Nother/Trentish

Description

A priori conlang for a race of entlike creatures in Nother. Polysynthetic.

• Author: Muke Tever | ✎

Phonology and Orthography

Phonemic Inventory

Consonants

	labial	alveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
plosive	p pʼ pʰ	tʼ tʰ tʷ	c cʰ cʷ	k kʼ kʰ kʷ	ʔ
nasal	m	n	ɲ	ŋ
lateral		l tɬ
fricative		s ʃ		x

Vowels

i y	ʊ u
e ø	o
	ʌ ɔ
	ɑ

Internal Sandhi

Word-level

• Trentish words can only end in a vowel or a nasal. Stops and /l/ occurring at the end of a word are nasalized, thus /thɑk/ "wear" becomes [thɑŋ]. /ʔ/ and the other consonants are dropped.

Syllable-level

Syllable-final

• Plain voiceless consonants disappear, lengthening the previous vowel:

  /xlɔʔ/ "washed, clean" → [xlɔɔkʷʌ] "be washed".

• Ejectives and /l/ turn to nasals as at the word level:

  /tʰɔl/ "upon" → [tʰɔŋkʷʌ] "be on top of".

• Labialized consonants reduce to [w]:

  /kitʷ/ COLL → [kiwcʷecʷe] "set of journeys".

• Aspirated consonants fricativize:

  /pʼɑlɑkʰ/ "hate" → [pʼɑlɑxpʼɑlɑŋ] "grudge".

Syllable-initial after a nasal

• Aspirated stops are ejectivized by a preceding original nasal:

  /tʰɑŋ/ "wear" → [xɑntʼɑŋ] "wear that"

• Labialized stops inherit preceding nasality:

  /cʷe/ "go" → [xɑnɲʷe] "go up yonder".

• Plain stops are aspirated by a preceding nasal:

  /pɑ/ TOP → [xɑnpʰɑ] "yonder"

• Ejective stops geminate a preceding nasal:

  /pʼɑlɑŋ/ "hate" → [xɑmmɑlɑŋ] "hate that"

Morphology

Reduplication

Reduplication produces resultative nouns from verbal roots.

• /mɑli/ "speak" → /mɑli-mɑli/ "speech, message"
• /pʼɑlɑŋ/ "hate" → /pʼɑlɑŋ-pʼɑlɑŋ/ "hatred, grudge" (i.e., [pʼɑlɑxpʼɑlɑŋ])

In reduplication, no more than the first two syllables are reduplicated:

• /ikʼɑtɬi/ "barter" → /ikʼɑ-ik'ɑtɬi/ "transaction"