User:Ceige/Sketch v2: Difference between revisions

<!-- Damn, I shoulda made a mix of Georgian, Nobiin and Mizo morphology. Well, that can wait for later! -->

The places of articulation are defined as follows:

* '''labial:''' using the lips

:: '''N.B.:''' ''This is an area people creating daughter languages can explore.''

Vowels are distinguished horizontally (frontness) and vertically (openness), and by roundedness or nasality.

: '''N.B.:''' ''This vowel system was chosen as it has a few areas which could lead to a breakdown in symmetry and thus an entire rearrangement of the vowel system. <strong>In addition</strong>, as rounding is not distinguished in nasal vowels, there is an opportunity for vowel shifts to occur there too in order to bring in extra symmetry. Nasal vowels are also often quite unstable, at least going by French and the Slavic language family, and can also have weird effects on following consonants too. <strong>Lastly</strong>, vowel harmony can be tweaked given the number of dimensions vowels are distinguished by here. So people making daughter languages should have plenty of options available to them.''

In addition, an epenthetic schwa /ə/ can be used.

Vowel harmony is in effect for rounding (with an exception for nasal vowels) and dialectally for frontness and backness. In describing the [[#Grammar]], vowels are written in upper-case (e.g. I, A, E) to signify that they change according to vowel harmony.

: '''N.B.:''' ''Vowel harmony is not set in stone and can be tweaked a lot in daughter languages. Like with <strong>every</strong> description of the language on this page, don't feel too bad if you decide to get rid of vowel harmony or decide to go nuts with it and expand it. That's why I've added vowels out the wazoo!''

(Naturally, Į, Ę, Ą, Ǫ, Ų signify the relevant nasal vowels)

There are two marked accents: relative high and low pitch. High pitch uses an acute accent (á) and low pitch uses a grave accent (à). There is also a neutral accent. After an accented syllable, all subsequent syllables may use the same pitch until the next accented syllable. Thus:

* tatáta = NHH (or LHH)

* tatatà = NNL (or HHL)

  ## DESCRIPTION // SUMMARY

Word order is flexible, with VSO, SOV and SVO all being possibilities. Note, however, that S and O are not strictly speaking the actor and patient in a sentence; see [[#Morphosyntactic alignment]] for more information.

  ## Should nouns mark for gender or animacy?

  ## NEEDS REVAMP

Nouns can optionally be distinguished by number. The three numbers are singular, plural, and collective. Plural markers can come before or after case markers.

|}

Nouns use case markers which agree with them in vowel harmony. These markers or particles are actually analysable as nouns in their own right, and thus in certain styles of speech can go before or after the noun they modify. But traditionally, they are marked after the noun. <!--or rather, a noun-phrase modifies a case marker by coming before it-->

The reportative is actually an evidentiality marker that can be affixed to ''any'' unit of speech, including verbs or even entire phrases and sentences.

Verbs can mark for a range of categories, and are also pro-drop as far as some of these categories are concerned too. The categories are:

* '''Gender:''' male, female, inanimate and honorific (note that verbs tend to only mark for a gender '''or''' honorific, thus its inclusion in this category)

Standard verbal nouns, gerunds or participles end with <code>-mA</code>.

  ## Austronesian type alignment

  # focus erg/acc/dir

  # verb marking if necessary (cf. austronesian "passive" voice with C-um-VC)

* kʰałta = drawing

* k'ut = house