Luryo

Luryo or Lurian (xxx; /ˈɺy:.ɻɪ̈.ɔ/), is a language spoken by the 288 Lurian species and is the official language of the United Empire of Lur, one of the galactic states.

General information
Luryo is the reconstructed version of the Early Modern Melnarian, a constructed language, thus some linguists also know Luryo as Neo Melnarian. It is spoken by far more than 4.2*1017 people inside the UEL, where it is standardised, and outside, where it has many pidgins and developed several creoles, being the Nezanomian Luryo Creole the most similar to the standard form.

History
In their earlier history, the Melnarians spoke a few languages. Through time, these languages began to evolve and split, creating whole new languages. Due to many people were not able to communicate with each other, a big group of linguist documented all the tongues of almost all the regions of their home planet. They took into account phonology, word roots, grammar and writing. After that, they began a project to create an universal language. They accomplished their goal and named the new language Melnarian. After a test period, it became official and all the people in the empire had to be able to speak Melnarian along with, if so, their native language

The Melnarians ruled over a vast extension of the Milky Way, so contact with other languages within their territory and with languages of other galactic civilisations, espcielly the Nezasomi, influenced Old Melnarian and created multiple dialects gouped in what was named Middle Melnarian. Another group of linguists decided to revise and standardise the language again in what was named Late Melnarian.

The Melnarians spoke Late Melnarian for hundreds of years without any significant changes but neologisms. However, it didn't last too much due to the involvement of the Melnarians in a bloody military conflict with the other galactic civilisations. In the final years of Galactic War 1, the Melnarian population that escaped their home planet and from plenty of minor colonies divided in 72 flotillas each of which headed to one of the seventy-two major colonies that they had previously founded. These colonies comprised a trinary star system with six inhabitable planets.

After thousands of years of isolation, new languages evolved in each planet of each colony. When the 72 colonies met, there were 288 different languages. Once again, a goup of linguists began a project to create an universal language. They found it difficult, so they decided to reconstruct the language used in the journals of the sunk ships. This reconstructed lanaguage was unofficially known as Neo Melnarian. Then it was officially named Luryo.

The regulatory authority for the teaching of Luryo is the Imperial Academy of the Lurian Language (ponto pangyen; xxx; /pɔn.tɔ.paŋ.jɛn/), an especial body of the Lurian Ministry of Education (ponto pangyen; xxx; /pɔn.tɔ.paŋ.jɛn/). The carer body of the literary heritage in Luryo is the Imperial Institute of the Lurian Literature (ponto pangyen; xxx; /pɔn.tɔ.paŋ.jɛn/), an especial body of the Lurian Ministry of Culture (ponto pangyen; xxx; /pɔn.tɔ.paŋ.jɛn/).

Brief Overview
Luryo is extremely flexible respect to word order, allowing to write a sentence with any of the six sintactic word orders. It has 96 phonemes of which 15 have a short allophone.

Phonology
Luryo has 77 consonant phonemes, 30 vowel phonemes, 15 long and 15 short, and 4 semivowel phonemes.

Consonants
The inventory of consonants in Luryo is spread over almost all the places of articulation founded in human languages, but it has no clicks, ejectives nor implosives. The 77 consonants and 4 semivowels are:

Vowels
The inventory of vowels, like that of consonants, is spread over almost all the places of articulation founded in human languages. with each of the 15 long vowels phonetically paired with one of the 15 short vowels. The 30 vowels are:

Alphabet
The Lurian alphabet consists of 81 consonants, including semivowels, and 15 vowel graphemes. There are upper and lower cases. Luryo is written in rows from left to right.

Phonotactics
The standard syllable structure is; Where (A) is a liquid consonant or a semivowel. There is consonant harmony according to the place of articulation when a syllable ends with a nasal or a liquid consonant (except fricatives and affricates) and the next syllable begins with a plosive, a fricative or an affricate.

Grammar
Luryo is a nominative–accusative language, morphologically agglutinative, slightly flexive and uses several particles to determine the grammatical functions of the sentence elements.

World order
Luryo has a relative free word order, meaning that it can follow any of the structural orders which are: SOV, SVO, VSO, VOS, OVS and OSV. These orders are grouped in SO, OS, VO, OV, SV and VS. The VO sentences are head initial, have the adjectives after nouns, place adpositions as prepositions before the noun phrases they govern and use the place-manner-time order. In contrast, OV are ussually head final, have the adjectives before nouns, place adpositions as postpositions after the noun phrases they govern and use the time-manner-place order. SV sentences follow the inderect-direct objects order and VS sentences follow the direct-indirect objects order. SO place complements after the object and OS sentences place complements before the object. Even though someone can use any word order, the SO orders are the most common.

Nouns
The noun is the nominal part of speech which refers to a concrete or an abstract entity.

In Luryo there two classes of nouns, animate and inanimate beings, both in the sense of living, not motion. The fomer class has three genders: masculine, feminine - both of which are based on the sex of living beings - and neuter - which is used when the speaker doesn't know the sex of the person, of the animal or of the plant; in plural it's used to include beings that are masculine, feminine and ambiguous. The latter class has one gender and includes objects, places, abstractions and actions.