##PHONOLOGY##

As there is a lot of morphophonology going on in the text, I am going to quickly introduce some important details about the phonology:

This is the phoneme inventory:

Consonants:

! ǂ (spelled as ! ǂ)
ǃʰ ǂʰ (spelled as !h ǂh)
ǃ̬ ǂ̬ (spelled as g! gǂ)
ǃ̤ ǂ̤ (spelled as g!h gǂh)

Vowels:

i		u	i:		u:
e		o	e:		o:
	a			a:

ĩ		ũ	ĩ:		ũ:	(nasal vowels spelled with an ogonek)
	ã			ã:

There are phonological effects bounded by the word and ones bounded by the domain (see below). Firstly ones that can only occur within the same word:

The capital lettered plosives are realized as if they were bilabial before rounded vowels. In all other positions, they are realized as velar.
A sequence of two or more plosives reduces to a geminate of the last. When this happens, depression (see below) is not lost!
The phoneme T is realized as any plosive. Specifically, it copies the next plosive in the word. If this is not possible, then it is realized as if it were /t/
The maximum onset principle applies as follows: CVCVC -> CV.CVC; CVCCVC -> CVC.CVC

Polysyllabic words are stressed on every second syllable, starting from the first, with the exception of the final syllable. Monosyllabic words are stressed. Thus, where S = stressed syllable and s = unstressed syllable:

• S
• Ss
• Sss
• SsSs
• SsSss
• …

Stress is relevant for the placement of tones, see below.

To describe all the other effects, including the behavior of tone, I first need to introduce the concept of the domain. The domain is a unit larger than a word but smaller than a sentence. A domain new domain starts precisely if one of the following conditions apply:

• At the beginning of a clause (i.e. for the purposes of this relay at the beginning of a line)
• At the beginning of a Noun Phrase (NP) or Prepositional Phrase (PP)

Using, as an example, an English sentence (which of course has differences in word order) and applying the same rules, these are the domains:

• [The man went] [to the village] [of the woman.]

All effects regarding tone and nasalization apply to the whole domain with no regards to word boundaries. It should be noted here that the clitic pronouns do NOT count as the start of a new domain.

If a vowel is nasal, then this nasality spreads backwards (to the left) until the domain boundary. Vowels become nasalized, with mid vowels behaving as follows:

• e -> ã
• e: -> ĩ:
• o -> ũ
• o: -> ã:

With consonants, the following alterations occur:

• p t k s ! !h ǂ ǂh remain identical
• b d g g! gǂ -> m n ŋ ŋ! ŋǂ (the velar nasal never occurs in this text on its own so I didn't bother figuring out how to spell it. The nasalized clicks will be written as n! nǂ)
• l -> n

Tone:

Tones are a bit complicated. Only a bit. First of all, a distinction must be made between the underlying tones

• Low (L or grave accent)
• High (H or acute accent)
• Rising (R or caron accent)

and surface tones, represented by numbers from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest). In the dictionary, underlying tones are given, in the text you get the surface tones (how they're actually pronounced).

Underlying tones are not tied to any specific syllable, they can move quite freely within the domain. A single underlying tone may also be assigned to multiple, adjacent syllables (called spreading). I will first explain how the tones are assiged to syllables and then how they are realized. I will do the first with a whole bunch of examples; followed by a hopefully rigorous algorithm.

Assume for now a made up domain consisting of just a single, four-syllable word, let's say "patakasa" (remember that this would be stressed 'pata'kasa). I will assign various tone patterns to this word to illustrate how the tones get assigned to syllables.

First, I shall make a few examples using only H and L (R behaves a bit differently):

(1) Single high tone, e.g. pátakasa or patákasa or patakása or patakasá:
First, the tone is attracted to the first stressed syllable:

• pátakasa
• |
• H

Then, the tone spreads rightwards to all adjacent syllables with no assigned tone:

pátákásá
| | | |
H-+-+-+

This word would then surface with a continuous high tone. Similar things happen with a single low or rising tone.

(2) Two identical tones, e.g. pátakása or similar:
Adjacent identical tones are deleted. Afterwards, the same thing as in (1) happens.

(3) Two different tones, e.g. pátàkasa or similar:
First, the tones are attracted to the first stressed syllables:

pátakàsa
| |
H L

Then, tones spread rightwards to all adjacent syllables:

pátákàsà
| | | |
H-+ L-+

(4) Three tones (with no adjacent identical tones), e.g. pátàkása or similar
Tones like to align with the stressed syllables. However, if there are more tones than stressed syllables, then generally tones bunch up at the left as much as they can:

pátàkása
| | |
H L H

Then, as usual, tone spreads to the right:

pátàkásá
| | | |
H L H-+

(5) Five tones, e.g. pátàkásà + H
Syllables can generally only be associated with one tone. However, the final syllable in the domain can take two tones. To do so, it must however be a long vowel. Thus, the final syllable of a domain can lengthen to accomodate an exess tone:

pátàkásàá
| | | ||
H L H LH
If there were a sixth tone, it could not associate and would be deleted.

Going on to rising tones now: A rising tone requires there to be two morae, i.e. it must be assigned to either a long vowel or to two syllables. This could push tones off. From now on, I'll use the word pataaka (stressed 'pata:ka)

(6) Single R: pǎta:ka or similar
Acts just like other tones:

pǎtǎ:kǎ
| | |
R-+--+

(7) pátǎ:kà
The R can align with the long syllable just fine:

pátǎ:kà
| | |
H R L

(8) pǎtá:ka
Here, the R tone can't just align with the first (short) syllable, so it is required to spread to the next one:

pǎtǎ:ká
| | |
R-+ H

(9) pátà:kǎ
The R wants to be on a long syllable, but the final syllable is able to lengthen:

pátà:kǎ:
| | |
H L R

(10) pátà:kǎ + H
Curiously, the R can be compounded with another tone on the final syllable. This can be explained by the fact that these compound tones act like a single contour tone (as R is) themselves:

pátà:kǎá
| | ||
H L RH

This would also work the other way round.

These rules might be summarized as a list of constraints where ones higher up on the list are more important:

• No identical adjacent underlying tones (delete one of them if occurs)
• Try to assign an underlying tone to every stressed syllable
• Assign R to at least two morae (either a long syllable or two syllables)
• Assign tones from left to right
• Assign at most one tone to any syllable, with the exception of the last one, which may have two.
• Maximize the amount of tones assigned

Now for the realization of the tones, i.e. how you get from those forms above to the numbers.

Words have an "inherent" tone of height 3, i.e. mid. Tones then modify that level. In particular how they work is that before the start of the tone, the level is changed, then the tone is pronounced, and then the level changes again.

If that made no sense, no worries. First, the representations of the three tones:

H 3(4)3 2(3)2 1(2)1
L 3(2)2 2(1)1 1(1)1
R 3(35)3 2(24)2 1(13)1

The first number is the "input" level. Assuming it's 3, then the tones will be pronounced as they are in the parentheses. But if the input tone is of a different height than three, the numbers must be altered. Consider a sequence L-H

L		H
3(2)2	-	3(4)3

These can't be "connected" as the numbers next to the hyphen aren't identical (the L tone lowers the level by one) so the numbers on the H must be adjusted:

At this point, depression can be explained:

The phonemes written with a diaeresis below are pronounced identically as the normal voiced ones. However, they lower the level by one. Thus a word like bábhá is pronounced ba4 ba3. These consonants are called depressor consonants and the phenomenon depression. Note that depression is inherent to the consonant, i.e. not a tone in itself.

Now for spreading. The spreading of H and L is very straighforward; while that of R is a bit more complex:

In other words, H and L just retain the tone throughout the spread; R spreads the rise over the first two syllables and then stays high.

Finally, final syllable contours:

##GRAMMAR##

We now come to the straighforward part.

Nouns inflect for three states (read: cases). The terminology here is a bit confusing.
This language is marked nominative. For reasons beyond the scope of this relay, I prefer calling the "nominative" ergative and the "accusative" absolutive in marked nominative languages (which I prefer to call "extended ergative").

Absolutive state:

• Formation: dictionary form
• Use: direct object of transitive verbs, both nouns in copular phrases, vocatives, titles

Ergative state:

• Formation: lengtening of first vowel. If already long, breaks into VlV, in which case R tone breaks into L-H
• Use: subject of transitive and intranstive verbs, nouns headed by a preposition. Ergative state of pronouns are used to mark possessors on other nouns as well: thing-1s.ERG = my thing; thing-3s.ERG man.GEN = the man's thing

Genitive state:

• Formation: reduplication (see under suffixes)
• Use: marking possessors

Verb roots take a different tone depending on the mood: L for indicative, R for imperative (no other moods occur in the text).

Word order is S O V X, but ergative pronouns attach to the verb (in which case one gets (O) V-S X)

Spaces separate syllables, hyphens separate words. No other punctuation is used.