Akachenti

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.

Other Links

• Akachenti on CALS

Phonology

Orthography

The phonemic inventory of Pre-Modern Akachenti was somewhat captured at the adoption of the Tongchan writing system, a series of glyphs for the perceived phonemes of the language. In particular, the current ae diphthong was considered a vowel, length was distinguished for five of the six vowels, and several current consonantal phonemes were and are considered consonant clusters.

• Vowels: a, a:, o, o:, u, u:, ae, e, e:, i, i:
• Consonant "Clusters": nl, hl, tl, dl, ngl, khl, kl, gl

The above are all clicks with pre-glottalized allophones in glottalic tone syllables.

Vowels

The phonemic vowel inventory contrasts five qualities, three heights, and length.

Vowels

	Short Vowels			Long Vowels
	front	central	back	front	central	back
close	i		u	i:		u:
mid	e		o	e:		o:
open		a			a:
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. Other diphthongs are treated orthographically as vowel clusters.

Diphthongs

	Front		Back
	unrounded	rounded	rounded
close	iɪ - ij		ui
mid	ie	ue
open	ia	ua

The close diphthongs in the top row are typically falling diphthongs, with the first vowel more prominent, though iɪ can realize as rising "diphthong" jɪ. The remaining four diphthongs are typically rising, with e and a being prominent.

Consonants

Phonemic Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar			Post-Alveolar			Velar			Glottal
			voiced	voiceless	murmured	voiced	voiceless	murmured	voiced	voiceless	murmured	voiceless	murmured
nasal		m	n						ŋ
click	nasal		ᵑǃ			ᵑǁ
	simple		gǃ	ǃ		gǁ	ǁ
	fricated release		(sgǃˡ)		sǃʱˡ			sǁʱˡ
stop/affricate		b	d	t		dʒ	tʃ		g	k		ʔ	(ʔh)
fricative		f-v		s			ʃ			x			ɦ
tap/approximant			ɺ			ɹ - ɾ

Consonants in parentheses are allophones. The only true consonantal approximant in Akachenti is an allophone of the rhotic tap. The lateral tap has the allophone of a voiced fricated alveolar click.

Akachenti disallows clicks in coda positions or multiple clicks appearing in a single lexical root.

Clusters

Consonant Clusters

	n	ŋ	ɹ	ɦ	x	d
nonlabial click/stop/affr.	n(C)	ŋ(C)	∅	∅	∅	∅
labial (m, b, v) + g	∅	∅	(C)ɹ	∅	∅	∅
v	∅	∅	(C)ɹ	(C)ɦ	(C)x	∅
ʃ	∅	∅	∅	∅	∅	(C)d

Regional dialect variations may allow sɹ, ʃɹ, dɹ, or ɹɦ and ɹx, but this is disfavored in most Akachenti dialect regions.

Allophones

Consonant Allophones

Syllable	Midtone (default)				Glottalic Tone			Low Tone
	Onset	Intervocalic	Coda	Word-Final	Onset	Intervocalic	Coda	Onset	Intervocalic	Coda
Q Dialect	k		k	k̚	kʼ		kʼ	k		k
S Dialect	k		k	k̚	q		q	k̬	k̬x̆	k̬

Prosody

Register

Tone goes hand in hand with variations in quality, duration, and phonation of affected syllables.

Verbs

Verbal Agreement Case Marking

Akachenti's pronominal case agreement system is similar to that of natlang Kotiria, where argument/slot order initially determined case and marked case eventually permitted free order constrained by topicalization.

Unmarked Order

Synchronically, unmarked order is:

topic/patientive + VERB ROOT + agentive

In cases where topic is not conflated with one of the first two core arguments—nominative or accusative—the default order shifts to:

topic + patientive + VERB ROOT + agentive

indicating a diachronic conditioned merger of the topic and patientive slots. Significantly, this order is only valid for intransitive and transitive verbs. Verbs with more than two referents marked on the verb utilize various hierarchical combinations of person and case marking across all available slots to indicate multiple objects.

Even in cases where only two core arguments are marked on the verb, unmarked order is not always possible.

Accusative-Possessive

The modern accusative-possessive is marked by a glottalic accent vowel in the case of simple markers. This is a reduced form of the original accusative-possessive affix.

Patientive-Oblique

The modern patientive-oblique is marked by a raised mid-tone vowel. This may be an actual alternation fallback or a reduced form of an original dative affix. In its marking of relative clauses, there is evidence it may have also reduced from a genitive affix.

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.

Diachronic Reconstruction

lexeme	gloss	part of speech
se:	to be	verb
se:n	what (one) is	nominalized verb

Synchronic Examples

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

1. Identical or near-identical adjacent syllables are merged, e.g. a + kacha + chan + enti = Akachenti, not *Akachachanenti

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.

Synchronic Examples

unmarked	+ agentive affix	optative	+ agentive affix
baga:	baga:v(a)	baga:sha	∅
ashi	ashik(a)	ashiv(a)	∅