Ilya

Introduction and Morphology

• Ilya is an agglutinative language.
• Suffixes predominate Ilya morphology, though there is a small number of prefixes. Verbs can express tense and aspect, and they agree with the subject in person and number. There is no grammatical gender in Ilya, nor are pronouns marked for natural gender.

• See also: Ilya dictionary

Phonology

consonants

Ilya consonants

	Labial		Alveolar		Post- alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m		n
Stop	p	b	t	d					k	ɡ
Affricate			t͡s		t͡ʃ
Fricative	f	v	s	z	ʃ	ʒ					h
Approximant				l				j		w
Flap				ɾ

vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i~ɪ		u~ʊ
Mid	e~ɛ		o~ɔ
Open		a~ə

• ai - /aɪ/

Orthography & Allophony

Ilya uses 23 of the 26 letters in the English alphabet; q, w, and x are unused.

• c - /ʃ/; /t͡ʃ/ when followed by a front vowel; /t͡s/ when word final
• g - always /g/
• h - can be /ɦ/ when followed by a front vowel
• j - /ʒ/ in all cases; can be /dʒ/ in proper names
• u - /u/ but /w/ when followed by another vowel
• y - always /j/

Accents

The acute accent ◌́ is used to mark stressed syllables in words that deviate from the standardized stress patterns. It is also used to distinguish minimal pairs.

• á é í ó ú

Nouns

Nouns are commonly preceded by determiners. Plural nouns are formed by appending -m to nouns ending in vowels or -im to nouns ending in consonants. This does not alter the stress:

• doma > domam — house > houses
• ajen > ajenim — woman > women

Mass nouns include liquids, powders, and substances, such as usu (water), - (sand), and heta (wood). They do not normally require determiners or the plural. However, one may add these to indicate specific examples or different types:

• usu — the water (e.g. in the cup)
• hetam — woods (e.g. various kinds)

Gender is typically not indicated. If necessary, nouns may be followed by ...:

• A few terms for family members and traditional roles do show distinctions of gender. For example:
• ...

Apposition — the use of one noun to modify another — is mostly limited to names and titles:

Case

Case	Ending	Examples		Meaning
		karya "village"	saca "tree"
Nominative	Ø (none)	zz	zz	(the) village/tree
Genitive	-ín	karyín	sacín	the village's/tree's of the village/tree
Dative	-é	karyé	sacé	to the village/tree
Accusative	-í/-yí	zz	zz	the village/tree
Ablative	-(e)cí	zz	zz	from the village/tree
Locative	-(e)dá	karyadá	sacadá	in the village/on the tree

Pronouns

• Ilya is a null-subject, or pro-drop, language, so personal pronouns (e.g. I, he, she) are optional. Pronouns generally are the same for all cases.

Pronouns

Person	Singular	Plural
1st	na	nuk
2nd	te	tum
3rd	il	hum