Qetarch

General information
In-universe:

Qetarch (pronounced [qəˈʈɑᴙ]) is a language spoken by the warrior class of a space-faring race of the same name.

Real-world:

I created this language as a part of a SF conworld I was inventing. The idea was to make a harsh-sounding language suitable for warriors, which resulted in a large numbers of rhotics and creaky voice pronounciation of vowels. I thought it would be a fun making a language in which even very polite questions sound like insults.

Consonants
All flaps are (normally) voiceless and slightly aspirated. Labioental fricative /f/ is often pronounced dentolabial. The alveolar sibilant is laminal (like in Basque). Unvoiced consonants can acquire voicedness when inter-vocalic due to the lenition processes, but this is non-phonemical.

Vowels
All vowels are usually spoken with creaky voice, although with long vowels it's permissible to open the glottis a bit more than with the short ones.

Alphabet
Qetarch has a syllabic alphabet of its own, but the romanised version (created for my own convenience) also exisits, and it looks as follows:
 * ɑ > a
 * ɑː > aa (all long vowels are written as doubles, so it's not necessary to write them all here)
 * ə > e
 * ɪ > i
 * o > o
 * ɯ > y
 * ɳ > n
 * pʰ > p
 * ʈ > t
 * ʈʰ > th
 * qʰ > qh
 * q > q
 * ʔ > '
 * f > f
 * s̻ > s
 * ʂ > z
 * ʜ > hh
 * ɬ > lh
 * r > r
 * ɾ̥ > rh
 * ɽ͡r > rd
 * ɽ > rdh
 * ʀ > rg
 * ɢ̆ > rgh
 * ᴙ > rch

Phonotactics
Qetarch has CV(C) syllable structure, with an obligatory one-consonant onset, one-vowel nucleus (which is also obligatory) and an unobligatory coda (one-consonantal, too). Words are composed of syllabical raher than phonemical units (a feature reflected in the writing system). Each word usually contains one to three sylables (longer words are rare), but these can also be juxtaposed to form longer derived words, although this doesn't influence the inner structure of words.

Grammar
Qetarch uses so-called adjuncts (small, uninflectible words; they can also be called particles) to inflect other words like verbs or substantives (This language doesn't clearly distinguish between nouns and adjectives, so they will be collectively called substantives later in this article). These adjuncts/particles can also be joined into longer forms, thus allowing them to inflect themselves in some way.

Nouns
Qetarch nouns are formed by putting a casual adjunct (that is, an adjunct/particle which defines case) before a bare substantive (a 'pure' form of a non-verb part of speech). There are 2 morphosyntactic alignment cases (unmarked absolutive and the ergative marked with the nee adjunct), as well as many oblique/locative cases. Nouns don't normally decline by number or gender (although it's possible to put a numeral or gender adjunct in frnt of a noun), but they do have several definitness levels.

Syntax
Qetarch is VOS (or, rather, verb-patient-agent) and strongly head-initial. In an active voice sentence, modal adjunct comes first, then there is a tense/aspect adjunct with the verb. That is then followed by the absolutive subject (or direct object, when transitive). Next come all the indirect objects, with the ergative transitive subject coming at the end.

Vocabulary
Coming soon...

Example text
Coming soon...