Syzkyn

Syzkyn
сызқынҟы мол / სჷზქჷნყჷ მოლ syzkynqy mol
Pronunciation	[ˈsɘzˌkʲʰəɴ.qʹə mɔɫ]
Created by	rnifnuf
Date	2017-
Native to	Russia, Georgia, Turkey, with small diaspora
Ethnicity	Syzkyn
Native speakers	Approximately 400,000 (2021)
Language family	Indo-European North Germanic East Scandinavian? Syzkyn
Early form	Old Norse
Official status
Official language in	Russia Syzkyn Republic
Recognised minority language in	Jordan Turkey Israel

Syzkyn is a North Germanic language spoken predominantly in the Syzkyn Republic, a Federal Subject of the Russian Federation located in the western Caucasus. It is the native language of the Syzkyn people, who are thought to be the only descents of the Scandinavian Rus' people who were not fully assimilated by Slavs.

Phonology

Syzkyn's phonological inventory is highly similar to those of Kartvelian languages. Notable features include ejective stops and affricates, uvular consonants, and a mid-sized vowel inventory

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal		m	n		[ŋ]1	[ɴ]2
Plosive	Aspirated	pʰ	tʰ	kʰ~kʲʰ
	Voiced	b	d	g~gʲ
	Ejective	pʹ	tʹ	kʹ~kʲʹ		qʹ	(ʔ)
Affricate	Aspirated		t͡sʰ	t͡ʃʰ		[qχʰ]3
	Voiced		d͡z	d͡ʒ		[ɢʁ]3
	Ejective		t͡sʹ	t͡ʃʹ
Fricative	Voiceless	f	s	ʃ	x~χ		ħ~h
	Voiced	v~ʋ4	z	ʒ	ɣ~ʁ
Approximant			l	j
Rhotic			r~ɾ

1. Allophone of /n/ before velars
2. Allophone of /n/ before uvulars
3. [qχʰ] and [ɢʁ] are realizations of /χ/ and /ʁ/ after nasals
4. The fricative [v] and approximant [ʋ] are in free variation
   1. [ʋ] is the most prevalent realization after a vowel
   2. /v/ is realized as [ʷ] after a consonant

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ~ə1	u
Mid	e~ɛ3		o~ɔ4
Open		a~ɑ2

1. /ə/ has several allophones:
   1. [ɘ] or [ɨ] when stressed and not following a labialized or palatalized consonant
   2. [ɪ] after a palatalized velar (in dialects that palatalize the velar stops) or /j/
   3. [ʊ] after a labialized consonant
2. Typically reduced to [ɐ] when unstressed. Broadly transcribed as /a/
3. Broadly transcribed as /e/
4. Broadly transcribed as /o/

Prosody

In Syzkyn, stress can be located on any syllable in a word. Typically, especially in native words of Norse origin, primary stress is on the first syllable, often occurring on other syllables in words of non-Norse origin. However, stress remains on the same syllable in all inflected forms.

Orthography

The primary modern orthography for Syzkyn is the Cyrillic alphabet, which shares elements of the alphabets used for Abkhaz and Ossetian. Historically, it has also been written in the Mkhedruli script, which some speakers in diaspora still use.

Cyrillic	Mkhedruli	Transliteration	IPA	Notes
А а	ა	A a	a
Ӕ ӕ	ე	E e	e	Only used initially or after vowels
Б б	ბ	B b	b
Г г	გ	G g	g
Ӷ ӷ	ღ	Ğ ğ	ɣ~ʁ	Can be substituted with ҕ
Д д	დ	D d	d
Дж дж	ჯ	Dž dž	d͡ʒ
Дз дз	ძ	Dz dz	d͡z
Е е	(ჲ)ე	(J)E, (j)e	(j)e	/je/ initially and after vowels, otherwise /e/
Ё ё	ჲო	Jo jo	jo
Ж ж	ჟ	Ž ž	ʒ
З з	ზ	Z z	z
И и	ი	I i	i
Й й	ჲ	J j	j
К к	კ	K' k'	kʰ
Қ қ	ქ	K k	kʹ
Ҟ ҟ	ყ	Q q	qʹ
Л л	ლ	L l	l
М м	მ	M m	m
Н н	ნ	N n	n
О о	ო	O o	o
П п	პ	P' p'	pʹ
Ԥ ԥ	ფ	P p	pʰ	Can be substituted with ҧ
Р р	რ	R r	r
С с	ს	S s	s
Т т	ტ	T' t'	tʹ
Ҭ ҭ	თ	T t	tʰ
У у	უ	U u	u
Ф ф	ჶ	F f	f
Х х	ხ	X x	χ
Ҳ ҳ	ჰ	H h	h
Ц ц	ც	C c	t͡sʰ
Ҵ ҵ	წ	C' c'	t͡sʹ
Ч ч	ჭ	Č' č'	t͡ʃʹ
Ҷ ҷ	ჩ	Č č	t͡ʃʰ
Ш ш	შ	Š š	ʃ
Ы ы	ჷ	Y y	ə
Ю ю	ჲუ	Ju ju	ju
Я я	ჲა	Ja ja	ja

Stress is typically unmarked, but for documentation is indicated with an acute (á).

Grammar

Syzkyn's grammar has been heavily influenced by Kartvelian languages, but continues some characteristic features of Old Norse. Broadly, Syzkyn is agglutinating, dependent-marking, pro-drop, and strongly head-final.

Morphological Alternations

Ablaut and Umlaut

Syzkyn has preserved Germanic ablaut and Norse umlaut to a limited extent. Neither is productive in the modern language, and the u-mutation like that found in Icelandic is entirely lost in Syzkyn.

H-Vocalization

Old Norse /g/ debuccalized to *ɦ after a vowel. Later, *ɦ vocalized to /j/ after a non-low front vowel, /v/ after a non-low back rounded vowel, and eventually to /a/ after a low vowel but before a consonant or word boundary; all remaining *ɦ devoiced to merge with /h/. The vocalization to /a/ did not happen before a vowel, leading to an alternation between /a/ and /h/ when a vowel-initial morpheme is suffixed to roots ending in /ea/, /oa/, and /aa/.

For example, the plural form of даа, from Old Norse dagr, is даҳар from Old Norse dagar.

Glottalization

When two obstruents come into contact through affixation, they may merge into a single ejective consonant. This change is most common in constructions preserved from Old Norse.

Spirantization

/l/ spirantizes to /ʒ/ after a voiced stop, /ʃ/ after an aspirated stop, and /t͡ʃʹ/ after ejectives.

Uvularization and Velarization

/χ/, /ʁ/, and /qʹ/ may alternate respectively with /kʰ/, /g/, and /kʹ/ due to suffixation or ablaut.

Nouns

Syzkyn nouns are formed through a root that can take up to three suffixes. The first two suffixes, respectively encoding number (singular/plural) and definiteness, are inherited from the Old Norse nominative forms. The third suffix encodes grammatical case, with suffixes derived from prepositions, later postpositions, that became grammaticalized after the erosion of the Old Norse case system.

Inflection classes, number, and definiteness

Syzkyn nouns can be divided into four broad classes depending on how plurals and definiteness are marked. Although Syzkyn does not have grammatical gender, the classes are named for the gender that the noun would have had in Old Norse, albeit after the Masculine and Feminine merged into a Common gender. There are three Common declensions and one Neuter declension.

First Common Declension

First Common Declension nouns reflect the Old Norse masculine a-stem and an-stem nouns, as well as the feminine ō-stem and in-stem nouns. They usually end in a consonant or -ы, the latter of which is elided when a vowel-initial morpheme is suffixed.

First Common Declension	a/ō-stem reflex боҭ 'boat'		an/in-stem reflex қалақы 'city'		H-Vocalization даа 'day'
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
	боҭ	боҭ-ар	қалақ-ы	қалақ-ар	даа	даҳ-ар

Second Common Declension

Second Common Declension nouns reflect the Old Norse i-stems and u-stems, as well as the feminine ōn-stems. Despite not having been masculine or feminine in Old Norse, the neuter an-stems are also reflected by this group, having been absorbed into the feminine ōn-stems due to their relative paucity and similar declension. They inflect similarly to a-stems but take plurals in -(ы)р. Singulars either use no suffix or -а, the latter of which is elided by the plural suffix but not the definite article.

Second Common Declension	i/u-stem reflex сул 'sun'		ōn-stem reflex ӷаҭа 'street/road'		Vowel-final example ҟу 'shoe'
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
	сул	сул-ыр	ӷаҭ-а	ӷаҭ-ыр	ҟу	ҟу-р

Third Common Declension

Nouns of the Third Common Declension reflect the various Old Norse consonant stem nouns aside from the n-stems. The nominative plural *-iz suffix reconstructed in Proto-Germanic manifested in Old Norse as an -r that caused i-mutation in the stem in Old Norse. This plural ending is lost in Syzkyn, but the umlaut remained due to the frequent usage of these nouns. Due to the collapse of historical frontness and rounding distinctions among the reflexes of Old Norse's short vowels, however, umlaut only directly affects vowels that were long in Old Norse, so some Third Common Declension nouns do not directly show any alternation of the stem vowel; however, velarization may still occur.

Third Common Declension	r-stem reflex музыр 'mother'		Consonant stem with velarization ӷос 'street/road'		Number-agnostic common noun ман 'person'
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
	муз-ыр	мез	ӷос	гес	ман

Neuter Declension

Nouns of the Old Norse neuter a-stem are reflected in the Syzkyn Neuter Declension, for which there is no plural suffix. However, the definite article inflects for plurality.

Neuter Declension	ҳус 'house'		цу 'thigh'		гыжды 'guild/company'
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
	ҳус		цу		гыжды

Definite Article

Inherited from Old Norse, the definite article is suffixed to the noun after the number marking if there is any. The definite article itself also inflects for number, even if the noun itself has no indefinite plural marking.

Definite Article	Singular	Plural
Common	-(ы)н	-ныр
Neuter	-(ы)ҭ	-(ы)н

The (ы) is included if the stem ends in a vowel that is not the result of H-vocalization; otherwise it is dropped. If the stem ends in a vocalized ҳ, then the (ы) is included and the vocalization is reversed. For example, the singular definite of даа '(a) day' is даҳын 'the day'. Some speakers, particularly of lower socioeconomic classes, elide the (ы) without reversing H-vocalization; in the case of даа, for example, the definite form for these speakers would be даан.

Cases

All nouns use the same set of case markers.

Case	Ending	Etymology	Allomorphy
Nominative	-Ø	Inherited directly from Old Norse	N/A
Accusative	Nominative for inanimate nouns, dative for animate nouns
Genitive	-с	Old Norse a/i-stems and Georgian1	-ыс after sibilants
Dative	-аҭ	Old Norse at 'to'	Elides final ы but is otherwise -ҭ after a vowel
Instrumental	-ма/гвы	Old Norse með and við 'with'	-ма prohibited after labials, -гвы prohibited after dorsals, otherwise in free variation
Adverbial	-ав	Old Norse af 'of, from, by'	Elides final ы but is otherwise -в after a vowel
Locative	-и	Old Norse í 'in, on'	Elides final ы but is otherwise -й after a vowel

1. The ending is homophonous with the Georgian genitive ending -ს -s. Some scholars believe that, since two of the most numerous classes of nouns in Old Norse already used -s as their genitive singular ending, Georgian influence caused this ending to spread to other nouns.

Adjectives

When used attributively, adjectives in Syzkyn do not agree with the head noun in case, number, or definiteness. Furthermore, the Old Norse distinction between 'strong' and 'weak' adjectives has been lost. Adjectives also have comparative and superlative forms. Generally, these are respectively formed by suffixing -(а)ры and -(а)ҵы, but there is a small subset of adjectives for which these are formed partially through suppletion. Adverbs can be derived from adjectives with the adverbial case suffix -(а)в, the suffix -ла, or the older suffix -а.

Adjectives in Syzkyn are able to be used as modifiers or as nouns themselves, taking the same markings of number, case, and definiteness. For example, тур can mean 'large' or 'a large thing', while турын means 'the large thing'. Most adjectives use the second common declension for plural marking (i.e. -ыр), but some use the neuter declension instead, notably the comparative, superlative, and present participle.

Verbs

The Syzkyn verbal paradigm preserves several hallmarks of Old Norse's while innovating several forms, particularly converbs and relative forms. Verbs conjugate for person, number, tense, and mood using the following template:

Preverb	STEM	Tense/Mood	Person/Masdar/Participle	Reflexive	Complementizer/Relative/Converb

Preverb

Preverbs can add directional or other semantic information to a verb. For example, дрынхан means "to drink", but юрдрынхан means "to drink excessively"; and фаран means "to go" but уҭфаран means "to go out" or "to exit".

Tense and strong/weak verbs

Syzkyn has four tenses that are formed synthetically: present, past, future, and conditional. The present tense is not marked.

Syzkyn has two major classes of verbs split by how the past tense is marked: weak and strong

Weak verbs use a suffix, to mark past tense. There are two subclasses of weak verbs: consonant-stems and vowel-stems. Vowel stems use the suffix -з- after the stem to mark past tense, for example ҭру-а (believe-1SG) > ҭру-з-а (believe-PAST-1SG). This is the only productive verb class in modern Syzkyn.

Consonant stems use the same suffix in theory, but in practice it has fused with the ending of the stem:

Stem-final consonant	Fused past stem ending
-б, -п, -ԥ, -тв, -ҭв, -ф	-тв
-в	-зв
-м	-мд
-н	-нд
-л	-жд
-т, -ҭ	-т
-қ, -ҟ, -х	-ҟт
-г, -ӷ	-аз, -вз, -йз
-с, ш	-ҵ
-з, ж	-д

By contrast, strong verbs use ablaut in the verb root and no suffix to show past tense. There are ten classes of strong verbs continuing the seven general classes of strong verb in Old Norse. Each class has its own ablaut paradigm with up to three unique vowels: one for all nonpast forms, one for past finite forms, and one for the past participle. These ablaut paradigms are listed in the below table, with Vowels that uvularize any preceding velars from the present stem marked with asterisks, and vowels that undo uvularization and cause palatalization in italics.

Ablaut Class	Nonpast	Past Finite	Past Participle
1	и	ы*
2	у, и	ы
3	а	ы(в)
4		о*	а*
5			а
5-j	ы(й)	о
6	а	у
7-e	о	е	о
7-u		у
7-r		ар

Other verbs, usually the preterite-presents, will have other strategies for marking past tense.

All verbs except for the copula гваран form the future tense by suffixing -(а)нҟыл- and the conditional tense by suffixing -(а)нкыжд-. This construction originates from the grammaticalization of the Old Norse auxiliary verb skulu suffixed to the Masdar before being reanalyzed as a tense marker. The independent form of this verb became the future and conditional stems of the copula гваран, respectively ҟыл- and кыжд-. These independent stems are sometimes used for the verb гаран 'to do' in casual conversation, but this is not standard usage.

The future tense is not used to mark imminent or near-future events. Using the future tense for such events makes one sound impatient.

Person marking, mood, masdar, and participles

All Syzkyn verbs must take a suffix to mark the person and number of the verb's subject or a suffix to indicate that the verb is not finite.

The below set of subject markers is used for almost all verbs in the indicative mood. Remarkably, they are derived from the standard subjunctive personal markers of Old Norse, which were also applied to weak verbs in the past tense. A consequence of this is that number is not distinguished in the third person due to the collapse of vowel fronting and rounding distinctions.

Person Marking	Singular	Plural
First Person	-а	-(ы)м
Second Person	-(ы)р	-(ы)з
Third Person	-(ы)

Much like the pronoun ир, the second person plural can be used for a singular subject in formal or respectful speech.

The imperative endings are the same as the indicative endings, except the 2SG ending is null.

There are three primary non-finite constructions in Syzkyn. The most basic is the masdar, a verbal noun formed with the suffix -(а)н on the present stem, which is thought to have descended from the definite article being suffixed to the Old Norse infinitive.

There are also two participles, both inherited from Old Norse. The present participle is formed by the suffix -анды on the present stem of all verbs. The past participle suffix varies by verb type: strong verbs use the suffix -(ы)н, while weak verbs have a null suffix on the past stem.

Reflexive

The suffix -шы, derived from the accusative form of the Old Norse reflexive pronoun sik marks the mediopassive voice on a Syzkyn verb, which is used for reciprocal, reflexive, or passive actions.

Complementizers, relativizers, and converbs

Syzkyn employs various suffixes to convey relative or complementary phrases on verbs, as well as for converbs to illustrate sequences of events enacted by the same subject.

The following suffixes for relative and complementary verbs are suffixed to pr

Suffix	Function	Etymology
-сым	Relative clause (modifying a head noun)	Old East Norse sum (relative pronoun)
-зу	Concessive/contrastive	Old Norse þó
-мы	Conditional (precondition for primary verb)	Old Norse um
-(а)ҭ	Clausal nominalizer	Old Norse at
-цви	Causal	Old Norse því

There are three converbs, indicated by suffixes on nonfinite forms.

Converb	Suffix	Nonfinite form	Etymology	Notes
Imperfective	-о	Present participle	Old Norse á 'in, on'	Overwrites final -ы
Perfective	-твыр	Masdar	Old Norse aptir 'after'
Alternative	-ҵажи	Masdar	ON stað(i) 'place, stead' + ON í 'in'	Marks an action the subject forwent in favor of that marked by the finite verb