Mekoshan

Mekoshan Meexoŝ
Spoken in:	USA
Conworld:	Future
Total speakers:	50 Million
Genealogical classification:	Germanic Anglo-Frisian American Mekoshan
Basic word order:	VSO
Morphological type:	Fusional
Morphosyntactic alignment:	Accusative
Writing system:
Created by:
Taylor Selseth	2011 C.E.

Mekoshan ('Mheqqoŝ) is a descendant of English spoken in the American Midwest. It is notable among the Anglic languages for it's pharyngealization of consonants.

Phonology

Mekoshan has a very large consonant inventory and a very complex syllable structure. Most notable are the Uvular, Pharyngeal, and Pharyngealized consonants that developed from clusters with the historical English /ɹ/. Most voiceless nasals come from /s/+nasal clusters. most /ɬ/ come from English /sl/.

IPA

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Plosives, Plain	p	t		k	q qʷ
Plosives, aspirated	pʰ	tʰ		kʰ	qʰ qʷʰ
Affricates, Plain		ʦ ʦˤ	ʧ
Affricates, aspirated		ʦʰ ʦˤʰ	ʧʰ
Nasals	m m̥	n n̥
Fricatives, unvoiced	f	s ɬ	ʃ	x	χ χʷ	ħ	h
Fricatives, voiced	v	z	ʒ	ɣ		ʕ
Approximants	w	l	j
Trill		r r̥

	Front	Central	Back	Diphthong
High	'i iː	y yː	u uː
Mid	e eː	ø øː	o oː	ɛi ɛu ɔi ɔu
Low		a aː		ai au

Orthography

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Plosives, Plain	b	d		g	x br/rb
Plosives, aspirated	p	t		k	q pr
Affricates, Plain		ds jr	j
Affricates, aspirated		ts cr	c
Nasals	m mh	n nh
Fricatives, unvoiced	f	s lh	š	kh	qh fr/rf	hr	h
Fricatives, voiced	v	z	ž			r
Approximants	w	l	y
Trill		dr tr

	Front	Central	Back	Diphthong
High	i ii	ü üü	u uu
Mid	e ee	ö öö	o oo	ei eu oi ou
Low		a aa		ai au

Allophony and Morphophonology

Vowels

All vowels become lower and/or more back in quality when adjacent to uvular pharyngeal, and pharyngealized consonants. The vowel allophony is thus:

/a e i o u/ > [ɑ ɛ ɪ ɔ ʊ]
/aː eː iː oː uː/ > [ɑː ɛː ɪː ɔː ʊː]
/ai au ei eu oi ou/ > [ɑɘ ɑo æɘ æo ɒɘ ɒo]

Consonants

Unaspirated plosives and affricates are voiced when in between vowels or adjacent to a voiced consonant.
Coda /n n̥/ assimilate in POA to a following consonant.
/l/ is velarized when adjacent to a back vowel.

Morphophonology

Morphemes starting or ending with /ħ ʕ/ trigger the following assimilation in adjacent consonants and the dropping of /ħ ʕ/:

/p pʰ t tʰ k kʰ/ > /qʷ qʷʰ r r̥ q qʰ/
/f v s z ʃ ʒ x ɣ/ > /χʷ w sˤ zˤ sˤ zˤ χ ʕ/
/ʦ ʦʰ ʧ ʧʰ/ > /ʦˤ ʦˤʰ ʦˤ ʦˤʰ/
/j/ > /ɣ/

Grammar

Like many Anglic languages, Mekoshan is a moderately synthetic, fusional laguage with a bias towards prefixes in it's verbs.

The Noun Phrase

The noun phrase has the following structure:

1. Preposition
2. Article
3. Possessive Determiner
4. Demonstrative, or numeral
5. Adjective(s)
6. Noun

Articles

There are definite, indefinite, and generic article, all of which inflect for case and number. The generic article is derived from the reanalysis of prepositions, and is highly syncretic with the Indefinite. The article is simply omitted in the Generic and Indefinite Nominative

In the following chart, some article forms differ depending on if the following word begins with a consonant or vowel, the vowel form follows the consonant form.

	Generic	Indefinite	Definite SG	Definite PL
Nominative	Ø	Ø	de	do
Accusative	da/d'	da	dead	doad
Genitive	o/ov	ov	ööd	ood
Dative	ta/t'	ta	tead	toad
Benifactive	fr'/fra	fra	fread	froad
Locative	ę/ęn	ęę	ęęd	ǫǫd

Possessive Determiners

Possessive determiners, also called possessive adjectives or adjectival genitive pronouns, indicate who or what possesses a noun: "my shirt", "her house"

	1st. Person	2nd. Person	3rd. Masculine	3rd. Feminine	3rd Neuter
Singular	maa	ör	šez	hra	žes
Plural	ar	yaa	der	der	der

Nouns and Adjectives

Nouns inflect for number. For most nouns the plural is formed by a -s, -z, or -az suffix in voicing agreement with the preceding consonant, if any. Some nouns are formed by mutation of the final consonant with or without the normal plural suffix. 4 nouns retain the old Germanic Umlaut: Men, Womn, Mos, and Gus; meaning man, woman, mouse, and goose.

tö - töz = toy - toys
brekh - brek = brick - bricks
cref - crep = trap - traps
men - man = man - men

Adjectives only inflect for the comparative and superlative forms.
Comparative: mor*-