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 were marked for gender (masculine, other), number (singular, plural) and state (absolute, construct) through a series of affixes. Adjectives were unmarked but formed compounds with the noun they modified. Personal pronouns were usually prefixes attached to verbs, nouns, adjectives etc.
Gender
The exact nature of the gender system is unclear, but it appears to be based on two largely semantic classes: a masculine class and an other class. The masculine class (also called the E-class) included 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 class (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.
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. the root HATAL "child" may 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".
Number
Nouns are either singular or plural and number is required on all nouns.
A collective suffix -ul can be used to denote a class of objects and is declined as a singular noun, e.g. putulek "men (in general)".
State
All nouns have an absolute and a construct form. The absolute is marked with suffixes and is the form used without any 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.
Construct nouns must be preceded by one of the following:
- a demonstrative prefix
- a possessive prefix
- a verbal prefix
Declension
All nouns consist of an immutable stem to which affixes are attached, e.g. PUT "man", QRAL "house", NUUK "dog". The stem may not stand alone and must be accompanied either by absolute suffixes or some kind of prefix. 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. These vowel sequences form part of the affixes attached to the noun stem, as follows:
| Masculine PUT | Other QRAL | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Absolute | Singular | putek | qralah |
| Plural | putiik | qralaah | |
| Construct | Singular | -eput | -aqral |
| Plural | -iiput | -aaqral |
Demonstrative Prefixes
The demonstrative prefixes are added to the beginning of the construct noun and are as follows:
- q- "that", denoting things close to the listener, but used in a general sense almost like a definite article, e.g. qaqral "the/that house".
- p- "this", denoting things close to the speaker or recently mentioned, e.g. piiput "these men"
- qr- "that" denoting things far away or abstract, e.g. qrahatal "that girl/child".
Possessive Prefixes
Possessive prefixes form part of a series of personal prefixes which occur for each person and number, as well as masculine and other in the 3rd person singular only (3rd pl. wey- is used for both genders). There is also an impersonal prefix tśey- "someone's" used when the possessor is not known or when speaking generally (e.g. tśeyenuuk "someone's dog").
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | key- | ney- |
| 2 | ley- | tey- |
| 3m | sey- | wey- |
| 3o | hey- | |
| Imp. | tśey- |
Examples: keyaqral "my house", seyefak "his wife", weyaahatal "their children".
Verbal Prefixes
Verbal prefixes transform the noun into a predicate, e.g. keput "I am a man", hanuuk "it is a dog". See below for forms.
Adjectives
Adjective stems are not fully distinguishable from nouns and in many cases a single stem may behave as either, e.g. ETS "salt; salty". Adjectives may be either simple (e.g. SUUP "large") or derived from another part of speech (e.g. PUTIŚ- "manly, man-like"). In either case they may be used predicatively or attributively.
An attributive adjective is placed after the noun in either its absolute or construct state and is unmarked for gender, number or state, e.g. qaqral suup "the big house", putek neh "an old man". In many cases an attributive adjective may be compounded with the noun stem, where the relationship between the noun and adjective is stronger. Here, the adjective intervenes between the construct noun stem and prefixes, e.g. qasuupqral "the big house, the mansion", nehputek "an old man".
A predicative adjective may be formed by adding the verbal prefixes to the stem where the subject is a pronoun, e.g. kiputiś "I am manly", hisuup "it is large". When the subject is a noun, the attributive structure is used and verbal prefixes are added to the noun, e.g. haqral suup "it is a large house" or "the house is large", siput neh "he is an old man" or "the man is old".
Verbs
Like nouns and adjectives, verbs consist of an immutable stem to which affixes are added. Some stems may have both verbal and nominal functions, the distinction being made by affixes used, e.g. LAAN "breath, to breathe", laanah "a breath", kilaanamen "I breathed". Verbal morphology is largely agglutinative and the verb is composed of the following elements:
- [SUBJECT PREFIX] + ([OBJECT PREFIX]) + [STEM] + ([DERIVATIVE]) + [ASPECT SUFFIX] + ([TENSE SUFFIX])
Subject Prefixes
Subject prefixes exist for each of the persons in singular and plural with separate masculine and other prefixes in the 3rd singular only. There is also an indefinite subject meaning "someone, something" when the actual subject is unknown or not relevant, and an impersonal subject, which effectively acts as a placeholder when there is no apparent agent.
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ki- | ni- |
| 2 | li- | ti- |
| 3m | si- | wi- |
| 3o | hi- | |
| Ind. | tśi- | |
| Imp. | e- |
Subject prefixes are only used to mark the subject of the verb or predicate and are mandatory even where the subject is otherwise specified. They may be added to verbs, nouns or adjectives. When added to nouns, the -i- of the prefix is lost to preserve the declension vowels (e.g. ki-eput > keput). When added to verbs or adjectives the form is ki- etc, with epenthetic h added before a stem-initial vowel, e.g. kisuntsu "I was sleeping", hihets "it is salty".
The impersonal subject places focus on the verb and/or its object. It may be used with transitive verbs to create a passive sense, e.g. esuneenamen "he was seen" (i.e. "X saw him"). With an intransitive verb it can be translated with the dummy subject "there" (or "it" with weather etc.), e.g. etipa "there was runnning", esili "it is raining".
Object Prefixes
Object pronouns are similar to subject forms, but have an additional reflexive form. They are used to show the direct object of a transitive verb and cannot be omitted, even where the object is stated elsewhere. The impersonal form is used when the object is either unknown or unspecified. They cannot be used with noun or adjective stems (except where these have a verbal use, like LAAN above).
The prefixes are inserted between the subject prefix and the stem.
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | -ku- | -nu- |
| 2 | -lu- | -tu- |
| 3m | -su- | -wu- |
| 3o | -hu- | |
| Imp. | -tśu- | |
| Refl. | -keru- |
When the prefixes precede a vowel-initial stem, an epenthetic n is inserted, e.g. kisuneenamen "I saw him".
The reflexive is used with all persons, e.g. likeruneenamen "you saw yourself", sikerutanya "he will kill himself".
Aspect and Tense Suffixes
All true verbs must have an 'aspect' marker (which includes the irrealis mood marker), added after the verb stem:
- Perfect -a
- Imperfect -i
- Irrealis -ya
- Habitual -itti
E.g. tisuntsi "you are sleeping", tisuntsa "you slept", tisuntsiya "you may/will sleep", tisuntsitti "you sleep often".
To these may be added the tense marker -men denoting the past, e.g. tisuntsimen "you were sleeping", tisuntsamen "you had slept", tisuntsiyamen "you would sleep".
These two sets of suffixes are used to build the verb paradigm, as follows:
| Verb Form | Construction | E.g. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Present | STEM + i | kitipi | I run |
| Past Continuous | STEM + i + men | kitipimen | I was running |
| Past | STEM + a | kitipa | I ran |
| Pluperfect | STEM + a + men | kitipamen | I had run |
| Present Habitual | STEM + itti | kitipitti | I often run |
| Past Habitual | STEM + itti + men | kitipittimen | I used to run |
| Future | STEM + ya | kitipya | I will run |
| Conditional | STEM + ya + men | kitipyamen | I would have run |
| Imperative/Hortative | faa _ STEM + ya | faa kitipya | I ought to run |
Notes on the Tenses
- Present
- Used as both a simple and continuous present, denoting general truths or ongoing actions/states.
- It can also have a future sense, when the action is impending or when used with an adverb of time e.g. kitipi tapatla "I am going to run tomorrow".
- Past Continuous
- Used to denote ongoing actions/states in the past.
- Past
- A simple past or perfect, denoting completed past actions.
- Pluperfect
- Denoting actions/events that were completed at some time in the past.
- Present Habitual
- Denoting actions/states that the subject regularly or repeatedly experiences.
- The habitual suffix -itti can be used to create a noun meaning "one who Xes habitually", something like an agent or occupational noun, e.g. kalittiek "one who eats often, a glutton", qekayateltitti "the fisherman (one who fishes)".
- Past Habitual
- Expresses actions that used to be habitual for the subject, but no longer are. The use of the past habitual is relatively rare.
- Future
- Denotes actions/states expected to occur in the future. This is the base form of the irrealis mood, which indicates merely that an action/state has not taken place and has not been completed. No indication is given as to the likelihood of the verb action taking place. As such, while the primary meaning is taken to be future, the verb may be translated not only with the English future "I will run" etc (which indicates that the action is likely to occur), but also with "I may run" etc (where there is less certainty).
- Conditional
- The conditional is the past irrealis denoting hypothetical past events. Its use is mainly restricted to a conditional sense, e.g. "I would have run" etc.
- Imperative/Hortative
- Generally expressing commands, entreaties, wishes or obligations. It must be preceded by the particle faa. The strength of the meaning is purely contextual. The 2nd person forms may be a translated as direct imperative, e.g. faa litipya "run!" but also "you ought to run, please run, may you run". In the other persons, these other meanings are also used, e.g. faa misuntsya "I ought to sleep", faa tśikalya "one ought to eat".
Causative
A suffix -tsa may be added to the end of the verb to create a causative. Here, the subject prefix marks the agent of causation and the object prefix marks the agent of the verb itself, e.g. kisuneenitsa "I make him see". Causatives usually take an indirect object (see below).