Adzamasi

Adzamasi
Created by	Irrhythmic
Setting	Mygith
Ethnicity	Adzamasiin
Dialects	Tabiqa Adzamian Kilimbadi
Writing system	Latin

Background

The Adzamasi language is a fantasy lang created for the Adzamasiin, a nomadic desert people of the world of Mygith (a med-fantasy project). There are three major dialect groups: Tabiqa (most populous, 'standard') ; Adzamian (highest amount of borrowings) ; and Kilimbadi (the most otherwise divergent). Adzamasi took some original inspiration from Turkish phonology, but grammatically it much more closely resembles Athabaskan and Inuit languages. Adzamasi is highly agglutinative, polysynthetic, and its word order follows the animacy hierarchy.

Phonology

Consonants

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	m		n
Plosive	b		d, t	c, ɟ	k	q
Ejective			t`	c`	k`	q`
Fricative	v	θ	s	ç	x	χ	h
Approximant	w		l	j

The Kilimbadi dialect also has /g/, and pronounces the uvular ejective as a glottal stop. The palatal stops are postalveolar affricates in Tabiqa.

Geminates are not permitted. il-dac-catt -> /ildacatt/, */ildaccatt/ "in the lake"

Fricatives are voiced intervocalically, or in clusters with a voiced sound or another fricative. tuusa, [tu:za] "long"

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	ɪ, i:	ʏ, y:	ʊ, u:
Mid	ɛ, e:	ɶ, œ:	ʌ, o:
Open		ɐ	ɑ:

The phonemic diphthongs are ei [ej], ao [æo], ae [æe], and ea [eɐ].

Phonotactics

Onset clusters are not permitted, while complex codas are. Syllables must be of three morae or less - therefore long vowels may not be followed by a clusters.

Orthography

The romanized alphabet is fairly simply and based largely on the IPA. Ejectives are written with doubled plosive counterparts (e.g. [k`] = <kk>), the fricatives [θ ç χ] as "þ z r", [j] as "y" and [ɟ] as "j". The vowels are written single or doubled for long/short (/ tense/lax) as "i ü u e ö o a".

Pronouns

Pronouns in Adzamasi are declined into four persons (the fourth being obviative). The second and third persons feature gender (non-grammatical - the four genders of Adzamasiin society), and the third and fourth person also animacy. All pronouns have honorific forms, and the first person plural comes in inclusive and exclusive. None are declined for case, although there are reflexive and possessive forms.

Morphology

As a polysynthetic agglutinative language, Adzamasi features a robust morphological component.

Nominal morphology

Nouns in Adzamasi are defined for definiteness, number, and animacy. When quantified they must also take classifiers.

Articles

There are three articles, which are better described as definiteness prefixes.

The indefinite is unmarked, while the definite takes il-, the partitive o-, possessed þar-, and none article qa-.

Number and animcy

Both number and animacy are coded in a fused suffix. There are two number categories (singuler and plural) and seven animacy classes: inanimates, tools, fluids, plants, animals, deities and sacred things, and people.

The suffixes are:

Animacy	Singular	Plural
Inanimate	-(y)ik	-(i)xi
Tool	-(y)it	-(i)þ
Fluid	-(a)o	-(i)qo
Plant	-(a)t	-aþa
Animal	-sat	-su
Sacred	-(o)n	-vah
People	-(y)et	-(y)on

Old morphological forms for the person category are still seen in some irregular forms, such as bakrar / bakraan 'man / men.' There is also a defunct location class which is seen in some words such as nariq / narenüq 'horse(s)."