Vortex Lang Thread: A tale of three languages, Part 1

[Tiamat]

This thread will consists of posts about my various conlangs set in my conworld (name pending even though I have been working on this on and off for the better part of 6 years). Three main families I will be dealing with (2 more possibly but only because one is a substrate and the other offers some loanwords into the others) are Kna:u, Kamiya, and Kweddia. The names all starting with "K" is completely accidental. I will begin with Kna:u.

EDIT: So I decided that this post will before keep track of everything I add onto the thread

1. Kna:u
1.1 Kna:u Phonology

[Tiamat]

Intro to Kna:u

Kna:u is the northern most language and is one of two soul surviving members of its larger family. It is spoken by the most advance civilization in the region with 3 main dialects. One for each of the civilization's two capital cities (names pending) and surrounding areas and one for the southern provinces. The Kna:u I will be posting about it the form of Kna:u that existed before the 3 dialects became more distinct. I should also mention that Kna:u is the the ethnonym for the people, Kna:u-bak is the language name.

(Very) Brief Phonology

Consonants

N: /m n ŋ/
P: /p b t d k g ʔ/
A: /ts) dz)/
F: /s z h~ɦ/
R: /r l/
G: /w j/

Vowels

front vowels: /i e a/
back/-front vowels: /ɯ u ɤ o/

Now before anyone comes barging screaming, "BUT VORTEX! You have more back vowels than front vowels! I'm going to call the conlang police!" I know that it is not common, but Mongolian and Khmer do it and I don't plan on having this be a terribly stable system. It collapse for most daughters, but it has a role to play for now. Just be patient.

diphthongs: /ɤu eu au ɤi ei ai/

All vowels and diphthongs have two lengths, short and long. Long vowels will be marked with :.

Phonotactics

Kna:u heavily favors mono-syllabic roots to the point that most polysyllabic roots, if not all, come from loanwords. The basic syllable structure is (s/z, N)C(C)(C)(G)V(C)(s). The initial (s/z, N) are prefixes but are only allowed to precede clusters that don't begin with a fricative, in the case of s/z, or contains a nasal, in the case of N. Final s/z can't occur after a fricative or affricate. G cannot occur after another G.

Possible onsets: C[-ŋ], PF, PA, PN, PR, AN, AR, ts)h, FN, FR, NR, NN, PFN, PFR, PAN, PAR
possible codas: p, b, t, d, k, g, s, z, h, ʔ, m, n, N, r, ts), dz)

The larger consonant clusters are not as common as the smaller ones. Also there are more rules to these clusters then I show, but I don't feel like explaining them now. Though I'll tell you the major two. No consonant can appear before itself and there is a heirarchy (p>k>t) with the plosive clusters as to which can appear first in the cluster.

Vowel harmony

I = underspecified high unrounded vowel
E = underspecified mid unrounded vowel

CV[+front]+CI > CV[+front]Ci
CV[-front]+CI > CV[-front]Cɯ

CV[+front]+CE > CV[+front]Ce
CV[-front]+CE > CV[-front]Cɤ

All native words follow vowel harmony, foreign words are the only violators.

Palatalization

ts > tʃ / _i, j
dz > dʒ / _i, j
s > ʃ / _i, _j
z > ʒ / _i, _j

Misc.

ji > i:
wu > u:

Also some nasal infixes cause voicing of a following consonant, and others don't. This is from an earlier voiced-voiceless distinction in nasals.

example:

ktad - cup + -aN- > kandad - cup of
pka - sleep + -oN- > poŋka - bed

Stress

Stress always falls on the root vowel. In foreign words, it will fall on where it does in the donor language and will be marked with an acute accent mark.

Transcription note:

/ts)/ and /dz)/ will be written as c and j in order to avoid confusion with the clusters /ts/ and /dz/. Because of this, /j/ with be written as y.

Next up: Pronouns, Nouns, and Cases! Oh my!

[Tiamat]

This is largely rebooting my first post here with some parts completely ripped from it.

Pronouns

Pronouns in Kna:u encode both number and gender. In the singular there is a distinction between masculine and feminine genders, but this distinction is missing in the plural. In the third person there is a non-human pronoun. This can be used by itself or with a noun classifier.The plural pronouns are more frequent in early Kna:u, but in later varieties in the city dialects they have fallen out of use.

Singular Pronouns

1.M - si
1.F - mo
2.M - wɤ:
2.F - taŋ
3.M - ku
3.F - tir
3.N - tE

Plural

1 - mɤʔ
2 - sɤŋ
3.H - pa:ŋ
3.N - tE

When no classifier is used with the third person non-human pronoun the pronoun takes front harmony [te], but when a classifier is used, it takes the harmony of the classifier.

cu: tE > cu: tɤ
4.NC 3.N

Pronouns are treated like regular nouns syntactically, but in vulgar varieties of Kna:u subject pronouns are frequently dropped (maybe once I create a script for it I will create some graffiti to demonstrate this).

The Noun

Nouns in Kna:u has in general little morphology and most of the morphology that is present is purely derivational. Cases are marked with enclitics which attach onto the whole NP, though because Kna:u is pretty strict head final, it usually looks like they attach to the noun directly.

Number

Number is optionally marked on the noun. This done by way of full reduplication of the noun and done for human nouns when no other word is present to indicate that the noun is plural. This however is usually done for emphasis.

prah
'boy'

prah-prah
'boys'

Noun classifiers

Noun classifiers are mandatory for nouns when you are using numbers with nouns in Kna:u Each noun classifier corresponds to a specific noun class and there are 11 noun classes. The noun class 1 is used for humans; noun class 2 is used for animals and children; noun class 3 is used for large things like mountains, trees, hills, large animals and things like sand and dirt; noun class 4 is used for round things like fruits, balls, stars/sun, planets, orbs, etc.; noun class 5 is used for oblong or misshapen objects; noun class 6 is used for objects that are longer than they are wide (this includes man made objects); noun class 7 is used for plants and sends; noun class 8 is used for flat objects (including man made objects); noun class 9 is used for man made objects that aren't in noun class 6 or 8; noun class 10 is used for liquids, air, fire, spirit, clouds and etc.; noun class 11 is used for small things.

class 1 - ʔaŋ
class 2 - sau
class 3 - hi:s
class 4 - cu:
class 5 - kmuʔ
class 6 - ha
class 7 - swi
class 8 - kraŋ
class 9 - nɤm
class 10 - wɤh
class 11 - tum

Noun classifiers come after the number/adjective and before the noun.

Count words

When a certain quanity of an item is need to be expressed, such as "X cups of Y", noun classifiers aren't used, with the except of the class 8 noun classifier. Instead count words are used. Count words are overwhelming derived from nouns using the infix -aN-. This infix is placed after the initial consonant of the root.

ktad + -aN- > kandad
"bowl" "bowls of"

rac + -aN- > ranac
"basket" "baskets of"

The only except to this is the generic count word gyur, which is not derived from a noun.

Adjectives and Demonstratives

Adjectives are divided into categories. Demonstratives and normal adjectives. I know the last category is vague, but there is this basic distinction becomes important for descendents in terms of how they are treated. Demonstratives unlike other adjectives required to be followed by noun classifiers.

swa - this
ki - that (close to speaker)
maŋ - that (far from both, but with in sight)
traŋ - that (far from both and out of sight)

chɤŋ - goat
swa sau chɤŋ - this goat
ki sau chɤŋ - that goat
maŋ sau chɤŋ - that goat over there (insight)
traŋ sau chɤŋ - that goat over there (outsight)

Demonstratives and numbers can be post-posed, though not at the same time, for emphasis. The classifier follows.

chɤŋ ki sau
goat that NC
"that goat"

All other adjectives appear before the demonstratives.

sa:r ki sau chɤŋ
small that NC goat
"that small goat"

Part 2: Meet the Cases, will be up soon.