Late Ma'nijr
Background
Late Ma'nijr is a highly endangered language spoken by the people of the Laechijmán region. It is a descendant of a dialect of Ancient American, called Ancient Appalachian American, aka Ancient Appalachian. "Laechijmán" comes from the Ancient Appalachian toponym, "Platchee Mou'inz" (Appalachian Mountains), and "Ma'nijr" from "Mou'neer" (Mountaineer). Prospects for the language's survival are dim, as the Ma'nijr are the only Terrran humans (approx. 900) who have survived the cataclysmic wars and ecological disasters of the 21st and 22nd Centuries, the "Rajwiw'", which means "The Great Disaster". Based on the last census data, the population will continue to decline without intervention, unless Her Majesty confers authority upon Her Viceroyalty Rimmūš aplu Tayyāhari to do so.
Based on surviving inscriptions and textual material uncovered by archaeological excavations, dichronic reconstructions indicate that Late Ma'nijr has retained 60-70% of the lexicon of Ancient American. However, radical sound changes and syllable reductions have created words that are unrecognizable from their ancestral forms. Numerous homophones emerged in Middle Ma'nijr, which exerted pressure on the language to disambiguate these homophones. For example, through different processes the original Ancient American words big, fruit, and visit merged in Middle Ma'nijr into /vɪʔ/, represented orthographically in the Reformed Ma'nijr transcription system as <vih'>. In Late Ma'nijr, compounding and other derivational processes were applied to <vih'> to reduce the number of homophones, yielding <vimvih'> (big-and-big), <vi'aew>, <vyaew> (fruit-apple), and <givih'> (go-visit).
Phonology
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labio-dental | Dental | Alveolar | Post-alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Epiglottal | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | ||||||||||||
| Plosive | ||||||||||||
| Fricative | ||||||||||||
| Affricate | ||||||||||||
| Approximant | ||||||||||||
| Trill | ||||||||||||
| Flap or tap | ||||||||||||
| Lateral fric. | ||||||||||||
| Lateral app. | ||||||||||||
| Lateral flap |
Vowels
| Front | Near-front | Central | Near-back | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | |||||
| Near-close | |||||
| Close-mid | |||||
| Mid | |||||
| Open-mid | |||||
| Near-open | |||||
| Open |
Phonotactics
Orthography
Grammar
Morphology
Nouns
Adjectives
Verbs
Copula
| Tense-Aspect Prefix | Person Affix | Tense-Aspect Suffix | Example | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Person Singular | =Ø | =(áe)m | =Ø | Adzhi-m, Adzhik-aem,kaem-áem |
| Second Person Singular | =Ø | =(r)á | =Ø | Adzhi-ra, Adzhik-a, kaem-á |
| Third Person Singular | =Ø | =(í)z | =Ø | Adzhi-z, Adzhik-íz, kaem-iz |
| First Person Plural | =Ø | =(w)aré | =Ø | Adzhi-ware, Adzhik-are, kaem-aré |
| Second Person Plural | =Ø | =(o)lá | =Ø | Adzhi-lá, Adzhik-olá, kaem-olá |
| Third Person Plural | =Ø | =dh(i)ma | =Ø | Adzhi-dhma, Adzhik-dhima, kaem-dhima |
Syntax
Canonical word order in Ma'nijr is VSO. SVO word order is also common. Modifiers precede their heads. The general order of constituents are as follows:
[NEG] [WH-word] Subject - Verb - Object - Indirect Object - Oblique [NEG] [INTERROG]