Nankôre

Nankôre
Nankôre
Pronunciation	[/nan.ko:re/]
Created by	–
Native to	Nanhoshka Kôya
Native speakers	3,232,430 (2014)
Language family	Language Isolate Nankôre
Official status
Official language in	Koya Island
Regulated by	Nankore
Language codes
ISO 639-1	nk
ISO 639-2	nnk
ISO 639-3	nnk

Background

Nankôre, from the words nan ("man, human") and kôre ("speech"), is spoken by the Nanhoshka people of Kôya Island. There are two main dialects, the Konishmak, located in the Northeastern Coastal Mountains, and the Sapshira, encompassing the western and southern parts of the country. The dialects differ chiefly in pronunciation and differences in certain lexical items, but are otherwise mutually intelligible.

The origins of the language and its people remain clouded in mystery. Physically, the Nanhoshka people look distinct from the Northwest Pacific Native Americans just 862 kilometers from the eastern shore, but their physical features bear a strikingly close resemblance to the Minhast people of the Republic of Minhay, who live much further away on the other side of the Pacific Ocean close to Japan and Ainushir. Because of these physical resemblences, both anthropologists and linguists have been exploring a possible relationship between the two peoples. Although recent genetic research has uncovered that both the Nanhoshka and Minhast belong to the haplogroup C-M212, suggesting a common ancestry, linguists have been much less successful in establishing a relationship. Some linguists have compiled Swadesh lists that suggest some lexical items may have a common origin, but so far researchers have failed to demonstrate reliable sound correspondences between the two languages. Therefore, both Nankôre and Minhast remain classified as language isolates.

I'll get back to Nankore later to make it conform to the language format policy. For now, here's a sample text:

Atemana uyasi, mahun teyaroa teh hekaci u tempa wasin te taa'. Okaaka ta techam aci tah sinehne ka ante ta anene yoopani ta asin te taa. Ta hekaci taa. Cis ani taa'. Un kayo taa pahke te oman kusuan.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m		n
Stop	p	t				k	ʔ
Affricate				͡tʃ
Fricative			s	ʃ			h
Approximant	w				j
Flap			r

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	ɪ		u
Mid	e		o
Open		ɑ

Orthography

The Nankôre orthography is based on the Allen-Mills system, derived from the Latin alphabet:

a
b
c / ͡tʃ/
s /s/, /ʃ/
sh /ʃ/
e
h
i
k
r
m
n
o
p
t
u
w
y

The symbol [s] is pronounced /ʃ/ when followed by [i] (e.g. sinkokah(t) "orca"), or in coda position (Nanhoska "the Nanhoshka people")

Grammar

Morphology

Nouns

Nouns in Nankôre are not inflected for case. Core arguments for Agent (A) and Patient (P) are marked by verbal affixes. Oblique arguments, behave as adjuncts, and are thus bound to their clause with the connective clitic si= or =si. Context alone determines the semantic role of the oblique. Because obliques are considered adjuncts, they may not come between the core arguments and the verb, and therefore must appear either before or after the clause nucleus. To illustrate, the sentence Maska=si ohipna koykare ekán itá (anthill=CONN twig boy insert PST), i.e. "The boy inserted the twig into the anthill", the noun maska (anthill) is the oblique argument and is marked with the clitic si= to join it to the rest of the sentence. Oblique arguments use the form =si preceding the clause nucleus, or si= following the clause nucleus, e.g. Ohipna koykare ekán itá si=maska.

Possession is indicated by joining the possessor to the possessum with the connective si=, followed either by the verb ras to indicate inalienable possession e.g. Koykare si=naho ras, "The boy's mother", or ocité for alienable possession, e.g. Koykare si=maska ocité. If the possessor is lower in the animacy heirarcy, the inverse marker ta'/tah is prefixed to the verb, as in the improbable Maska si=koykare tah-ocité, "The anthill's boy".

Verbs

Verbs in Nankôre, as in many other languages, can perform operations to alter the argument structure of a clause. Agents and Patients may be demoted from their core status, Patients may be promoted to a derived Subject, and Obliques may be promoted to a core role. Nankôre has a several auxiliary verbs that perform operations similar to passivation, antipassivation, and applicativized. In a language that has virtually no adpositions or case markings on the NPs, valence operations these auxiliary verbs, particularly the passivation and antipassivation auxiliaries, are exploited to convey spatial or directional information that case affixes or adpositions perform in other languages. The animacy system interacts with these auxiliary verbs, called valence auxiliaries in the linguistic literature of Nankôre.

As an example, the auxiliary kohán passivizes the clause, resulting in a one-argument clause containing only the logical Patient. Since there is only one core argument, the need for inverse marking no longer exists, and in fact the presence of both the passive auxiliary kohán and the inverse marker tā' in the same sentence is ungrammatical. The same is true for the antipassive auxilliary norhe/norhâ, that is the logical Patient is deleted leaving only the agent, and so once again, the presence of the inverse tā is ungrammatical. When either the Agent or the Patient has been deleted by the passive or antipassive auxiliaries, one thing that must be noted is that the demoted arguments are fully deleted. In other languages that have passives and/or antipassives, demoted core arguments need not be deleted, in fact in many languages the demoted argument may still be retained in the sentence, but this time as an oblique argument. Such is not the case in Nankôre; the former core argument cannot appear in the sentence.