Låzhö

Låzhö
Pronounced:	/lɑ.ʝø/
Timeline and Universe:	Zebia
Species:	Human
Spoken:
Total speakers:
Writing system:	Zhetu Låzhö (Låzhö script)
Genealogy:
Typology
Morphological type:	Isolating
Morphosyntactic alignment:	Ergative-absolutive, dechticaetiative
Basic word order:	SVO
Credits
Creator:	Tmeister
Created:

Phonology

Consonants

Consonants
	Bilabial		Labiod.				Alveolar				Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m						n				ɲ		ŋ
Plosive	p	b					t	d			c	ɟ	k	g	ʔ
Fricative			f	v			s	z			ç	ʝ
Lateral Approximant								l

Vowels

Vowels
			Front		Central				Back
High			i	y					ɯ	u
High-mid			e	ø					ɤ	o
Low			æ		a				ɑ

Phonotactics and allophony

The core syllable structure is CV, although various standalone consonants (/s n t p k/) may complicate a syllable. Standalone consonants (except for /n/) assimilate in voicing with the next consonant, although /l/ is considered unvoiced for this purpose. /n/ assimilates in place of articulation with the next consonant, and so may be realized as any of [m n ɳ ŋ ɴ] ([ɴ] occurs before /ʔ/, but this sound can also be merged with [ŋ]).

A standalone consonant attaches to the previous syllable if this is possible, then to the next syllable if this is possible, then to a dummy syllable /ʔa/ if neither is possible. At the beginning or end of a syllable, a single consonant is possible, as is /s/+C. At the end, C+/s/ and /n/+C are also possible.

The glottal stop /ʔ/ varies freely with zero except in very careful speech. Intervocalically, it is pronounced as a semivowel based on the frontness and roundedness of the previous vowel, except when that vowel is /a/. For example, /iʔo yʔo uʔo ɯʔo/ are realized as [ijo yɥo uwo ɯɰo].

Romanization

Consonants are romanized as in IPA except for /c ɟ ç ʝ ŋ/, which are romanized <ch j sh zh ŋ>. /ʔ/ is not written except when it is between a consonant and a vowel within one word, in which case it is written as a dash (<->) separating two syllables. Standalone consonants are phonetically transcribed, taking assimilation into account by writing one of <z m d b g>. Standalone [ɳ ŋ ɴ] are all transcribed as <n>, and standalone /k/ is written as <c> for esthetic reasons.

The vowels /i e a o u/ are written as in IPA. /y ø æ ɑ ɤ ɯ/ are transcribed as <ü ö ä å ë ï>, respectively.

Grammar

Word order

The basic word order is SVO. The object is optional, and the subject may be left out if the topic is known, although generally a sentence consisting only of one verb is not permissible. Sometimes dropping the subject can cause ambiguity, in which case it must be included for clarity, even if it is only the placeholder word ï.

Verbal morphology

Verbs are marked for two attributes: aspect and voice. The aspect may be imperfective or perfective, and the voice may be active or passive.

Aspect is indicated by placing a single-consonant morpheme before the verb: s for imperfective and n for perfective. Imperfective aspect is used for incomplete or ongoing actions, while perfective aspect is used for state-of-being or for actions which have been completed and have not been undone.

Voice is also indicated by a single-consonant morpheme: s for active and n for passive. This morpheme goes after the verb. Active voice means that the subject is the agent and the object is the patient. Passive voice means that the subject is the patient and the object is the agent. In either case, the object is optional.

For example, in imperfective aspect and active voice, the verb -z güs means "to make (something) red". By changing the aspect to perfective, the word becomes -n güs, "to have made (something) red". If we now change the voice to passive, it becomes -n gün, meaning "to have been made red (by something)", and so if there is no object, it means simply "to be red". Finally, changing the aspect to imperfective yields -s gün, which means "to be made red (by something)" or, in the absence of an object, "to become red" (by something)" or, in the absence of an object, "to become red".

Ditransitive verbs

Låzhö uses dechticaetiative alignment, meaning that the recipient is treated as the object, while the theme is specially marked with the prefix u. The theme comes after the object. For example, -s fus means "to give". A sentence of the form "A gives B to C" is expressed as As fus C u B, where A, B, and C are the donor, theme, and recipient respectively.

Clauses

Subordinate

A subordinate clause is usually opened with t and closed with c. More rarely, p is used instead of t, which occurs when the speaker is saying that the clause is true (as opposed to t, which makes no statement about the truth of the clause). A subordinate clause like -t/-p X c is treated as a noun meaning "the fact that (X)". At the end of a sentence, c may be omitted.

When reporting speech indirectly in a subordinate clause, pronouns are always used as if they were direct. For example, the sentence Ös lås ut soz ŋos choc is translated as "The person says that he/she is drinking water", but the literal meaning is "The person says that I am drinking water". This is because the statement is from the person's perspective, and in that case "I" is the way to refer to that person.

Relative

Like subordinate clauses, relative clauses are enclosed in t--c, and c can be omitted at the end of a sentence. Within the clause, the word being relativized is replaced by the relative pronoun ë. The relative clause comes after the word it modifies. For example: Chot öz ŋos ëc = "The water that the person is drinking". When the relative pronoun is the first word in the clause, it can be (and usually is) omitted. For example, the previous phrase can be reworded as Chot azŋon öc by changing the voice to passive, switching the subject and object, and then dropping ë, which is now at the beginning of the sentence. Because of this, in a subordinate clause the subject cannot be dropped, since otherwise it would look like a relative clause.

Serial verbs

Serial verbs can be used to provide tense and mood information about the main verb. The main verb comes last, and various auxiliaries come before it. Auxiliary verbs do not have voice, since they have no object as such, so there is no voice-indicating morpheme after them. The aspect of an auxiliary verb is usually perfective, but imperfective can be used to express a changing mood.

For example, the sentence Soz ŋos means "I am eating/drinking" in a tense-neutral way. The auxiliaries -m bu, -n cha, and -n sa can be put before the main verb to express explicit tense: e.g., Som buz ŋos "I ate/drank" and so on.

Other verbs that can be used as auxiliaries are -n chi ("to be able to...") and -n gu ("to quickly do X"). So Son chiz ŋos means "I can eat" and Son guz ŋos means "I am quickly eating". If we change the aspect of the auxiliary verbs to imperfective, then the sentences become Sos chiz ŋos ("I am acquiring the ability to eat") and Soz guz ŋos ("I am accelerating my pace of eating").

Serial nouns

Nouns are compounded right-branchingly, the reverse of languages like German or Chinese. That is, the head of the noun phrase comes first, while its modifiers come after it. For example, the word zevä, meaning "night", is composed of ze ("time") and vä ("star").

More to come...