Meftla

Meftla is a language with a priori vocabulary created by Renato Montes in 2011. Its phonological inventory was intended to resemble a SAE language, and the rest is inspired by feature found in Romance languages, Standard Arabic and Chinese. The author has far more on this language in his computer, but it's all in Spanish, and this being the case this article is intended to give a Wikipedia-style overview of the language.

Meftla
Basic word order:	VSO/head-initial, free
Morphological type:	agglutinating ~ fusional
Morphosyntactic alignment:	accusative
Created by:
Renato Montes	2011-

Phonology

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Nasals	m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Stops: unvoiced	p	t		k	ʔ
Stops: voiced	b	d		g
Affricates: unvoiced		ts	tʃ
Affricates: voiced		dz	dʒ
Fricatives: unvoiced	f	s	ʃ
Fricatives: voiced		z	ʒ
Laterals		l
Trills		r~ɾ
Semivowels	w		j		h

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i:, i		u:, u
Mid-close	e		o:, o
Mid-open	ɛ:, ɛ		ɔ:, ɔ
Open		a:, a

Stress

Stress generally falls on the last syllable of the root. Clitics never affect its location, though certain affixes (inflectional or derivational) can attract the stress towards them.

Word linking and the initial /ʔ/

Word-initial words can be linked to the syllable of the last word in a similar way to English and Spanish, e.g. interested in it [ɪˈnɪt̚]. Note that, unlike English, the language distinguishes words with an initial glottal stop /ʔ/ and words with an initial vowel: ʔosa [ˈʔosa] 'skirt', osa [ˈosa] 'star'.

Orthography

Consonants, vowels and stress

The consonants are written with the exact same glyphs as the IPA symbols used above, with the exception of /r~ɾ/ which is written r at all times.

The different vowel qualities are written with IPA symbols, except that length is marked with macrons instead of a following colon.

Stress is not usually marked. If a speaker feels some disambiguation is necessary, they can mark it by adding an acute accent on top of the respective vowel. Stress is normally marked in didactic and reference materials on every word as well, including this article.

Punctuation

The usage of periods and commas differs significantly with English. In an argumentative or expository text, sentences are usually thought of representing one whole idea or point of view, and it's normal to have various main clauses linked simply by juxtaposition with a comma. Such texts in Meftla would strike many English speakers as having long chains of "comma splices".

In general terms, a sentence ends once the speaker is going to start a contradiction with what has just been said, or perhaps an exploration on a very small part of it. In narrative texts, a sentence would end once the next one introduces a sort of surprise, such as a character coming in into the events.

In the same way, paragraphs aren't divided as much as it's normally done in English. Paragraphs can normally expected to contain much introductory information with details, lists and different points of view all the way to a conclusion. Narrative texts can go on pages and pages without a paragraph break in a whole scene. A paragraph break in general represents a significant change in topic or environment, such as a new in-depth treatment of a topic in a research article or a change of location in a narration.

The style of quotation marks used is ‘‘...‘...’...’’, and unlike various English quotations styles, punctuation is never introduced if not part of what the person actually said. Dialogue uses quotation marks as well.

Questions and exclamations use a single ? and ! at the end. Ellipses have either two or six periods: .. or ......, the latter representing a greater pause or voice drag.

Morphology

Morphology, whether inflectional or derivational, balances between agglutinating and fusional.

Inflection of nouns

Nouns are inflected for case and number, across four declensions.

-a declension

This declension is mostly comprised by nouns ending in -a and long vowels except for ɛ̄. The great majority are of feminine gender.

	Singular	Plural	Supraplural
Nominative	alea	aleɛ	aleaiām
Accusative	alear	aleɔr	aleɔiɔ̄r
Oblique	aleas	ale	aleɔiɔ̄s

-ɔ declension

This noun class is comprised solely by feminine nouns ending in -ɔ. If a borrowing is created with final -ɔ and it's masculine, it's absorbed into the -i- declension.

	Singular	Plural	Supraplural
Nominative	zullɔ	zullɔi	zullɔiɔ̄m
Accusative	zullɔr	zullɔir	zullɔiɔ̄r
Oblique	zullɔs	zullɔis	zullɔiɔ̄s

-ɛ declension

The majority of nouns here belong to the masculine gender, and all end in -ɛ.

	Singular	Plural	Supraplural
Nominative	reitɛ	reitɛi	reitɛiɛ̄m
Accusative	reitɛr	reitɛil	reitɛiɛ̄r
Oblique	reitɛs	reitɛis	reitɛiɛ̄s

-i- declension

Also known as "the consonant declension", the nouns comprising this declension are mostly masculine. They include words ending in a consonant or -i in the nominative. Various of the inflections can be analyzed as essentially ending in a consonant, though inserting an /i/ if a cluster that is not allowed is produced.

	Singular	Plural	Supraplural
Nominative	—	-i	-iɛ̄m
Accusative	-(i)r	-(i)l	-iɛ̄r
Oblique	-(i)s	-i	-iɛ̄s

	Singular	Plural	Supraplural
Nominative	fant	fanti	fantiɛ̄m
Accusative	fantir	fantil	fantiɛ̄r
Oblique	fants	fanti	fantiɛ̄s

Inflection of adjectives

Adjectives inflect in the same manner that nouns do, agreeing in gender, case and number.

There are three declensions for adjectives:

• Those that inflect like -a in the feminine and ɛ in the masculine.
• Those that inflect like -a in the feminine and -i- in the masculine.
• A small, closed class of adjectives relating to mostly female phenomena (such as menstruation or pregnancy) ending in -ɔ and inflecting like such nouns. In the event of these adjectives agreeing with a male noun (such as pregnant seahorses), they still inflect like -ɔ declension nouns.

The Definite Clitic

The definite infixing clitic -un- is inserted right before the inflectional ending of a noun: fugi 'rain' (nom.), fuguni 'the rain' (nom.); kardir 'a book' (acc.), kardunir 'the book' (acc.).

The main argument for considering it a clitic and not an inflection or an extremely productive derivational suffix is that it doesn't really have allomorphs (besides the -u- being a part of diphthong or not, best considered as part of the regular morphophonology of affixes beginning with /i/ and /u/), and that if it were a derivational suffix it'd be the only that never changes the noun's declension.

Inflection of Personal Stressed Pronouns

	Singular				Plural
	1st person	2nd person	3rd person		1st person	2nd person	3rd person
Nom Feminine	ʔɔ̄	lī	kɔ		ʔauāh	lāi	nāi
Nom Masculine	ʔɛ̄	lɛ	ki		ʔū	lɛ̄i	nɛ̄i
Acc/Obl Feminine	ʔɔr	lir	kɔr		ʔar	lair	nair
Acc/Obl Masculine	ʔɛr	lɛr	kir		ʔur	lɛir	nɛir

Correlatives

	Question	Rel. pron.	This	That	Every	-ever	Some	No
Person	ref	miref	hi	mi	bɛlrɛn	rɛnsau	rɛnoia	rɛnzɛ
Thing	sef	tisef	ro	to	bɛlsɛt	sɛtsau	setoia	sɛtsɛ
Place	ialef	tīasef	hou	togou	bɛlnia	niasau	nialoia	niazɛ
Manner	karef	tikardef			bɛlkar	karsau	karoia	karzɛ
Time	gaɔnef	tigaɔnef			bɛlgaɔ	gaɔsau	gaɔnoia	gaɔzɛ
Reason	ʒulnief	tiʒulnief			bɛlʒulni	ʒulnisau	ʒulnioia	ʒulzɛ

None of the above inflects for case, gender or number except for the question determiner-pronouns and relative pronouns. Note that the language doesn't quite have clear means to differentiate "what" and "which", leaving it to context. On the other hand, it distinguishes interrogative determiner-pronouns from relative pronouns.

Ref and sef, when they serve as interrogative determiners (which engineer? what friend?), inflect like adjectives of the -a and -i- declensions. As interrogative pronouns, they take their -a forms only. Miref and tisef always agree with the noun they modify, even in case (and not the case the noun would have inside the relative clause, like with English whom).

Inflection of verbs

Verbs inflect for the gender of their subject, aspect, and two moods (indicative and imperative). The imperative essentially the same, but with the vowel of the inflection made long and stress moved to it, except for the pluperfect. There's also a single non-finite form, functioning as a sort of infinitive or gerund.

The following shows the inflection of regular verbs:

	Indicative		Imperative
	Feminine	Masculine	Feminine	Masculine
Perfective	kizila	kizili	kizilā	kizilī
Pluperfect	kizilad	kizilɛd	miŋkizilād	miŋkizilɛ̄d
Experiential	kizilat	kizilɛt
Inchoative	kizilɔ	kizilɛ	kizilɔ̄	kizilɛ̄
Imperfective	kizilɔn	kizilɛn	kizilɔ̄n	kizilɛ̄n
Habitual	kizilɔs	kizilis	kizilɔ̄s	kizilīs
Gerund	kizilai

Verbal Clitics

Verbs can take up to three infixing clitics, always unstressed: direct object pronouns, indirect object pronouns, and a further clitic used when the verb is in the main clause of certain adverbial clauses.

These clitics have inflections of their own: the pronouns agree in person, gender and number with their antecedents, the adverbial clitic varies depending on the type of adverbial clause it's used with.

	Singular				Plural
	1st person	2nd person	3rd person		1st person	2nd person	3rd person
Direct Feminine	-ɔh-	-ɔl-	-ɔk-		-ai-	-ail-	-ain-
Direct Masculine	-ɛh-	-ɛl-	-ɛk-		-ūh-	-ɛil-	-ɛin-
Indirect	-ah-	-ik-	-ik-		-āh-	-īn-	-īn-

Derivations

Word derivations are mostly accomplished by adding suffixes, although a very small number of prefixes exist. Suffixes may be added to a root or to a root that already has other suffixes.

Compounding roots directly, as done with Latin and Greek roots in scientific contexts (e.g. lamino-alveolar), isn't common. Adpositions and possessive constructions are preferred to modify nouns with other nouns instead, and affixes exist to derive adjectives from verbs. There are no affixes that express prepositional notions such as post- ('after (sth)'), however, and such always have to expressed with the corresponding preposition.