Pulqer/Kelt
Kelt is the extinct native language of the island of Jacques (Tśak), believed to have been a language isolate. Relatively little is known of the language; there are few written survivals and the primary source of information is through its impact on the language of Pulqer, which replaced it. Kelt is the name of the language in Pulqer, it is thought to have been called Keltah by its speakers.
Phonology
Vowels
Kelt had a system of four primary vowels, each of which had long and short variants. There were no diphthongs.
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | i /i/, ii /iː/ | u /u/, uu /uː/ |
| Open-mid | e /ɛ/, ee /ɛː/ | |
| Open | a /a/, aa /aː/ |
Consonants
The consonant inventory is shown below. It is characterised by having only voiceless plosives, fricatives and affricates but voiced resonants. It is unclear whether Kelt originally had a series of aspirated plosives alongside the unaspirated ones - a defining feature of Old Pulqer, which has a phonology heavily influenced by Kelt. If this distinction existed, it had probably been lost by the time Pulqer began ousting Kelt.
It is possible that /l/ and /ɾ/ were allophonic variants of the same sound occurring in different environments. Evidence from later Pulqer suggests that /ɾ/ occurred between vowels or after a consonant (CrV) while /l/ occurred at the beginning or end of a word and before consonants (VlC).
The realisation of h is unclear and may also have had allophonic variation, perhaps /h/ in most circumstances but /ʔ/ or /χ/ at the end of a word.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Post-alveolar | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Labial | |||||
| Nasal | m /m/ | n /n/ | ||||
| Plosive | p /p/ | t /t/ | k /k/ | q /kʷ/ | ||
| Fricative | f /ɸ/ | s /s/ | ś /ʃ/ | h /h/ | ||
| Affricate | ts /t͡s/ | tś /t͡ʃ/ | ||||
| Approximant | r /ɾ/ | |||||
| Lateral app. | l /l/ | y /j/ | w /w/ |
Phonotactics
The maximal syllable structure was CLVC, where C represents any consonant, L represents either l or r (possibly always /ɾ/ in this position) and V either a long or short vowel. Consonant clusters could occur across syllable boundaries.
Stress
Stress placement is unclear, but may have been on the penult.
Grammar
Nominals
Nouns had the following features:
- Gender - masculine or other
- Number - singular or plural
- State - absolute or construct
The exact nature of the gender system is unclear, but it appears to be based on two classes: a masculine class and an other class. The masculine class (also called the E-class) includes male humans, animals and deities along with other 'masculine' objects denoted by shape (i.e. long/tall and narrow), material (all metal and some stone objects belong here), purpose (e.g. weapons) or importance (including many celestial bodies). The 'other' (or A-class) contains all other nouns that don't belong to the masculine category, including all female living beings and deities and many abstracts.
Both gender and number form part of an inflectional paradigm.
All nouns have two forms: an absolute and a construct. The absolute is marked with suffixes and is the form used without a preceding determiner or pronominal prefix and, as such, may be called 'indefinite'. The construct occurs with a preceding determiner or pronominal prefix and is usually definite.
Each noun is constructed from an immutable stem, to which affixes are attached, e.g. PUT "man", QRAL "house". The stem may not stand alone. As gender is semantically determined, stems usually have inherent gender but some nouns may belong to more than one gender with a difference of meaning, e.g. HATAL "child" mean be masculine qehatal "the boy" or other qahatal "the girl, the child". Masculine nouns may be declined as 'other' to give a pejorative sense, e.g. putah "effeminate or weak man".
Nouns are declined according to their class. Masculine nouns have e in the singular and ii in the plural. Other nouns have a in the singular and aa in the plural.
| Masculine PUT | Other QRAL | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Absolute | Singular | putek | qralah |
| Plural | putiik | qralaah | |
| Construct | Singular | -eput | -aqral |
| Plural | -iiput | -aaqral |
Construct nouns must be preceded by:
- a demonstrative prefix
- a possessive prefix
- a verbal prefix
The demonstrative prefixes are: q- "that", used in a general sense and often closer to a definite article; p- "this", denoting things close to the speaker or recently mentioned; qr- "that" denoting things far away or abstract. E.g. qaqral "the/that house", piiput "these men", qrahatal "that girl/child".
The possessive prefixes are:
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | key- | ney- |
| 2 | ley- | tey- |
| 3m | sey- | wey- |
| 3o | hey- | |
| Imp. | tśey- |
Note that there is no distinction made in noun class in the 3rd person plural, wey- means "their" for all types of nouns.
The impersonal tśey- is used when the possessor is unknown.
Examples: keyaqral "my house", seyefak "his wife", weyaahatal "their children", tśeyenuuk "someone's dog".
Verbal prefixes transform the noun into a predicate, e.g. keput "I am a man", hanuuk "it is a dog". See below for forms.