Nother/Trentish

Description

A priori conlang for a race of entlike creatures in Nother. Polysynthetic.

• Author: Muke Tever | ✎

Phonology and Orthography

Phonemic Inventory

Consonants

	labial	alveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
plosive	p pʼ pʰ	tʼ tʰ tʷ	c cʰ cʷ	k kʼ kʰ kʷ	ʔ
nasal	m	n	ɲ	ŋ
lateral		l tɬ
fricative		s ʃ		x

Vowels

i y	ʊ u
e ø	o
	ʌ ɔ
	ɑ

Orthography

(tentative)

• b p ph t th tw dʼ tʼh tʼw g k kh kw q
• m n ny ng
• l ƛ
• s sh x

• i ü oo u
• e ö oh
• r o
• a

No uppercase.

Internal Sandhi

Word-level

• Trentish words can only end in a vowel or a nasal. Stops and /l/ occurring at the end of a word are nasalized, thus /thɑk/ "wear" becomes [thɑŋ]. /ʔ/ and the other consonants are dropped.

Syllable-level

Syllable-final

• Plain voiceless consonants disappear, lengthening the previous vowel:

  /xlɔʔ/ "washed, clean" → [xlɔɔkʷʌ] "be washed".

• Ejectives and /l/ turn to nasals as at the word level:

  /tʰɔl/ "upon" → [tʰɔŋkʷʌ] "be on top of".

• Labialized consonants reduce to [w]:

  /kitʷ/ COLL → [kiwcʷecʷe] "set of journeys".

• Aspirated consonants fricativize:

  /pʼɑlɑkʰ/ "hate" → [pʼɑlɑxpʼɑlɑŋ] "grudge".

Syllable-initial after a nasal

• Aspirated stops are ejectivized by a preceding original nasal:

  /tʰɑŋ/ "wear" → [xɑntʼɑŋ] "wear that"

• Labialized stops inherit preceding nasality:

  /cʷe/ "go" → [xɑnɲʷe] "go up yonder".

• Plain stops are aspirated by a preceding nasal:

  /pɑ/ TOP → [xɑnpʰɑ] "yonder"

• Ejective stops geminate a preceding nasal:

  /pʼɑlɑŋ/ "hate" → [xɑmmɑlɑŋ] "hate that"

Morphology

Reduplication

Reduplication produces resultative nouns from verbal roots.

• /mɑli/ "speak" → /mɑli-mɑli/ "speech, message"
• /pʼɑlɑŋ/ "hate" → /pʼɑlɑŋ-pʼɑlɑŋ/ "hatred, grudge" (i.e., [pʼɑlɑxpʼɑlɑŋ])

In reduplication, no more than the first two syllables are reduplicated:

• /ikʼɑtɬi/ "barter" → /ikʼɑ-ikʼɑtɬi/ "transaction"

Voice

Trentish verbs are marked for voice.

There are five voices, active, unergative, unaccusative, passive, and middle. Their use depends on the presence of and importance given to the agent and patient.

agent	patient	voice	marker
high	low	active / middle	∅
high	none	unergative	/tɬi-/
low	high	passive / middle	∅
none	high	unaccusative	/ʔuu-/

The middle voice is used if the agent and patient refer to the same entity (me and myself) or an entity and a part of itself (me and my nose).

The high agent or patient is marked with the topic marker /-pɑ/. The low agent or patient is marked with /-(ɔ)m/.

Aspect

There are at least six aspects, which are focuses on the status of the event.

aspect	description	marker
imperfective	seen as in progress	∅
perfective	seen as completed	/po-/
iterative	seen as happening many times together	/tʰø-/
cumulative	iterative with cumulative effect	/mel-/
reluctative	seen as happening with reluctance	/ɑk-/
effrenative?	seen as happening without reluctance (either in a good or bad way)	/pʰli-/

Number

Trentish nouns are unmarked for number. There is, however, optional number marking, along two axes:

	paucal	plural
separate	/me-/	/ʔlu-me-/
aggregate	/el-/	/ʔl-el-/

A singular can be emphasized with /s(ʌ)-/.

Aggregate and separate refer to whether the plural things are physically grouped together (aggregate), or not (separate).

Adjectives

There are two types of adjective in Trentish, scalar and binary. Scalar adjectives are always marked for degree (the simplest form is the positive /ʔo-/). Adjectives can be used nominally.