User:Ceige/NotherPIE

Ceige/NotherPIE

Underlying Phonology

Ceige/NotherPIE's phonology is chronologically divided into two loose categories: Early and Late Ceige/NotherPIE. These are not well defined.

Consonants

Ceige/NotherPIE has the following consonant phonemes:

• P (p, b̥, b), m, w: labial
• T (t, d̥, d), n, l (l, r): dento-alveolar
• S (s, z̊, z), ɲ, ʎ, y: palatal
• K (k, g̊, g), ŋ: velar
• Kʷ (kʷ, g̊ʷ, gʷ), ŋʷ: labiovelar
• ʔ, ħ, ħʷ (ˀ, ʀ, ʀʷ; ɦ, ˤ, ˤʷ): laryngeal/guttural

One may imagine the above system evolved from something resembling the system below, after many mergers and splits, but this is just one possibility of an older system:

• P, m, w: labial
• T, s, n, l: dento-alveolar
• Ć, ś, ń, ĺ: palato-alveolar
• Č, š, ň, j: palato-velar
• K, x, ŋ, ʀ: velar

Vowels

Ceige/NotherPIE's underlying vowels and their possible realisations (default, +ATR +salient, -ATR +salient) are:

• i, ey, ay
• u, eu, au
• (⟨Ø⟩ ə, ⟨ə⟩ ɐ), ⟨e⟩ æ, ⟨a⟩ ɑ

There is a bit of crossover between vowel and consonant here - see the consonant section for y and w!

Accent

Ceige/NotherPIE has a four-dimensional accent system partially capable of derivation, using:

• pitch
• salience
• ATR (cf Mongolian)
• and consonant gradation

... to aid in word segmentation when listening to the language and to differentiate different words.

All these are features of Late Ceige/NotherPIE.

Grammar

Morphology

Within $LANG there are several underlying phonosememic units which play a reoccurring role in the language. Here are some examples:

• M = used to indicate normative, ambient, close phenomena.

Found in words related to mothers, the first person perspective, and neutral/passive positions in relative roles between phrases.

Cf. in PIE:

• *meh₂tḗr
• -mi
• -om, -mis, -mos, although see also -bʰi(s) and -bʰos
• -mós

Case

The following particles and clitics commonly act as case markers:

• -T, partitive, indicates that a phrase is the source in some manner (e.g. the population source of another object, the source of the action, the owner of an object, etc).

Often used in a nominative, genitive, partitive and ablative role.

• -m, direct object marker, indicates that a verb is affecting this object somehow.

Often used to form accusatives.

• -i, indirect object marker, indicates that the phrase is contextually important

Often used to form relative phrases, indirect and benefactive objects, and adjectival/descriptive phrases.

From -T, the following cases were devised later on:

• -s(i), nominative & genitive: descended from underlying -T, a partitive suffix.

This case formed thanks to either the lenition or palatalisation of -T (since -T is often found in conjunction with *y), and is used to turn a phrase into a modifier for another; the use of this lax-partitive then

• -m-, often combined with the lax-partitive to form various object markers

Pronouns

The underlying roots used for most pronouns are:

• -m-
• -t-

... and ...

• -k- ("(this) place")
• -y- ("

Syntax

Ceige/NotherPIE is primarily a mostly head-final left-branching phrase-oriented agglutinating language. Within verb phrases, morphemes tend to follow an OVS order (e.g., 3p.help.1sg = I help them), where objects (which needn't be patients) modify verbs, and verbs modify the subjects (which needn't be agents). Phrases generally follow the order of general information with regards to a relationship between arguments first, and specific information with regards to the relationship last. For example, "I kicked the ball" might be "I the ball kicked" (with "I" (de)nominalised in some fashion). This is due to an overwhelming habit of speakers to think of individuals and objects close to them (metaphorically or physically) first and the specific details pertaining to them later.

However, while word order can be changed to give the impression that something is particularly important, grammaticality is strongly judged based on adherence to a modifiers-first rule, e.g. "the yellow ball", not "the ball yellow" (the latter could still be technically semantically and grammatically correct if "ball" modifies "yellow" and "yellow" is understood to be a "yellow thing", but this would just be confusing).