Ditab

Ditab /diθ̠aw̃/ is a language of Méich Bhaonnáiqh (Bech Baddochaqh?) inspired by Iau, Proto-Lakes Plain and Semitic languages (particularly chanted Tiberian Hebrew). It's the ceremonial language of uplifted birds of the space colony Bădháchôth.

Todo

A reading tradition of Ditab with a Modern Hebrew accent: no tones or vowel or consonant length (so there will be a lot of ambiguity; Ditab isn't actually spoken that way)

• odhubh cabhechoth (fill in tones and vowel lengths) -> oduv kvekhot

Phonology

Ditab has

• 5 consonants:
  • rostral nasalized fricative: m̞ (written b)
  • voiced apico-palatal stop: d
  • voiceless apico-palatal stop: t
  • voiceless lamino-palatal stop: c (written c)
  • voiced choanal stop: ʡ (written q)
• 21 vowels: i ị e ẹ a ạ ọ o ụ u /i ɪ e ɛ æ ɑ ɔ o ʊ u/ + nasalized counterparts + ă (shva na3, by default /ä/); /ɔ o ʊ u/ are really their unrounded counterparts
• 6 pitch accent patterns (level, rising, falling, falling-rising, rising-falling, one like Swedish tone 2) (they should be loosely modeled after tropes) (long and overlone tones should be different; some tones have two nuclei like pashtayim and qadma v'azla)

There is a three way length distinction as well, in both consonants and vowels.

All five stops have continuant allophones (roughly [w̃ ð̠ θ̠ j ʕ]) after vowels, unless they're geminated.

Word structure

Final stress like Tiberian Hebrew

Most words are underlyingly either open syllable -V: (e.g. o), or "closed syllable" with nucleus -V: and allowed "codas" -C, -V, -VC, -CC, -(unstressed syllable) (e.g. och, o.o, o.och, o.chebh, o.c)

Extrametrical elements occur too: ô.c-co [ô:.c:-cò:] (like -k in TibH vattėbh-k 'and she wept')

Orthography

Ditab has an ASCII friendly orthography in addition to the 'default' one, where some vowels are written with consonant letters. It also has a Hebrew orthography with cantillation marks for tones and weird matres lectionis (like nun, mem, samekh, ayin etc.)

Morphology

Ditab morphology is entirely suffixing except for adjectives. Adjectives are a small closed class and work by infixing and/or changing the vowels in the noun according to a predictable umlaut pattern.

There is no grammatical gender, and two declension classes:

• Class one nouns mark the construct state with the suffix -bẽ́.
• Class two nouns mark the absolute state with -bẽ́.

Verbs inflect by aspect but not tense. Curiously, the imperfective and perfective forms are interchanged when the verb follows the interrogative particle củ-, the negative particle bách- or the conjunctive particle ădhùbh-, or other preverbs/conjunctions, reminiscent of Old Irish verb allomorphy.

Ditab has Slavic-style verbs of motion: walk, run, fly, soar, fly by flapping wings, travel by a vehicle, swim, ... each with a unidirectional and a multidirectional counterpart.

Ditab is borderline polysynthetic in that some verbs have to incorporate their objects. Ditab also uses bipersonal inflections.

Syntax

Ditab is strictly OVS. Cleft constructions are common.