Ash
| Ahgo | |
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| ahgoa | |
| Pronunciation | [[Help:IPA|ˈʔɑħˌk̠ɔ̯ɑː]] |
| Created by | Ava Skoog |
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Introduction
Ahgo (ahgoa, lit. "seaspeak", pronounced [ˈʔɑħˌk̠ɔ̯ɑː]) is the anglicised name of a language mostly spoken around coastal areas, notably the town of Ahba. Its speakers are familiar with technological advancements such as nautical vessels and steam locomotives.
The language is mildly synthetic to polysynthetic, largely based around agglutination with fusional elements. There is a great focus on verbs, nominals being mostly uninflected, and significant pro-drop tendencies and a general focus around deixis rather than pronominal distinctions. The word order is heavily SOV.
Phonology
Phonemes
The underlying sounds of Ahgo are few enough that a simple listing is preferable to a traditional table:
| Vocalic | /a~Ø i~j~Ø u~w~Ø/ |
|---|---|
| Plosive | /p~β t~ð k~ɣ/ |
| Affricate | /t͡ɬ~ɬ t͡s~s/ |
| Fricative | /h~ʔ/ |
| Nasal | /m~˜ n~˜ ŋ~˜/ |
The reasoning for this rather unusual classification is down to phonotactic patterning: these five groups all behave somewhat differently and serve as a more useful distinction than point of articulation when describing the phonology of Ahgo. The pair or triplet given for each phoneme refers to an important feature of the language which is the alternation between various allophonic realisations despite the relatively low number of underlying sounds, making the variation richer on the surface. For instance, long vowels (romanised by doubling the vowel) and nasal vowels (romanised using a tilde) are not analysed as phonemic.
Romanisation
The romanisation strikes a balance between representing phonemes versus surface realisations and uses the following seventeen letters:
| a | ã | e | ẽ | y | o | õ | w | b | d | g | s | l | h | m | n | ŋ |
An example of a word with its archiphonemic, phonemic and surface transcriptions as well as romanisation:
| //ˈwat.ha.ku// | → /ˈwah.taˌku/ | → [ˈʔɔ̯ɑħ.t̠ɐˌɣʊ] | → oahdago "during the day" |
Syllable structure
A cluster cannot exceed two consonants and must be of one of the following configurations:
| CC | Both consonants are the same |
| FP | Fricative followed by plosive |
| NP | Nasal followed by plosive |
| PN~FN | Plosive or fricative followed by nasal |
Prefixes are always unstressed. Following the last stressed syllable an iambic pattern of secondary stress on every other underlyingly light syllable follows unless an underlyingly heavy syllable intervenes, resetting the pattern. In addition, unless at the end of a word, stressed syllables are forced to be heavy either by lengthening of the vowel or reduplication of the next syllable's onset consonant if they are not already underlyingly so.
Morphology
Ahgo does not mark words for number, person or case. With regards to syntactic patterning, only three significant word classes can be posited: verbs, nominals and adverbials. Nonetheless there is a degree of mobility between the three.
Verbs
The bulk of all inflection goes on verbs, making them morphemic anchors fundamental to almost any utterance in the language. The general verb template looks as follows:
| Stem | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deixis | Trans./Poss. | Preverb | Incorp. | Class. | Root | Der. | State | Mood/Nom. | Adv. | Enclitics |
The nominalisation slot creates a deverbal nominal and the adverbialisation slot creates an adverbial and so these two serve to change the class of the word; the possession slot is only used on deverbal nominals and not on regular verbs.
Stems
Each verb has a set of primary stems formed more or less predictably from a combination of affixes. The first stem, the stative indicative, is used as the lemma when citing words, such as oada "to shine":
| Stative | Active | Translative | Causative | Passive | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indicative | oada | oahda | oadna | oadsa | oasda |
| Optative | oase | oahdse | oadne | oadse | oasdse |
All of these terms are to an extent ad hoc. For instance the passive stem is only used to form deverbal nominals; there is no true passive construction syntactically.
Nominals
Nominals are mostly unmarked and the main kind of affixation, while resembling case marking, results in adverbialisation, thus changing the class of the word. Nominals can however be marked for possession or be incorporated into a verb.
Adverbials
Adverbials are used to denote a place, time or manner. Their formation sometimes resembles case marking or conjunctions more than traditional adverbs, but serves that role as well.
Some prominent adverbialising suffixes:
| Suffix | Example | |
|---|---|---|
| Locative | -da | mehda "by the fire" |
| Temporal | -go | oadnago "in the morning" |
| Benefactive | -ba | eaba "in order to see" |
Deixis
The language lacks true pronouns and due to its pro-drop tendencies commonly avoids alternatives as well. What does get commonly marked is deixis: whether something is close to or far away from the speaker or a previous referent; unspecified deixis is also possible. On nominals deixis is generally spatial while on verbs it is temporal (proximal working roughly as a present tense and distal as a non-present one); adverbial deixis can be either depending on the characteristics of the adverbial in question.
The deictic stems are as follows:
| Neutral | Ø- (unmarked) |
|---|---|
| Proximal | e- |
| Distal | o- |
Deixis occurs in the form of isolated nominals ee and oo as well as verbal and possessive prefixes e- and o-. Neutral deixis sometimes surfaces epenthetically as a- due to phonotactic constraints, but is not underlyingly explicitly marked.
Syntax
The word order is strictly SOV, with adverbials generally preceding the nominals followed by the verb.
Valency
Transitivity and inversion
Transitivity is explicitly marked and through an inversion marker on the verb the roles of agent and patient can be swapped without a change in word order, the purpose of which is topicalisation, leaving the topic in the subject position.
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Inversion is especially important when the subject is being omitted as person markers do not exist:
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Incorporation
There is a limit on two unmarked nominal arguments of a verb. There are two ways to introduce more arguments, one of which is to incorporate the third nominal into the verb.
- ao bao odsãmmoyya
[ˈʔɑːʊ̯ ˈβɑːʊ̯‿wo̞ʔˈd̠͡z̠ɑ̃mˌmʊʝ.ʝɐ]
ao dog DIST-TR<water>consume.CAUS.IND
Ao gave the dog water to drink
Adverbialisation
The other method is to completely remove the valency of the nominal by turning it into an adverbial, which is why this process sometimes resembles case marking.
- mehda ao bao odsãmmoyya
[ˈme̞ħ.t̠ɐ‿ˈʔɑːʊ̯ ˈβɑːʊ̯‿wo̞ʔˈd̠͡z̠ɑ̃mˌmʊʝ.ʝɐ]
fire-LOC ao dog DIST-TR<water>consume.CAUS.IND
Ao gave the dog water to drink by the fire
Animacy
While there is no explicit marking for animacy, an underlying hierarchy ranging roughly from natural forces at the top to people and animals in the middle and inanimates at the bottom governs certain parts of the grammar. The main consequence of this hierarchy is that inanimate referents cannot act as agents which affects how transitive and inverse marking is interpreted in their presence.
| Transitive | Inverse | |
|---|---|---|
| Animate | bao ahhoo "dogs eat it" | bao assoo "dogs are eaten" |
| Inanimate | sããn ahhoo "water is drunk" | *sããn assoo (ungrammatical) |
Subclauses
Relativisation is done simply by chaining phrases one after another, with no special marking. Subclauses go before main clauses, in which the deictic context is centered around the subject of the subclause.
- oo oahdago bao ossoyya ee oahdago esseana
[ˈʔu̯oː‿ˈwɔ̯ɑħ.t̠ɐˌɣʊ ˈβɑːʊ̯‿wʊs̠ˈs̠ʊʝ.ʝɐ‿ˈji̯eː‿ˈwɔ̯ɑħ.t̠ɐˌɣʊ‿jɪɕˈɕɛ̯ɑːn̠ɐ]
DIST shine.ACT.IND-TEMP dog DIST-INV-consume.CAUS.IND PROX shine.ACT.IND-TEMP PROX-INV-see.TRANS.IND
today I saw the dog that you fed yesterday
Locative verbs
An important part of Ahgo grammar is an extensive set of so called locative verbs which are used almost like a noun classification system and cover location, motion and related concepts while providing specific information about the referent at hand, such as specifying whether liquid is involved.
These are some of those verbs:
| Lemma | Semantic range |
|---|---|
| laa | general stative (indefinite or permanent) |
| goo | general active (temporary or dynamic) |
| sããn | water and other liquids |
Disambiguation
One function of locative verbs is to resolve potential ambiguities.
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Specification
To denote motion, a motive prefix is placed into the verbal classifier slot.
- ao algoo
[ˈʔɑːʊ̯‿wɬ̠̩ˈku̯oː]
ocean MOT-TEMP.STAT.IND
Ao moves
The preverb slot can be used to specify a manner, location or a direction.
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Use with adverbials
Adverbial location is generic and locative verbs can be used to specify the meaning.
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