Lalakhmet

General Information
Lalakhmet (also known as Proto-Lalakhi) is an a priori lang. It is spoken by a rather large group in the old roman province of Mauritania. This is the historical dialect whence came the modern dialects now spoken in the country of (romlang for conword). The ethnic peoples who speak Lalakhmet were largely nomadic when the Romans conquered North Africa. Over time, the nomadic peoples advanced quickly with the technology and society of the Romans (and later ethnic Nomidians).

Being nomadic, the orginal language was not written because it was only spoken, but for uses in this article, a romanization will be used.

Consonants
Note that Palatal'' is used to mean palatal and post-alveolar to conserve space. A French-derived system is used as the first person to re-construct Lalakhemt was French''. 1. /r/ is always a true trill 2. /ɲ/ is /ŋ/ word finally or pre-velar 3. /r̥/ and /ɬ/ are treated as the fricative forms of /r/ and /l/ respectivally in      Lalakhmeti understanding. /ɣ/ is viewed as a liquid. 4. /ɣ/ syllable-initial; /ɰ/ post-vocalic –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 5. G, WGU, and C cannot come before I/E, therefore become GU and QU respectivally. C is  /t͡s/ before I/E; it becomes Ç before another vowel 6. S must be intervocalic therefore it is often followed with a   silent E.  7. I is /j/ before another vowel: Ï after or between one/two.

Vowels
1. E is silent everywhere (this is to make S intervocalic). É is for /ɛ/ in an open syllable: È for a closed one (or the following has an E). 2. /a/ is a true front

Phonotatics
ICLVGCC, N̩ Restrictions
 * I - fricatives or nasals (where the /r̥/ and /ɬ/ rule comes in as /r/ and/l/ can't go here, but /r̥/ and /ɬ/ can). /d͡z/ as a result of /z/ not being allowed.
 * C - any consonant
 * L - liquid other than /r̥/
 * V - vowel
 * G - glides, {j w ɣ~ɰ}
 * N̩ - nasal other than /ɲ~ŋ/
 * /ɣ~ɰ/
 * /ɣ/ can only appear syllable-initial before a vowel
 * /ɰ/ can only appear post-vocalically
 * Affricates cannot final without a following vowel
 * /s z/ cannot be initial
 * /s/ can exist initially in the I position
 * /z/ must always become /d͡z/ (always represented with a Z)

Stress
Lalakhmet is spoken slowly (compared to French or Agentinian Spanish) and carries a moderate stress that is not phonemic. It is always placed on the antepenultimate (or the closest syllable thereto).

Grammar
Words are formed from a root (the base example here will be khaï-, -i-/-t-, speak/language/speech). This root can be applied for different meanings according to the verb/noun/adjective paradigms. Though, some words have their own name (these also have static genders). These paradigms can be layered (as in, khaï- can be put into a passive participle then an adjective suffix thereon to make the adjectivial idea passive).

In a root, there are two (three) parts: the root (khaï-) and the sandhi (-i-/-t-). The sandhi part affects the entire word: therefore, between two syllables, the suffixes will take the sandhi of the root. Note that glides are immune to sandhi as they function as vowels and consonants simletaneously.

Description
Lalakhmet declines nouns to grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, neuter, omninous, and glorious), number (singular, partative, mass, and plural), and case (nominative, accusative, lative, simple adpositional, and complex adpositional).

Gender paradigms are not noun specific except with some nouns (father, mother, sister, etc (these have seperate words)).

Gender

There are five genders, masculine, feminine, neuter, omninous, and glorious. Masculine describes sentient being that are of the male gender. Feminine does the same but for the female gender. Neuter is similar, but it applies to unsentient objects, plants, and mass groups of a mixed gender. Ominous and glorious split from the previous three: ominous describes ideas that are percieved as dark, taboo, malicious, etc; glarious does the same but for ideas that are percieved as happy, inspiring, good, light, etc.

Number

There are four numbers: singular, partative, mass, and plural. Singular describes one single object. Partative describes objects that are either less than one (such as 1/2) and/or objects that are a part of a greater, complete object. Mass describes objects that are being talked about in general: not relating to or specifying a specific object. This is used most oftenly with neuter nouns. Plural nouns talk about a specific group of more than one objects.

Case

There are five cases: nominative, accusative, lative, and the simple/complex adpositionals. The nominative describes the subject and the agent of an active construction and the subject of a passive one. The accusative is the patient of an active construction and the patient and agent of a passive one. The lative does three things: the dative, genitive, and a general adpositional (representing at, to, towards, into, etc). It also acts as a pseudo-accusative with intransitive verbs; in passives, it replaces the accusative. The first prepositional describes nouns that are being acted upon by dynamic[,] deictic prepositions (as well a few other abstract prepositionals (such as against [someone])). The second prepositional describes static, deictic prepositions and abstract ones.

Declension
Masculine Feminine Neuter Ominous Glorious

Conjugation
Description Verbs conjugate to object (their number and gender), evidentiality (first hand, second hand, third hand, fourth hand), passivity (active, passive), tense (present, past, future, conditional), aspect (perfect, continuous, progressive, habitual), semantic aspect (mementane, inchoative, terminative, frequentive), and quality (normal, augmentive, diminiuative, causative). Paraphrastic verbs describe mood (such as want, should, can, may, etc).

Object Conjugation/Agreement

Verbs do not conjugate to person (prefixal pronouns do that). Instead, they conjugate to their accusative/lative's number and gender. If the verb is intransitive, then there is no agreement. Reflexive verbs agree with themselves (boys/girls would use the masculine/feminine when speaking about themselves). Evidentiality

This is an optional suffix to the pronominal prefix. It dictates how the information encoded in the verb came to be. First hand are events directly seen and/or experienced by the speaker. Second hand are events that the speaker learned from someone else. Third hand are events learned by someone else who in turn learned it from someone else the person's self, or the speaker learned it from a authority figure. Fourth hand are events that had been fabricated, falsified (when used in the retrospect of the speaker), or events told in a story or fable (especially the latter). There are, on the other hand, restrictions to each one's use: Tense and Passivity
 * First Hand: -â-
 * Second Hand: -iâ-
 * Third Hand: -âwg-
 * Fourth Hand: -éâ-
 * All pov's can be used in the present tense during any aspect other than continuous and progressive
 * more later

Passivity and tense conjugate together.

There are two voices: the active and passive (both extend to nominal and adjectivial forms). The active is an event where the nominative is the agent and subject and the accusative is the patient. The passive is the opposite thereof. In nominal and adjectivial (rarely the latter) forms, it means that the meaning of the word has reversed actors (as in employer and employee where employer is active and employee is passive). Specifically to adjectives, it makes the adjective causative (as in, the active "the warm bread" and the 'passive' "the bread that has been made to be warm").

There are the present, past, future, and conditional tenses. The present describes events taking place around the moment of utterment. The past describes events taking place a reletive while ago to the point of utterment. The future describes events taking place a reletive amount of time to another point in the future: if it is not being made out as an overt fact/goal, then it takes a optative/subjunctive meaning in which the event is wished or guessed to happen. The conditional describes an event that could/should/would (depending on the auxillary verb or lack thereof) take place.

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Ideas:
 * Adjectives with degrees of connotativeness (heinous, bad, neutral, good, glorious) and nature (positive/negative, active/passive) with comparativeness made with adjectives