Syzkyn: Difference between revisions

Syzkyn is a North Germanic language spoken predominantly in the Syzkyn Republic, a Federal Subject of the Russian Federation located in the western Caucasus. It is the native language of the Syzkyn people, who are thought to be the only descents of the Scandinavian Rus' people who were not fully assimilated by Slavs.

Syzkyn's phonological inventory is similar to those of Kartvelian languages.

In Syzkyn, stress can be located on any syllable in a word. Typically, in words of Norse origin, primary stress is on the first syllable, often occurring on other syllables in words of non-Norse origin. However, stress remains on the same syllable in all inflected forms.

The primary modern orthography for Syzkyn is the Cyrillic alphabet, which is similar to the alphabet used for Abkhaz. Historically, it has also been written in the Mkhedruli script, which some speakers in diaspora still use.

Syzkyn's grammar has been heavily influenced by Kartvelian languages, but continues some characteristic features of Old Norse. Broadly, Syzkyn is agglutinating, dependent-marking, pro-drop, and strongly head-final.

Syzkyn preserved Germanic Ablaut and Norse Umlaut to a limited extent. Neither is productive in the modern language, and the u-mutation like that found in Icelandic is entirely lost in Syzkyn.  

Old Norse /g/ debuccalized to *ɦ after a vowel. Later, *ɦ vocalized to /j/ after a non-low front vowel, /v/ after a non-low back rounded vowel, and eventually to /a/ after a low vowel but before a consonant or word boundary; all remaining *ɦ devoiced to merge with /h/. The vocalization to /a/ did not happen before a vowel, leading to an alternation between /a/ and /h/ when a vowel-initial morpheme is suffixed to roots ending in /ea/, /oa/, and /aa/.

Syzkyn nouns are formed through a root that can take up to three suffixes. The first two suffixes, respectively encoding number (singular/plural) and definiteness, are inherited from the Old Norse nominative forms. The third suffix encodes grammatical case, with suffixes derived from prepositions, later postpositions, that became grammaticalized after the erosion of the Old Norse case system.

Syzkyn nouns can be divided into four broad classes depending on how plurals and definiteness are marked. Although Syzkyn does not have grammatical gender, the classes are named for the gender that the noun would have had in Old Norse, albeit after the Masculine and Feminine merged into a Common gender. There are three Common declensions and one Neuter declension.

'''First Common Declension''' nouns reflect the Old Norse masculine a-stem and an-stem nouns, as well as the feminine ō-stem and in-stem nouns. They usually end in a consonant or -ы, the latter of which is elided when a vowel-initial morpheme is suffixed.

'''Second Common Declension''' nouns reflect the Old Norse i-stems and u-stems, as well as the feminine ōn-stems. Despite not having been masculine or feminine in Old Norse, the neuter an-stems are also reflected by this group, having been absorbed into the feminine ōn-stems due to their relative paucity and similar declension. They inflect similarly to a-stems but take plurals in -(ы)р. Singulars either use no suffix or -а, the latter of which is elided by the plural suffix but not the definite article.

Nouns of the '''Third Common Declension''' reflect the various Old Norse consonant stem nouns aside from the n-stems. The nominative plural *-iz suffix reconstructed in Proto-Germanic manifested in Old Norse as an ''-r'' that caused i-mutation in the stem in Old Norse. This plural ending is lost in Syzkyn, but the umlaut remained due to the frequent usage of these nouns. Due to the collapse of historical frontness and rounding distinctions among the reflexes of Old Norse's short vowels, however, umlaut only directly affects vowels that were long in Old Norse, so some Third Common Declension nouns do not directly show any alternation of the stem vowel; however, velarization may still occur.

Nouns of the Old Norse neuter a-stem are reflected in the Syzkyn '''Neuter Declension''', for which there is no plural suffix. However, the definite article inflects for plurality.

Inherited from Old Norse, the definite article is suffixed to the noun after the number marking if there is any. The definite article itself also inflects for number, even if the noun itself has no indefinite plural marking.

The (ы) is included if the stem ends in a vowel that is not the result of H-vocalization; otherwise it is dropped. If the stem ends in a vocalized ''ҳ'', then the (ы) is included and the vocalization is reversed. For example, the singular definite of ''даа'' '(a) day' is ''да'''ҳ'''ын'' 'the day'. Some speakers, particularly of lower socioeconomic classes, elide the (ы) without reversing H-vocalization; in the case of ''даа'', for example, the definite form for these speakers would be ''даан''.