Liu

Liu Liu
Spoken in:
Conworld:
Total speakers:
Genealogical classification:	Liu
Basic word order:
Morphological type:
Morphosyntactic alignment:	nominative-accusative
Writing system:
Created by:
Qwynegold

Phonology and phonotactics

Consonants
	Bilabial		Labiod.		Dental		Alveolar		Post-alv.		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasals		m						n
Plosives	p	b			t	d							k	g
Affricates, clusters and other					ts								ks	kʷ
Fricatives			f	v			s								h
Approximants								ɹ
Lateral Approximant								l

Vowels
	Front		Near-front		Central		Near-back		Back
High	i									u
High-mid	e									o
Mid
Low-mid
Low	a

The syllable structure is (C)(C)(C)V(V/ː)(C)(C). Liu has phonemic vowel and consonant length constrast. Stress is random.

Grammars

Nouns

Liu has three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. Masculine nouns usually end with -e or -o, and feminines with -a. Neuter nouns have no particular ending.

There are four kinds of number: singular, plural, pair and uncountable. The pair, which is not the same as dual, is used about things that consists of two parts (like scissors, pants) or usually appear in pairs (such as gloves, eyes, twins). The singular number has zero marking, while the others are formed by adding suffixes as shown below.

In the following tables, the column "Replace with..." shows which suffix is added, depending on what letter(s) the word ends with, as indicated on the column "If word ends with..." If the suffix is preceded by a -, it means that it completely replaces the end of the word specified under "If word ends with..." If it is precided by a + on the other hand, it means that the suffix does not replace the end of the word, but is just added on after it. V stands for any vowel and C for any consonant. The symbols 0, ♂ and ♀ specify words that have the neuter, masculine resp. feminine gender.

Forming the plural

If word ends with...	Replace with...
-a	-i
-e	-i
-á,é,i,ó,ú	-í
-í	0 -íu ♂ -ío ♀ -ía
-o	-oi
-u	-ui
-C	0 +i ♂ +o ♀ +a
-(V)VV	-aia

Cases

Liu has five cases, of which only the accusative is inflectional.

Nominative
The nominative has zero marking, and it is used for the agent and causer semantic roles.

Accusative
The accusative stands for the semantic roles of patient, range and result. When it comes to range and result, if the noun is derived from the verb (or vice versa), the sentence is more preferrably expressed intransitively, instead of having to repeat the same word root, as in the English sentence "They sang a song". The accusative case is expressed with different suffixes, depending on the gender and number of the noun.

Forming the accusative case

If word ends with...	Replace with...
0 sg. -u,ui*	-ú
0 sg. -(V)(V)V	-u
0 sg. -C	+u
0 pl. -i,oi	-ui
0 pl. -íu	-iu
0 pl. -aia	-uai
♂ sg. -(V)(V)o	-uo
♂ sg. -(V)(V)V	-ue
♂ sg. -C	+ue
♂ pl. -i	-iu
♂ pl. -ío	-iou
♂ pl. -oi	-ou
♂ pl. -ui	-ue
♂ pl. -aia	-uie
♀ sg. -(V)(V)V	-ua
♀ sg. -C	+ua
♀ pl. -a	-au
♀ pl. -ía	-iau
♀ pl. -oi	-ou
♀ pl. -ui	-ua
♀ pl. -aia	-uia

Pair and uncountable missing!!!
*On this table, long vowels are treated the same as short ones. For example, neuter singular nouns ending with -ú will get the same suffix as neuter singular nouns ending with -u.
Dative
The dative is used for the dative and beneficiary semantic roles. It is usually expressed with the preposition des (meaning "for"), but it can also be expressed by the preposition pseu (approximately meaning "instead of"). Two examples missing!!!

Genitive
The genitive is expressed as "possessed thing PREP possessor". Proper terms needed!!! There are three different preposition that are used depending on the gender of the possessor. For masculines do is used, The rest of the genitive prepositions needs to be filled in!!! Also, examples needed!!!

Instrumental The instrumental, obviously, stands for the sematic role of instrument. It is expressed with the preposition con. Example missing!!!