Tanemantin

Tanemantin is one of the Ke:tic languages and a descendent of the classical language Sarim.

Phonology

Tanemantin distinguishes between 17 consonant phonemes

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive/Affricate	p /p/	t /t/ d /d/		ch /c/	c /k/ g /g/
Fricative	f /ɸ/	th /θ/	s /s/			h /h/
Nasal	m /m/		n /n/	ny /ɲ/
Liquid	w /w/	l /l/	r /ɾ/	y /j/

There are four vowel phonemes /i e a o/. Length is phonemic, and long vowels are distinguished with macrons. There are also three diphthongs, all falling: /ai ei oi/.

Stress

Stress in Tanemantin is non-phonemic, always falling on the penultimate syllable of the word unless an adjacent syllable has a long vowel nucleus, in which case the stress shifts to that syllable. If both the final and antepenultimate vowels are long, stress falls on the final vowel. Monosyllabic semantic words are stressed, grammatical particles are not.

Syllable Structure

Tanemantin has a (C)V(m n s r) syllable structure, with the caveat that /h j/ do not occur following a coda consonant, and /w/ only occurs following coda /s/.

Allophony

- /n m/ are not distinguished before another consonant, but are realised as a nasal at the same point of articulation as the following consonant, e.g. /imne/ [ɪn.ne]; /ankas/ [ɐŋkɐs].

- Voicing is progressive, so that a cluster like /sd/ is realised as [st].

- The short vowels /a e i o/ tend to be realised as [ɐ ɛ ɪ ɒ] in closed syllables.

- The long vowels /a: e: i: o:/ have a tendency to develop a schwa-like glide: [aə eə iə oə].

Nominal Morphology

Noun Classes

Tanemantin has two noun classes: animate nouns include humans, animals, deities and spirits, aswell as certain other bodies such as inim 'the Sun' and lō 'fire'. Inanimate nouns are everything else.

Number

Tanemantin nouns are marked for singular, plural, and nullar numbers.

The plural morpheme differs with noun class:

The nullar is a fairly recent innovation, from the Sarim partitive case, the use of which was largely limited to the patient of negative verbs and *m(ə)ruʔ 'none' (cf. Tanemantin mai 'nothing'). By the time of Middle Tanemantin the old partitive had come to be the nullar number. Note that for this reason nullar nouns are not marked for case.

Cases

Tanemantin nouns are marked for two cases: the Absolutive and the Ergative.

Personal Pronouns

Tanemantin has the usual run of first, second, and third person pronouns in singular and plural. It also has an obviate "fourth person" pronoun, which is not declined for number. Unlike nouns, Tanemantin pronouns have a distinct genitive case in addition to the normal six cases, and for the first and second person pronouns the ergative, not the absolutive, is the base form of the pronoun.

First Person:

	Singular	Plural
Absolutive	nan	nagan
Lative	nethī	negī
Locative	nā	nagā
Ablative	nam	nagum
Partitive	nānu	naganu
Ergative	nā	naga
Genitive	nar	nagā

Second Person:

	Singular	Plural
Absolutive	lī	ligan
Lative	lithī	ligī
Locative	lī	ligā
Ablative	liyum	ligum
Partitive	līnu	liganu
Ergative	li	liga
Genitive	lir	ligā

Third Person:

	Singular	Plural
Absolutive	un	ini
Lative	unī	inithī
Locative	una	inī
Ablative	unum	inim
Partitive	uneu	iniu
Ergative	us	inī
Genitive	una	inī

Fourth Person (Obviate):

	Singular	Plural
Absolutive	thi
Lative	thī
Locative	thī
Ablative	thiyum
Partitive	thinu
Ergative	thī
Genitive	thī