Ametdantar

Background

Goals

My goal was simply to create an a priori constructed language. I don't remember the exact date when I started, but I believe it was some time in August of 2014.

Setting

The ametdantar live on a small remote tropical desert island. They have no outside contact and are not aware of any other landmasses (and there may not be any others -- I haven't decided that yet). They believe that the world is mostly water and is therefore amorphous.

Inspiration

I joined the Constructed Languages group on Facebook with the intent of simply looking at the constructed languages of others for a while to get some ideas, and was mainly interested in auxilliary languages, but I started my own, ametdantar, fairly promptly after joining.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Epiglottal	Glottal
Nasal	m			n
Plosive	p		t̪ d̪					k
Fricative				s	ʃ ʒ				ʁ			h ɦ
Affricate				ts	dʒ
Approximant
Trill
Flap or tap				ɾ
Lateral fric.
Lateral app.				l
Lateral flap

Vowels

	Front	Near-front	Central	Near-back	Back
Close					u
Near-close
Close-mid					o
Mid
Open-mid	ɛ
Near-open
Open	a a:

Phonotactics

/p/ and /ʃ/ can occur only in onset position. /r/ and /ʁ/ cannot be the first element of an onset cluster or the second element of coda cluster. Onset clusters can contain a maximum of two consonants. Rimes are maximally trimoraic -- the long a, /a:/, counts as two morae, and each consonant in the coda is a mora.

Diphthongization does not occur in ametdantar, and the hiatus resolution strategy is "do not resolve." A series of two homorganic vowels does not become a lengthened vowel, not even if it is /a/.

Orthography

ametdantar has a mostly phonemic alphabet -- each monograph stands for exactly one sound, and each digraph stands for exactly one sound.

Monographs

a /a/
m /m/
d /d̪/
t /t̪/
n /n/
r /ɾ/
e /ɛ/
h /h/
f /ɦ/
o /o/
p /p/
k /k/
u /u/
l /l/
s /s/
j /ʒ/

Digraphs

tz /ts/
si /ʃ/
rg /ʁ/
aa /a:/

Stress

ametdantar stress is very simple. There are two rules: Stress is ultimate. Enclitics are disregarded in stress assignment.

Now, of course, this requires us to define the enclitics of ametdantar. They are -et, the plural suffix, and -er, the perfective suffix. Note that there are roots that end with -et or -er naturally; these are not enclitics. There are also fossilized forms that are stressed on the enclitic (because, as a suffix, it's in ultimate position). Fossilized forms include the plural personal pronouns, which are all formed with the plural suffix, and some adjectives formed with the perfective suffix.