Lhueslue

Lhueslue Lhueslue
Spoken in:
Conworld:
Total speakers:
Genealogical classification:	Lhueslue
Basic word order:	VOS
Morphological type:	agglutinative
Morphosyntactic alignment:	nominative-accusative
Writing system:
Created by:
Qwynegold

Phonology

Phoneme inventory

Consonants

Consonants
	Bilabial		Labiod.		Dental		Alveolar		Post-alv.		Retroflex		Palatal		Velar		Uvular		Glottal
Nasals		m						n								ŋ
Plosives	p	b					t	d							k	g	q
Affricates							tʃ
Fricatives			f	v	θ		s	z	ʃ	ʒ			ɕ		x		χ		h
Trills							r
Approximants												ɻ		j		w
Lateral Approximant					ɬ̪͆			l

Vowels

Vowels
	Front		Near-front		Central		Near-back		Back
High	i	y								u
High-mid	e	ø			ɘ					o
Low-mid	ɛ
Near-low	æ
Low									ɑ

Lhueslue features vowel harmony. Each vowel belongs to one of two groups: tense (marked in red in the table above) or lax (marked with blue).

Tones

Lhueslue has three tones: low, mid and high. The mid tone is the most common one. The low tone may be realized as falling, and high can be realized as rising.

Allophony

Length

The high tone turns its vowel long, and the low tone turns it half-long. If a word has only mid tones, the final syllable will have a long vowel on two conditions.

1. It must be a monophthong.
2. The syllable must be open or end with one of the following consonants:

Vowel harmony

The lax vowels are paired together with the tense vowels in the following way:

Tense	Lax
i	ɘ
u	y
e	ɛ
o	ø
ɑ	æ

Some words, or combinations of words and affixes have so called broken vowel harmony. It means that the word contains both tense and lax vowels, but that the allophony treat the boundary between tense and lax as a word boundary (this boundary is marked with a dash in the romanization). One example of a word with broken vowel harmony is oe-i (old). This word is pronunced [øː.iː]. Note how the two vowels do not form a diphthong, and both are long as if both appeared at the end of a word.

Writing

Romanization

Letter	Pronunciation	Semantic association
A a	ɑ	Beginning
Ae ae	æ	End
B b	b	Soft
C c	ɕ	Feminine
Ch ch	tʃ	Part, divide
D d	d	Left
E e	e	Active, fast, moving
Ee ee	ɛ	Passive, slow, still
F f	f	Fire
G g	g	Machine
H h	h	Air
I i	i	Life
Ie ie	ɘ	Death
J j	ʒ	Middle, present
K k	k	Metal
L l	l	Humanoid
Lh lh	l̪͆	Magic, religion
M m	m	Earth
N n	n	Nose, mouth, smell, taste
Ng ng	ŋ	Place
O o	o	Big
Oe oe	ø	Small
P p	p	Hard
Q q	q	Back, past
R r	r	Masculine
Rh rh	ɻ	Animal
S s	s	Ear, sound
Sh sh	ʃ	Water
T t	t	Right
Th th	θ	Wood, plant
U u	u	Material
Ue ue	y	Abstract
V v	v	Give
W w	w	Eye, vision
X x	χ	Hand, touch
Xh xh	x	Front, future
Y y	j	Upper
Z z	z	Lower

High tone is marked with an acute accent, and low tone with a grave. In digraphs, the accent mark is placed on the first letter. Mid tone is unmarked. Diaeresis is used on e to mark that it is not part of a digraph.

Grammar

Verbs

Transitivity

Some verbs are by default intransitive, while others are transitive. But intransitive verbs can be derived from transitive ones by adding a suffix that agrees with the subject's noun class.

Noun class	Suffix with tense vowel harmony, following a consonant	Suffix with tense vowel harmony, following a vowel	Suffix with lax vowel harmony, following a consonant	Suffix with lax vowel harmony, following a vowel
Masculine	-ar	-ra	-eer	-ree
Feminine	-ac	-ca	-eec	-cee
Earth	-am	-ma	-eem	-mee
Water	-ash	-sha	-eesh	-shee
Fire	-af	-fa	-eef	-fee
Air	-ah	-ha	-eeh	-hee
Metal	-ak	-ka	-eek	-kee
Wood	-ath	-tha	-eeth	-thee
Aether	-alh	-lha	-ue	-lhue
Light	-ai	-ti	-eet	-tee
Dark	-ad	-da	-ie	-die

Tense

The verbs have three tenses: past, present and future. The present tense is unmarked while past and future are marked with suffixes.

Verb class	Suffix	Example
Tense or lax, ends with -e or -ee	-q	eze (move) > ezeq (moved); chyuelee (think) > chyueleeq (thought)
Tense, ends with anything else than -e	-eq	buzeyted (roll) > buzeytedeq (rolled)
Lax, ends with anything else than -ee	-eeq	eelùe (sleep) > eelùeeeq (sleeped)

The future tense is formed similarly, except with -xh instead of -q as the final consonant.

Verb class	Suffix	Example
Tense or lax, ends with -e or -ee	-xh	eze (move) > ezexh (will move); chyuelee (think) > chyueleexh (will think)
Tense, ends with anything else than -e	-exh	buzeyted (roll) > buzeytedexh (will roll)
Lax, ends with anything else than -ee	-eexh	eelùe (sleep) > eelùeeexh (will sleep)

Voice

Lhueslue has passive and active voice. Active voice is unmarked while passive voice is marked by a circumfix on the verb. The first part (prefix) of the circumfix agrees with the object's noun class, and the last part (suffix) agrees with the subject.

Noun class	Prefix preceding a consonant	Prefix preceding a vowel
Masculine	ree-	r-
Feminine	cee-	c-
Earth	mee-	m-
Water	shee-	sh-
Fire	fee-	f-
Air	hee-	h-
Metal	kee-	k-
Wood	thee-	th-
Aether	ue-	uelh-
Light	i-	t-
Dark	ie-	d-

Noun class	Suffix following a consonant	Suffix following a vowel
Masculine	-eer	-r
Feminine	-eec	-c
Earth	-eem	-m
Water	-eesh	-sh
Fire	-eef	-f
Air	-eeh	-h
Metal	-eek	-k
Wood	-eeth	-th
Aether	-ue	-lhue
Light	-i	-t(i)
Dark	-ie	-d(ie)

If the affix has a tense vowel while the verb is lax, or vice versa, it results in broken vowel harmony. But in the case of the light and dark suffixes following a vowel, the vowel in the suffix is skipped if it's not in the same vowel harmony group as the verb. For example eze (move) becomes tezed if the object is light and subject dark, but eelùe (sleep) becomes teelùedie.

Syntax

The normal word order in Lhueslue is VOS.

Genitive

The genitive is expressed with the particle eev. The order is possessed (pro)noun - eev - possessor.

Su eev rong.
su	eev	rong
ear	GEN	3.SG.M
His ear.

Imperative

Imperative sentences have always a subject, which is the person who is requested to do something. The subject is moved to the beginning of the sentence while everything else follows the normal word order.

Rixh zexh chuloung aeng!
rixh	zexh	chuloung	aeng
2.SG.M	walk	room	toward
Go to your room!

The verb can be in either present or future tense. Using future tense is more polite, because it implies that the speaker understands that the action can't be carried out immediately.

Hortative

The hortative mood is formed exactly the same way as the imperative, but the pronoun that is used must be a first person plural.

Lajlaj sluesoexeexh thtoedsvue
lajlaj	sluesoex-eex	thtoedsvue
1.PL.N	write-FUT	note
Let's write a note, shall we?

Time

For indicating duration, a temporal adverb is placed after the verb. A temporal adverb anywhere else indicates when something happened.

Zexhéheq raj qae-yif.
zexhéh-eq	raj	qae.yif
run-PAST	1.SG.M	yesterday
I ran yesterday. Zexhéheq qae-yif raj. zexhéh-eq qae.yif raj run-PAST yesterday 1.SG.M I ran the whole day yesterday. When indicating when something happened, the temporal adverb can be placed after any object or subject. It is preferrably placed after whichever core argument that has the smallest amount of other words referring to it (adjectives, spatial particles, etc.) after it. If there are several word that qualify as "the core argument with least amount of referents following it", the temporal adverb is placed as close to the beginning of the sentence as possible if the time reference is seen as something important, and as close to the end as possible if it's seen as something unimportant. The temporal adverb can also be placed at the beginning of a sentence, in which case it indicates topicality. Interrogative The particle sùej is placed at the beginning of a sentence, no matter what type of question it is.