Skerre

Revision as of 17:03, 28 January 2021 by Nicomega (talk | contribs) (→‎Stress)
Skerre
Pronunciation[/skɛr/]
Created byDoug Ball
Date1994
Skerre
  • Skerre

Skerre, [skɛr], is a constructed language whose invention began in 1994 and continues to the present. The language has been inspired by many natural languages over its history, but the language presented herein is perhaps most inspired by Philippine languages like Tagalog, Oceanic languages like Tongan and Nêlêmwa, Pacific Northwest Coast languages like Coast Tsimshian, Lushootseed, and Siuslaw, and Caddoan languages like Wichita.

Introduction

The fictitious speakers of Skerre are small in number and live in the forests of the foothills of the western side of the Western Interior range. They are hunter-gatherers. Dialect variation among the different bands is not significant and is largely confined to lexical differences. The language appears to be an isolate, with no known congeners.


Phonology

Orthography

Skerre is written using the roman alphabet. The symbols employed follow expected IPA values, excepting that /kʷ/ is qu, /ɾ/ is r, /j/ is y, and /ɑ/ is a. (Additionally, /t͡s/ is always written without the tiebar.) Long vowels are written as double vowels.

Consonants

Vowels

Prosody

Stress

Stress regularly occurs near the right edge of words. Words with a final short vowel (with or without a final consonant) are stressed on the penultimate syllable, e.g. /kˈisi/ ‘ghost’. while words with a final long vowel (again, with or without a final consonant) are stressed on that vowel, e.g. /heˈtiː/ ‘sibling’s child’.

Intonation

Phonotactics

Roots are almost all CVV(C) or CV(V)CV(V)(C) in shape (parentheses indicate optional sounds; VV indicates a long vowel). Consonant clusters occur (especially initially), but only at morphological boundaries.

Morphophonology

Morphology

Skerre is a mildly synthetic language, though a number of important grammatical categories are expressed through function words. The syntax is strongly head-initial, with heads appearing before all kinds of dependents.

Nouns

Skerre has no grammatical gender and, in fact, nouns have no obligatory inflection. They can be simple, compound, or derived, with a fair number falling in the last category.

Syntax

Constituent order

Noun phrase

Verb phrase

Sentence phrase

Dependent clauses

Example texts

Other resources