Elasian

Meret sá, /ˈmɛrɛt s̺ɑh/, or Élászyato meret, /e̞hlɑht͡sjato̞ ˈmɛrɛt/, also known as Elasian is the ancestral language of the Élászyat people, who inhabit the dale of Élászalyadá, a valley in northeastern Central Asia.

Conlanger's notes: The primary impetus for the creation of this language came to me whilst doing something completely unrelated; suddenly, I had a flash of insight and from that moment onwards I knew that I would express the diminutive by the suffix ak! Unfortunately, I realised relatively quickly that I had no language available on which to tack it on. So, I started with a new one. What originally was termed the language of the little birds (the word for bird was the first coined, the diminutive the second) has now developed slightly more into the language of the Élászyat, an independent nation.

Phonology

Consonants

Consonants (Allophones included)

		Bilabial		Labiodental		Dental		Alveolar		Postalveolar		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasals		m [m]				n [n]								(ŋ)2
Plosives	voiceless	p [p]				t [t]								k [k]
	voiced	b [b]				d [d]								g [g]
Affricates	voiceless							sz [t͡s]		(ʃ)
	voiced							z [d͡z]
Fricatives	voiceless	(ɸ)3				(θ)3		s [s̺]						(x)		´ [h]
	voiced	(β)3				(ð)3								(ɣ)3
Trills						r [r~ɾ]
Flaps						(ɾ)5
Approximant												y [j]
Lateral approximant								l [l]				(ʎ)

Vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Mid	e̞	o̞
Open-mid	(ɛ)
Open	a	(ɑ)

Orthography

The traditional sorting order for the Latin alphabet is derived from the order of the native script Élászyato ládarat, or simply Ládarat. The traditional names for the letters are also from the Ládarat: a or alpa, o, u, e, i, ép, ét, ék, éb, éd, ág, mi, ni, lamád, ró, yá, ás, áz, ász, (éx). Since the grapheme x is unique to the Latin script and the most recent addition it appears last.

Written in Ládarat : élászyato ládarat ars (The signs of the Elasiat are) a o, u, e, i, p, t, k, b, d, g, m, n, l, r, y, s, z, sz.

The acute accent is used to indicate that a vowel is followed by /h/, a feature inherited from the native script which uses a similar diacritic. Since /h/ may only occur as a coda there is no native need for a separate grapheme for it. This posits a minor problem if one seeks to accurately capture an onset /h/. While originally dropping the h, Elasian has started retaining it in certain English loanwords. Thus, the language council recommends the utilisation of the grave accent ` for writing foreign words with an initial H and discourages the usage of the letter H. Thus, the German name Hans would be properly written as Àns.

Latin	IPA	Words
´	[h]	á, tá, Élász
a	[a]	alpa, ars
	[ɑ]	kulak
p	[p]	táp, ép
	[ɸ]	pasz
t	[t]	lyat, ét
	[θ]	ter
k	[k]	arak, ék
	[x]	kul
b	[b]	éb
	[β]	bátar
d	[d]	merad, éd
	[ð]	deret
g	[g]	múrag, ág
	[ɣ]	ger
m	[m]	mi, meret
n	[n]	ni, názar
l	[l]	lamád, terelesz
r	[r]	ró, báret
y	[j]	yá, syó
s	[s̺]	ás, sá
z	[d͡z]	áz, zerelesz
sz	[t͡s]	ász, szárad
x	[ks]	éx, arax

Morphology

Nouns

Nouns are inflected for five cases - nominative, accusative, genitive, dative and the instrumental. In addition to this they are inflected for grammatical number. This is carried out by affixes to the stem of the word which is a predominantly agglutinative process wherein the case marker is first attached and thereafter the grammatical number. Some fusion of elements can be detected in the language, thus providing an alternate analysis of e.g. the plural genitive -un as a single morpheme instead of one composed of -o(genitive) + -en(plural).

arak, arax, arako, araká, arakem

araken, araxen, arakun, arakán, arakemen

Derivational morphology

The Elasian language features a very robust derivational system enabling the transformation of nouns to verbs and back again (shifting syntactic category), the diminution of nouns, verbs and adverbs are all possible and likewise so with augmentation.

Diminutives and augmentatives

Diminutives are handled for animate words with the suffix ak. For naturally inanimate nouns this becomes ek.

E.g.

word	diminutive	gloss
pet	petak	bird > little bird
ger	gerek	story > saying, proverb
kul	kulak	tribe > family
pasz	paszek	stone > pebble

Collective nouns

Elasian also features ways to form a collective noun; this is extensively used for concepts such as a puddle (of water), days, groups of animal and such. Take for example the word ter ('a moment') from which the Elasian word for a day teret is derived. It can be broken down into ter and the inanimate collectivising morpheme -et ('a group of moments, a day').

Syntax

Word order

The default unmarked word order in Elasian is subject-object-verb as in I apples eat. The alternate word order OSV is permitted when seeking to emphasise the object; an inversion of subject and object occurs, e.g. truth I speak.

Generally speaking, qualifiers precede the noun they modify. This does not go for class IV verbs to which a large semantic space of description goes; they correspond partially to what we would term adjectives, in truth they're more akin to stative verbs and are treated as such and thus go after the noun they modify.

petaken mirigeni

"(the) little birds red.are"