Emeigu

Emeigu (Emeigu: The language of Eigu) is a largely isolating nominative-dechticaetiative language spoken in Tarbaithenu.

Phonology

Phoneme Inventory

Emeigu distinguishes the following vowels and consonants:

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive/Affricate	p /p/ b /b/	t /t/ d /d/		j /ɟ/	k /k/ g /g/
Fricative	f /ɸ/ v /β/	th /θ/	s /s/	sh /ɕ/		h /ɦ/
Nasal	m /m/		n /n/
Liquid	w /w/		r /ɾ/ l /l/	y /j/

There are five vowel phonemes, /i e a o u/, represented by i e a o u, as well as five diphthongs, all falling: /ai au ei eu ou/, ai au ei eu ou.

Orthographically, the diphthongs are distinguished from two discrete vowel nuclei with an apostrophe, e.g. tai /tai/ ta'i /ta.i/.

Syllable Structure

Emeigu has a simple (C)(r)V(r s h n m t th) syllable structure, with the following caveats:

-Word-internal coda /s/ does not occur before voiced plosives.

-Coda /th/ does not occur in a syllable with /th/ in the onset, having dissimilated to /t/ at an earlier stage in the language.

-Word-internal coda /t/ does not occur before another plosive.

-Diphthongs do not occur in syllables with a coda consonant.

-Onset /nr lr yr wr vr pr/ do not occur.

Allophony

-/n/ assimilates to the point of articulation of any following consonant.

-Unstressed vowels, and stressed vowels in closed syllables, tend to be realised as lax [ɪ ɛ ɐ ɔ ʊ], except after a palatal, where /a/ tends to be realised as [æ]

- The palatal stop /ɟ/ tends to be realised as an affricate [ɟʝ] or [dʑ].

Syntax

Emeigu is quite strongly isolating, and has often been accused of being a 'word soup' language, and syntactic rules can be a bit complicated.

Syntactic Categories and Parts of Speech

Emeigu is generally considered to distinguish three types of speech: Nouns, Verbs, and Particles. The majority of adjectives or adverbs are actually either nouns (e.g fawa - strenght, strong), or stative verbs (like thoro - (to be) afraid), whilst some fall under the (rather nebulous, really) particles category, such as seu - other, or ei - too, also.

Basic Word Order

The basic word order in Emeigu is Subject-Verb-Object (SVO), as in English, for example:

Ari dau shono

Man look dog

the man looks/looked/will look at the dog

Ari kimdi

Man eat

The man eats/ate/will eat

Morphology

Emeigu has very little nominal or verbal morphology, being a largely isolating language. It does have a richer derivational morphology and word compounding system, however

Plurality

Emeigu has a plural morpheme, -u (-yu after /i u/). However, when plurality is marked by a number or a word such as jana many, the noun is always left unmarked.

Derivational Morphology

Emeigu uses a mix of compounding and derivational affixes to derive new words. Some derivational affixes are not standalone morphemes, for example:

The prefix en- produces an inaminate agent or tool from a verb or adjective: maru to pierce - emmaru thorn  ; jau black - enjau ink

Similarly, y(e)- means 'one who does X': tirni to dance - yetirni dancer; amem to know - yamem savant, scholar

Abstractions of nouns are made with kei- (verbs can be abstract nouns, too): yat farmer - keiyat agriculture but gamne to die, death ; arbai to join, joint, alliance

A place is formed with was-: wasyat farm ; wajau the underworld