Old Shataranjan

Old Shataranjan is the earliest form of the Shataranjan language family.

= Phonology =

Consonants
There is a moderate amount of allophony present:
 * /r/ is phonetically [ɾ~ɽ].
 * /x/ is post-velar and varies between [x] and [χ].
 * Sibilants /ts, tsʼ, dz, s/ are palatalized to [tɕʰ, tɕʼ, dʑ, ɕ] before /j/.
 * "Plain" stops /p, t, ts, k/ are aspirated [pʰ, tʰ, tsʰ, kʰ].
 * /ʔ/ is only pronounced at word boundaries.
 * /l/ velarizes to [ɫ] in syllable coda.

Vowels
The small vowel inventory and vertical vowel system, combined with a sonority hierarchy, allows for a wide variety of allophones.


 * Before /j/, /a/ and /ɨ/ are realized as [ɛ] and [ɪ].
 * Before /w/, /a/ and /ɨ/ are realized as [ɔ] and [ʊ].
 * /a, ə, ɨ/ get an r-coloring to [ɑ, ɐ, ɤ] before /r/.
 * /a/ can become [æ] afte /j/ and [ɒ] after /w/.

Phonotactics
Each root follows a (C)(R)V(R)(C) structure, where C is any occlusive, nasal or fricative, R is any sonorant (w, l, r, j) and V is one of the three vowels.

= Grammar = Old Shataranjan is an agglutinative, verb-subject-object language, notable for having classifiers (measure words) and no number marking on nouns, while having case marking.

Verbs
Old Shataranjan verbs conjugate for mood, voice, tense-aspect, person and number in that order.

Verb structure template
"You (all) could have not been making (them) give (it)"

Negation
To negate a verb in Old Shataranjan, a prefix sɨw- is placed before the verb.

Voice
There are three grammatical voices in Old Shataranjan: passive, active and causative.

Mood
Old Shataranjan makes use of reduplication on a verb stem to convey the imperative mood. Combined with other mood affixes, it creates different meanings.

Tense and Aspect
The markers for both tense and aspect are encoded in one affix.

Nouns
Nouns are inflected by case. There are a total of 10 grammatical cases. Interestingly, nouns do not have any number marking, this function being provided by classifiers.

Adjectives
Adjectives, just like nouns, decline by case but not number. When used as an attribute, an adjective precedes its noun.

Classifiers
Old Shataranjan makes use of classifiers when referring to its nouns. Classifiers are placed after the numeral denoting the amount of the noun and before the noun itself, which is declined in the partitive case, denoted by the suffix -ɨj. The following is a list of commonly used classifiers, along with nouns they can be referred to and examples of usage. Notably, classifiers also decline for oblique cases.

Syntax
Shataranjan has a default verb-subject-object word order, however because of heavy inflection the word order is rather free. It is often changed to emphasize the subject or the object.

Comparative and superlative clauses
The word pʼam, meaning "many, more", is used to create comparative clauses. To do so, the adjective (used as a predicate) or the adverb is placed after the noun it refers to and before the comparative word, which is in turn followed by the noun to which the subject is compared, inflected to the ablative case. To form a superlative adjective, one reduplicates its root. Superlative adverbs are formed the same way. If it is a deadjectival adverb, the adverb suffix is only applied once.

= Writing system = Old Shataranjan made use of a highly pictographic logography.