Spocian

Spocian
xtʾesčʾ spocʾyuƛwa
Pronunciation	[ˈxt'ɛʃtʃ' ʃpɔˈts'jutɬ'wa]
Created by	Lili21
Date	Oct 2017
Setting	Calémere
Ethnicity	Spocians
Native speakers	630,000,000 (2312)
Language family	Oƛ-Yeshan languages Sands' languages Otlic Old Spocian Spocian
Writing system	Spocian script
Official status
Official language in	Spocius, many others

Spocian (natively xtʾesčʾ spocʾyuƛwa [ˈxt'ɛʃtʃ' ʃpɔˈts'jutɬ'wa] or just spocʾyuƛwa) is a Oƛ-Yeshan language spoken on the planet of Calémere (in Spocian Cʾyuweƛiłpʾeɂ [ts'juwetɬ'iɬˈp'ɛʔ], literally "every land" or "all the lands"), in the northern and northwestern part of the continent of Védren. The native language of most people in the country of Spocius (in Spocian Spocʾyuł [ʃpots'ˈjuɬ]), a lingua franca across northern and western Védren, and an important language in the Łoxvicʾay religion, it is the third most spoken language on the planet when counting both native and L2 speakers (about 630 million, after Chlouvānem and Cerian), and the fifth most spoken if counting only native speakers (about 200 million, after those two as well as Nordulaki and Skyrdagor).

With Spocian people (sg. Spocʾyuƛip', pl. Spocʾyuƛepʾi [ʃpɔts'juˈtɬ'ip'], [-ˈtɬ'ep'i]; in literature also (pl.) xviicʾ spocʾyuƛwa) being the only Oƛ-Yeshan speaking community that founded states before Evandorian colonization, Spocian is the only Oƛ-Yeshan language to have a long written and literary history, and the literary language typically used by speakers of the Sandy branch (to which Spocian also belongs) of the Oƛ-Yeshan family. Spocian is also one of only two native Védrenian languages which were already written before contact with either the Evandorians or the Chlouvānem, Chodwaeng being the other one. The exonym Spocius is Íscégon (actually Spócius, with a long vowel), whence derives its Cerian name Suóčusu. Chlouvānem call it Ṣpatsyūla, another adaptation of the Spocian endonym.

Spocian grammar is agglutinating, characterized by heavily inflected verbs and almost uninflected nouns (only a small set of nouns is marked for plural, but these are mostly irregular - c.f. waƛiłupʾ "land" vs. weƛiłpʾeɂ "lands"). Its phonology features a large number of contrasting plain and ejective stops and affricates.

External History

The name Spocius, as with Ceria and Nordûlik, derives from a map I made around 2007 and 2008; when I found it I liked it and decided to keep it in a similar position, close enough to the main "Western" area to have had frequent interactions but totally different from it. In other words, it's somewhat like the Calémerian analogue to the Arab world; northern Védren even actually came to have, coincidentally, a geography that partially reminds of northern Africa. As for the main idea behind this conlang, a Salishan aesthetic and various Kartvelian inspirations are easy to notice.

Phonology

Consonants

→ PoA ↓ Manner		Labial	Alveolar			Palatal/ Palatoalveolar	Velar		Uvular	Pharyngeal & Glottal
			Plain	Lateral	Fricated		Plain	Labialized
Nasals		m m	n n				ŋ ŋ
Plosives	Voiceless	p p	t t		c ts	č tʃ	k k	qv kʷ	q q	ɂ Ɂ
	Voiced	b b	d d		dz dz		g g
	Ejectives	pʾ p'	tʾ t'	ƛ tɬ'	cʾ ts'	čʾ tʃ'	kʾ k'	qvʾ kʷ'	qʾ q'
Fricatives				ł ɬ		s ʃ	x x	xv xʷ	h χ	ħ ħ
Approximants			r r	l l
Semivowels						y j		w w

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i i		u u
Mid	e e		ô o o ɔ
Low		a a

Phonetic long vowels exist where two adjacent similar vowels occur - as in xviicʾ "people" /ˈxʷiits'/ [xʷiːts']

Morphology

Verbs

Spocian verbs are agglutinatively inflected with a combination of suffixes and prefixes.

Non-past subject markers

Subject marking in the non-past tense is done with the following affixes (example root -bac- "to eat"). These unmarked forms have a gnomic or progressive meaning (e.g. "I eat" or "I am eating").

Person	Marker	Form (-bac-)
1SG	m(o)-	mbac
2SG	g(e)-	gebac
3SG	∅-	bac
4P	-tu	bactu
1PL excl.	m(o)- -łi	mbacłi
1PL incl.	g(e)-m(o)- -łi	gmobacłi
2PL	g(e)- -łi	gebacłi
3SG	∅- -ł	bacł

Aspect markers

Aspect markers are positioned between the subject prefixes and the root.

The prospective aspect is marked by -ôƛ-: môƛbac, gôƛbac, ôƛbac, ôƛbact, môƛbacłi, gemôƛbacłi, gôƛbacłi, ôƛbacł.

Nouns

Spocian nouns are only inflected by means of three suffixes that show, respectively, direct objects (i.e. accusative), indirect objects (i.e. dative), and possessors (i.e. genitive). The "accusative" suffix is -(u)t, the "dative" is -mi, and the "genitive" is -(a)l:

qvʾac "house"

mnas qvʾact "I build a house"

gemôƛdzełi qvʾacmi "we're going to leave it at home (lit. "to the house")"

gineqʾ qvʾacal "the garden of the house"

Note that Spocian has Suffixaufnahme:

mnas qvʾact młôdzbalt "I build my sister's house"

gemôƛdzełi gineqʾmi qvʾacalmi "we're going to leave it in the house's garden".

Nouns possessed by pronominal subjects are marked by the same markers used for verbal non-past subjects (but note 3/4SG as(i)- and plural -łi- before the stem), i.e.:

mar "mother"

momar "my mother"

gmar "your (sg.) mother"

asmar "his/her mother"

mołimar "our (excl.) mother"

gmołimar "our (incl.) mother"

gełimar your (pl.) mother"

asiłimar "their mother"

Syntax