Classical Sanle

Classical Sanle was the language of the Sanle Empire during its first great expansion. It had significant influence on neighboring languages, including Classical Kasshian.

Phonology

Consonants

		Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Alveopalatal	Palatal	Velar	Uvular
Stops	Voiced	b			d			g
	Voiceless	p			t			k	q
Nasal		m			n
Lateral affricates					tlh
Fricative	Voiced		v	dh	z	zh		gh
	Voiceless		f	th	s	sh		kh
Glides							y
Liquids	Lateral				l
	Rhotic				r

Vowels

There were five vowels /i e a o u/ which could be long or short. Long vowels are marked by an acute, á é í ó ú. Some dialects pronounced short /a/ as a schwa.

Stress

Stress is regularly on the first syllable of a word, exceptions are marked by a grave (à è ì ò ù) for short vowels, circumflex (â ê î ô û) for long vowels.

Syllables

Classical Sanle tended towards monosyllabic words, with a fair number of disyllabic words. Moderately complex consonant clusters were permitted, but no vowel sequences existed. Legal onsets were:

• No consonant (only on the first syllable of a word)
• Any consonant
• A stop followed by any other consonant (including another stop)
• A nasal followed by anything except another nasal
• A fricative followed by any other consonant
• L followed by r or y

Sequences of stops and fricatives were required to have the same voicing
Legal codas were:

• No consonant
• Any consonant
• A nasal followed by a stop or fricative with the same place of articulation
• A fricative followed by a stop (same voicing)
• An l or r followed by a stop, fricative, or nasal
• rl

Grammar

Sanle was mostly isolating, with only a few inflections.

Nouns

Sanle had three genders: sapient (human, gods, spirits, pteranthropans), other animates, and inanimates, two numbers (singular, plural), and two cases (common and genitive-dative). Suffixes varied according to gender. Adjectives used the same suffixes, except that common singular had -r for sapient and -kh for inanimate. If the suffixes would violate phonotactic restrictions, an epenthetic vowel is added between the noun root and the suffix, determined by the last vowel in the noun. For example, the common-plural for divb (ally) is divbit, while for daq (angry), when referring to a human, it's daqat

Case	Sapient		Animate		Inanimate
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Common	Ø	-t	Ø	-p	Ø	-ln
Gen-Dat	-ren	-ten	-n	-mp	-khi	-lakh

Verbs

Verbs were inflected for aspect, mood, and gender and number of subject, by means of an inflected auxiliary placed before the verb

The perfective was marked by the auxiliary arl

Subject	Realis	Irrealis
Human singular	arl	ari
Human plural	arlar	arra
Animate singular	ark	arkh
Animate plural	arkar	arkra
Inanimate	arp	arf

The imperfective was marked with the auxiliary ger

Subject	Realis	Irrealis
Human singular	ger	gels
Human plural	gelar	gelra
Animate singular	gelk	gelkh
Animate plural	gelkar	gelkra
Inanimate	gelp	gelf

Habitual was marked by use of ger plus reduplication of the main verb (e.g., ger kner, eat human-singular imperfective vs. ger kner-kner, eat human-singular habitual)

Stative is marked with the auxiliary korm

Subject	Realis	Irrealis
Human singular	korm	kons
Human plural	kar	konra
Animate singular	konk	konkh
Animate plural	konkar	konkra
Inanimate	komp	komf

In addition, a third mood, the desiderative ("want to") was formed by suffixing -(y)iC to the verb, and using irrealis forms of the auxiliaries (where C represents the last consonant of the verb, and y is used if the verb ends in a vowel), e.g., gels knerir would be the desiderative human-singular imperfective of "eat") while the imperative was formed with the bare verb.

Syntax

Sanle used SOV as the normal word order with adjectives preceding nouns and postpositions.