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EDIT: A lot of this is outdated, as I have been undergoing a revamp of the language.
Been sitting on this for awhile, both in terms of working on it and of posting it. I've been meaning to pick it back up again for a long time now, and I'm currently bored and don't particularly feel like working on Physical Mechanics homework.
Phonology
Consonants
Plosive: /p t k/ ⟨p t k⟩
Nasal: |N| (see below)
Fricative: /f θ s ɬ ʃ x ħ/ ⟨f th s c sh kh h⟩
Approximant: /ɹ l/ ⟨r l⟩
The nasal archiphoneme's realization is dependent upon its surroundings; the following rules apply, in this order:
Vowels
/a e ø i y ɤ o ɯ u/ ⟨a e ö i ü ë o ï u⟩
There is a two-tone accent system. The default tone is low. The high tone is written using an acute accent over vowels without an umlaut and using a circumflex to replace the umlaut over a vowel that has an umlaut in its low-tone form.
Syllabic Consonants
/|N̩| ɹ̩ l̩/
These are written as double the appropriate letter unless between two obstruents, word-finally following an obstruent, or word-initially preceding an obstruent, in which case they are written as a single letter.
Syllabic consonants do not take tone.
Allophony
The following syllables are permitted, ⟨R⟩ indicating a syllabic resonant:
Nouns
Nouns come in one of three number: Nullar, singular, and plural. The typical nullar suffix is -ul following a consonant, but a vowel-final word triggers some mutation. The nullar also often cares a negative sense when used with verbs; renderings can often be equally read "X does not Y" or "no X Ys".
In the "Else" category, the resultant vowel takes a low tone.
Unusual rules also govern the formation of the plural. If a word begins with a single vowel, the plural is formed by adding on the suffix -(a)r, where the vowel is omitted following another vowel. If a word begins with a consonant and the following vowel is one of /a e i o u/ in either tone, the first consonant metatheses one slot to the left (i.e., C₁VC₂ → VC₁C₂). If a word begins with a consonant and the following vowel is one of /ø y ɤ ɯ/ in either tone, then the vowel splits into two vowels, one with the roundedness and the second preserving place of articulation and the tone (i.e., C₁V̈C₂ → V[±round +low tone ∓POA]C₁V[∓round ±tone ±POA]C₂). The first vowel becomes either of /i u/ as is appropriate for the roundedness in the vast majority of words, although there are a few exceptions, most of which are analogical in nature.
azel bend in the road → azelar
shále son → ázhle
mï`e valley → imu`e
The plural forms in this way even if the first syllable containing a vowel is not the first syllable in the word.
khlzêt transmission, message → khlizót
The word (and endonym) "Timar" is an irregular plural formation; the regular plural would be *idn.
Pronouns
There are four "persons" in Timar; the fourth person acts as a dummy subject in passive constructions. There is no plural for the fourth person.
Verbs
Verbs themselves do not decline or inflect. Tense and aspect are shown via modal constructions, and negation is shown via pronouns or the nullar construction.
Tense-wise, Timar does not have so much past-present-future as it has anterior-proximal-posterior. The proximal is often used in a present sense, but this is not always so; in fact, a relevant event is often used as an "anchor point" in conversation, with events described as being prior to, concurrent with, or post of it.
Aspect-wise, there are three aspects: Pausative, completive, and durative. The pausative is marked by a particle sür, the completive is marked by agr, and the durative is unmarked.
I am still contemplating what I want to do with the mood. I had initially had the infinitive, the indicative, the optative, the potential, and the conditional, but I am now not sure just how I want this to be handled.
(For the order of these, I had initially assumed that the appropriate words would follow the verb, but I'm not sure now. I want to check it out with WALS but as I had finally found the correct feature it threw me a 503 with Guru Meditation. It seems to be doing that a bit much today…)
A (Very) Little Bit on Word Order and Grammar
The basic word order is VOS.
idhín shále ü ik ü
bring.glory.to son.SG the father.sg the
the son brings glory to the father
Relative clauses are formed by slotting in a sentence about the referent following the appropriate noun or pronoun. (The "DM" below stands for "dummy morpheme", which is sometimes employed in constructions with the copula.)
idhín shále ü á`e sá cen tü ik ü
bring.glory.to son.SG the be DP 3PS here father.SG the
the son who is here brings glory to the father
----
More to come later. If anybody can help me figure out a better way to represent the voiced pharyngeal fricative, or if anybody just has any feedback in general, I'd much appreciate it and I'm all ears.
Been sitting on this for awhile, both in terms of working on it and of posting it. I've been meaning to pick it back up again for a long time now, and I'm currently bored and don't particularly feel like working on Physical Mechanics homework.
Phonology
Consonants
Plosive: /p t k/ ⟨p t k⟩
Nasal: |N| (see below)
Fricative: /f θ s ɬ ʃ x ħ/ ⟨f th s c sh kh h⟩
Approximant: /ɹ l/ ⟨r l⟩
The nasal archiphoneme's realization is dependent upon its surroundings; the following rules apply, in this order:
- 1. If a consonant follows, it assimilates to that consonant.
2. If a consonant precedes and no consonant follows, it assimilates to that consonant.
3. Intervocalically and word-initially, the realization is [m].
4. Word-finally, the realization is [n] unless succeeded in the utterance by a labial or a dorsal, in which case [m] or [ŋ], respectively, is realized.
Vowels
/a e ø i y ɤ o ɯ u/ ⟨a e ö i ü ë o ï u⟩
There is a two-tone accent system. The default tone is low. The high tone is written using an acute accent over vowels without an umlaut and using a circumflex to replace the umlaut over a vowel that has an umlaut in its low-tone form.
Syllabic Consonants
/|N̩| ɹ̩ l̩/
These are written as double the appropriate letter unless between two obstruents, word-finally following an obstruent, or word-initially preceding an obstruent, in which case they are written as a single letter.
Syllabic consonants do not take tone.
Allophony
- Voiceless obstruents voice intervocalically and when in contact with a resonant unless at word boundaries. This is reflected in the orthography; [b d g v ð z ɮ ʒ ɣ ʕ] are written ⟨b d g v dh z cz zh gh `⟩
- /a/, in any tone, fronts to [æ] with the same tone before a nasal.
- Vowels lax in unstressed open syllables.
- If a high tone is present in a syllable, that syllable receives stress unless preceded immediately by a stress-carrying high-tone syllable.
- If two low tones in a row follow a high tone and precede a high tone, the second low-tone syllable loses stress and the second high-tone syllable gains stress.
- If a syllable has a syllabic consonant for a nucleus and is word-initial, it cannot receive stress and the following syllables receive stress assignments pursuant to the above rules.
- All other things being equal, stress in Timar syllables tends to occur on the first syllable of the word.
The following syllables are permitted, ⟨R⟩ indicating a syllabic resonant:
- (C)V(C)
- (C)R
- VCC (the distribution of which is severely restricted to a certain few morphological categories)
- CCVC (the distribution of which is severely restricted to a certain few morphological categories)
Nouns
Nouns come in one of three number: Nullar, singular, and plural. The typical nullar suffix is -ul following a consonant, but a vowel-final word triggers some mutation. The nullar also often cares a negative sense when used with verbs; renderings can often be equally read "X does not Y" or "no X Ys".
Code: Select all
Vowel | Nullar
a/á | ol
e/é | ol
i/í | ïl
Else | Vl
Unusual rules also govern the formation of the plural. If a word begins with a single vowel, the plural is formed by adding on the suffix -(a)r, where the vowel is omitted following another vowel. If a word begins with a consonant and the following vowel is one of /a e i o u/ in either tone, the first consonant metatheses one slot to the left (i.e., C₁VC₂ → VC₁C₂). If a word begins with a consonant and the following vowel is one of /ø y ɤ ɯ/ in either tone, then the vowel splits into two vowels, one with the roundedness and the second preserving place of articulation and the tone (i.e., C₁V̈C₂ → V[±round +low tone ∓POA]C₁V[∓round ±tone ±POA]C₂). The first vowel becomes either of /i u/ as is appropriate for the roundedness in the vast majority of words, although there are a few exceptions, most of which are analogical in nature.
azel bend in the road → azelar
shále son → ázhle
mï`e valley → imu`e
The plural forms in this way even if the first syllable containing a vowel is not the first syllable in the word.
khlzêt transmission, message → khlizót
The word (and endonym) "Timar" is an irregular plural formation; the regular plural would be *idn.
Pronouns
There are four "persons" in Timar; the fourth person acts as a dummy subject in passive constructions. There is no plural for the fourth person.
Code: Select all
| | NULL | SING | PLUR
| 1P | hec | no | cál
| 2P | lu | moro | sa
| 3P | rn | cen | fódn
| 4P | sí | khé | ----
Verbs themselves do not decline or inflect. Tense and aspect are shown via modal constructions, and negation is shown via pronouns or the nullar construction.
Tense-wise, Timar does not have so much past-present-future as it has anterior-proximal-posterior. The proximal is often used in a present sense, but this is not always so; in fact, a relevant event is often used as an "anchor point" in conversation, with events described as being prior to, concurrent with, or post of it.
Aspect-wise, there are three aspects: Pausative, completive, and durative. The pausative is marked by a particle sür, the completive is marked by agr, and the durative is unmarked.
I am still contemplating what I want to do with the mood. I had initially had the infinitive, the indicative, the optative, the potential, and the conditional, but I am now not sure just how I want this to be handled.
(For the order of these, I had initially assumed that the appropriate words would follow the verb, but I'm not sure now. I want to check it out with WALS but as I had finally found the correct feature it threw me a 503 with Guru Meditation. It seems to be doing that a bit much today…)
A (Very) Little Bit on Word Order and Grammar
The basic word order is VOS.
idhín shále ü ik ü
bring.glory.to son.SG the father.sg the
the son brings glory to the father
Relative clauses are formed by slotting in a sentence about the referent following the appropriate noun or pronoun. (The "DM" below stands for "dummy morpheme", which is sometimes employed in constructions with the copula.)
idhín shále ü á`e sá cen tü ik ü
bring.glory.to son.SG the be DP 3PS here father.SG the
the son who is here brings glory to the father
----
More to come later. If anybody can help me figure out a better way to represent the voiced pharyngeal fricative, or if anybody just has any feedback in general, I'd much appreciate it and I'm all ears.