Kandi

Tsan
ᏊᏮ Ꮧ:Ꮂ (Tsani tsúyi)
Pronunciation	[[Help:IPA|t͡sʌ̃ʔɪ t͡suβ̞ʝɪ]]
Created by	–
Native to	Sultanate of Tsandi
Native speakers	4 million (2014)
Language family	Jasi-Jivan Tanisi Tsan
Early form	Proto-Tanisi
Dialects	Western Tsan Eastern Tsan Kanni
Official status
Regulated by	Aytshin Sasháatsandi
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ts
ISO 639-2	ts
ISO 639-3	qts

Tsani, or ᏊᏮ Ꮧ:Ꮂ (Tsani tsúyi), pronounced [t͡sʌ̃ʔɪ t͡suβ̞ʝɪ], is a Tanisi language spoken in the Sultanate of Tsandi. The Sultanate is located in the eastern region of Sapirica. The language belongs to the Tanisi language family and is thus distantly related to the Ris language.

Tsani is a heavily agglutinating with a complex verbal morphology. The language has repeatedly been analysed as lacking nouns and adjectives altogether, in favour of verbs. Phonologically it exhibits prenasalised consonants, realised as nasal clusters or voiced consonants in different dialects.

Phonology

The Tsani inventory has been documented and assessed repeatedly since the 19^th century, the foremost people in the field being the Belgian linguist Émile d'Ivoire and the Scottish linguist John Glenn Crossing, an expert on Jivan languages.

Consonants

The following is a Tsani inventory of consonants, according to Émile d'Ivoire, a model nowadays serving as standard when analysing the language. Émile analyses the Tsani inventory as unusual in that it has prenasalised consonants, as well as an ill-defined dorsal consonant. The consonantal phonology is fairly symmetrical, with the exception of lacking /p/.

d'Ivoire model

		Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar			Dorsal	Glottal
			central	central	lateral	palatal
Nasals		m [m]	n [n]
Stops	prenasalised	mb /ᵐb/	nd /ⁿd/				ng /ᶮɟ ~ ᵑg ~ ᶰɢ/	ʾ /ʔ/
	voiceless		t /t/				k /c ~ k ~ q/
	ejective	[pʼ]	[tʼ]				[cʼ ~ kʼ ~ qʼ]
Affricates				ts /t͡s/	tl /t͡ɬ/	tsh /t͡ɕ/
Fricatives			th /θ/	s /s/		sh /ɕ/	kh /ɕ ~ x ~ χ/	h /h/
Approximants		[β̞]				y /j/	w /ɰ/ ~ [ɰʷ]
Trills			r /r/

Vowels

D'Ivoire also re-analysed and standardised the phonemic inventory of vowels in the language. He divided the five primary vowels into two categories, nasal and oral, these were in divided by length, granting short, long and extra long vowels. D'Ivoire did make clear that the vowels were not phonetically realised as long and extra long in the modern language, but rather as diphthongised and diphthongised with a long non-glide element, respectively.

Traditional model

Orthography and vowels
	Oral			Nasal
	short	long	extra long	short	long	extra long
i	i /i/	í /i:/	íi /i::/	in /ĩn/	ín /ĩ:n/	íin /ĩ::n/
e	e /e̞/	é /e̞ː/	ée /e̞ːː/	en /ẽ̞n/	én /ẽ̞ːn/	éen /ẽ̞ːːn/
a	a /a/	á /aː/	áa /aːː/	an /ãn/	án /ãːn/	áan /ãːːn/
u	u /u/	ú /uː/	úu /uːː/	un /ũn/	ún /ũːn/	úun /ũːːn/
o	o /o̞/	ó /o̞ː/	óo /o̞ːː/	on /õ̞/	ón /õ̞ːn/	óon /õ̞ːːn/

Émile's model did coincide with the traditional orthography, but he disputed the realisation of the vowels.

D'Ivoire model

	Oral			Nasal
	short	long	extra long	short	long	extra long
i	[i]	[iɨ̯]	[i:ɨ̯]	[ẽ]	[ẽ:]	[ẽ:]
e	[e̞]	[e̞ə̯]	[e̞ːə̯]	[ə̃]	[ə̃ː]	[ə̃ː]
a	[a]	[aː]	[aː]	[ʌ̃]	[ʌ̃ː]	[ʌ̃ː]
u	[u]	[uβ̞]	[uːβ̞]	[ʊ̃]	[ʊ̃ː]	[ʊ̃ː]
o	[o̞]	[o̞ɰʷ]	[o̞ːɰʷ]	[ɒ̃]	[ɒ̃ː]	[ɒ̃ː]

Grammar

Tsan exhibits what’s called predicate/argument flexibility, meaning that all content words equivalent to English verbs, nouns and adjectives, can fill the role as predicate or as argument. This is achieved through that the basic form of the content word always corresponds with a predicative expression. The language’s word order is as such very free.

In essence, this feature makes the language seem to lack nouns or verbs, or rather lexical categories. Nevertheless, all content words may be conjugated and form verbal phrases, just like they may modify each other and all have one of three grammatical genders; masculine (M), feminine (F) or neuter (N). The genders are not marked, but rather a form of natural gender: women are feminine, men and males are masculine, and everything else is neuter. The marking on the content words congruate with the gender of the subject, and is simply marked as the same as, homus (HO), or different to, heterus (HE), the subject.

Note to self: Topic rather than subject? Would make things easier and more intuitive.

Terminology

• Predicate – the part of a sentence or a clause containing, in the English translation, a verb and stating something about the subject. For example went home, in John went home.
• Argument – any of the nouns or noun phrases directly related to the predicate.

• Subject – a noun or noun phrase that is the element about which the rest of a clause is predicated. For example John in John went home.
• Object – a noun or noun phrase that is the element governed by an active transitive verb or by a preposition. For example home in John went home.

• Dependent argument – a dependent argument is marked on the predicate in the language, as an affix, similar to conjugation. For example –ó in Cambió pasaporte.
• Independent argument – an independent argument is not marked on the predicate, such as él, in él cambió pasaporte.
• Content word – equivalent to a verb or a noun in Tsan linguistic terminology.