Sarim

Sarim (Sarim: Sarim Sovat) is a language spoken in Sarmenyn, a nation on the continent of Yandras. It is a largely fusional, head-final language, displaying split-ergative morphosyntactic alignment.

Phonology

Sarim has a fairly simple phonology; it distinguishes 22 consonants and 10 vowels, as detailed below:

Consonants:

• Labial: /p b m ɸ β/

• Alveolar: /t tʰ d n s z ð r l / <t th d s z dh r l>
• Palatal: /c ɟ ɕ j/ <kj gj s̘ j>
• Velar: /k ŋ x ɣ/ <k ŋ x g>
• Glottal:/h/ <h>

Vowels:

/i e ɛ a ɐ ɨ ɔ o u/ <i e è a à y ò o u

/ai au ɐi ɐu ɛi ɛu ɔi ɔu/ <ai au ài àu ei eu oi ou>

Allophony

-The consonants /t d n l/ are realised as dental unless adjacent to one of /s z/, which are always alveolar (and laminal).

-/p/ may be realised as either aspirated or plain in free variation, as may /k/ and /c/.

-/ð/ is generally realised as interdental.

-The rhotic /r/ is realised as a tril [r] when intervocalic or word initial. Word-finally or when adjacent to another cosnoant, it weakens to a flap [ɾ] or even an approximant [ɹ].

-/j/ is realised as the voiced palatal fricative [ʝ] word-initially.

-The palatal stops may affricate to [cç ɟʝ].

Phonotactics

A Sarim syllable consists of an onset and a rime.

The onset may consist of any single consonant, or a cluster of Cr or Cv, with the exception that /r l j v/ may not be C, and only velars and /s/ may occur in Cv onset clusters. Zero-rimes also exist, although they are not particularly common.

The rime may consist of any single vowel, or a vowel plus one of a limited number of coda consonants. Word internally, these consonants are /t s r l/ or a nasal at the same point of articulation as a following consonant. Word-finally, /m n ŋ/ are distinguished phonemically, but other than these only alveolar consonants may occur.

In addition, there are also rules governing which clusters may occur:

• /h/ may not occur after another consonant.
• Clusters of /lr vr/ do not occur, undergoing metathesis to /rl rv/.
• Clusters of stop+nasal undergo
• Coda /t/ may not occur before another stop.

Phonemic long vowels do not occur in stressed syllables. In Old Sarim [i: e: a: o:] in stressed syllables became [aj aj wa aw]. Because stress in Sarim is always on the penultimate syllable, this created some interesting vowel changes in stems. However, many of these were restored by analogy, leaving just a few irregular forms, e.g. oban has the aorist form aomas.

Elision

Elision is a Sandhi feature very common in Sarim, and occurs when two vowels are neighbouring across a word boundary, e.g. 'ti omi that (he) see(s). If the two vowels are the same quality, they are realised together as a long vowel. If the two vowels are of different quality and either the first or last element is one of unstressed /e i/ or /o y/, then these are realised as [j] and [w] respectively, so /ti omi/ is realised as [tjomi]. If neither of these conditions is fulfilled, and one of the words involved is a grammatical particle, that particle looses its vowel, which orthographically is represented by replacing the vowel grapheme with an apostrophe. If the two words are lexical words, and removing the final vowel of the first one would not create an illegal consonant cluster, it may be dropped, indicated orthographically by replacing the vowel with an apostrophe. If none of these conditions are met, no change is made.

Stress

-Sarim syllables are moraic.

• An open syllable whith a short vowel counts as one mora.
• A consonant rime with a short vowel, or an open rime with a long vowel or diphthong, counts as two morae
• A consonant rime with a diphthong counts as three morae.

Stress is regulary on the penultimate mora, unless a vowel in an adjacent syllable is long in which case the stress shifts to there. Note that this change occured after long vowels in stressed syllables diphthongised. Long vowels are realised as significantly higher pitch than short ones. Stressed is realised as an increase in volume and pitch.

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Nominal Morphology

Sarim nouns are declined for three cases and three numbers. To show how examples of allomorphy and how the various suffixes are formed, four sample noun stems shall be used: don ; man maze; house ; Sarm; Sarim aprah; child

The Absolutive form is the same as the stem, with the exception that consonant stems ending in two consonants have an additional epenthetic /i/ inserted between the two consonants in this form, and stems ending in -h lose their final consonant: don, maze, sarim, apra.

The Oblique is identical to the Absolutive if the noun ends in a vowel or -h. Otherwise, the final vowel is lengthened.

dona, mazē, sarma,aprā

The Genitive is formed with -n if a noun ends in a vowel and -en if it ends in a consonant. -h stem nouns lose their vowel and take -n. If the last syllable of the stem contains /n/, then the genitive morpheme dissimilates to -m

donem, mazen. sarmen, apran

The plural is formed with -t for all stems, with an epenthetic -a- inserted afterconsonant stems:

donat, mazet, sarmat, 'aprahat

Before the oblique and genitive inflections, the -a of the plural morpheme is lost. -h stems lose their -h and lengthen the preceding vowel.

donta dontem; mazeta, mazeten; aprāta, aprāten

The nullar is a more recent innovation; it is formed with -(e)l after the case inflection. The nullar genitive is -nde. -h stems have a nullar objective in -:l, where -: is the lengthening of the final vowel dŭnel, dŭnăl, dŭnende; mazel, mazel, mazende; sarmel, sarmal, sarmende; apral, aprāl, aprande

Pronouns

Sarim 1P, 2P, 3P and 4P animate pronouns are inflected for nominative, accusative, oblique and genitive cases. The 3P and 4P inanimate pronouns are inflected for absolutive, oblique, and genitive cases.

1P Singular - Plural:

• NOM:na - nan
• ACC:nām - nem
• OBL:nae - nenta
• GEN:nem - neman

2P singular - plural:

• NOM:ath - āda
• ACC:enda - ādan
• OBL:ath - ādan
• GEN:atham - alyam

3P(animate) singular - plural:

• NOM:ko - kor
• ACC:kam - karon
• OBL:kor - koda
• GEN:kom - koram

4P(animate) singular - plural:

• NOM:ri - rede
• ACC:rem - riden
• OBL:ride - ridat
• GEN:rem - riyem

The third and fourth person inanimate pronouns are ka and ri respectively. They are inflected like normal nouns, with the exception that their oblique singular forms are kai and rŭ respectively.

Possessive Clitics

These appear on nouns after any case or number inflections:

1PS:-an 1PP:-ane 2PS:-alh 2PP:-eda 3PS:-a 3PP:-ar 4PS:-ar 4PP:-ara

If the noun in question ends in a vowel, the vowel of the possessive affix is elided, except for -a, which becomes -ya e.g. mazene our house, otaya his father, yatrenamane of our town.

Verbal Morphology

Compared to nouns, Sarim verbs are more richly inflected. The bare form of the verb is the stem. There are two verb classes in Sarim, stems ending in vowels, e.g. kara- use,make,do and consonant stems, e.g. sov- speak.

There is one infinite verb form in Sarim, the verbal noun. If the verbal noun morpheme appears following a consonant, it is -o. If it appears after a vowel then it has the allomorph /0/. Any potential verb form may be made into a verbal noun, e.g. mathido play-IRR-PERF-VRB.NOUN maybe having played. The possessive clitics may be used on a verbal noun construction, but not the person verbal clitics, e.g. sovon my speaking, not *sovano. The verbal noun may also receive case inflections:

• ya nidonane tos yatrena phŭrjan karyo
• at be-PERF-VRB.NOUN-GEN-1PP to town-OBL have-INC-1PS hunger
• I started to get hungry when we arrived in town

Syntax

Theta-roles in Sarim

Sarim shows Ergative alignment. This means that Sarim treats the sole argument of an intransitive verb (S) and the patient of a transitive verb (P) the same, and marks the agent of a transitive verb (A) differently. However, the animate pronouns show nominative alignment, as found in English and most other European languages. Sarim is therefore a split-ergative language.

Sarim ditransitive verbs show dative alignment; the theme (what is given) is marked as absolutive, whilst the receiver is marked as Dative.

Sarim Words

The basic divide in Sarim is between lexical and grammatical words.

• Lexical words are any words referring to an object, state, or action
• Grammatical words show function or position, or modify meaning.