Naisek

Naisek (the original name was New Year's Supposed EuroClone) is meant to be vaguely European, although in fact, it has a number of features that aren't typical of Europe.

Orthography and Phonology

Alphabet

Under the most common orthography, the modern basic latin alphabet is used. Q, V, and Z are limited to foreign names, although some writers use Z or TZ for TS. Although diacritics aren't normally used, a system of marking vowels with acute, grave, and circumflex accents exists as an aid to reading a text aloud. The circumflex and acute are also used in dictionaries to indicate otherwise unpredictable stress.

There's a much less commonly used orthography that has Ĉ for C, C or TC for TS, Ĵ for J, J for Y, and Ŝ for X.

There's a one-to-one correspondence between letters and phonemes, except that TS is used for both /ts)/ and /t:s)/ and that vowel length isn't marked.

Phonemes

The orthographic symbols are shown in UPPER CASE, followed by the /phonemes/. The phoneme symbols chosen are those of the principal allophones. Additional allophones are in [brackets].

Consonants
	Bilabial		Labioden.		Alveolar		PostAlveolar		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Plosive	P /p/	B /b/			T /t/	D /d/					K /k/	G /g/
Affricate					TS /ts/		C /tʃ/	J /dʒ/
Fricative			F /f/	[v]	S /s/	[z]	X /ʃ/	[ʒ]					H /h/
Nasal		M /m/				N /n/						[ŋ]
Trill						R /r/
Lateral Approx.						L /l/
Approximants		W /w/								Y /j/

Vowels
	Front			Central			Back
High	I /i/						U /u/
High-mid		E /e/				O /o/
Low-mid			[ɛ]		[ɔ]
Low				A /a/

Accent

The accent is one of stress, which is determined according to syllable weight. For words of at least three syllables the following rules hold:

• the ultima is stressed if extraheavy; otherwise
• the penult is stressed if heavy or extraheavy; otherwise
• the antepenult is stressed.

For words of two syllables:

• the ultima is stressed if extraheavy; otherwise
• the penult is stressed.

Some one syllable words are unstressed.

• An extraheavy syllable ends in either two consonants, or a single consonant preceded by a diphthong or long vowel.
• A heavy syllable ends in either a single consonant or a diphthong or long vowel.
• A light syllable ends in a short vowel.

Phonotactics

Onset and coda clusters are each limited to certain two consonant combinations.

Vocabulary

While there are a number of words borrowed from, or via, known European languages, the bulk of the lexicon is of unknown origin.

Morphosyntax

Notable features include the Fluid-S alignment and the voice-case agreement system.

Basic Morphology

Naisek is agglutinative with some inflectional fusion. There are a few prefixes; otherwise inflection uses suffixing. Derivational processes involve suffixing and compounding, sometimes together. In compounds, the modifier precedes the head. Some derivations are completely regular and productive, while others are lexicalized.

Noun Phrases

The order of phrase components is:

Determiner-Quantifier-Noun-Adjective(s)-Relative Clause.

The determiners include the demonstratives and the definite, indefinite (not common), and negative determiners. The quantifiers include cardinal and fractional numbers as well as more general quantifiers.

Nouns have implicit gender (animate or inanimate) and are inflected for number (singular or plural) and case. There's no correlation between declension (vowel stems vs. consonant stems) and gender. Adjectives, determiners, and certain pronouns (3rd person and relative) are inflected for gender as well, agreeing with the noun. Other pronouns are inflected for either number and case (1st and 2nd person), gender and case (interrogative), or just case (indefinite). "One" is inflected for both gender and case; other cardinal numbers are inflected only for case.

The cases are: Agentive(=Ergative=Nominative), Patientive(=Absolutive=Accusative), Dative, Genitive, Partitive, Instrumental, and Temporal. Adjectives also have forms used as adverbs and secondary predicates. Agentive and Dative are rare with inanimates, Partitive is rare with singular count nouns, and Temporal is mostly limited to time words. Prepositions are mostly followed by Genitive objects.

Verbs and Clauses

The order of components in a clause is mostly determined by pragmatics. Contrastive focus is indicated using particles.

Both finite and non-finite verbs are inflected for grammatical voice, using prefixes when marked. In addition, finite verbs are inflected for mood and tense and for the person, number, and case of the verb's subject while non-finite verbs are inflected for aspect. The moods are indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and contrafactual. The tenses, distinct only for the indicative, are past, present, and future.

Constructions using the copula followed by a non-finite verb are used for the progressive, retrospective(=perfect), prospective, and habitual aspects. The verbal noun is used for the last and participles are used for the others. The progressive isn't used for purely stative verbs, since their simple forms are all imperfective. Only purely dynamic verbs have simple imperative forms (which include performative, hortative, and jussive forms as well as true imperatives). Mixed verbs have simple present imperfectives like stative verbs, but are otherwise like dynamic verbs.

The verbal noun may also be used, with case marking, as a noun and the participles as fully inflected adjectives. The prospective participle is also used with no further inflection as the infinitive in constructions involving auxiliary verbs.

Voice-Case Agreement

The ending of a finite verb agrees with the case of the clause's subject, which is selected from the possible arguments according to the Agentive > Dative > Patientive hierarchy. Which of these are possible depends on the verb's class as well as its grammatical voice marking. Notably, an argument retains its case when it becomes the subject.

More Information

For more information, see the grammar at http://qiihoskeh.googlepages.com/Ntoc.htm