Uínlītska
This majority language of Norse America is derived from Old Norse, with adstrates from Germanic, Celtic, Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Inuit, in particular Scots, Scots Gaelic, English, Nunatsiaviummiutut, Nunavimmiutitut, Míkmak, Ojibwe, Abenaki and Beothuk.
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Phonology
See the Uínlītska Phonology article for details.
Orthography
Latin Script
| a | æ | sc | ð | e | f | h | i | j | k | kj | l | hl | m | n | n | o | p | s | sj | sk | t | tj | þ | u | z | ø | œ |
| ɑ | ɛ | sk | z | e | f | x | i | j | k | tʃ | l | ɬ | m | n | ŋ | o | p | s | ʃ | ʃk | t | tʃ | ɬ | w/o | z | ə | əː |
Diacritics are acute for long vowels, macron (the linea nasalis) for nasalized vowels, and hook-below for the 'open' versions of e and o. The blønna, the dot written for the glottal stop, is also generally treated as a diactritic. All these are normally ignored completely when sorting.
The orthography is uncial, that is there are no capital letters.
Runes
| ᚠ | ᚢ | ᚦ | ᚨ | ᚲ | ᚹ | ᚺ | ᚾ | ᛁ | ᛃ | ᛇ | ᛈ | ᛊ | ᛋ | ᛏ | ᛖ | ᛗ | ᛚ | ᛝ | ᛟ | ᛨ |
| f | o | ɬ | ɑ | k | w | x | n | i | e | j | p | z | s | t | ɛ | m | l | ŋ | ɔ | ə |
Morphology
Both verbs and nouns distinguish between single, dual and plural number.
Morphophonemics
See the Uínlītska Phonology article for definitions of the vowel archiphonemes.
The consonant archiphonemes ɴ, ʟ, ᴊ, and ᴡ have the following realizations:
| Base | Environment | |||||||
| V_V | V_# | #_V | C_V | V_C | C_C | C_# | #_C | |
| ɴ | n | n | n | ən | n | ən | ə̃ | nə |
| ʟ | l | l | l | l | w | əl | il | lə |
| ᴊ | j | j | j | j | j | i | i | i |
| ᴡ | w | w | w | w | w | o | o | o |
Nouns
Summary
A fully inflected noun consists of (in order) a stem, inflected for number and case, optional marking for definiteness, and an optional postposition. For instance: sōrƿinmeð (with the son), hámsū (about a house).
Gender
Nouns are split into Masculine, Feminine and Neuter genders in the singular. In the dual and plural, Masculine and Feminine collapse into identically-formed paradigms, which is often called the Common plural.
Case
Nouns have three core cases (used only for core NPs), and four oblique cases (which are used with postpositions for non-core NPs).
Nouns may also be marked with attitudinals (qv).
The citation form of a noun includes a hyphen followed by the stem vowel.
See the section on umlaut and sandhi for a description of the notation used below.
Core Cases
Erg, Nom/Abs, Acc, based on fluid-S system oriented to intentionality. In certain circumstances, the choice of cases adds morphology to the verb, this is shown in the Verb row.
| Undergoer | ||||||
| Initiator | Animate | Inanimate | Intransitive | Not Specified | Negative | |
| Willing | Unwilling | |||||
| Unintentional | Nom/Acc | Erg/Acc | Nom/Acc | Acc | Nom | Erg |
| Intentional | Erg/Nom | Erg/Acc | Erg/Nom | Nom | Nom | Erg |
| Verb | Patient- | Agent- | ыk-/ы- | ɴ- | ||
The Patient and Agent prefixes are identical to those used for the possessor of obligatorily possessed nouns.
Oblique Cases
Gen/Abl, Dat, Loc, Ins
Declensions
REDO FROM START
| I | II | III | IV | V | ||||||||||||
| ON Stem | -a | -i/-u | -o | -r | -nd | |||||||||||
| Sg | Du | Pl | Sg | Du | Pl | Sg | Du | Pl | Sg | Du | Pl | Sg | Du | Pl | ||
| Nominative | Initiator | -ʟ | -ʟᴊ | -η | -∅ | -ᴊ | -ω-∅ | -ω-ʟ | -ω-ʟᴊ | -ʟ | -ʟ | -ʟᴊ | -υ-ᴊ | -ᴊ | -jᴊ | -υ-ʟ |
| Accusative | Undergoer | -∅ | -ᴊ | -∅ | -∅ | -ᴊ | -∅ | -ᴡ | -ᴡᴊ | -η | ||||||
| Genitive | From | -s | -ø | -a | -a | -ω-a | -a | |||||||||
| Dative | To | -ᴊ | -ω-ᴊɴ | -ᴊ | -ᴊ | -ю-ᴊ | -ᴊɴ | |||||||||
| Locative | At | -s | -ᴊs | -s | -s | -ᴊs | -s | -øs | -øᴊs | -ηs | ||||||
| Oblique | (Everything else) | -sj | -øs | -as | -as | -ω-as | -as | |||||||||
Some useful patterns occur in noun declensions:
- The Dual is formed in most cases from the Singular plus -ᴊ.
- The Locative and Oblique are formed from the Accusative and Genitive respectively plus -s (or -j when the ending is already s).
Obligatory Possession
Certain nouns (notably body parts and family members) must bear a possessive prefix showing their referent/"possessor". Other nouns may optionally bear the same prefixes (instead of using a Genitive phrase) if the possessor is animate.
The prefixes used are:
| Posessor | Marking |
| 1 | ɴ- |
| 2 | ki-/k- |
| 3 Px | ᴡ- |
| 3 Ob | ю-/юs- |
Article
Definiteness is marked as follows:
| Definite To | Marking | ||
| Speaker | Listener | Animate | Inanimate |
| No | No | Not marked | |
| Yes | No | -ᴊl | -ᴊþ |
| Yes | Yes | -ᴊ̃ | -ᴊs |
Attributive Article
The particles hī, his precede adjectives and adverbs used attributively as parts of names, as opposed to "ordinary" articles suffixed to adjectives and adverbs to nominalise that quality. For instance pję́n hī ǫzih is Bjarn The Weathly, and pję́n ǫzihī is the weathly Bjarn (as opposed to the other one).
Postpositions
Many common postpositions have become enclitics, and a process of their becoming instead enlargements of the case system is imminent, and arguably already underway in various colloquial lects.
Note: needs moar disambig.
| Postposition | Nom | Acc | Gen | Dat | Loc | Obl |
| á | by means of | upon | on | in the manner of | ||
| af | from | out of | because of | |||
| at | to | near | towards | |||
| í | among | into, onto | in, within | during | ||
| eftí | along | in order to obtain | according to | behind | later than | |
| flá | from | concerning | ||||
| hfᵫ́ri | because of | against | in front of | earlier than | ||
| með | by means of | as well as | in combination with | |||
| of | above | over | concerning | because of | around, about | for |
| ǫ́ | of | out of, from | made from | |||
| sjá | beside, at the side of; compared with; close by | |||||
| til | in; of, concerning; on; as, for, to obtain; until, to, up to the time | |||||
| útā | outside (of); beyond; without | |||||
| ū | about, concerning | across | throughout | |||
| ᵫðð | reaching to, against, with; towards, at; in exchange for; by; (together) with, close to; because of | |||||
| ᵫfí | above, over, at; across, upon | |||||
Postpositions show above with a leading hyphen have generally fused as enclitics.
Adjectives
Pronouns
Pronouns are marked for person, number and case. Additionally, pronouns carry inclusivity/exclusivity information for the first person not encoded elsewhere. See the respective sections above and below for more details on the individual systems.
Placeholder mostly-pure-ON pronouns
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | ||||||||||||
| Incl | Excl | Proximal | Distal | |||||||||||
| Sg | Du | Pl | Du | Pl | Sg | Du | Pl | Sg | Du | Pl | Sg | Du | Pl | |
| Nominative | ek | fist | fé | hlo | hlist | hlé | an | ant | hléj | hlast | hlęst | zǫ | ||
| Accusative | mih | øski | øs | hlisk | iski | ihli | hán | hánt | zá | zat | zet | zǫ | ||
| Genitive | mín | oská | fǫ́ | hlín | iska | isa | ęns | ęnts | hléjø | hles | hlents | hléjø | ||
| Dative | ||||||||||||||
| Locative | ||||||||||||||
| Oblique | ehs | fits | fés | hløs | hlits | hléls | ans | ants | hléjs | hlats | hlęts | zǫs | ||
The 3rd Person Prox/Dist forms are used (more or less) to distinguish between an 3rd Person who is the subject of the current sentence/clause (using the Proximal) and a 3rd person who is not the subject (using the Distal).
Verbs 2.0
Person Marking
Class I A
Simple Active/Nominative.
Mainly based on the ON verb, with some borrowings and calques.
| Subject | Marking |
| 1 | -ø̄ |
| 2 | -ᴊ |
| 3 | -ыt |
| Neg | ne- -n |
| Indef | u- |
Class I S
Simple Stative/Ergative.
Class I T
Obligatorily Transitive.
| Subject | Object | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 An Px | 3 An Ob | 3 Inan | Neg | Indef | |
| 1 | -ø̄ | ||||||
| 2 | -ᴊ | ||||||
| 3 | -ыt | ||||||
| Neg | ne- -n | ||||||
Class II U
Noun-Undergoer Incorporational.
Class II T
Noun-Target Incorporational.
Class II A
Noun-Association Incorporational.
These tend to be equivalent to abilitatives, optatives, and other similar verbs and auxilliaries, and are usually short (sometimes monophonemic) and most often suffixes. A classic example is the Class 2A verb -m ("to be able to use/perform"), which when suffixed to the name of the language uínlītska forms the derived verb stem uínlītskam, which forms fully-conjugated forms such as intuínlītskam, literally "I can speak Uínlītska".
| Subject | Object | ||
| An Px | An Ob | Inan | |
| 1 | u- | mihtⁱ- | intᵒ- |
| 2 | hᵒ- | ᵃl- | kⁱ- |
| 3 | -ᵗo | -ˢᵗo | -u |
Verbs 1.0
The verb is similar in structure to the ON verb. The 3rd and 4th conjugations of weak verbs have disappeared entirely, merging with the 2nd, and several strong conjugations have collapsed together.
Need to add more personal distinctions, and a variety of object suffixes
Per sound changes, verbs are apparently much simpler
Conjugations
| I | II | III | IV | V | To be | ||||
| INDIC. | Nonpast | Sing. | 1. | -a | -i | -∅ | -∅ | -υ-∅ | em |
| 2. | -al | -il | -l | -s | -υ-l | és | |||
| 3. | -al | -il | é | ||||||
| Plur. | 1. | -ø̄ | -jø̄ | -ø̄ | -ø̄ | -υ-ø̄ | éhø̄ | ||
| 2. | -iz | -iz | -iz | éhøz | |||||
| 3. | -a | -ja | -a | euo | |||||
| Past | Sing. | 1. | -az | -ta | -ω-∅ | -ηj-∅ | -ω-∅ | uá | |
| 2. | -azi | -til | -ω-s | -ηj-t | -ω-s | uás | |||
| 3. | -azi | -ti | -ω-∅ | -ηj-∅ | -ω-∅ | uá | |||
| Plur. | 1. | -izø̄ | -tī | -ω-ø̄ | -ø̄ | -ω-ø̄ | uálī | ||
| 2. | -iziz | -tiz | -ω-øz | -iz | -ω-iz | uáliz | |||
| 3. | -∅ | -ti | -i | -i | -ω-i | uáli | |||
| IMPERAT. | -a | -∅ | -∅ | -∅ | -∅ | ué | |||
| SUBJ. | Pres. | Sing. | 1. | -a | -a | -a | sjá | ||
| 2. | -il | -il | -il | sél | |||||
| 3. | -i | -i | -i | sé | |||||
| Plur. | 1. | -ī | -ī | -ī | sém | ||||
| 2. | -iz | -iz | -iz | séz | |||||
| 3. | -i | -i | -i | sé | |||||
| Pret. | Sing. | 1. | |||||||
| 2. | |||||||||
| 3. | |||||||||
| Plur. | 1. | ||||||||
| 2. | |||||||||
| 3. | |||||||||
Example Verbs
None yet
Voice
Active Voice
Simple bare verb.
Passive Voice
The use of the Passive is virtually obligatory when the agent of the verb is of lower percieved animacy than the undergoer.
Future Tense
Formed by want/must/should/might/etc. per ItC/WGer style patterns.
Aspects
Perfect formed by is/have/become/do/etc. per ItC/WGer style patterns.
Attitudinal and Evidential modifiers
Equiv. doch, schon, mal, eben, ja, etc.
Gerunds, Participles, and their Adjectives and Nouns
Incorporation, Compounding, and Derivation
Adverbs
Particles
Other Languages
Other languages in this AU presume the gradual creation and growth of European colonies in North & Central America starting around 1000CE instead of the rapid colonization of Central America starting around 1500CE and of North America starting around 1600CE.
Finla was the first major consolidation of power, followed by "Nova Scotia" (provisional name), consisting mostly of Christian Celtic and Anglo-Saxon missionaries from England and France who established their major centers on the southwest coast of Greenland and to the south of Finla between 1100CE and 1250CE. Their Hibernic language is a Celtic koine of Old Gaelic, Old Welsh, Old Breton and Old Cornish with adstrates from Old English and Old French and a significant superstrate from Church Latin.
