Ín Duári

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Introduction

Ín Duári is an indigenous minority language spoken in small pockets in Minhay. The language is not related to the Minhast language, nor the Peshpeg language, another minority language in the Minhast Nation. A relationship with the extinct Corradi language, another language indigenous to Minhay, has not been successfully demonstrated. Some linguists have also tried to establish a relationship with nearby languages in Northeast Asia, including Japanese, Korean, Ainu, and various Altaic, Tungusic, and Paleosiberian languages. Others have tried to link it to the Indo-European language family, due to typological similarities between the two. Nevertheless, a relationship with other languages continues to elude scholars, and thus Ín Duári remains classified as a language isolate.

The Ín Duári have often been referred to in older literature by the name Golahát. The term is an exonym, originating from the Peshpeg word gola, meaning foreigner, and -hát, a Peshpeg suffix used to derived denonyms; the suffix -hát is itself a borrowing from the Minhast suffix -ast/-hast. The endonym ín Duari, used by native speakers to refer to themselves, means "the people", and they refer to their language as rinázi, meaning "those who speak (intelligibly)".

Like Peshpeg, Golahát is an endangered language; according to the 2010 census, less than one thousand people still speak the language, the youngest in their late 30's or early 40's. ín Duari has fared better than Peshpeg, which has only a few hundred speakers at most. Nevertheless, ín Duari continues to lose speakers due to several factors, such as the influx of Minhast speakers into traditionally Golahát-speaking areas, emigration by the younger generation to urban areas in search for employment, and the influence of the Minhast-dominated media.



Phonology

Orthography

Ammerkast Characters
a, á, e,é, i, í, o, ó u, ú, b,p,f, v, d, ð, t, þ, g, k, n, m, l,r, z, s,h, ḩ, w,y


Consonants

Golahát Consonantal Inventory
Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal Laryngeal
Nasal m n
Plosive p b t d k g ʔ
Fricative Non-Sibilant f v θ ð x h
Sibiliant s z
Affricates
Approximants w j
Trill r
Lateral l

Vowels

  Front Near- front Central Near- back Back
Close
Blank vowel trapezoid.svg
i
u
ɪ
ɪ̈
o
ɛ
a
  Near-close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open

Prosody

Length and Stress

Vowel length is distinctive in Golahát, and is indicated in the orthography by acute accents over the lengthened vowels. Additionally, the acute accent in ú and í also signify vowel quality. Since vowel length affects the stress; the acute accent also indicates the location of the primary stress of the word.

Vowel length is almost always associated with syllable stress. As a general rule, long vowels do not occur in CVCC clusters, although some exceptions arise, as in mínþir (exhaustion). If two or more long vowels occur in a word, the final long vowel is stressed.

Intonation

Phonotactics

Morphophonology

Morphology

Golahát is a fusional language with some agglugination.

Nouns

Nouns inflect for gender, number and case. The gender system contains eight classes, descended from an earlier system that distinguished animacy through noun classifiers. In time these classifiers became bound morphemes, accounting for the disparate patterns found across the present noun class system. Animacy is still correlated with noun classes, with animacy tending to decrease from left to right across the noun classes. However, the animacy distinctions have blurred, with some of the nouns in the protolanguage being reassigned to another class due to syncretism.

The Class I and Class II nouns are unmarked in the nominative, but mark the accusative with a suffix specific for that class. Nouns from Class III to Class VI all exhibit suffix marking on the nominative, with null marking on the accusative. These nouns are referred to as the unmarked accusative nouns, or marked nominative nouns. Based on this type of case marking, linguists have classified Ín Duári's morphosyntactic alighnment as nominative-absolutive , a subtype of the more familiar nominative-accusative morphosyntactic alighment. Nominative-absolutive languages occur rarely throughout the world. However, Ín Duári exhibits nominative-absolutive alignment only in Class III-Class VIII. Class I and Class II exhibit the prototypical nominative-accusative pattern though, so Ín Duári is highly unusual as it appears to exhibit a split alignment system between the nominative-accusative and the nominative-absolutive morphosyntactic alignment classifications.

Class VII and Class VIII nouns have merged the nominative and accusative cases into a single, direct case. The plural forms originally reduplicated the initial syllable with the CV- pattern, but through phonological erosion initial consonants were lost, leaving behind the vowel of the original reduplicated syllable. Through time the vowels were leveled to an e- prefix in all noun classes, save for the plural in the form VIII direct case, which changed to initial i- prefix.

Case Noun Classes
Class I Class II Class III Class IV Class V Class VI Class VII Class VIII
Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural
Nominative sarian esaraþa mane emanþea vannea evanþænwyn dioneiða edioþwyðas tænzyca etænþycæn fwyðneas efwyþinwas naërwyð enaërþyfa berfwyn iberþyfwa
Accusative sarianai esaraþnai manead emanþeada vanin evanþæn dioneið edioþwyð tænzyc etænþyca fwyðen efwyþin
Genitive
Locative
Oblique
Root sari- man- vani- dion- tænz- fwyð- naër- ber-
Meaning man hand cloud leaf knife water desire stone


Pronouns

Person Nom. Accusative
1S vren vreni
2S kos koris
3S.CL1 nian nianè
3S.CL2 nie niéa
3S.CL3 anéa anin
3S.CL4 feiðoas feiðá
3S.CL5 næfwynas næfwyn
3S.CL6 nyca nyc
3S.CL7 eowa eowa
3S.CL8 hæswyða hæswyða

Verbs

The Ín Duári verb is moderately synthetic, capable of indicating voice, tense, and aspect. Three tenses, a present, past, and future are distinguished. Additionally, three aspects are marked, namely the habitual, imperfect and perfect. However, person is not marked and requires context or explicitly stating the core argument. Mood is for the most part indicated by particles preceding the main verb; however, a Purposive mood exists.

Ín Duári lacks an infinitive but possesses two non-finite forms, namely the gerund and participle, and a base verbal noun, which may take additional derivational suffixes.

The following table demonstrates the conjugation of the regular verb vára (to see):

Tense-Aspect Active Passive
Past Habitual varántir izvaráltir
Non-Past Habitual evarán azeváralan
Past Perfect vará azvarál
Past Imperfect evára azevarál
Present Perfect vára azvarál
Present Imperfect evárae azevaráli
Future Perfect varái azvarál
Future Imperfect evaráien azvaraiél

The Purposive mood exists only in the Active voice and is uninflected for tense, instead inheriting its tense marking from the verb in the matrix clause. Additionally, the Past and Non-Past Habitual forms have merged.

Tense-Aspect Active
Habitual varánuiþ
Present Perfect varánþ
Present Imperfect evaránþ

The non-finite forms inflect for case and number:

Header text Header text Header text
Example Gerund Participle
Nominative Example Example
Example Example Example
Example Example Example
Example Example Example
Example Example Example
Example Example Example
Example Example Example
Example Example Example
Example Example Example
Example Example Example
Example Example Example

Unlike its relative Nidâri, Ín Duári does not have a negative verbal affix; negation is indicated by the particle kel which must come before the verb, although other constituents may intervene between the negator and the verb:

Kel Renviaran evára Anzi renzuiþ Haþlua men Kirmaþanai (Renviar did not go to Anzi to kill Wolf Speakers).

Syntax

Constituent order

Canonical word order is VSO. Nevertheless, SVO, SOV, VOS, OSV, and OVS may appear as the case system allows such flexibility since it explicitly marks syntactic roles. Modifiers for the most part follow their heads, although determiners and deictics precede their heads.

Noun phrase

Verb phrase

Sentence phrase

Dependent clauses

Example texts

Other resources