Vrkhazhian - Śādi Warḫālu

[Ahzoh]

Ma ǧubu eḫḫu Ezu-Nardi kulye ḳebbi tabbasi nukūśa. Kulye ǧīmu maǧǧadu bi Araś-Īzun nuressaǧuśśa.
"On this day, Ezu-Nardi made himself the first king. He set himself the royal name [that is] Arash-Hizun."

Vrkhazhian (Śādi Warḫālu [ˈɬɑːdi wɑrˈxɑːɮu]) is a conlang project I've been working on since early February 2014. It has gone through numerous revisions and overhauls as my knowledge of linguistics has expanded. Really, only one feature has remained and that is that it possesses a "triconsonantal morphology".

Contents
Phonology

1. Consonants
2. Vowels
3. Syllable Structure and Stress

Morphology

1. Overview
2. Nominal Morphology
3. Verbal Morphology
4. Adjective/Adverb Morphology
5. Derivation

Syntax

1. Overview
2. Morphosyntactic alignment
3. Vrkhazhian as a secundative language
4. Head Directionality
5. Superlative/Comparison
6. Anaphora/Obviation
7. Some other stuff I can come up with

etc. etc.

[Ahzoh]

Phonology
Consonants
I don't know how to merge cells, so we'll have to bear with this kinda ugly table:

	Peripheral	-----------	-----------	-----------	Coronal	-----------	-----------	-----------	Glottal
	Bilabial	*********	Velar	*********	Central	*********	Lateral	*********
	Plain	Ejective	Plain	Ejective	Plain	Ejective	Plain	Ejective
Nasal	m		ŋ ⟨ñ⟩		n
Stop	p b	pʼ ⟨ṗ⟩	k g	kʼ ⟨ḳ⟩	t d	tʼ ⟨ṭ⟩			ʔ ⟨ʾ⟩
Fricative			x ⟨ḫ⟩ ɣ ⟨ǧ⟩		s z	(t)sʼ ⟨ṣ⟩	ɬ ⟨ś⟩	(t)ɬʼ ⟨ṣ́⟩
Liquid	w		j ⟨y⟩		r		ɮ~l ⟨l⟩		h

The phoneme /h/ is more often pronounced [ɦ] intervocalically and [ħː] when geminated.

Vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i iː	u uː
Open	ɛ ɛː	ɑ ɑː

All consonants and vowels distinguish length phonemically. Long consonants are represented in writing as double consonants while long vowels are written with a macron (ā, ē, ī, ū) or a circumflex (â, ê, î, û). The usage of a circumflex in writing is mainly to indicate vowel coalescence as a result of the contraction of the weak consonants /h ʔ j w/. Phonetically, long vowels are one-and-a-half times as long as short vowels when they are unstressed and twice as long as short vowels when they are stressed.

Syllable Structure and Stress
The basic syllable structure is maximally (C)V(V)(C) whereby any syllable can begin with any consonant except for /h ʔ/ and any syllable can end with any consonant except for /h ʔ j w/. Vrkhazhian strongly dislikes consonant clusters in the onset or coda of a syllable and typically inserts vowels to break the offending clusters. The epenthetic vowels typically mirror the adjacent vowel.

Stress in Vrkhazhian is highly predictable as it is based on syllable weight, of which there are three: light (V, CV); heavy (CVC, CV̄, CV̂), and superheavy (CV̄C, CV̂C) and stress is always placed on the final heaviest syllable of a word. Superheavy syllables are generally dispreferred and usually resolved by epenthesis (/i/ if coronal and /u/ if peripheral) or shortening.

[Ahzoh]

Nominal Morphology
Vrkhazhian nouns decline for number, gender and case. Specifically there are two cases (nominative and oblique) and two numbers (singular and plural). Additionally, Vrkhazhian has two grammatical genders: masculine and feminine. The genders are not assigned on a strictly semantic basis and, outside of specific humans nouns, is mostly arbitrary. Despite this there are general patterns as to what kinds of nouns are what gender. Some examples of what kinds of nouns can be what gender are listed in the spoilers below:

More: show

Feminine Nouns

• all female humans
• domesticated animals (except some male animals)
• domesticated plants
• concepts related to basic survival
• concepts relating to agriculture
• nations and lands
• man-made structures
• most body parts
• collective nouns

Masculine Nouns

• all male humans
• wild animals (except some female animals)
• wild plants
• concepts relating to war and battle
• concepts relating to hunting
• natural geographic features
• materials except wood
• legs/feet, arm/hands, and the buttocks

Noun Inflection
With regards to the cases, the nominative has but one purpose, which is to mark the subject of an intransitive verb and the agent of a transitive verb. The oblique meanwhile has many purposes, which is to mark the patient of a transitive verb, the possessor of another noun, and the object of a preposition.

Masculine Example - sarbe "raven"

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	sarb-e	sarb-en
Oblique	sarb-i	sarb-in

Feminine Example - ḳurūśa "boat"

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	ḳurūś-a	ḳurūś-an
Oblique	ḳurūś-u	ḳurūś-un

Noun States
Nouns are considered to be placed into what are called "states". There are two states: the governed state, or status rectus, and the construct state, or status constructus. The construct state is used in genitive constructions to mark the head noun (possessed noun), while the oblique case is used to mark the dependent (modifying) noun or adjective. Nouns that that are not placed in the construct state are considered to be in the governed state, which is the default state of all nouns.

When a noun is placed in the construct state, it is stripped of its gender-case ending except for when the noun is plural, in which case the ending becomes a long vowel. In addition, since consonant clusters are illegal, vowels are inserted to break up the clusters as a result of the disfix.

Masculine Example - semśe "boundary, border"

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	semeś	semś-ē
Oblique	semeś	semś-ī

Feminine Example - ḫuza "horse"

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	ḫuz	ḫuz-ā
Oblique	ḫuz	ḫuz-ū

There are also nouns whose gender-case endings are long vowels as a result of the contractions of weak consonants. This also means that the noun's bound form will end in a vowel.

Masculine Example - ūśê "hand, arm"

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	ūś-ê	ūś-ên
Oblique	ūś-î	ūś-în

Bound Form:

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	ūśu	ūś-ê
Oblique	ūśu	ūś-î

Feminine Example - mazâ "sea"

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	maz-â	maz-ân
Oblique	maz-û	maz-ûn

Bound Form:

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	mazi	maz-â
Oblique	mazi	maz-û

[Ahzoh]

Reserved for Morphology 2

[Ahzoh]

Reserved for Morphology 3

[Vardelm]

Nice to see Vrkhazhian make a return to the ZBB!

Down the road it might be interesting to see a summary of the various stages the language has gone through as you have developed it.