Zlïke

Todo: change name to Zlïce

Zlïce is a language of Central Etalocin. It's aesthetically inspired by German.

Phonology

Vowels: a e i o u w ë ï ẅ /ɑ ɛ ɪ ɔ ʊ ʏ ə ɪ ʊ/. Final unstressed e is pronounced as if written ë. Vowels may be doubled or glottalized; the latter is marked with the letter h.

In addition there are a few diphthongs: ei ëi ie ïe au ua /ɛɪ əɨ ɪə ɨə ɑʊ ʊɑ/.

Consonants: b p f pf d t th g c/k ch h s z ß m n ng l r j /b p v f d t t' g k k' ʔ ʃ ts s m n ŋ l ɾ j/

Final ejectives are realized as unreleased stops, whereas final voiceless stops may be spirantized as in Irish English or Liverpool English.

Morphology

Nouns

Zlïce nouns come in four genders: personal, human, animate nonhuman and inanimate. Technically the personal gender isn't really a noun gender because it only includes pronouns but it's treated as a gender for the sake of verb agreement.

Noun morphology includes case, number and incorporated adjective. Cases and numbers are mostly agglutinating suffixes while incorporating adjectives are prefixes with occasional umlaut, which manifests as vowel backing if the umlauting vowel is e, i or w. Occasionally adjectives cause suppletion of the noun.

Adjectives

Incorporating adjectives are a small closed class, with others being expressed as verbs.

Constituent order

Zlïce is predicate-first like Lushootseed.