Difference between revisions of "Akachenti"
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Long vowels are pronounced with a low tone. The phonemic diphthong in the bottom row is the only one treated as a phonemic vowel in Akachenti's orthography and is romanized as ae. | Long vowels are pronounced with a low tone. The phonemic diphthong in the bottom row is the only one treated as a phonemic vowel in Akachenti's orthography and is romanized as ae. | ||
| − | The close diphthongs in the top row are falling diphthongs, with the first vowel more prominent. The remaining four diphthongs are typically rising, with ''e'' and ''a'' being prominent. | + | The close diphthongs in the top row are typically falling diphthongs, with the first vowel more prominent, though ''iɪ'' can realize as rising dipthong ''jɪ''. The remaining four diphthongs are typically rising, with ''e'' and ''a'' being prominent. |
=== Consonants === | === Consonants === | ||
Revision as of 14:02, 2 May 2017
Akachenti is the most commonly spoken major dialect of the Kachan language, spoken by the Ogunn people. It is an incorporating fusional polysynthetic language with fluid-S active morphosyntactic alignment and relatively free word order with default OVS.
Contents
Phonology
Vowels
The phonemic vowel inventory contrasts three vowel heights and length.
| Front | Back | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short | long | diphthong | short | long | diphthong | |
| close | i | i: | iɪ - ij | u | u: | ui |
| mid | e | e: | ie | o | o: | ue |
| open | ia | a | a: | ua | ||
| phonemic diphthong | aɛ - aɪ | |||||
Long vowels are pronounced with a low tone. The phonemic diphthong in the bottom row is the only one treated as a phonemic vowel in Akachenti's orthography and is romanized as ae.
The close diphthongs in the top row are typically falling diphthongs, with the first vowel more prominent, though iɪ can realize as rising dipthong jɪ. The remaining four diphthongs are typically rising, with e and a being prominent.
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Post-Alveolar - Palatal | Velar-Uvular | Glottal | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Verbs
The Copula
Thus far, we posit Pre-Modern Akachenti copular forms of se:, "to be", and the nominalized sen, "what (one) is". The fact that the copula almost always takes alternate vowel forms rather than glottalic tone indicates an underlying long vowel affecting neighboring syllables despite being mutable, pronounced with a mid-tone and short.
| lexeme | gloss | part of speech |
|---|---|---|
| se: | to be | verb |
| se:n | what (one) is | nominalized verb |
| lexeme | sample | definition | translation | alignment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| se: | hese: | how are (you)? | how be? | denuded |
| se: | ise: ganche | it is beautiful | it's beautiful | i-agentive |
| se | ise ganchá | it, I am (experiencing), (it) does beauty (to) me.PAT | it's beautiful to me | e-patientive, á-patientive |
| se | isikachan evagonchan | it is, Kachan, my home voice | Kachan is the language I speak at home | e-patientive |
| se | igonar isiganchanta | it, my home, it is beautiful | my home is beautiful | i-agentive |
| se | sa gudá | I am an experiencer of home-want | I'm a shut-in OR I don't get out much | á-patientive |
| se | usa iba:sh | (with) you, I am that, a lover | with you, I am a lover | i-patientive |
| se | huede esef (huede esev) | and that is (going to be)? | and that is too? | e-patientive |
| sen | isen ís | it.AGT, what (it) is, (it) is that.PAT | it is what it is | í-patientive |
| sen | hesen | what is (it)? | what is it? | denuded |
Affixation and Derivation
Compounding and Incorporation
Akachenti is an incorporating language and frequently creates compound nouns, compound adjective-nouns, compound serial verbs, and incorporated compound noun-verbs.
Rules of Compounding
- Identical or near-identical adjacent syllables are merged, e.g. a + kacha + chen + enti = Akachenti, not *Akachachenenti
Inflectional Affixes
Inflectional affixes appear to all be postpositions, in keeping with an OVS language and verbs tending to fuse at the end of a word. Unlike evening constructions, inflectional affixes have fused sufficiently that they no longer attract glottalic tone to their first and last syllables. Inflectional affixes serve as a compounded extension of the root.
The Verb Base
There are two primary verb bases, demonstrated below.
| unmarked | + agentive affix | optative | + agentive affix |
|---|---|---|---|
| baga: | baga:v(a) | baga:sha | ∅ |
| ashi | ashik(a) | ashiv(a) | ∅ |
