Noku speedlang noumi: Today's Speedlang

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Solarius
roman
roman
Posts: 1173
Joined: 30 Aug 2010 01:23

Noku speedlang noumi: Today's Speedlang

Post by Solarius »

Figured a high-speed lang would be a little fun. I've been incredibly blocked conlang-wise for going on 6 months now, and I figured it would be useful to unblock things by doing a very quick speedlang.

The phonemic inventory is:

/p t c k q/<p t c k q>
/h/<s/h>
/m n ɲ ŋ/<m n ñ ng>
/l ɹ ʎ j/<l r ll y>

/i e a o u/

Note that all the coronals are dental.

The syllable structure is a fairly simple (C)(L)V(h), where L is /l ʎ j/. Sequences of LL are also prohibited. Hiatus is not common; most syllables have an initial consonant.

Allophony is fairly complicated:

-/h/ surfaces as a laminal alveolar fricative before /i e l ɹ ʎ j/.
-/k ŋ/ assimilate to palatals before /ʎ j/
-When word final or in stressed syllables, except before /h/, vowels are lengthened.
-Before stressed syllables, the vowels /i u/ are reduced to [ɪ ʊ].

Nouns, Pronouns, and the Noun phrase
Monosyllabic words can be pluralized by reduplication:

ña --> ñaña
farmer --> farmer-PL

Polysyllabic words are pluralized by reduplicating the first syllable.

qumila --> ququmila.
priestess --> priestess-PL

Only words which refer to humans can be pluralized.

There is case marking in this language, which is done with prefixes.
0-: Nominative
ya-/ye-: Accusative
plla-/plle-: Dative
no-: Ablative
sya-/sye-: Vocative/Prepositional
qu-: Comitative

The alternation in the accusative, dative, and vocative is conditioned by the quality of the vowel of the first syllable of the root--if it is /i/ or /e/, the form of the prefix emerges as [e].

The uses above are fairly straigtforward.

Prepositions also influence the cases a fair amount as well so I'll talk about them here. There are three prepositions in this language:
ka(h): "on, in, general locative"
qoto: "with (both instrumental and comitative)"
mi(h): "via, through"

The above <h> surfaces when the subsequent word begins with a vowel (rare) or approximant.

In combination with cases, these create more specific meanings, as well as govern for specific cases, usually the vocative [1].

ka(h) + VOC-: Generic locative
ka(h) + DAT-: Motion towards, lative
ka(h) + ABL-: Motion away
qoto + ACC-: Instrumental
qoto + COM-: Comitative
mi(h) + VOC-: via, through

Other, more specific meanings are created by relational nouns.

The noun phrase in this language is a pretty generic head-final order: Noun-Adjective-Numeral-Demonstrative. None of these are marked for any sort of agreement or morphology.

Pronouns in this language are pretty simple.

ñlle--1p.SG
yeñi--1p.PL
pa--2p.SG
papa--2p.PL
haya--3p.SG
esya--3p.PL
ku--4p.SG
kuku--4p.PL

The case marking on these pronouns is fairly regular, barring the semi-irregular 1st person singular.
Spoiler:
NOM: ñlle
ACC: yelle
DAT: pllelle
ABL: nolle
VOC: sllalle
COM: qullu
Possession is marked with the Possessed noun, followed the Possessor in the ablative case. Frequently in colloquial speech an ablative form of the 3rd or 4th person is inserted before the possessed noun.

(noku) samle noña
(ABL-4p.SG) cow ABL-farmer

Some nouns cannot be possessed, such as natural features or heavenly bodies.

[1] It is believed that in earlier forms of the language this was the accusative but was reanalyzed; older */kah=ya-/ [kas=ya] to modern /ka=sya/.
Nachtuil
greek
greek
Posts: 595
Joined: 21 Jul 2016 00:16

Re: Noku speedlang noumi: Today's Speedlang

Post by Nachtuil »

I like some of your design decisions like limiting plurality on nouns to humans and the partial reduplication on polysyllabic words. Just for my own purposes because I am developing a language that has a vocative, did you get the idea of using a marker for both vocative and prepositional from a real world example?
Solarius
roman
roman
Posts: 1173
Joined: 30 Aug 2010 01:23

Re: Noku speedlang noumi: Today's Speedlang

Post by Solarius »

My computer ate my second post, on verbs. Either way, it'd be a little less speedy than I thought [xP] .
Nachtuil wrote: 20 Apr 2020 22:46 I like some of your design decisions like limiting plurality on nouns to humans and the partial reduplication on polysyllabic words. Just for my own purposes because I am developing a language that has a vocative, did you get the idea of using a marker for both vocative and prepositional from a real world example?
Thank you! I didn't get the idea directly from any natural language, but I took the idea from the changes in indefinite articles seen in some European languages, like English's *a napron --> an apron (I think Italian had a similar change with its reflex of orange).
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