Leonine

Leonine is a language spoken by people who have taken the Lion morph, following the spread of the Neo-Mutant virus. The main lexical base is Japanese, but a large amount of Chinese, Romance and Germanic roots and untraceable new words have made it into the vocabulary. The language is also known as "Leonian".

File:Flag-Leonine.png
Leonine Reoni
Pronounced:	/ɾeoni/
Spoken:	Leonine
Writing system:	Latin
Genealogy:	Japonic Japanese (creole) Neo-Mutant Feline
Typology
Morphological type:	Fusional and agglutinative
Morphosyntactic alignment:	Theme-based alignment (similar to Austronesian alignment)
Basic word order:	SOV
Credits
Creator:	User:Madbrain

History

The Neo-Mutant virus, after spreading through humans, turned them into various "morphs". People with similar morphs tended to congregate together, and ended up creating new languages starting from creoles based on the various human languages they spoke. Japanese was a particularly important source, forming the base for all the Feline Neo-Mutant varieties. The Feline languages are characterized by their use of supra-segmental phonetic distinctions (length, tone, accent, etc) as a basis for their grammatical inflections.

Phonology

Consonants

The consonants in Leonine follow the rough structure of Japanese and Indo-European languages.

	Labial	Dental	Palatal	Dorsal	Glottal
Stop	p b	t d		k g
Affricate		ts dz	tʃ dʒ
Fricative	f v	s z	ʃ ʒ		h
Nasal	m	n		ŋ ɴ
Liquid	w	l ɾ	j

The orthography is similar to Japanese Romanization, with the following conventions: the affricates /ts dz tʃ dʒ/ are written "ts dz ch dj", /ʃ ʒ/ are written "sh j", /ŋ ɴ/ are written "ng nr", and /j/ is written as "y".

Non-initial consonants can also be long (written as pp, tt, kk, tts, cch, ssh etc). This is often produced by grammatical processes. The exception to this is "r" (/ɾ/), which cannot be lengthened.

Vowels

Short vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨᵝ	u
Mid	e~ɛ		o~ɔ
Open	a

The vowel /ɨᵝ/ is written as "u". In turn, /u/ is written as 'û' except when combined with a tone, in which case it is written as 'uh' with the tone mark added (resulting in "úh üh ùh" for the high, dipping and falling tone).

Long vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	iː	ɨᵝː	uː
Mid	eː		oː
Open	aː		ɑˤː

The lexical long vowels /eː oː ɑˤː/ are the result of diphthongs "ei ou ao" turning into monophthongs, and are written that way.

The other long vowels are the result of grammatical elongation or borrowing, are are written with double letters (aa ee ii oo uu ûû).

Nasal vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	ɪ̃ː	ɨ̃ᵝː	ʊ̃ː
Mid	ɛ̃ː		ɔ̃ː
Open	ãː

Nasal vowels are somewhat rare, and are written as vowel+n (an en in on un ûn). In particular, /ɪ̃ː ɨ̃ᵝː ʊ̃ː/ are very rare.

Diphthong

	Front
Open to close	ai

The diphthong /ai/ can be turned into the vowel sequence /a.i/ by grammatical processes.

Tones

Leonine uses tone strictly as a grammatical process. Only a few syllables are marked for tone, which spreads to adjacent syllables.

Name	Spelling	IPA	Contour	Use in Nouns	Use in Verbs
Plain	a	(˧ ˩ etc)	Very variable, depends on intonation	Non-theme non-qualified nouns	3rd person present
High (final)	...á	...˥	High last syllable	Theme and qualified nouns	3rd person past
High (right-spreading)	á...	˥˥˥...	High first syllable, spreads to whole word	Implicit possessive	Imperative (2nd person)
Dipping	ä	˨˩˦	Falls low and rises, similar to Mandarin 3rd tone	(never used)	1st person present
Dipping + High	ä...á	˨˩˦...˥	Initial dipping tone + high tone on final syllable	(never used)	1st person past
Falling	à	˥˩	Falls from high to low (like Mandarin 4th tone)	(never used)	2st person present
Falling + High	à...á	˥˩...˥	Initial falling tone + high tone on final syllable	(never used)	2st person past

The final high tone on theme/qualified nouns is not written. Instead, when the noun not the theme and isn't qualified but the context implies that it should, the next word is written with an initial capital letter.

Syllable Structure

The syllable structure of Leonine strictly (C)V, where C stands for a consonant and V stands for a vowel or the /ai/ diphthong. If the /ai/ diphthong is followed by a vowel, it is resyllabified as /a.jV/ (where V is the vowel). Various vowel sequences are possible. Sequences of a nasal vowel followed by another vowel are generally disallowed, and are normally transformed into /V.nV/ (where V V are non-nasal vowels). In spellings, apostrophes are used to break up ambiguous spellings (ex: /ao/ is written as "a'o").

The following syllables are not used outside of loanwords: /ti, tɨᵝ, tu, di, dɨᵝ, du, tse, tsa, tso, tsai, ji, wo, wɨᵝ, wu/, plus long and nasal versions of these.

Prosody

The concept of stress doesn't apply very well to Leonine, but generally you could describe the process as a right-leaning accent on the last syllable of the word. The syllable rhythm is moraic.

Grammar

Morphology

Overview

The Leonine language is morphologically rich. Morphological processes fall into two categories: supra-segmental (where a tone, long vowels/consonants or extra syllable boundaries are added), and agglutinative suffixing. It's not clear if the suffixes are independent words, clitics or true affixes.

Nominal morphology

Leonine nouns are declined for number (singular, plural), qualified/possessive state (normal, qualified, implicit possessive), and theme vs non-theme (roughly equivalent to accusative vs non-accusative case).

Plural takes two forms: either an -e suffix (-ne if the noun ends in -e), or elongation of the vowels (generally only applied to the first two syllables). Ex: oto -> otoe or ootoo.

The qualified state indicates that a noun is further qualified by adjectives, possessive pronouns, possessive nouns, relative clauses, demonstratives (nra) etc., which are added after the noun. The qualified state is indicated by an absence of break in the intonation after the noun, which generally means that the last syllable takes a high tone. Ex: oto -> oto me (as opposed to oto Me).

By putting a noun in qualified state and adding a pronoun, you can form pronominal possessives:

Person	Example	Gloss
1st person singular	oto me	"my car"
2nd person singular	oto ne/te	"your car (singular)"
3rd person	oto a	"his/her/its/their car"
1st person plural	oto mou	"our car"
2nd person plural	oto nou	"your car (plural)"

The implicit possessive indicates that the noun has a pronominal possessor, and while the person is left implicit, most of the time it is the same as the verb subject. It is roughly equivalent to the changing "house" into "home", "father" into "dad" etc. It is indicated by giving a high tone to all the syllables (written as a high tone on the first syllable).

Nouns which are used as verbal theme (generally equivalent to the object in nominative-accusative languages) appear directly in front of the verb in the sentence, and are linked to the verb by removing the intonation break between the noun and the verb, which generally results in a high tone on the last syllable of the noun. This process is similar to verb incorporation, and the distinction often translates into a subject vs object distinction:

! | Noun Thematicity ! | Example ! | Gloss |- ! Non-thematic | Sente Doubu. | "The body moves." |- ! Thematic | Sente doubu. | "He moves his body."

Adjectival morphology

Adjectives in Leonine are generally invariable, aside from intonation changes. They always follow the noun.

When used in noun phrases (as epithets), the intonation of the adjective depends on if there are further qualifiers applied to the noun - in which case there is no intonation break after the adjective and the last syllable generally has a high tone (and the next word is not written with an initial Capital letter). Ex: oto hao me (as opposed to oto hao Me).

When used with the verb da (to be) as an attribute, the adjective becomes a verbal theme and there is no intonation break either (so the verb da doesn't start with a Capital). In some sentences, this intonation change is meaningful:

! | Adjective Thematicity ! | Example ! | Gloss |- ! Non-thematic | Oto hao Da. | "The good car is (like that)." |- ! Thematic | Oto Hao da. | "The car is good." |- ! Thematic | Oto hao da. | "It's a good car."

The adjective can be used as an adverb by adding the -ki suffix. This can be used either as a theme or not:

! | Adverbial Thematicity ! | Example ! | Gloss |- ! Non-thematic | Haoki Tsuté. | "Well he/she/it/they did it!" |- ! Thematic | Haoki tsuté. | "He/she/it/they did it well."

Verbal morphology

Main article: Verbs in Leonine

Syntax

Main article: Syntax in Leonine