Elasian
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Meret sá, /ˈmɛrɛt s̺ɑh/, or Élászyato meret, /e̞hlɑht͡sjato̞ ˈmɛrɛt/, also known as Elasian is the ancestral language of the Élászyat people, who inhabit the dale of Élászalyadá, a valley in northeastern Central Asia.
Conlanger's notes: The primary impetus for the creation of this language came to me whilst doing something completely unrelated; suddenly, I had a flash of insight and from that moment onwards I knew that I would express the diminutive by the suffix ak! Unfortunately, I realised relatively quickly that I had no language available on which to tack it on. So, I started with a new one. What originally was termed the language of the little birds (the word for bird was the first coined, the diminutive the second) has now developed slightly more into the language of the Élászyat, an independent nation.
Phonology
Vowels
The Elasian vowel system is relatively uncomplicated, with only five distinct vowels. There are no diphthongs.
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u |
| Mid | e̞ | o̞ |
| Open-mid | (ɛ) | |
| Open | a | (ɑ) |
The vowels /e/ and /a/ can assume [ɛ] and [ɑ] respectively during certain circumstances.
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labiodental | Dental | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasals | m [m] | n [n] | (ŋ)2 | ||||||||||||||
| Plosives | voiceless | p [p] | t [t] | k [k] | |||||||||||||
| voiced | b [b] | d [d] | g [g] | ||||||||||||||
| Affricates | voiceless | sz [t͡s] | (ʃ) | ||||||||||||||
| voiced | z [d͡z] | ||||||||||||||||
| Fricatives | voiceless | (ɸ)3 | (θ)3 | s [s̺] | (x) | ´ [h] | |||||||||||
| voiced | (β)3 | (ð)3 | (ɣ)3 | ||||||||||||||
| Trills | r [r~ɾ] | ||||||||||||||||
| Flaps | (ɾ)5 | ||||||||||||||||
| Approximant | y [j] | ||||||||||||||||
| Lateral approximant | l [l] | (ʎ) | |||||||||||||||
Phonotactics
Orthography
The traditional sorting order for the Latin alphabet is derived from the order of the native script Élászyato ládarat, or simply Ládarat. The traditional names for the letters are also from the Ládarat: a or alpa, o, u, e, i, ép, ét, ék, éb, éd, ág, mi, ni, lamád, ró, yá, ás, áz, ász, (éx). Since the grapheme x is unique to the Latin script and the most recent addition it appears last.
The acute accent is used to indicate that a vowel is followed by /h/, a feature inherited from the native script which uses a similar diacritic. Since /h/ may only occur as a coda there is no native need for a separate grapheme for it. This posits a minor problem if one seeks to accurately capture an onset /h/. While originally dropping the h, Elasian has started retaining it in certain English loanwords. Thus, the language council recommends the utilisation of the grave accent ` for writing foreign words with an initial H and discourages the usage of the letter H. Thus, the German name Hans would be properly written as Àns.
| Latin | IPA | Words |
|---|---|---|
| ´ | [h] | á, tá, Élász |
| a | [a] | alpa, ars |
| [ɑ] | kulak | |
| p | [p] | táp, ép |
| [ɸ] | pasz | |
| t | [t] | lyat, ét |
| [θ] | ter | |
| k | [k] | arak, ék |
| [x] | kul | |
| b | [b] | éb |
| [β] | bátar | |
| d | [d] | merad, éd |
| [ð] | deret | |
| g | [g] | múrag, ág |
| [ɣ] | ger | |
| m | [m] | mi, meret |
| n | [n] | ni, názar |
| l | [l] | lamád, terelesz |
| r | [r] | ró, báret |
| y | [j] | yá, syó |
| s | [s̺] | ás, sá |
| z | [d͡z] | áz, zerelesz |
| sz | [t͡s] | ász, szárad |
| x | [ks] | éx, arax |
Grammar
Morphology
Nouns
Nouns are inflected for five cases - nominative (nom), accusative (acc), genitive (gen), dative (dat) and the instrumental (ins). In addition to this, they are inflected for grammatical number. All of this is carried out by suffixes to the stem of the word; this is a predominantly agglutinative process, markers are tacked on after each other. A mild hint of fusion can be detected in certain suffixes — the genitive plural -un — appears to be related to both the genitive -o and the pluralisation marker -en.
Case
| case | singular | plural |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | -t/-k/-Ø | -en |
| Accusative | -s | -sen |
| Genitive | -o | -un |
| Dative | -á | -áen |
| Instrumental | -em | -emen |
The nominative case (nom) is used for the subject in both transitive and intransitive sentences. Additionally, it is used as the citation form for nouns.
- example sentence using word
- Leipzig gloss goes here
- "English translation here."
The accusative case (acc) is used to signal the direct object of a sentence.
- example sentence using word
- Leipzig gloss here
- "English translation here."
The genitive case (gen) is used to express relationships between nouns, it is marked on the possessor, similarly to English; in Elasian inalienable possession is expressed using a specific set of words and not by the genitive case.
- example sentence using word
- Leipzig gloss here
- "English translation here."
The dative case (dat) is used to signal the indirect object of a sentence. It is also used for situations in which an action benefits or damages a party.
- example sentence using word
- Leipzig gloss here
- "English translation here."
The instrumental case (ins) is used to indicate the means by which an action is carried out. It is additionally used to indicate companionship.
- example sentence using word
- Leipzig gloss here
- "English translation here."
Number
Singular
The singular is the unmarked form of the noun, it signifies that there is, quite literally only one of said noun.
- Example sentence here
- Leipzig gloss here
- "English freestyle translation."
Plural
The plural indicates several instances of the noun. It is regularly formed by adding -en to the case-inflected word, with one exception: the genitive, in which case they seemingly fuse to -un.
- Example sentence here
- Leipzig gloss here
- "English freestyle translation."
Derivational morphology
The Elasian language features a very robust derivational system enabling the transformation of nouns to verbs and back again (shifting syntactic category), the diminution of nouns, verbs and adverbs are all possible and likewise so with augmentation.
Diminutives and augmentatives
Diminutives are handled for animate words with the suffix ak. For naturally inanimate nouns this becomes ek.
E.g.
| word | diminutive | gloss |
|---|---|---|
| pet | petak | bird > little bird |
| ger | gerek | story > saying, proverb |
| kul | kulak | tribe > family |
| pasz | paszek | stone > pebble |
Collective nouns
Elasian features ways to form a collective noun; this is extensively used for concepts such as a puddle (of water), days, groups of animal and such. These may in turn be interpreted as singulars and given regular plurals of their own. A commonly encountered example is the word ter ('a moment') from which the Elasian word for "day", teret is derived. It can be broken down into ter and the inanimate collectivising morpheme -et ('a group of moments, a day').
Syntax
Word order
The default unmarked word order in Elasian is subject-object-verb as in I apples eat. The alternate word order OSV is permitted when seeking to emphasise the object; an inversion of subject and object occurs, e.g. truth I speak.
Generally speaking, qualifiers precede the noun they modify. This does not go for class IV verbs to which a large semantic space of description goes; they correspond partially to what we would term adjectives, in truth they're more akin to stative verbs and are treated as such and thus go after the noun they modify.
petaken mirigeni
"(the) little birds red.are"