LEXICON
Affixes
- aṉ- – durative applicative
- -dahay – third-person singular feminine object (spoken by male)
- e- – benefactive applicative
- -i – plural
- jə- – comitative applicative
- =kɛ – this, these (level with or below the speaker, fully visible)
- -kɛm – nominal negator (e.g., a not-something)
- -lə – third-person plural feminine object (spoken by male)
- -m – verbal nominalizer
- ng- – clitic indicating that a verb (or clause) is simultaneous with or somehow connected to the preceding clause
- ng- – locative applicative
- -swə – genitive
- -y – first-person singular object (spoken by male)
- -ʔ – irrealis
Lexemes
| dahay | (prn.) | third-person singular feminine (spoken by male) |
| eʔ | (conj.) | and (joins sentences) |
| iṉṉɛn | (prn.) | second-person singular masculine (spoken by male) |
| jejʔɛ | (v.) | swim |
| jewangda | (n.) | land, country |
| kajoa | (v.) | stop, end, die |
| kkɔ | (v.) | intend, decide on a course of action |
| łəy | (prn.) | first-person singular (spoken by male) |
| mɛhusɛ | (v.) | breathe |
| ña | (n.) | location |
| ñɛkɛk | (v.) | give |
| ñoɔk | (adj.) | large, great |
| səjɔ | (n.) | creature, animal, living thing |
| sistə | (adj.) | grand, great, majestic, regal |
| sotəʔ | (v.) | chant, sing |
| suzwe | (n.) | head, peak, summit, top |
| šeʔu | (n.) | ocean |
| Tilok | (n.) | mythical land from Sumric lore |
| tley | (v.) | go |
| zp | (v.) | accept |
| ʔɛjəp | (n.) | fruit |
| ʔəjuk | (n.) | saltwater fish |
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MORPHOSYNTAX
- The coronal consonants, grouped by MOA, are: ṉ, n, ñ; d, t, j; z, s, š; and ł, l, y. When two or more such consonants would stand together, they assimilate in POA (but not MOA) to the first—e.g., łj > łd, ny > nl, št > šj.
- At the start of a word, if a two-consonant cluster appears, it is broken up with a vowel preceding the cluster. At the end of a word, the vowel appears before the final consonant.
- If a three-or-more consonant cluster appears, the vowel surfaces showing preference to creating -CC- clusters towards the beginning of the word (so, given a word, say, *akspa, the vowel would appear between the /s/ and the /p/, creating a cluster -ks-). This vowel is /a/ before /ʔ h/, /o/ before labials and velars, and /e/ otherwise.
- EPENTHETIC VOWELS APPEAR AFTER, NOT BEFORE, CORONAL ASSIMILATION.
- The verbs and pronouns in this passage assume that both the speaker and the whale are male. (That is a sentence I’d never thought I’d have to type.)
- Word order is generally SOV. Typically, modifiers follow the head (there’s a few exceptions with adjectives, but you don’t need to worry about those here).
- The default gender of things is feminine. (This includes abstractions.)
- Oftentimes, instead of adverbs, there are applicatives that sometimes change the valency of the verb. Some such verbs can become ditransitive; in this case the argument that is governed by the applicative appears closer to the verb.
- Imperatives often use the present-tense irrealis.
- The basic verb template is APPLICATIVE-TENSE-stem-IRREALIS-OBJECT. There’s no use of other verb tenses in this passage, so you don’t have to worry about that.
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