User:Masako/pataka

Amal grammar

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_grammar
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_grammar#Parts_of_speech
• en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Turkish/Word_Order
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_grammar#Verbs
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_Franca_Nova_grammar
• en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Turkish_monosyllabic_words

Introduction

Amal is meant to be a personal (or artistic) conlang and despite appearances and structure is not intended as an IAL. Amal is phonologically inspired by Semitic languages but incorporates aspects and lemma of numerous natural languages, in an effort to be euphonious and easy to use/learn.

Amal is an agglutinative language. Its vocabulary consists of basic roots which can be extended into different parts of speech, their meaning changed or modified, with various suffixes. Most of the suffixes are optional, so that there is a choice of what sort of information to convey with a given word.

Phonology

consonants

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Labiovelar	Glottal
Plosives	p   b	t   d		k   g		ʔ (q)
Nasals	m	n
Fricatives		s	ʃ (sh)	x (h)
Approximants		l	j (y)		w	h
Trill		r

Note: The glottal stop /ʔ/ q, is used as a "buffer" to keep vowels apart when adding suffixes. /x/ and /h/ are actually allophonic.

vowels

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

The vowels can be marked with an acute accent — á, é, í, ú — for two purposes: to mark stress if it does not follow the most common pattern, or to differentiate words that are otherwise spelled identically.

• ai - /a͡ɪ/ (this is the only diphthong in Amal)
• o - /o/ is very rare

The four vowels /a e i u/ can be divided summarily into "front" and "back". This distinction is used in a type of vowel harmony when deriving new words and influences which affixes are used.

Phonotactics

The only syllable pattern allowed is CVC (where V includes long vowels and diphthongs), however, the q /ʔ/ (vestigial) is dropped unless buffering between non-diphthongized vowels (intervocalic). This means that the de facto syllable structure is (C)V(C) .

Initial consonant clusters are prohibited, and the final consonant, if any, cannot be p, g, q, w, or y. Syllables cannot begin with wu or wo.

Clusters do occur medially, but are often separated by /ɛ/.

All syllables should be emphatically pronounced, with a slight stress on the first syllable of a word (but on the second, if the word begins with a vowel).

Allophony

The velar stops become fricative between front vowels.

• begiya - /beɣiːja/ - PROX-dress - This dress.
• ikirim - /ixiːrim/ - tooth-PL - teeth

Word Order

Sentences generally take the form: (subject(s)) (object(s)) verb. For example, the following sentence literally means the woman the book read:

subject	object	verb
shen-a	kam.at-ú	kan-esh-u
woman.NOM	book-ACC	read-PST-3s.ANIM
The woman read the book.

This word order is not obligatory. You can alter the word order to emphasize a particular element. The most stressed element in a sentence is the element which is nearest to the verb. If you want to stress the verb, you put it at the beginning of the sentence. If you want to stress that it is the woman who read the book, you change the word order. This can also be done to emphasize negation of the verb.

object	subject	verb
kam.at-ú	shen-a	kan-esh-u
book.ACC	woman.NOM	read-PST-3s.ANIM
The woman read the book.

negation	verb	subject	object
ne	kan-esh-u	shen-a	kam.at-ú
NEG	read-PST-3s.ANIM	woman.NOM	book.ACC
The woman did not read the book.

subject	object	verb
kup-a	ur-wa	ish-u
dog.NOM	water.ACC	drink-3s.ANIM
(The) dog (the) water is drinking.

subject	direct object	indirect object	verb
edesh	gumb-ú	bi-kupa	shamk-esh-u
boy	ball.ACC	DAT-dog	throw-PST-3s.ANIM
The boy threw the ball to the dog.

NOTE: shamkek means to throw towards a precise point