Leonine
Leonine is a language spoken by people who have taken the Lion morph, following the spread of the Neo-Mutant virus. The main lexical base is Japanese, but a large amount of Chinese, Romance and Germanic roots and untraceable new words have made it into the vocabulary.
| File:Flag-Leonine.png | |
|---|---|
| Leonine Reoni | |
| Pronounced: | /ɾeoni/ |
| Spoken: | Leonine |
| Writing system: | Latin |
| Genealogy: | Japonic
|
| Typology | |
| Morphological type: | fusional and agglutinative |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | theme-based alignment |
| Basic word order: | SOV |
| Credits | |
| Creator: | User:Madbrain |
History
The Neo-Mutant virus, after spreading through humans, turned them into various "morphs". People with similar morphs tended to congregate together, and ended up creating new languages starting from creoles based on the various human languages they spoke. Japanese was a particularly important source, forming the base for all the Feline Neo-Mutant varieties. The Feline languages are characterized by their use of supra-segmental phonetic distinctions (length, tone, accent, etc) as a basis for their grammatical inflections.
Phonology
Consonants
The consonants in Leonine follow the rough structure of Japanese and Indo-European languages.
| Labial | Dental | Palatal | Dorsal | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | p b | t d | k g | ||
| Africate | ts dz | tʃ dʒ (ch dj) | |||
| Fricative | f v | s z | ʃ ʒ (sh j) | h | |
| Nasal Stop | m | n | ŋ ɴ (ng nr) | ||
| Liquid | w | l ɾ | j (y) |
Vowels
Short vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | ɨᵝ (u) | u (û) |
| Mid | e~ɛ | o~ɔ | |
| Open | a |
Long vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | iː * | ɨᵝː * | uː * |
| Mid | eː | oː | |
| Open | aː | ɑˤː |
(* Only used in loanwords and as part of grammatical elongation)
Nasal vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | ɪ̃ː * | ɨ̃ᵝː * | ʊ̃ː * |
| Mid | ɛ̃ː | ɔ̃ː | |
| Open | ãː |
(* Very rare)
Diphthong
| Front | |
|---|---|
| Open to close | ai |
The diphthong /ai/ can be turned into the vowel sequence /a.i/ by grammatical processes.
Consonant Gemmination
Consonants except /ɾ/ can be long. This is often produced by grammatical processes. The initial consonant of a word cannot be gemminated.
Tones
Leonine uses tone strictly as a grammatical process. Only a few syllables are marked for tone, which spreads to adjacent syllables.
| Name | Contour | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Plain | (varies) | Determined by intonation |
| High | ˥ | Often spreads rightwards |
| Dipping | ˨˩˦ | Similar to Mandarin 3rd tone |
| Falling | ˥˩ | Similar to Mandarin 4th tone |
Syllable Structure
The syllable structure of Leonine strictly (C)V, where C stands for a consonant and V stands for a vowel or the /ai/ diphthong. If the /ai/ dipthong is followed by a vowel, it is resyllabified as /a.jV/ (where V is the vowel). Various vowel sequences are possible.
The following syllables are not used outside of loanwords: /ti, tɨᵝ, tu, di, dɨᵝ, du, tse, tsa, tso, tsai, ji, wo, wɨᵝ, wu/, plus long and nasal versions of these.
Prosody
The concept of stress doesn't apply very well to Leonian, but generally you could describe the process as a right-leaning accent on the last syllable of the word. The syllable rhythm is moraic.
