Background:
Classical Tiggurat is a synthetic language, brushing along the borders between the fusional and the agglutinative; it really depends on the dialect. This page will explore Classical Tiggurat, and will serve as a snapshot of the region before the basin kingdoms fell, before the "present era." Much of the basin has succumbed to millennia of climate change — and some fucky wucky magical bullshit — transforming the once thriving region into yet more land claimed by the Great Sand Sea to the northeast, spreading its greed, its hunger, its heat. The Sand Sea provides solace only in death.
(Flashback noises)
At the height of its power, along the coasts and the rivers that carve through the Ullammani River Basin, great cities and towns flourish, many of them wealthy, beautiful and fertile.
The river basin was dominated by savannah, paving the way for the speakers of the Tiggurat language family to invade and settle. The ancestors of the Tiggurat peoples prospered in the balmy humid subtropical climate, which is almost Mediterranean along the southern waters. The basin itself is surrounded by the Ullammani Mountain Range to the north and east, and Kinmu's Spine to the northwest — they are all poignant (šika), pointy (šwayu), and pretty (katlak kazān). Catching seaside winds (pūmyimlaya), the rolling hills and lush fertile flatlands were all ripe (ī ) for one of the earliest known civilizations in the region.
The lion-lords (hānaslānu) carry the tradition of hunting lions (asla) and tigers (kumša) for power, status, and wealth, while mounted on rhinos and elephants in the Heartlands, the lion's domain (aslāhāli). These are central savanna lands that act as a giant buffer to the Coastal Cities, the Ullammani, and Kinmu's Spine. The home of the Main Dialect is on the shores that meet the Great Sea, lapping in the south and east. Access to the Great Sea allows the Coastal Cities to trade with foreign powers and acquire precious goods not found in the basin, as they also tap into the huge fishing market of the Sea. The basin itself offers ivory, lion pelts, tiger stripes, jade, turquoise and more to the lands beyond the Ullammani and the Spine.
Because of the immense wealth that this coastal region enjoys, the southern sea is known as Kšāylā Pūmyāmū and Kšāylā Tūya, which roughly means "The Great Sea of Immense Wealth and Riches." It is also known as Wāyyālway "The Great Green, The Big Blue," and Mlūkay Tūya, Mlūkūn Tūya "The Indigo Sea."
Phonology:
Pretty straightforward. The phonotactics and morphology, however, are bit of a doozy. In the Standard Main Dialect (MD), stress tends to fall on the antepenultimate syllable, but because the stress is so strong, preceding and subsequent vowels and syllables tend to weaken and delete entirely, forcing stress on the penultimate syllable instead. This will be explored more in future posts.Stops — p , t , c /t͡s/ , k , (ʔ)*
Nasals — m , n , (ŋ)
Fricatives — s , z , š /ʃ/ , h*
Liquids — w , y /j/ , l , ɾ* , r
Vowels — a, ā , i, ī , u, ū
Diphthongs — aw, āw, ay, āy, iw, īw, uy, ūy
* /ʔ/ is weak in the Main Dialect and the southern ones, more prominent in the north
*/ɾ/ is restricted to certain dialects
* especially in the Southern dialects, /h/ tends to disappear intervocalically
/i/ and /u/ when preceded by /a/ tend to become glides, but because of stress and other phonological factors, this can sometimes be unpredictable. In short, this is not a hard and fast rule, but could still be a handy cheatsheet:
In the proto-language, */ʒ/ ~ */ʑ/ was very widespread, and in the present, a rough division can be made between the northern and southern dialects for the reflexes of this sound, surfacing as /j/ in the north, and /ʃ/ in the south. In the central regions and among the lower classes, how either of these two phonemes should be pronounced tends to be ambiguous.uá → wá vs. úa — stays the same, or /a/ may disappear and lengthen stressed /u/, depends on shape of syllable
uí → wí vs. úi → úy
ia → yá vs. ía ~ ī
iú → yú vs. íw ~ ī
— In some dialects, not the MD, vowel hiatus is much more prominent
Let's explore one noun and the different affixes that come into play. From here on out, dialectal forms and cognates will be indicated by this line: |Šākurrat, Šākurra "Tiggurat River, Tiggurat River Valley"
Some more fun with the morphology and compounding:*molor ~ *məlur “dream”
→ *molorka → mlūka (v.), (n.) “dream, wonder, desire, hope”
*ɸat- — passive prefix
*ɸatmolor → hammalūša (n.) “to be dreamt of, wished for, desired; (n.) that which is dream of, innermost desire”
mlūša (n.) “dream”
mlūšaš | mlūyay (n.) “dreamer”
mlūnā (n.) “dream, reverie, image, idea, thought, imagination”
mlūkaš | mlūkay (n.) “dreamer, aspiring one, hopeful one”
pā- (1st person subject pronoun affix)
pāmlūka “I dream, I have a dream, I hope”
Plurals vary a lot in Tiggurat and its many sister dialects; this aspect of the language and all the nuance with plurality will also be covered in a later post since there's a lot to unpack here, but for now, know that animacy plays a big part in this.šippat (n.) “spear,” šippattim (plural) “spears” — -(h)im is the typical inanimate noun suffix for most dialects.
šupu (v.) “cover, hide, protect” + -ayya (noun intensifier suffix)
→ šupayya ~ špayya (n.) “protection, safety, shelter; shield”
šippat (ai) špayya “spear and shield; weapons” (fig.) “preparation, readiness, alertness; conflict, combat, battle, fight, war; military force”
šippatānu ~ šippānu (n.) “spearman, warrior, soldier”
taškānu (n.) “archer, bowman”
pāšippānu "I (am) a/the spearman/soldier." — Nearly every noun and adjective can be paired with one of these pronoun affixes to make it a verbal phrase. This will also have its own dedicated post, as pronouns tend to be one of my favorite aspects of any conlang.
— in the southern dialects, /ʃ/ is sometimes perceived as /ɕ/ ; in some extreme cases, it’s confused for /s/šippānuya ~ šippānya (plural n.) “spearmen, warriors, soldiers”
šippattim (pl. inan. n.) “spears; warriors, soldiers; attack, onslaught, rain of spears”
linni “wood” + šupu “cover” → linnišupu ~ līšpu (n.) “wooden cover; door; shield; top, cover, lid; barracks; pergola, patio cover, canopy”
— homonym of līšpu (adj.) “wooden, made of wood, covered with wood” (linni + -špu “covered with, made of”)
mūhan mū (“body to body”) “face to face, person to person” (n.) “fight, wrestle, battle”
→ mūnmū
yamahan yam “hand to hand”
šim yamā́nyam (v.) “to come hand to hand, to wrestle, fight, contest, duke it out, brawl, scrap, battle”
šanti “to meet, connect; join”
šī (v.) “to meet, approach”
šanti kūntinla (v.) “to meet/connect iron, to fight, combat, battle, duel, to war, invade, defend, attack”
ihu- “off, away, against” + *kitu “to stand”
→ ihuštu | ihuttu ~ ihittu ~ iːttu (v.) “to oppose, disagree, defy, object; to be against; to rival, contend”
īttu + hapu “face” → īttapu (v.) “to face off, face against, to battle, contest; to strive, struggle” (n.) “strife, struggle, fight, battle, combat, war; duel, contest, competition”
īttapucu (v.) “to make war, to fight, feud” īttapcuš ~ īttapcuy (n.) “instigator, aggressor”
īttapucanā ~ īttapucnā (n.) “war, warfare, great battle, great struggle, campaign; civil war”
īttapānu (n.) “warrior; fighter, contestant; enemy, foe, adversary”
īttānu, īttaš | īttay (n.) “enemy, for, adversary”
— in the northern dialects, /ʃ/ is more retracted, being somewhere between apical and alveolar, to the point where some rural dialects perceive it almost as /h/ (or even /ɦ/ between vowels). This is much more prominent before /k/ and the k’s that were /q/ in the proto-language.
— in some dialects, /w/ is allophonic with /h/, because both tend to descend from */ɸ/
— some conservative dialects in the central and northern regions of the basin retain /ɸ/, it being interchangeable with /w/ and /h/ and succeptible to funky sound changes. The trend throughout most of these dialects is */ɸ/ giving a round color to neighboring vowels.
A prominent example of this can be found in this proto-word: ɸaxno "man, human, person"
Here are the most common reflexes of the word:
The Tiggurats weren't the first group that occupied the region, such a group has either morphed into other distinct faces, or faded into obscurity tens of millennia long before the invention of writing. However, among this multitude of faces, one group of darker skinned natives is believed to have occupied the savannah before the Tiggurat arrival — the Kūmāša. They are one of the only truly indigenous peoples around in this time, though no one else really knows or respects this. Their original heritage and culture survives in the western plains along Kinmu's Spine, where giraffes and antelopes graze and roam. Kudu, oryx, gazelle, impala, and samotheriums are considered sacred to the Kūmāša, who named themselves after the majestic kudu. The majority of the native population that shares ancestry with the Kuumaasha tribes integrated with Tiggurat society long ago, occupying all strata of city life, and would certainly consider themselves Tiggurat in their own right, as would any of the other people that call the River Basin home.wānu “person, human, man” | hānu | hawnu ~ hōno ~ hōnu
*ɸaxnoɸaxno → (Southern Dialect) hānwānu (irregular plural) | hānūnu | wānūnu (n. pl.) “people, persons, individuals”
hān- is reanalyzed as a plural marker for honorifics and culturally important animate nouns
-(C)īnu stems from an adjective that means "many, more," and is used as an animate noun marker in many dialects.
wīnu “persons, humans, people” (a reanalyzed plural for -ānu)
**wā- didn’t have a specific traceable meaning, reanalyzed as wā (v.) “to be human, alive, mortal”
wāy (adj.) “human, living, alive, mortal” (n.) “mortal”
šippat špayya yampa kāšimlu
šippat špayya yampan kāšimšim ~ kāšimši
“Spear and shield in hand they came/went.”
It's unknown how long the Kūmāša tribes have inhabited the basin, maybe moments before the Tiggurats arrived, maybe they came along with their copper-skinned sun-worshipping brethren. Maybe the horned hunters have enjoyed the sun since the dawn of time. Either way, they have a long, proud and bloody history of roaming the savannas, hunting lions, and fearing the hippo demons in their rivers. Yet, long as their history may be, many native lion-lords still refuse the art of writing, adhering to their oral traditions to keep their minds sharp. Some of these western lion-lords view the Tiggurat power of memory as weak and rotting from the vices of convenience and idle minds. They complain how the Tiggurats rely too much on playing with clay, how they bake things they cannot eat, and how ink stories are unnatural, too fragile to carry around on a samothere's back, and how, though they may be cool the first time, ink stories are kind of spooky. Above all, according to these antelope-lovers, the Kūmāša peoples are nothing but Chads, and the Tiggurats are just a bunch of big ol' virgin losers who die in pointless wars and are too stupid to move somewhere else when the flood season begins. And yet the Tiggurats mock the Kūmāša for not wearing robes or dresses, for proudly owning their natural stench instead of masking it with perfumes, for hunting and killing their own food when city folk only need to buy it. Then again, the Kūmāša that became sedentary were in all likelihood already enjoying the fruits of their labor by the time the ancient Tiggurats arrive — and keep in mind, this is on a scale of thousands of years, if not dozens of them. There aren't any archaeologists sleuthing about to get the story straight.
Since the wealthiest cities are situated along the Kišāyla Sea, the Coastal Cities tend to be extremely biased. They deem themselves as the rightful heirs to the Tiggurat cultural lineage, identifying the South as the motherland of the Basin Kingdoms, and the birthplace of all human civilization. In truth, Tiggurat's evolution and her dialects originally ebb and flow from the north, from beyond the great savanna and even the basin itself. A wide strip of rocky grassland divides the Ullammani and the Spine — the Ancient Tiggurat peoples migrated through this elevated mountain pass unknown millennia ago. With them, the proto-language, "Proto-Tiggurat," also flowed from outside of the river basin, and it's very possible that distant relatives of the protolanguage survive just beyond the mountains that hug the savannas. The most conservative dialects of the Tiggurat family are, in essence, sisters and cousins to the Main Dialect, and, if armed with a sharp and careful ear, one can trace all the gradients of the language family, from babbling brooks down to shushing shores. The Coastal Cities harbor many foreign tongues beyond the basin. In the same vein, they are the sites where the rich Tiggurat dialects abroad die, as the harsher sounds of the north soften and erode, leaving behind nothing more than the salty breath of the sea.
Stay tuned.