Mekoshan

Mekoshan Maññòŝ
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	2012 C.E.

Mekoshan is a descendant of English spoken in the American Midwest.

Phonology

IPA

	Labial	Coronal	Dorsal	Glottal
Plosives, Plain	p	t̪ t ʦ ʧ	k q qʷ
Plosives, aspirated	pʰ	t̪ʰ tʰ ʦʰ ʧʰ	kʰ qʰ qʷʰ
Nasals	m m̥	n n̥ ɲ ɲ̥
Fricatives, unvoiced	f	s ʃ	x χ χʷ	h
Fricatives, voiced	v	z ʒ	ʁ
Other	w	l r r̥ j

	Front	Central	Back	Diphthong
High	i iː	y yː	u uː
Mid-High	e	ø	o
Mid	eː	øː	oː	ɛu ɔi
Mid-Low	ɛ	œ	ɔ
Low	a	aː ã	ɑ	ai au

Orthography

	Labial	Coronal	Dorsal	Glottal
Plosives, Plain	b	dh d dz j	g x br/rb
Plosives, aspirated	p	th t ts c	k q pr/rp
Nasals	m mh	n nh ñ ñh
Fricatives, unvoiced	f	s š	kh qh/hr fr/rf	h
Fricatives, voiced	v	z ž	r
Other	w/rv	l r y

	Front	Central	Back	Diphthong
High	i ī	ü ű	u ū
Mid-High	e/ri	ö/rü	o/ru
Mid	ē	ő	ō	ɛu ɔi
Mid-Low	è/re	ȍ/rö	ò/ro
Low	a	ā	à/ra	ai au

Allophony and Morphophonology

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.

Grammar

Like many Anglic languages, Mekoshan is a moderately synthetic, fusional language 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	dhe	dho
Accusative	dha/dh'	dha	dhai	dhau
Genitive	o/ov	ov	od	aud
Dative	ta/t'	ta	tē	tō
Benifactive	fr'/fra	fra	frē	frō
Locative	en/ai	en	ne	no

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	mè	ör	hez	hra	es
Plural	ar	vör	dher	dher	dher

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-
Superlative" mos-

The Verb

The morphological structure of the verb is thus:

1. Personal Inflection
2. Negation
3. Tense-Aspect-Mood-Voice (TAMNV)*
4. Adverbal prefixes
5. Causative
6. Verb root
7. Secondary TAMV suffixes*

• Many of the TAMV morphemes are circumfixes.

Morphophonology of Verbs

The 2 suffix elements found in the TAMV system, -t and -n, merge with many preceding consonants and mutates them.

Personal Inflections

There are 2 sets of personal inflections, a normal set and a set marking that the sentence is a yes-no question.

Normal

	1st. Person	2nd. Person	3rd. Masculine	3rd. Feminine	3rd Neuter
Singular	è-	ü-	hi-	ši-	ai-
Plural	vi-	yā-	dhe-	dhe-	dhe-

Polar Question

	1st. Person	2nd. Person	3rd. Masculine	3rd. Feminine	3rd Neuter
Singular	dè-	jü-	ti-	ci-	dai-
Plural	dvi-	jā-	dze-	dze-	dze-

Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Voice

In Mekoshan the marking of tense, aspect, mood, and voice is highly fusional from a synchronic standpoint and the different elements of the morphemes can only be teased out of one has knowledge of their diachronic development.

The Tense categories are Past and Non-Past.
The Aspect categories are Perfective, Imperfective, and Perfect,
The Mood categories are quite numerous and will be described below.

Tense and Aspect

As is common in languages that have both tense and a perfective-imperfective distinction, the the Perfective does not have any tense distinctions and since the Perfective in Mekoshan is derived from a fusion of the English Preterite and Non-Past Perfect it usually has a past perfective meaning, and so it will be called the Aorist in this grammar to prevent confusion. The Past and Non-Past Imperfective will be called the Imperfect and Present, respectively, for brevity.

The Stative Present is the simplest finite verb form, with only the verb root and the personal inflection. it is used with stative and experiential verbs. It has a habitual meaning when used with dynamic verbs, but this usage is somewhat archaic and is only found in formal writing and by older individuals.

èsi ü "I see you"
è-si ü

The Dynamic Present is formed by the suffix -n, which, as mentioned above, is often realized as a mutation of the preceding consonant. It is only used with dynamic verbs.

èvañh "I am walking"
è-vakh-n

The Imperfect is formed with the prefix -vo- along with the suffix -n. it is used to refer to actions in the past with internal structure. It is often used when describing the background information of a past situation (he was sleeping when...), whereas foreground events would be spoken of in the Aorist(...then the door opened and...).

èvoren
"I was reading" è-vo-red-n

The Aorist is formed by suppletion, ablaut of the verb root, or by the cicumfix -v- -t. As mentioned above, -t is often realized as consonant mutation. It it used for completed action, usually implying a past tense meaning.

hifòn ai "he found it"
hi-fòn ai

èvsdap "I stopped"
è-v-sdaf-t

The Perfect is formed by the circumfix -ven- -n is used to describe an event in the past spoken of as a whole from the perspective of the present.

èvenren "I have read"
è-ven-red-n

The Pluperfect is formed by the circumfix -bben- -n and is like the Perfect except it refers to that past event from a past perspective that is still after the event itself.

èbbenvañh "I had been walking
è-bben-vakh-n