Síntári

Síntári developed due to inspiration from both Finnish and Basque. It shares characteristics of both languages, such a system of vowel harmony and polypersonal verb conjugation; it is, however, ultimately an a priori conlang. In addition, Síntári sometimes synthesizes features of both Finnish and Basque, as in its tripartite morphosyntactic alignment. Like the languages that inspired it, Síntári is a highly agglutinative. It also tends toward polysynthesis.

Phonology

Phoneme Inventory

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Alveolo-Palatal	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m		n			ɲ
Plosive	p b		t d				k g
Affricate				ʦ ʣ	ʨ ʥ
Fricative		f v	θ ð	s z	ɕ ʑ		x ɣ	h
Approximant						j
Trill				r
Lateral Fricative				ɬ
Lateral Approximant			l			ʎ

	Short Front	Long Front		Short Back	Long Back
Close	i y	iː yː		ɯ u	ɯː uː
Close Mid	e ø	eː øː		ɤ o	ɤː oː
Near Open	æ	æː
Open				ɑ	ɑː

Phonemic Length

Consonants, as well as vowels, have long forms. Geminate consonants are written by doubling the letter, while long vowels are written with an acute accent over them. In each case, Síntári contrasts the meaning of long and short vowels and consonants. Being that they are phonemic, there is a difference in meaning between the words halla and hala, which mean fish and air, respectively.

Phonotactics

Síntári is capable of building fairly complex consonant clusters. There can be at most four consonants in the onset, but this does not occur frequently and is limited to /vstr/. The syllable nucleus must be a vowel sound; Síntári does not allow syllabic nasals or liquids to occur. The coda usually ends in a single consonant, as any other consonants accompanying it will be moved to the onset of the following syllable. Exceptions can occur, however, as in a word like roumna, forest, where the [mn] occupies the same syllable.

Syllabification

Síntári divides open syllables into [CV.CV]. As mentioned above, a coda with two consonant sounds will likely be divided. For example, halla divides as [CVC.CV] as would similarly built words like halta, halda, or halka. Syllables that have a cluster of three consonants, such as ístve, love (n.) keep that cluster as the onset of a new syllable. Illustrated, it looks like [V.CCCV].

Stress & Intonation

Síntári regularly stresses the penultimate, or next-to-last, syllable of a word. Since all of the above words have two syllables, the first syllable would be stressed; it would predictably move one syllable to the right if the word took on an extra syllable, perhaps due to it being inflected. Since Síntári is an agglutinative language, words have a tendency to be rather long. In such cases, the primary stress will always fall on the penultimate syllable; a secondary stress will fall every third syllable from the primary stress.

Compound words function slightly differently. The first segment of the compound maintains a regular, primary stress on the penultimate syllable, but the second segment of the compound has a secondary stress on its penult.

Intonation works much the same way in Síntári as it does in English. Declarative sentences and questions formed with a question word have a falling intonation; questions and declarative sentences formed like questions have a rising intonation.

Vowel Harmony

A Venn diagram illustrating what vowels may appear within a word root.

Síntári has a system of vowel harmony in which front vowels and back vowels may not occur within a word boundary. Because of this feature, the vowels Æ, Ø, and Y may not occur in the same word as A, O, Õ, U, and Ũ. It is not difficult to choose the appropriate harmonic suffix. If the stem contains Æ, Ø, or Y, then front vowel suffix forms are necessary. If it has A, O, Õ, U, or Ũ, then back vowel forms are necessary. If a stem has only E or I, it will take front vowel forms. E and I are neutral and can exist in a stem with either set of vowels; however, if a suffix has an Ũ or an Õ in its back vowel form, then an I or an E will oppose it in its front vowel form. For example, Síntári has the optional gender suffix -ũros/-irøs which signifies that the stem the suffix attaches to is a male person. Because the suffix has an Ũ in it, an I needs to oppose it, otherwise the system of vowel harmony would not work.

Romanization & Native Script

An image of Síntári's native alphabet, including punctuation.

Síntári has a one-to-one ratio of phonemes to graphemes; additionally, Síntári's sounds romanize fairly closely to their IPA symbols. The alphabetical orders appear below.

Síntári Alphabet

A	Æ	B	C	Č	D	Ð	E	F	G	Ģ	H	I	J	K	Ķ	L	Ľ	Ł	M	N	Ň	O	Õ	Ø	P	R	S	Š	T	Þ	U	Ũ	V	Y	Z	Ž	DZ	DŽ
a	æ	b	ʦ	ʨ	d	ð	e	f	g	ɣ	h	i	j	k	x	l	ʎ	ɬ	m	n	ɲ	o	ɤ	ø	p	r	s	ɕ	t	θ	u	ɯ	v	y	z	ʑ	ʣ	ʥ

Síntári considers all Latin characters with a diacritic to be independent letters, and are so listed here. The only exception is long vowels, because they continue a sound rather than denote a new, derived sound. Síntári marks a long vowel with an acute accent; in the case of Õ and Ũ, a double acute is used, which creates Ő and Ű.

Nouns

Number and Case

A speaker can inflect any Síntári noun into one of three grammatical numbers and one of twenty-three grammatical cases. Síntári possesses a singular, a dual, and a plural number. The dual and plural forms are marked with suffixes, while the singular, being the basic form, is denoted by the lack of any number suffix.

The singular functions in Síntári the same way it does in English, with a single exception. Where English would use the plural to express zero of some object, Síntári always uses the singular. The dual always refers to a set of two objects, and unlike in some languages, Síntári's dual forms are not restricted to body parts that come in pairs. The dual also extends to pronominal forms and verb conjugations. Finally, the plural refers to a set of three or more objects.

	Number Suffixes
Dual	-eu-, -ey
Plural	-ai-, -æi-

Síntári's case system employs twenty-three different suffixes to express quite a range of grammatical concepts. These twenty-three cases are divided into groups: the syntactic cases, the locative cases, the temporal cases, and the transitional cases. The intransitive, ergative, accusative, dative, genitive, instrumental, and abessive cases make up the syntactic group. The inessive, illative, elative, lative, adessive, allative, ablative, perlative, subessive, and superessive form the locative group of cases. The temporal class includes the distributive-temporal, antessive, and postessive; the remaining transitional cases include the essive, exessive, and translative.

Syntactic Cases

The majority of the syntactic cases mark grammatical relationships. The following table defines how each case is used.

	Usage	Case Ending
Intransitive	Marks the subject of an intransitive verb.	A vowel or any alveolar consonant
Ergative	Marks the agent of a transitive verb.	-rsa, -rse
Accusative	Marks the patient of a transitive verb.	-nsa, -nse
Dative	Marks the indirect object.	-saë, -seë
Genitive	Marks possession and has partitive characteristics.	-ssa, -sse
Instrumental	Marks the instrument with which something is done.	-naë, -neë
Abessive	Marks a lack of something.	-nta, -nte

Locative Cases

The locative cases, as the name suggests, show various kinds of location and movement.

	Usage	Case Ending
Inessive	Marks location in.	-dža, -dže
Elative	Marks movement from and out of.	-ddža, -ddže
Illative	Marks movement into.	-džaë, -džeë
Adessive	Marks location on.	-rra, -rre
Ablative	Marks movement away from.	-rtan, -rtæn
Allative	Marks movement onto.	-rta, -rte
Lative	Marks movement to.	-rva, -rve
Perlative	Marks movement across and through.	-rvas, -rvæs
Subessive	Marks location and movement under and below.	-lta, -lte
Superessive	Marks location and movement over and above.	-ltar, -ltær