Th’uȟw’aas’oor

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Th’uȟwaas’oor
ϴ’ūxȟʷ’ās’ōr X̱āƛ
Pronunciation[[Help:IPA|θ’uχʷ’aːs’oːr ʜaːt͡ɬ]]
Created byMacy Sinrich
Date2020
SettingSirius
EthnicityPʷ’aach’a
Native speakers4 thousand (7th sun)
Language isolate
  • Th’uȟwaas’oor
Early form
Proto Th’uȟwaas’oor
  • Old Th’uȟwaas’oor
  • Classical Th’uȟwaas’oor
Dialect
Northern (Kxaʀsi) Western (Erpsxi)

Th’uȟw’aas’oor (ϴ’uȟʷ’ās’ōr X̱āƛ, [θ’uχʷ’aːs’oːr ʜaːt͡ɬ] or ϴ’uȟʷ’ās’ōr [θ’uχʷ’aːs’oːr]) is the language of the Pw’aach’a, the indigenous inhabitants of the fictional moon Sirius. Th’uȟw’aas’oor is a constructed language created by Macy Sinrich, a 17 year old in Cherry Hill, New Jersey

Writing System

Th’uȟw’aas’oor uses the Latin script with small modifications that include the four diacritics (ˉ, ̠ ,ˇ,.) placed adjacent to certain letters. An apostrophe (ʼ) is used to mark ejective consonants, (e.g. kʼ, čʼ). And the modifier letter small W (ʷ) s used to mark labialized consonants (e.g. kʷ, xʷ).

Alphabet

Th’uȟw’aas’oor's writing system uses the Latin alphabet and consists of 35 letters. The following table gives their upper-case forms, along with the IPA values for each letter's sound:

Latin А а Ā ā E e Ē ē O o Ō ō I i
IPA [a] [aː] [e] [eː] [o] [oː] [i]
Latin Ī ī J j K k L l U u Ū ū P p
IPA [iː] [j] [k] [l] [u] [uː] [p]
Latin F f Q q G̱ g̱ R r S s T t ϴ θ
IPA [f] [q] [ʡ] [r] [s] [t] [θ]
Latin Š š Č č C c H h Ḵ ḵ X x W w
IPA [ʃ] [t͡ʃ] [t͡s] [h] [ç] [x] [w]
Latin 7 ƛ Ḥ ḥ Ł ł Ʀ ʀ Ȟ ȟ X̱ x̱
IPA [ʔ] [t͡ɬ] [ħ] [ɬ] [ʀ] [χ] [ʜ]

Phonology

Th’uȟw’aas’oor has a large phonemic inventory, with 75 consonants and 10 vowels. Th’uȟw’aas’oor has a complete series of ejectives accompanying its stop, fricative, and affricate consonants.

Consonants

Labial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal/
Epiglottal
Glottal
plain lab plain lab. plain lab. pal. plain lab. plain lab.
Stop plain p t k q ʡ ʡʷ ʔ
ejective pʷʼ tʷʼ kʷʼ kʲʼ qʷʼ ʡʼ ʡʷʼ
Affricate plain t̪͡θ t͡s t͡ʃ k͡x k͡xʷ q͡χ q͡χʷ
ejective t̪͡θʼ t͡sʼ t͡ʃʼ k͡xʼ k͡xʷʼ q͡χʼ q͡χʷʼ
Fricative plain f θ s ʃ ç x χ χʷ ħ ħʷ h
ejective θʼ ʃʼ çʼ xʷʼ xʲʼ χʼ χʷʼ
Approximant l j w
Trill plain r ʀ ʜ ʜʷ
ejective r̥’ ʜ’
Lateral Affricate plain t͡ɬ t͡ɬʷ
ejective t͡ɬ’ t͡ɬʷ’
Lateral Fricative plain ɬ ɬʷ
ejective ɬ’ ɬʷ’

Vowels

Front Back
plain long plain long
Close i u
Mid e o
Open a

Phonological rules

  • t > t̪ / r_
  • w > ʍ / _O

Dialectical Variety

In phonology, the most prominent distinguishing element of Northern Thʼuȟʷʼaasʼoor, except for the westernmost ones, is the Palatalization and Labialization of the vowels /i/ and /u/. The vowel, /i/ is pronounced [j] and /u/ is pronounced [w].

Prosody

Th’uȟw’aas’oor contains many "harmonic clusters" involving two consonants of a similar type (plain or ejective) which are pronounced with only a single release; e.g. the name of the western dialect of Erpsxi (of the sea’), Ckłta (life), and Ḥalq’ckʷ’a (water). Clusters in Th’uȟwaas’oor containing four, five or six consonants are not unusual—for instance, the words for /pθkt͡s’e.li/ (hard), and /'ostxrt͡sapʃq’a/ ("to behave”)

Grammar

Th’uȟw’aas’oor is a synthetic, fusional language in the terminology of linguistic typology. Traditionally, it is an inflected language. Words include an objective semantic element and markers specifying the grammatical use of the word.

The grammatical function changes by modifying the markers: the word is "inflected" to express different grammatical functions, but the semantic element usually does not change. Inflection uses affixing and infixing. Affixing is prefixing and suffixing. The inflections express gender, number, and case in adjectives, nouns, and pronouns, a process called declension. Markers are also attached to fixed stems of verbs, to denote person, number, tense, voice, mood, and aspect.

Nouns

A regular noun belongs to one of five main declensions. There are 5 declensions which are distinguished by the genitive singular class of the noun. There are seven noun cases, which also apply to adjectives and pronouns and mark a noun's syntactic role in the sentence using inflections. Thus, the word order is:

  1. Nominative – used when the noun is the subject or a predicate nominative.
  2. Accusative — used when the noun is the direct object of the subject.
  3. Dative – used when the noun is the indirect object of the sentence.
  4. Ablative – used when the noun demonstrates separation or movement from a source, cause, agent or instrument.
  5. Genitive – used when the noun is the possessor of or connected with an object
  6. Vocative – used when the noun is used in a direct address.
  7. Locative- used when the noun indicates a location.
  8. Instrumental — used when the noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns may be classified by person, number, gender, and case. It has three grammatical persons (first, second, and third) and two numbers (singular and plural). In the third person singular, there are gender forms for male, female, neuter, epicene. Personal pronouns have two cases, subject, and object. Subjective and Objective pronouns are used as the subject and object forms of the verb, respectively.

Person Number/Gender Subject Object Dependent possessive (determiner) Independent possessive Reflexive
First Singular I me my mine myself
Plural We us our ours ourselves
Second Singular you your yours yourself
Plural yourselves
Third Masculine he him his himself
Feminine she her hers herself
Neuter It its - itself
Epicene they them their theirs themself/ themselves

In addition to the personal pronouns shown in the above table, it also has other pronoun types, including demonstrative, relative, indefinite, and interrogative pronouns, as listed in the following table.

Demonstrative Relative Indefinite Interrogative
this who one who
these what something / nothing what
that which someone / anyone / no one which
those that somebody / nobody

Adjectives

There are 3 types of regular adjectives: first, second, and third. They are so-called because their forms are similar or identical to first and second.

Verbs

A regular verb in belongs to one of four main conjugations. A conjugation is "a class of verbs with similar inflected forms. The conjugations are identified by the last letter of the verb's present stem.

Irregular verbs may not follow the types or may be marked in a different way. The "endings" presented above are not the suffixed infinitive markers. The first letter in each case is the last of the stem so the conjugations are also called a-conjugation, e-conjugation and i-conjugation. Third-conjugation stems end in a consonant: the consonant conjugation. Further, there is a subset of the third conjugation, the i-stems, which behave somewhat like the fourth conjugation, as they are both i-stems, one short and the other long.

There are three general tenses (present, imperfect, and future) and three moods (indicative, subjunctive, conditional, and imperative) as well as the infinitive, participle, and gerund forms. It also has three principle parts (first, second, and third). It also has two numbers (singular and plural), and two voices (active and passive):

  1. The first principal part is the singular first-person, present active form.
  2. The second principal part is the present active infinitive.
  3. The third principal part is the first-person singular, perfect active indicative.

There are six "tenses". These are divided into two tense systems: the present system, which is made up of the present, imperfect and future tenses, and the perfect system, which is made up of the perfect, pluperfect and future perfect tenses. Each tense has a set of endings corresponding to the person, number, and voice of the subject. Subject (nominative) pronouns are generally omitted for the first (I, we) and second (you) persons except for emphasis.

The table below displays the common inflected endings for the indicative mood in the active voice in all six tenses. For the future tense, the first listed endings are for the first and second conjugations, and the second listed endings are for the third and fourth conjugations:

Tense Singular Plural
1st Person 2nd Person 3rd Person 1st Person 2nd Person 3rd Person
Present -s -t -us -tis -t
Future -ō, -a -is, -ēs -it, -ēt -ijus, -ējus -itis, -ētis -ut, -et
Imperfect -a -ās -at -ās -ātis -at
Perfect -istī -it -ijus -istis -ērut

Word Order

Th’uȟw’aas’oor is an SOV language. There are three major levels or gradation of honorific, low, medium, and high

  1. Low honorific is used by elder speakers to address a younger individual, especially of that of a child.
  2. Medium honorific is used by individuals to denote someone of the same social status or age
  3. High honorific is frequently used by younger speakers to denote respect for an elder.