Aitenji scratchpad
Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2021 11:17 pm
There's no cultural or fictional background to this one (yet), just experimenting with ideas I like. It's an agglutinative, suffixing language with very free word order and a simple phonology. Without further ado...
Phonology
Vowels: /a e i o u/, written as in the IPA.
Consonants (transcription matches IPA unless noted):
Voicing is not contrastive for obstruents, and they are usually voiced between voiced sounds.
The consonants j and ś occur primarily before i, but occasionally before other vowels. On the other hand, k s h g cannot occur before i.
The syllable structure is (C)V(n). The one exception is that the sequence pś sometimes occurs before i and u.
Final n assimilates to the place of articulation of a following consonant, and is transcribed as m when realized as such; it is deleted before a syllable beginning in one of h w r y.
Sequences of two vowels in hiatus, whether different or identical in quality, are permitted and common; the only limitation is that /ei/ and /ee/ do not contrast, nor do /ou/ and /oo/. Those sequences are written ei and ou, regardless of what the underlying sequence might be.
I haven't decided yet anything about stress or prosody; for now I'm putting some stress on the first syllable of each word and every other syllable thereafter, except the last syllable (counting each vowel as a separate syllable even when they occur consecutively).
Morphophonology: palatalizing suffixes
A number of suffixes cause palatalization of the last syllable of the stem to which they are added. I note this with an asterisk, as in -*ji. This has two kinds of effects. First, if the vowel of that syllable is a or o, it becomes e: eoko + -*ji = eokeji. Second, if the vowel of that syllable is u, the vowel itself remains the same, but the consonant before it is changed:
So ahu + -*ji = aśuji. If the consonant that would be affected doesn't appear in the first row of the table, then nothing happens.
Nouns
Each noun belongs to one of four classes. Each class has a different 3rd person pronoun (which is also used as an article) and set of demonstratives. For ease of glossing, I name the classes by roman numerals: class I (pronoun a-), class II (pronoun na-), class III (pronoun wi), and class IV (pronoun kono-). Classes I and II are grouped together as animate, and classes III and IV as inanimate, which will matter shortly for case-marking (and mostly matches the semantics). To indicate class concisely, I will cite nouns followed by a form of the appropriate pronoun: aru for class I, naru for class II, wiru for class III, and konoru for class IV. (The suffix -ru marks a 2s-possessor; it's only here because the pronouns can't be used without a suffix of some sort.)
Nouns inflect for case, number, and the person and number of their possessor. The structure of an inflected noun is stem-(possessor suffix)-(plural suffix)-(case suffix). For examples I will use the animate noun ahu aru "brother" and the inanimate noun eoko wiru "shell." Animate and inanimate nouns mark case differently, but have an unmarked case that doesn't add any suffix, so I'll ignore case marking momentarily while I go over possessor and number marking.
There are just four possessor suffixes:
The plural suffix is -mo and marks that either the base noun or the possessor is plural (or both). For the 1s suffix -*ji, the possessor is never plural (though -mo is still added if the base noun is plural). A 1pl possessor is of course always plural, but the 1pl possessor suffix -śi is also used as a polite form for 2nd person singular possession. Here are all the possessor/number forms of eoko with their possible glosses:
Finally, case marking. I haven't decided on the full list of cases or what their endings are yet, but the important ones are nominative and accusative for animate nouns, and ergative and absolutive for inanimate nouns. Nouns in the nominative and absolutive do not add any suffix (so all the forms of eoko given above are absolutive). This unmarked form is the citation form of the noun. (When we get to verbs we'll see that the overall alignment of the syntax is nominative-accusative; it's just case marking on inanimate nouns that follows an erg-abs pattern.)
Accusative animate nouns add -*ne to the stem, following the number and possessor suffixes. So nominative ahu "brother", accusative aśune. The plural suffix -mo, incidentally, is immune to palatalization: nominative ahumo "brothers", accusative ahumone.
Similarly, ergative inanimate nouns add -to: eokoto "shell (erg)", eokejimoto "my shells (erg)", etc.
Phonology
Vowels: /a e i o u/, written as in the IPA.
Consonants (transcription matches IPA unless noted):
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
| Stop/Affr. | p | t | j /tʃ/ | k | |
| Fricative | s | ś /ʃ/ | h | ||
| Nasal | m | n | g /ŋ/ | ||
| Liquid | w /ʋ/ | r /ɾ/ | y /j/ |
The consonants j and ś occur primarily before i, but occasionally before other vowels. On the other hand, k s h g cannot occur before i.
The syllable structure is (C)V(n). The one exception is that the sequence pś sometimes occurs before i and u.
Final n assimilates to the place of articulation of a following consonant, and is transcribed as m when realized as such; it is deleted before a syllable beginning in one of h w r y.
Sequences of two vowels in hiatus, whether different or identical in quality, are permitted and common; the only limitation is that /ei/ and /ee/ do not contrast, nor do /ou/ and /oo/. Those sequences are written ei and ou, regardless of what the underlying sequence might be.
I haven't decided yet anything about stress or prosody; for now I'm putting some stress on the first syllable of each word and every other syllable thereafter, except the last syllable (counting each vowel as a separate syllable even when they occur consecutively).
Morphophonology: palatalizing suffixes
A number of suffixes cause palatalization of the last syllable of the stem to which they are added. I note this with an asterisk, as in -*ji. This has two kinds of effects. First, if the vowel of that syllable is a or o, it becomes e: eoko + -*ji = eokeji. Second, if the vowel of that syllable is u, the vowel itself remains the same, but the consonant before it is changed:
| Original: | p | k | s | h | g |
| Palatalized: | pś | j | ś | ś | y |
Nouns
Each noun belongs to one of four classes. Each class has a different 3rd person pronoun (which is also used as an article) and set of demonstratives. For ease of glossing, I name the classes by roman numerals: class I (pronoun a-), class II (pronoun na-), class III (pronoun wi), and class IV (pronoun kono-). Classes I and II are grouped together as animate, and classes III and IV as inanimate, which will matter shortly for case-marking (and mostly matches the semantics). To indicate class concisely, I will cite nouns followed by a form of the appropriate pronoun: aru for class I, naru for class II, wiru for class III, and konoru for class IV. (The suffix -ru marks a 2s-possessor; it's only here because the pronouns can't be used without a suffix of some sort.)
Nouns inflect for case, number, and the person and number of their possessor. The structure of an inflected noun is stem-(possessor suffix)-(plural suffix)-(case suffix). For examples I will use the animate noun ahu aru "brother" and the inanimate noun eoko wiru "shell." Animate and inanimate nouns mark case differently, but have an unmarked case that doesn't add any suffix, so I'll ignore case marking momentarily while I go over possessor and number marking.
There are just four possessor suffixes:
| Suffix | |
| 1s | -*ji |
| 1pl | -*śi |
| 2 | -ru |
| 3 | -u |
| Form | Gloss |
| eoko | shell |
| eokomo | shells |
| eokeji | my shell |
| eokejimo | my shells |
| eokeśi | (polite) your (sng) shell |
| eokeśimo | our shell; our shells; (polite) your (sng) shells |
| eokoru | your (sng) shell |
| eokorumo | your (pl) shell; your (pl) shells; your (sng) shells |
| eokou | his/her/its shell |
| eokoumo | their shell; their shells; his/her/its shells |
Accusative animate nouns add -*ne to the stem, following the number and possessor suffixes. So nominative ahu "brother", accusative aśune. The plural suffix -mo, incidentally, is immune to palatalization: nominative ahumo "brothers", accusative ahumone.
Similarly, ergative inanimate nouns add -to: eokoto "shell (erg)", eokejimoto "my shells (erg)", etc.