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. The language is also known as "Leonian".
| 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 (similar to Austronesian 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 | ||
| Affricate | ts dz | tʃ dʒ | |||
| Fricative | f v | s z | ʃ ʒ | h | |
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ ɴ | ||
| Liquid | w | l ɾ | j |
The orthography is similar to Japanese Romanization, with the following conventions: the affricates /ts dz tʃ dʒ/ are written "ts dz ch dj", /ʃ ʒ/ are written "sh j", /ŋ ɴ/ are written "ng nr", and /j/ is written as "y".
Non-initial consonants can also be long (written as pp, tt, kk, tts, cch, ssh etc). This is often produced by grammatical processes. The exception to this is "r" (/ɾ/), which cannot be lengthened.
Vowels
Short vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | ɨᵝ | u |
| Mid | e~ɛ | o~ɔ | |
| Open | a |
The vowel /ɨᵝ/ is written as "u". In turn, /u/ is written as 'û' except when combined with a tone, in which case it is written as 'uh' with the tone mark added (resulting in "úh üh ùh" for the high, dipping and falling tone).
Long vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | iː | ɨᵝː | uː |
| Mid | eː | oː | |
| Open | aː | ɑˤː |
The lexical long vowels /eː oː ɑˤː/ are the result of diphthongs "ei ou ao" turning into monophthongs, and are written that way.
The other long vowels are the result of grammatical elongation or borrowing, are are written with double letters (aa ee ii oo uu ûû).
Nasal vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | ɪ̃ː | ɨ̃ᵝː | ʊ̃ː |
| Mid | ɛ̃ː | ɔ̃ː | |
| Open | ãː |
Nasal vowels are somewhat rare, and are written as vowel+n (an en in on un ûn). In, un and ûn, in particular, are very rare.
Diphthong
| Front | |
|---|---|
| Open to close | ai |
The diphthong /ai/ can be turned into the vowel sequence /a.i/ by grammatical processes.
Tones
Leonine uses tone strictly as a grammatical process. Only a few syllables are marked for tone, which spreads to adjacent syllables. This also involves lengthening, so it makes sense to describe these processes together.
| Name | Spelling | IPA | Contour | Use un nouns | Use in verbs | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | a | (˧~˩ etc) | Very variable, depends on intonation | Non-theme non-qualified nouns | 3rd person subject present, infinitive | |
| High (final) | ...á | ˥ | High last syllable | Theme and qualified nouns | 3rd person past | |
| High (right-spreading) | á... | ˥ | High first syllable, spreads to whole word | Implicit possessive | Imperative (2nd person) | |
| Dipping | ä | ˨˩˦ | Falls low and rises, similar to Mandarin 3rd tone | (never used) | 1st person present | |
| Dipping + High | ä...á | ˨˩˦...˥ | Initial dipping tone + high tone on final syllable | (never used) | 1st person past | |
| Falling | à | ˥˩ | Falls from high to low, similar to Mandarin 4th tone | (never used) | 2st person present | |
| Falling + High | à...á | ˥˩...˥ | Initial falling tone + high tone on final syllable | (never used) | 2st person past | |
| Elongation | aa aa... | ː | The first two syllables of the word are elongated | Plural | (informally used occasionally as an intensifier or to mark an implicit plural object) |
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/ diphthong is followed by a vowel, it is resyllabified as /a.jV/ (where V is the vowel). Various vowel sequences are possible, although sequences of a nasal vowel followed by another vowel are generally disallowed. In spellings, apostrophes are used to break up ambiguous spellings (ex: /ao/ is written as "a'o").
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 Leonine, but generally you could describe the process as a right-leaning accent on the last syllable of the word. The syllable rhythm is moraic.
