User:Ceige/Niche Grammar

Quick Phonological Overview

Consonants

	Labial	Dental	Palatal	Dorsal
Plosives & Affricates	p, b	t, d	č, dž	k, g
Classical Fricatives	f	s, (th)	š	h
Classical Sonorants	v	(r)	j	(l)
Nasals	m	n	ň	(ng)

Vowels

• Monophthong phonemes:

	Front	Center	Back
Closed	i	ø	u
Mid	e		o
Open	a

• Diphthong phonemes:

	Front	Back
Closed	ju
Open-Mid	ei
Open	(ai)	(au)

• Vowel length: Vowels use similar conditions to Germanic languages to determine vowel length. Vowels in a open syllables are habitually long, while vowels in a closed syllable are habitually short.

Phonological Processes

• Monosyllabisation: Words and roots are reduced by sound change to one main syllable, with consonant clusters being reduced to a set of features modifying a nuclear consonant:

• C̊m-, C̊n- C̊ň- > m̊, n̊, ň̊ (nasal voiceless continuant) > f, s, š
• Np, Nt, Nk > b, d, g
• tr, kl > s, h?

Quick Grammatical Overview

Nouns

• Possessive and Genitive phrases: The possessive and genitive share a particle, with the meaning depending on which side of that particle a noun is currently at. Possessees sit on the left of the particle, while possessors sit on the right. Either can be used without the other to form a possessive or genitive phrase.

POSS Joe = the thing of Joe's.

Cat POSS = the cat's owner.

Cat POSS Joe = Joe's cat.

• Nominalisation: Just about everything can be nominalised with the nominalisation particle.

Verbs & Syntax

• Separation of noun-phrases by verbs: The language's syntax is strongly guided by the principle of preventing noun phrases with limited marking from coming in contact by placing verbs between them whenever possible. See below for the effects of this phenomenon.
• SV₂OV₁ order: In sentences with only one verb, the word order is SVO; however in sentences with multiple verbs, the first verb goes at the end of the sentence (but before word final particles) and the other verbs go between the subject and object. Inspired by possible naive linguistic analyses of the function of "gern(e)" in German in sentences talking about wants and desires.
• Alignment: Austronesianesque, with the following:

In active voice transitive sentences, the agent is marked specially

In passive-voice transitive sentences, the patient is marked specially

In intransitive sentences, the main argument is not marked, or, for a twist, is marked with a copulaic particle where appropriate. Inspired by

• Verb Agreement marking: Verbs are marked to agree with subject nouns, and can be marked according to number, personal gender, or some sort of honorific ranking (which can like in Japanese apply to inanimate things like 「お酒」). But rarely are all three used. Bolded are the categories I would like to focus on.
• Sentence initial TAM phrases?

Questions

• Yes/No questions: Yes/no questions are preceded by a stock phrase (cf. French est-ce que, Indonesian apakah), or optionally, the V₁ comes to the start of the sentences, such that SV₂OV₁ becomes V₁SV₂O, OR an auxiliary verb (or transitive copula?) enters the scene (like English do as V₁), resulting in V₁SV₃…OV₂ or V₁SV₂V₃…O. The former-most and latter-most are considered the most well recognised.
• Questions about anything other than the subject: More English-esque nonsense here using the do-esque auxiliary, resulting in O^qV^doSV(VOV)