Ɬiʔa

Goals

1. Endgoal - A truly verbless language I can use
2. Vague phrases
   1. Glacial pace
   2. Navajo-of-nouns
   3. lazy but clever
   4. carved in stone
   5. complicated rituals
3. Naturalism - 6/10
   • I want some naturalistic elements
   • Different setting (parallel Earth)
   • Different nature (immortal humans)
   • Irregularities but not many
   • Idioms within reason
4. Complexity - insane. Navajo but with only nouns
5. Derivation - clear. Agglutinative, basically
6. Features
   1. Phonology
      1. Vowel harmony
      2. A couple of clicks, and ejectives (un-earth-like)
      3. CV, and CVC
   2. Grammar
      1. No verbs at all
      2. assumed copular between topic and subject
      3. 6 nouns classes (genders), like animacy
      4. Many cases (12?)
      5. Case-stacking
      6. word glue, like German
      7. mostly agglutinative, touch of fusional
   3. Culture
      1. things happen, not because someone does them, but because the world unfolds in prescribed patterns
      2. discourse is formulaic, ceremonial, or sacred: more on set relational expressions and fixed semantic roles, rather than on active description of novel events
      3. agency is less linguistically salient, so predicates assigning blame, initiative, or creativity are avoided
      4. Tidally Locked Planet
         1. The sun never moves in the sky.
         2. The world is divided into zones of permanent day, eternal night, and a narrow habitable twilight ring.
         3. People live in a stable band where temperature and light are forever the same.
      5. Mountain life
         1. Isolated communities → heavy internal consistency, less external pressure to simplify
         2. Thin air → favoring sharp, closed articulation: ejectives, glottalization, voiceless stops
         3. Cultural inwardness → deep philosophies of stasis and permanence
      6. Time is measured in generations, epochs, weathering of stone, growth cycles of ultra-slow plants

See also: Ɬiʔa/Conworlding

Morphology

Existential cases

Case	Function	Gloss	Ending
Topical	Frames the referent of the utterance	“As for…”	-Mp'a
Identity	Category, essence, nominal predicate	“is a…” / “equals…”	-
Possessive	ownership, authorship, kinship, part-whole	“X’s Y”	-rkI
Partitive	part-to-whole, uncertainty, scalarity	"some of, partially"	-g(Ö)
Genitive	association, content, theme, objective, attribution	“Y of X”	-ł(Ö)

Where/When Cases

Case	Function	Typical gloss	Ending
Locative	Place, state, context of being, time-within	“in,” “at,” “on”, "during"	-f'
Dative	Target, direction	“to,” “for,” “until", "as far as"	-Mk'O
Ablative	Source, cause, origin	“from,” “because of,” “due to”	-bdI
Benefactive	Advantage, interest, concern	“for the benefit of…”, "at the behest of"	-aI
Abessive	Absence, privation, “lacking”	“without,” “lacking,” “free from”, "exclude"	-st'Ö

How Cases

Case	Function	Typical gloss	Ending
Instrumental	Means, medium, material	“by (means of)”, “through,” “with”, "using"	-fla
Adverbial	Role/state modifier, part of speech shift	“as (a) X,” “in a X way”, "like"	-Oad
Translative	Change of state, transform/manifestation	“becoming,” “into,” “turning into”	-k'(I)

Noun Classes

	Not "Container" (mass: paucal, whole)	"Container" (count: number)
Idea + Matter	Animals (also temperaments)	Persons / Gods
Matter only	(Diffuse) Substances: air, fire	Tools , "rocks"
Idea only	Actions	Abstracts, Categories, Sets

Number: Containers are unmarked for number, as in Chinese/Japanese/Korean. Non-containers default to a collective/mass-noun number, but can take a paucal (which can mean as few as one).

Polypersonal pronouns:

	1x	1n	2	3P	3T	3R	3D	3S	3A	4
1x	ø
1in		ø
2			ø

Phonology/Orthography

	Labial	Labiolingual	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	/m~n/ M			(/ɲ/ nj)	/ŋ/ M
Click	(/ᵐʘ/ mx)		(/ŋǃ/ y)
Voiced Stop	b		d	(/dʑ/ dj)	g
Eject. Stop	/pʼ/ pq		/t’/ tq	/c'/ cq	/k’/ kq	/ʔ/ '
Unvoiced Stop	p		t	(/tɕ/ tj)	/k~x/ k
Voiced Fricative	/β~v/ v	/ð̼/ ð	z	(/ʒ/ zj)
Unvoiced Fricative	/ɸ~f/ f	/θ̼/ þ	s	(/ʃ/ sj)
Eject. Fricative	/fʼ/ fq	/θ̼ʼ/ þq	/s’~ts’/ sq
Approx./Trill	w		r	j		/h~ɦ/ h
Laterals		/l̼/ l	/ɬ/ ł	(/ʎ/ lj)

	Front	Back	Underspecified
High	i	u	I
High-Mid	e	o	O
Low-Mid	/ɛ/ ë	/ɔ/ ö	Ö
Low	/ä/ a

Allophony:

• nasal + labial ejective -> [m͡ʘ]
• nasal + non-labial ejective -> [ŋ͡ǃ]

Phonotactics are (C)(G)V(C₂):

• any consonant or none can a syllable
• Glides (/j/ or /w/) after anything, if after nothing, insert glottal stop
• hiatus allowed, diphthongs not
• any coda, except glides

Sentences

1. The storm scared the people.
   • vökqöthumxa 'usëk venargofq
   • As for the storm, (there is) fear in the people.