User:Chrysophylax/Substrate language

Phonology

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Alveolar sibilant	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m̥ m	n̥ n
Stop	pʰ p b	tʰ t d	t͡s d͡z	kʰ k g
Fricative	f		s	x	h
Approximant				w

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid-low	ɛ ɛː		ɔ ɔː
Low		a aː	ɑ ɑː

Syllable structure

(C¹)V(C²)

C¹: a consonant

V: a vowel

C²: a consonant

Allophony

Front vowels become central before [w]

Stops assimilate in aspiration to a following consonant and become unaspirated word-finally. Before an aspirated consonant, voiced stops become voiceless.

Low vowels become rounded after [w] and central vowels are raised.

Consonants palatalise after a non-low front vowel; velar consonants besides [w] become coronal palatalised; velar stops affricatise (/k/ > [t͡ɕ] \ [i e u]_).

Lots of other stuff.

Notes on orthography

The temporary orthography I've devised uses double letters to represent long vowels, <á> for /ɑ/, <hm> <hn> for the voiceless nasals, <z> for /d͡z/ and <sz> for /t͡s/, <x> for /x/, <ph th kh> for /pʰ tʰ kʰ/.

Morphology

• Case-inflected.
• Animate vs. inanimate

Pronouns

Pronouns
	First		Second		Third
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative	mia	miah(e)	su	suh(i)	ke, o	keh(e), ohe
Dative	ate	ateh	uti	utih	ete, hote	eteh, oteh
Accusative	miu	muhi	suw	suhi	ku, o	kuhi, ohe
Genitive-instrumental	axa	axah(e)	uxa	uxah(e)	exa, hoxa	exah(e), hoxah(e)

• No specific way of determining if a word is animate or inanimate

• addendum: certain suffixes are always one or the other, e.g. -dih 'a collection of X' is always inanimate, e.g. sokhdih 'a collection of stones, a pile of stones' < sokh 'stone', whilst others are always animate, e.g. -tus 'who does X', nōthētus 'sailor' < nōthē 'ocean'.