Verse:Mwail/Ditab

Ditab (Dîthâabh /diː˧˩θ̠aːaw˥˩/) is an Angai Papuan language inspired by Iau, Proto-Lakes Plain, Dinka, Thai, Formor's avian conlang C’ą̂ą́r and Semitic languages (particularly chanted Tiberian Hebrew).

Phonology

Mwail/Ditab has

• 4 consonants:
  • voiced labial stop: b
  • voiced postdental stop: d
  • voiceless alveolar stop: t
  • voiceless velar stop: k
• 21 vowels: i ị e ẹ a ọ o ụ u /i ɪ e ɛ ä ɔ o ʊ u/ + nasalized counterparts + ă (shva na3, by default /ä/); /ɔ o ʊ u/ are really their unrounded counterparts
• 6 pitch accent patterns (level, rising, falling, falling-rising, rising-falling, one like Swedish tone 2) (they should be loosely modeled after tropes) (long and overlong tones should be different; some tones have two nuclei like pashtayim and qadma v'azla)

There is a three way length distinction as well, in both consonants and vowels.

All four stops have continuant allophones (roughly [w ð̞̠ˠ θ̠ h]) after vowels, unless they're geminated. [ð̞̠ˠ] is Danish soft d.

Word structure

Final stress like Tiberian Hebrew

Most words are underlyingly either open syllable -V: (e.g. o), or "closed syllable" with nucleus -V: and allowed "codas" -C, -V, -VC, -CC, -(unstressed syllable) (e.g. och, o.o, o.och, o.chebh, o.c)

Extrametrical elements occur too: ô.k-ko [ô:.k:-kò:] (like -k in TibH ותבך vattėbh-k 'and she wept')

Orthography

Mwail/Ditab has an ASCII friendly orthography in addition to the 'default' one, where some vowels are written with consonant letters.

Morphology

Mwail/Ditab morphology is entirely suffixing except for adjectives. Adjectives are a small closed class and work by infixing and/or changing the vowels in the noun according to a predictable umlaut pattern.

There is no grammatical gender, and two declension classes:

• Class one nouns mark the construct state with the suffix -bẽ́.
• Class two nouns mark the absolute state with -bẽ́.

Verbs inflect by aspect but not tense. Curiously, the imperfective and perfective forms are interchanged when the verb follows the interrogative particle củ-, the negative particle bách- or the conjunctive particle ădhùbh-, or other preverbs/conjunctions, reminiscent of Old Irish verb allomorphy.

Mwail/Ditab is borderline polysynthetic in that some verbs have to incorporate their objects. Mwail/Ditab also uses bipersonal inflections.

Syntax

Mwail/Ditab is strictly OVS. Cleft constructions are common.