Disclaimer:
I'm a novice, I do not deny this, & I never claimed, nor claim to know enough linguistic concepts to make a good conlang. From the feedback of other people & compared to other projects I do realize my language is very generic & nooby for a naturalistic language, but IMHO I'm proud that I can make at least something that works like a language. Still, I'm trying my best for the language to be a bit alien/unlike other languages, especially English & Russian (the ones I know), & to not turn it into a "kitchen sink" I'd trash later. The reason I post it here is for people to be able see the conlang from inside-out, so they can use it & say how good are my language elements. I welcome feedback & criticism, & also ideas on how to improve this conlang!
Disclaimer II:
Proto-Pehian isn't near even to the point I consider it "usable", & everything here (maybe except phonology & vocab) is subject to change. I may do it in twisted ways that render previous Pehia sentences ungrammatical, so I'm not going to delete previous outlines I've made.
Ideas list:
№1: the Santa Barbara of demonstratives & 3rd person pronouns
№2: Literary Pehia is a pidgin.
To be posted:
How clauses work (oh dear how would I flesh this part out)
Stuff from posts after this
Phonology:
Proto-Pehian phonology:
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Consonants Labial Dental Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar
Nasal /m/ [m] /n/ [n]
Plosive /p/ [p] /b/ [b] /t/ [t] /d/ [d] [c]² /k/ [k] /g/ [ɡ]
Fricative /f/ [f] [v]⁵ ⁶ /th/ [θ] /s/ [s] /z/ [z] /c/ [ʂ] /zh/ [ʐ] [ç]² /x/ [x] /gh/ [ɣ]⁵
Trill /r/ [r]
Liquids /w/ [w] /l/ [ɫ] [ʎ]³ /j/ [j]
Pulmonic /q/ [t͡ɬ]
Vowels Front Central Back
Close /i/ [i] /y/ [ɨ]¹
Mid /e/ [ɛ] [e]² [ə]⁴ /o/ [o]
Open /a/ [a]
Syllable structure: (C)V(C), where C is any consonant, V is any vowel.
Only vowels, nasals, fricatives & liquids can end words.
¹phonemic only word initially, merged with /i/ elsewhere.
²[k] & [x] palatalize to [c] & [ç] before [ɛ], which itself becomes [e]
³a word final allophone of /l/
⁴[a] & [ɛ] weaken to [ə] in unstressed syllables
⁵[f] & [x] become vocalized ([v] [ɣ]) between vowels
⁶[w] becomes [v] word initially
Sound changes:
I'm not very good at sound changes that result in a language sounding like the way I want to, so I first made Proto-Pehian's phonology, & then analyzed it & solo-brainstormed on what changes could've led to this phonology. Basically, I reconstructed PKP's phonology from Proto-Pehian.
Proto-Kesto-Pehian phonology:
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Consonants Labial Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar
Nasal /m/ /n/
Plain plosive /p/ /t/ /k/
Asp. plosive /pʰ/ /tʰ/ /kʰ/
Fricative /s/ /ʂ/
Trill /r/
Liquids /w/ /ɫ/ /j/
Vowels Front Central Back
Close /ɨː/ /ɨ/
Mid /eː/ /e/ /ə/ /oː/ /o/
Open /äː/ /ä/
In the spoiler are sound changes that lead from PKP to Proto-Pehian. Changes in this color indicate a common family-wide change, this color means that a similar change also happens in another separating language, uncolored means a change that is unique to the Proto-Pehian branch. (I hope colorblind people here will be able to distinguish these)
Word order:
Proto-Pehian has a Subject-Verb-Object word order, & it's very strict - to the point that passive sentences like "O gets Ved by S" are forbidden. Passive constructions do exist, but they're used only when the subject is omitted/unknown. That is, you can reverse "A person (someone) feeds me" into "I am/get fed":
Gho sarota re ---> Re komace sarota
human feed 1SG ---> 1SG get feed
Sea jerma sonoka -x-> *Sonoka komace jerma ??! sei
3SG.FEM create tool -x-> *tool get create by(?) 3SG.FEM
So remember - in Proto-Pehian nothing can stop the SVO.
They still obey the almighty SVO. They just always lack an object, that's it. Look:But the passive constructions you were talking about-..!
Re komace sarota
| |_____| |____|
S V V
The order of all words relater to the noun are:
<Adpositions> <Numbers> <Demonstratives> <Noun> <Adjectives> <Possessors> <Relative clauses>
The sentence that fully illustrates this order:
Thi lei zhe den opo-no re-la zhe sejo doj-io thi barko otoki-jo.
in five this artificial_place good-NEUT 1SG-GEN this 3PL be-PLUR in near birch_tree-PLUR
"In these five good houses of mine that are near birches."
The spoiler below is older stuff that I think is now kind-of obsolete but just in case.
Nouns:
All nouns belong to one of the four noun classes: masculine animate, feminine animate, genderless animate & inanimate. Nouns have 3 numbers: singular, dual (when there's two of a noun) & plural; & four cases: nominative, dative, genitive/possessive & instrumental. Here's the postfix table:
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Singular Dual Plural
Nominative <unmarked> -(a)ma -(i/j)o
Dative -(k)ipi -(a)makipi -(i/j)okipi
Gen./Poss. -(l)a -(a)mala -(i/j)ola
Instrumental -(n)e -(a)mane -(i/j)one
3rd person pronouns have to agree by noun class w/ the words they refer to.
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Pronouns Singular Dual Plural
1st person re rema nel
2nd person ga gama xa
3rd p. masc. sei sema sejo
3rd p. fem. sea sema sejo
3rd p. neut. seo seom sejo
Verbs can be transitive or intransitive, & have 3 tenses: past, present & future; 2 aspects: perfective, imperfective (both apply only to past tense); & 3 moods: imperative (applies only to the present tense), negative & reflexive (transitive verbs only). Mood prefixes come before the tense prefixes. You can make transitive verbs from intransitive via derivational morphology. Verbs have to agree w/ the subject by number.
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Singular Dual Plural
Past Perfective s(e)- s(e)-(m)a s(e)-(i/j)o
Past Imperfective i(k)- i(k)-(m)a i(k)-(i/j)o
Present <unmarked> -(m)a -(i/j)o
Future j(o)- j(o)-(m)a j(o)-(i/j)o
Imperative mood k(i)-
Negative mood k(o)-
Reflexive mood <verb> subject_pronoun
Adjectives have to agree with a noun by its noun class. All adjectives can modify a verb (become adverbs) by taking no postfix.
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Masculine -(n)i
Feminine -(n)a
Neuter -(n)o
Adverbal <unmarked>
TL;DW, here's a noun agreement table:
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How adjectives agree How pronouns agree
Masc.-Animate <adj>-MASC 3SG.MASC
Fem.-Animate <adj>-FEM 3SG.FEM
Genderless-An. <adj>-MASC / <adj>-FEM 3SG.NEUT
Neut.-Inanimate <adj>-NEUT SG.NEUT
There's the door to the dictionary. (it's on Google Spreadsheets)
Here's the full derivational morphology table:
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Root <root>
Person/Doer of X <root>-(a)gho
Natural place of X <root>-(a)l
Constructed place of X <root>-(e)n
Tool for doing X <root>-(o)noka
Diminutive <root>-(n)ino
To noun <root>-(i/j)a
To adjective <root>-(o)j
To transitive verb <root>-(i)ka
Intrans. verb to trans. <root>-(a)se