Here's a bigger taste:
Notes on Location, Development and LexiconIt's probably best to move the epicenter of the language westward to Caesaria (modern day Cherchell), as minority languages like Berber and Coptic seem pretty much extirpated in the eastern end of North Africa. I guess that entails a lessening of Phoenician influence and a relative increase in Berber and Arabic influence. Because of much earlier contact, Phoenician and Berber words will undoubtedly supplant some very basic Latin items in the Lexicon, whereas Arabic loans will be more supplementary. Latin remains the liturgical language, whereas Arabic provides words related to society and culture. I haven't decided whence should come academic/scientific words, but I guess it'll vary, with earlier scientific words coming from Classical Arabic and later and modern ones from Latin and Greek.
NounsNouns come in two classes, masculine and feminine, and are inflected for definiteness and number. Most feminine words end in
-a (< -
AM from Latin or
-a(t) from Arabic) in the singular, although some other common endings are
-ḏá (< -
TĀTEM) and
-ṯóñ (< -
TIŌNEM). Masculine words end with anything, but a common suffix is
-u. Very basically, the plural is formed by vowel additions or vowel changes or the addition of [s] after the gender marker, but due to sound change, forming the plural is often considerably more complex.
The plural ending is not obligatory with quantifiers and explicit numerals, although it is more common to omit the ending with the latter.
(Note that this way of forming the plural does
not spring from the same source as Italian or Romanian; all nouns, with few exceptions, are derived from the accusative singular and plural forms of Latin. After high vowels, final fricatives besides /f/ were debuccalized to [h] and subsequently elided altogether.)
1. Nouns ending in a vowel followed by a non-retroflex plosives lenite these to voiced fricatives at the same place of articulation (but
-č →
-γ-), and a suffix
-u or
-i is appended.
ap 'bee' → aḇi 'bees'
paḷát 'speech' → paḷaḏu 'speeches'
lak 'lake' → laγu 'lakes'
kruč 'cross' → kruγi 'crosses'
2. Nouns ending in the vowels
-a,
-é or
-ó add
-s. (I think the latter two endings only occur in loans)
apa 'water' → apas 'waters, seas'
iṣeḷa 'star' → iṣeḷas 'stars'
3. Nouns ending in
-i or
-u are unchanged in the plural.
paṭi 'part, piece' → paṭi 'parts, pieces'
oču 'eye' → oču 'eyes'
4. Nouns ending in the palatal consonants -
ñ and -
ľ depalatalize the final consonant before appending
-i.
kañ 'dog' → kani 'dogs'
saľ 'salt' → sali 'salts'
5. Nouns ending in
-š appear to undergo rhoticism in the plural, but the presence of
-r- is a conservation rather than an innovation.
ħoš 'flower' → ħori 'flowers'
iskriḏóš 'scribe' → iskriḏori 'scribes'
6. The feminine nouns ending in
-ḏá drop the
-á and shift the stress to the preceding syllable before adding
-i.
kiḏá 'city' → kiḏi 'cities'
saḏá 'health' → saḏi 'healthy people'
Most loanwords entered the language after sound changes like intervocalic lenition of stops had already taken place. However, while the interiors of these words mostly stayed intact, the changes involving final consonants were extended by analogy to the borrowings. Thus, the Phoenician loanword
kukáb 'star, planet, bright spot in the sky' (cf. Hebrew
kôḵā́ḇ) maintains internal
-k-, but is bestowed with the Latinate plural marker
-u (owing to its masculine gender), and accordingly the final
-b is lenited to
-ḇ-, giving rise to the form
kukaḇu.
As a more general note, nouns keep the gender they had in Phoenician or Berber or Arabic, and adopt the plural ending
-u if masculine or
-i if otherwise.
Nouns are also "inflected" for definiteness. Unlike other Romance languages, Sharshali never developed an indefinite article—Semitic languages, which surround the area where Sharshali is spoken, don't have them. Two distinct definite articles were in the process of developing from
IPSU and
ILLU:
šu/
ša and
el. When Sharshali was exposed to Arabic,
el became favored over
šu, and
šu and
ša are now used only (and always) before names and other proper nouns.
El assimilates to the following word if it begins with a nasal consonant, a retroflex consonant or
l or
r.
(Note that this is the only instance where a dotted consonant letter is doubled.)
Nasal assimilation:
el +
naz 'nose' →
ennázRetroflex assimiliation:
el +
ḍaγóñ 'snake, dragon, lizard' →
eḍḍaγóñ,
el +
sandu 'saint' →
eṣṣanduL or R assimilation:
el +
luč 'light' →
eḷḷúčBefore a vowel or any other consonant,
el doesn't change, and is written separately. A feminine form also exists,
eḷa, but only exists in the speech of some speakers and is non-obligatory in the standard language.
Eḷa doesn't change in any circumstances. There is no distinct plural form of the article.
(As another important note,
el and
eḷa also combine with
a 'to', yielding
al and
aḷa. While 'the snake' is
eḍḍaγóñ, 'to the snake' is
aḍḍaγóñ, etc.
Di 'of' never comes into contact with
el or
eḷa; rather, the fossilized forms
deš and
deša, harkening back to the days when
šu was equally viable as a definite article, are used instead.)