User:Wattmann/Sandie

Western Mountains Qåuls is a language spoken along the ridges of the Western Mountains. It is bordered on the north by Inland Qåuls (or, more commonly, Qóll), on the west by Seashore Wargish and on the south by Swamp Wargish.

Western Mountains Qåuls is a language with a very low morpheme-to-word ratio, as there are never more than two morphemes per word. The morphemes are very specialized and fusional, and there are some consonant mutations and ablauts, together grouped under stem alternations.

Phonology

/pʰ ʰp t tʰ ʰt k kʰ ʰk q qʰ ʰq/ < p' 'p t t' 't k k' 'k q q' 'q>
/s sʰ ʂ ʂʰ/ < s s' š š' >
/ɬ ɬʰ/ < ł ł' >
/t͡s t͡sʰ ʰt͡s t͡ɬ t͡ɬʰ ʰt͡ɬ/ < c c' 'c č č' 'č >
/m mʱ n nʱ/ < m mh n nh >
/ʋ r l j ɰ/ < v r l j w >

/a e ø ɨ ʉ ɒ u (ɵ ɜ)/ < a e ø i y å u (o ë) >
/a̤ e̤ ɒ̤ ṳ/ < ah eh åh uh >
/ɒ͡a e͡ɨ ɒ͡ɨ/ < åa ei åi >

Stem Alternations and "Bleeding"

In WMQ, there are some regular alternation sets.
The most important is aspiration reversal and bleeding. When aspiration reversal happens, post-aspirated obstruent become pre-aspirated and vice versa. Bleeding happens if the obstruents follow another obstruent that's not post-aspirated and they switch from post-aspiration to pre-aspiration. In such cases, the first consonant acquires post-aspiration and the second one loses its newly acquired pre-aspiration.

The ablaut of /a → e → ɨ → ɒ → a/ can cause a lenition of consonants in that syllable. Lenition happens this way: post-aspirates lose aspiration, unaspirates gain pre-aspiration, modal nasals become breathy. Breathy nasals trigger breathiness in vowels as an assimilation.

When followed by a nasal, breathy vowels can diphthongize during nasal syncope.
Syncope happens when a syllable is both followed and preceeded by vowels and is unstressed.
Syncopated nasals reflect themselves as length on the previous vowel which then undergoes diphthongization in the following manner: /ṳ → ɒ͡a; e̤ → e͡ɨ; ɒ̤ → ɒ͡a; a̤ → ɒ͡ɨ/. Vowels left behind in syllables after syncope, if not diphthongised or diphthonɡs already, become semivowels in the following manner: /{a ɒ ɜ} → ɰ; {e ø ɨ ɵ} → j; {u ʉ} → ʋ/.
Breathy vowels that are not phonemic can occur phonetically nonetheless.

The ablaut of /ɒ → ø → e → ɒ/ causes fortification of consonants in that syllable invariably. Fortification happens this way: all obstruents become post-aspirates, breathy nasals become modal.

Geminate lenition is a different process. Geminates can lenite in two ways: /C: → ʰC/ and /C: → Cs/. These two lenitions are seperate and occur only morphologically without any other preconditions.

Coronal nasals can fortify under the right circumstances. The fortification is always: /n → t; nʱ → st/. /nʱ/ always passes on its breathiness to the vowel.

Fortification of /ɒ̤S/ and /a̤S/ where S = {s sʰ ʂ ʂʰ} results in /eks/.
Fortification of /e̤ → jɨ/ also causes deletion of the previous consonant.

The three levels of aspiration, pre-, post- and an-aspiration, are co-dependent and they invariably mix. Besides the phonemic variations, there also exist phonetic extensions. When two pre-aspirated consonants cluster together, such that they may be represented abstractly as /ʰCʰC/, pre-aspiration of the second consonant becomes post-aspiration of the first consonant, and the second consonant becomes technically "bare", such that the formula may thusly be represented abstractly: /ʰC-ʰC → ʰCʰ-C/. The reverse doesn't work, so that two consecutive post-aspirates are only post-aspirates.

Phonotactics

WMQ has a very specific syllable structure: it can either have onsets or codas, but not both. The maximum consonant cluster in WMQ is "CCC", that is, three consecutive consonants. Consonants must agree in suprasegmentality (presence of either aspiration or breathiness). As pre-aspiration blends with post-aspiration, pre-aspirates cannot occur cluster-finally but can occur on their own and non-finally.

There can be only two consecutive vowels.

Morpholosyntax

Western Mountains Qåuls is a fusional language. Its morphosyntactic alignment is transitive, with ergativity in pronouns. Verbs are always initial, and heads are free. Word order is generally free.

Noun

Nouns in WMQ are most commonly bisyllabic, although both longer and shorter nouns exist. Nouns can take either one suffix or one prefix, but not both. The prefix encodes topicality conflated with focus, while the suffix encodes case, number, class and animacy conflated into one slot.

Nouns in WMQ can be either topics or comments. Topics are the head nouns of phrases, and comments function as nominal adjectives or genitives. Topics are the only noun type that can be arguments to the verb, while comments function as modifiers to the noun.

Focus in WMQ is most often used in comment phrases to indicate the head of the comment phrase, while it can also be used in noun compounds to indicate the head of the compound.

This is the inventory of prefixes:

		Topicality
		Topic	Comment
Focus Presence	Present	čså-	šip'-
	Absent	en-	q'unh-