tulvan
Pronunciation	[/'tul.van/]
Created by	Nicolás Campi
Setting	Earth-like planet
Native speakers	Unknown (2012)
Language family	Tuluan Tulvanic Tulvan

Tulvan is a language developed to be in the far future in an imaginary time-line. As such, it showcases a very degraded noun morphology, erosion of compounds, relexification and other such traits. A particular characteristic is that words have become more and more specific in their meanings, thus countering a leveling in morphology with a diversification in semantics. The speakers of Tulvan are thought to be in a post-apogee civilization that values culture and scientific knowledge above all, although they still retain some superstitions in their culture.

Introduction

One of the main goals of the language was to experiment with having few to no declensions in a language tending to isolation and analytical morphosyntax. Of course some remnants of an older system remain, so it is not purely one thing or the other, but denotes a state of flux in the language continuum. In comparison to other conlangs of mine it is quite light in declension, only having a marked accusative.

Phonology

The phonology of Tulvan is not particularly complicated by design. It possesses no affricates or sibilant fricatives, and the velar fricative <c> [x] is becoming indistinguishable from the velar stop <k> [k] in most dialects. The language distinguishes between simple vowels <a, e, i, o, u> and palatalized vowels <ä, ë, ö, ü>, the latter ones not unlike those in Russian or other Slavic languages.

Consonants

	Bilabial	Dental	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Labio-Velar	Glottal
Stop	p b	t d		k g	q	kw gw	h
Fricative	f v	th [θ]		c [x]		cw [xw]
Sibilant		s z
Nasal	m	n				nw
Liquid		l r
Approximant			y [j]			w

In modern times the series <c, q, k> are merging in many dialects into one single /k/ phoneme, although some also present aspirated variants.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u ʲu
Mid	e ʲe		o ʲo
Open		a ʲa

The only distinction in vowels is between regular vowels and palatized ones, these last ones written: <ä, ë, ö, ü>

Grammar

Tulvan is a mostly analytical language, but some remnants of an older case system still remain, for example, in the accusative of nouns. Both pronouns and nouns are inflected for accusative, there's also an adjectival prefix i- to form adjectives from nouns and pronouns. In the case of pronouns they serve to create the possessive adjectives for each person.