Pulqer/Kelt
Kelt is the extinct native language of the island of Jacques (Tśak), believed to have been a language isolate. Relatively little is known of the language; there are few written survivals and the primary source of information is through its impact on the language of Pulqer, which replaced it. Kelt is the name of the language in Pulqer, it is thought to have been called Keltah by its speakers.
Phonology
Vowels
Kelt had a system of four primary vowels, each of which had long and short variants. There were no diphthongs.
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | i /i/, ii /iː/ | u /u/, uu /uː/ |
| Open-mid | e /ɛ/, ee /ɛː/ | |
| Open | a /a/, aa /aː/ |
Consonants
The consonant inventory is shown below. It is characterised by having only voiceless plosives, fricatives and affricates but voiced resonants. It is unclear whether Kelt originally had a series of aspirated plosives alongside the unaspirated ones - a defining feature of Old Pulqer, which has a phonology heavily influenced by Kelt. If this distinction existed, it had probably been lost by the time Pulqer began ousting Kelt.
It is possible that /l/ and /ɾ/ were allophonic variants of the same sound occurring in different environments. Evidence from later Pulqer suggests that /ɾ/ occurred between vowels or after a consonant (CrV) while /l/ occurred at the beginning or end of a word and before consonants (VlC).
The realisation of h is unclear and may also have had allophonic variation, perhaps /h/ in most circumstances but /ʔ/ or /χ/ at the end of a word.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Post-alveolar | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Labial | |||||
| Nasal | m /m/ | n /n/ | ||||
| Plosive | p /p/ | t /t/ | k /k/ | q /kʷ/ | ||
| Fricative | f /ɸ/ | s /s/ | ś /ʃ/ | h /h/ | ||
| Affricate | ts /t͡s/ | tś /t͡ʃ/ | ||||
| Approximant | r /ɾ/ | |||||
| Lateral app. | l /l/ | y /j/ | w /w/ |
Phonotactics
The maximal syllable structure was CLVC, where C represents any consonant, L represents either l or r (possibly always /ɾ/ in this position) and V either a long or short vowel. Consonant clusters could occur across syllable boundaries.
Stress
Stress placement is unclear, but may have been on the penult.
Grammar
Nominals
Nouns were marked for gender (masculine, other), number (singular, plural) and state (absolute, construct) through a series of affixes. Adjectives were unmarked but formed compounds with the noun they modified. Personal pronouns were usually prefixes attached to verbs, nouns, adjectives etc.
Gender
The exact nature of the gender system is unclear, but it appears to be based on two largely semantic classes: a masculine class and an other class. The masculine class (also called the E-class) included male humans, animals and deities along with other 'masculine' objects denoted by shape (i.e. long/tall and narrow), material (all metal and some stone objects belong here), purpose (e.g. weapons) or importance (including many celestial bodies). The other class (or A-class) contains all other nouns that don't belong to the masculine category, including all female living beings and deities, and many abstracts.
As gender is semantically determined, stems usually have inherent gender but some nouns may belong to more than one gender with a difference of meaning, e.g. the root HATAL "child" may be masculine qehatal "the boy" or other qahatal "the girl, the child". Masculine nouns may be declined as 'other' to give a pejorative sense, e.g. putah "effeminate or weak man".
Number
Nouns are either singular or plural and number is required on all nouns.
A collective suffix -ul can be used to denote a class of objects and is declined as a singular noun, e.g. putulek "men (in general)".
State
All nouns have an absolute and a construct form. The absolute is marked with suffixes and is the form used without any preceding determiner or pronominal prefix and, as such, may be called 'indefinite'. The construct occurs with a preceding determiner or pronominal prefix and is usually definite.
Construct nouns must be preceded by one of the following:
- a demonstrative prefix
- a possessive prefix
- a verbal prefix
Declension
All nouns consist of an immutable stem to which affixes are attached, e.g. PUT "man", QRAL "house", NUUK "dog". The stem may not stand alone and must be accompanied either by absolute suffixes or some kind of prefix. Nouns are declined according to their class. Masculine nouns have e in the singular and ii in the plural. Other nouns have a in the singular and aa in the plural. These vowel sequences form part of the affixes attached to the noun stem, as follows:
| Masculine PUT | Other QRAL | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Absolute | Singular | putek | qralah |
| Plural | putiik | qralaah | |
| Construct | Singular | -eput | -aqral |
| Plural | -iiput | -aaqral |
Demonstrative Prefixes
The demonstrative prefixes are added to the beginning of the construct noun and are as follows:
- q- "that", denoting things close to the listener, but used in a general sense almost like a definite article, e.g. qaqral "the/that house".
- p- "this", denoting things close to the speaker or recently mentioned, e.g. piiput "these men"
- qr- "that" denoting things far away or abstract, e.g. qrahatal "that girl/child".
Possessive Prefixes
Possessive prefixes form part of a series of personal prefixes which occur for each person and number, as well as masculine and other in the 3rd person singular only (3rd pl. wey- is used for both genders). There is also an impersonal prefix tśey- "someone's" used when the possessor is not known or when speaking generally (e.g. tśeyenuuk "someone's dog").
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | key- | ney- |
| 2 | ley- | tey- |
| 3m | sey- | wey- |
| 3o | hey- | |
| Imp. | tśey- |
Examples: keyaqral "my house", seyefak "his wife", weyaahatal "their children".
Verbal Prefixes
Verbal prefixes transform the noun into a predicate, e.g. keput "I am a man", hanuuk "it is a dog". See below for forms.
Adjectives
Adjective stems are not fully distinguishable from nouns and in many cases a single stem may behave as either, e.g. ETS "salt; salty". Adjectives may be either simple (e.g. SUUP "large") or derived from another part of speech (e.g. PUTIŚ- "manly, man-like"). In either case they may be used predicatively or attributively.
An attributive adjective is added to the front of the noun in either its absolute or construct state. In the latter, the adjective intervenes between the prefixes and the stem, e.g. qaqral "the house" → qasuupqral "the big house", nehputek "an old man", qaaetsiwes "the salty waters".
A predicative adjective may be formed by adding the verbal prefixes to the stem, e.g. kiputiy "I am manly", hisuup "it is large".