Ëangluk

Ëangluk

= Summary = Ëanglluk is a future version of English meant to be spoken by space colonists who have been isolated from Earth for long enough to develop their own language. The phonology has changed drastically, for example tone developed when consanants began to alter the pitch of nearby vowels. After consonant mergers tone became phonemic e.g. byets pronounced with a low tone means "bread", and with a rising tone means "breath". Other notable features are the development of ejectives, implosives and glottalised resonants, with the voicing distinction being lost everywhere except affricates. Uvular, retroflex and pharyngeal consonants have also emerged. The range of possible syllable structures has shrunk to (C) (j) V (j/w) (ñ) (C).The grammar has also changed, with noun incorporation becoming much more productive. Word order has become Topic Verb (Subject) (Object).

= Phonology =

Vowels
There are seven vowels.

Before a nasal consonant all vowels are nasalised. There are two diphthongs ae /ae/ and eo /eɔ/.

Consonants
(Phonemes in brackets are marginally phonemic)

After a front vowel the velarised lateral l /ɫ/ is pronounced as a palatal lateral. Velar ng /ŋ/ can only occur after a vowel, and ll /l/ can only occur before a vowel. Retroflex consonants other than the nasal, ejectives, aspirated consonants, r /ɾ/, y /j/, rk /q/, q /ʔ/ and w /v/ can also only occur before a vowel.,

As noted above the range of possible syllables is restricted to (C) (j) V (j/w) (C). However /j/ can only occur after velar and bilabial stops or vowels, and /w/ can only occur after a vowel. Also after an open syllable, the next syllable in the word must begin with a consonant. The combinations /aej/, /aew/ /uw/, /ɔw/, /ij/, /εj/, and /ɔj/ also never occur.

The retroflex nasal ñ // has a variety of pronunciations. It can only occur after a vowel. Before another vowel, it is usually lenited to a nasal approximant, written ñrz. Before a non-retroflex consonant, it is not pronounced, except for nasalisation of the preceding vowel. Elsewhere it is pronounced as a retroflex nasal.

Affricates are lenited to fricatives if they are not before a vowel. I have written this in the romanization in the case of ts.

Accent
Up to one syllable in a word can be accented, marked by a h before the syllable. The most common way that accent manifests itself is by consonant mutation. p /p/ and t /t/ become implosive b /ɓ/ and d /ɗ/ respectively. The cluster ky /kj/ becomes implosive j /ʄ/, and in other cases k /k/ becomes pharyngeal c /ʡ/. The velar affricate x /kx/ becomes pharyngeal ch /ʢ/ and the glottal stop q /ʔ/ becomes h /ɦ/. The affricates pf /pf/ and ts /ts/ are voiced to bv /bv/ and dz /dz/ respectively. Nasals and approximants become creaky voiced. The accent cannot fall on syllables beginning with consonants that are aspirated or ejective, nor the uvular stop rk /q/ or the retroflexes rt /ʈ/ and rts /ʈʂ/ although it can fall on the retroflex approximant rz /ɻ/. A substantial minority of speakers downstep the tones for the rest of the word after an accent, with or without the consonant changes described above. The tone in a syllable immediately before an accent must be either Low or Falling, and in the syllable immediately after an accent it must be Low or Rising.

If an aspirated consonant occurs in an accented word, then the is always immediately before it and the syllable has Rising Tone. If there is a syllable before this Rising Toned syllable, then it can only take Low or Falling Tone e.g. béathò /ɓε˨˦to˦˨/ - to be given battle, and q i béathò /ʔi˨ɓε˨˦to˦˨/ - who was given battle? are possible words (in both cases the accent is before the ea, turning p /p/ into b /b/. Apart from this case aspirated consonants cannot exist in accented words.

Tone
There are 6 tones in Ëangluk. There are many rules about how tones in a word can combine with each other and with consonants such as aspirates, ejectives and implosives.

Low Tone: a /a˨/ pronounced at the bottom of the speaker's vocal range and either level or slightly falling

Rising Tone: á /a˨˦/ starting at the bottom of the speaker's vocal range and rising.

High Tone: a (unmarked) /a˦/ starting at the top of the speaker's vocal range and either level or rising slightly.

Falling Tone: à /a˦˨/ starting at the top of the speaker's vocal range and falling.

Dipping Tone: ä /a˦˨˦/ starting at the top of the speakers vocal range, falling and then rising again.

Glottallised Falling Tone: â /aʔa ˦˨ / pronounced like the falling tone but with creaky voice. It can only occur in unaccented words, and only a maximum of one time per word and some consider this to be an accent on a syllable with Falling Tone. However Falling Tone only occurs in syllables that cannot bear accent.

One important tone rule in words with two or more syllables is that if a the tone of a syllable begins high (High, Falling, Dipping and Glottalised Tones), then the tone on the preceding syllable in the word (if any) must have ended high (Rising, High, or Dipping Tones). Likewise if the tone of a syllable begins low (Low and Rising Tones), then the tone on the preceding syllable must have ended low (Low, Falling and Glottalise Tones).

Another important rule is that the tone in syllables beginning with aspirated consonants can only be High or Falling. No other tones are possible in these syllables. Also if a word ends with an open syllable (without a consonant at the end) then it can only have Low or Falling Tone.

= Tone Sandhi = Ëangluk has an extremely large number of bisyllablic words that are compounds of two monosyllabic words. Also a large number of words that were bisyllabic in English were broken down into two monosyllabic words, which were then recombined to make new bisyllabic words e.g. from the verbs ëxphoñl - export and imvôm - inform came exvôm - leak information (literally exform). From ëatheak - attack came ïntheak - to besiege and ëxtheak - to sortie. In isolation, the "ex" in export and the "in / im" in inform are pronounced êx and ìhn respectively. As we can see from these, tone sandhi is important in compound words.

One syllable in a word is designated as a Strong syllable, and the others as Weak. In most verbs this is the last syllable, except in verbal nouns when it is the second last syllable of the root (it cannot fall on an infix). In nouns it is the second last syllable of the root, except in the possessive form when it shifts to the last syllable of the root. The most important factor in tone sandhi in noun compounding or incorporation is whether or not the word originally began with a vowel or a consonant

Syllables beginning with consonants
If the last syllable of the compound word is Strong, then the tone does not change.

If the last syllable of the compound is Weak then the following changes occur in that syllable:

If a syllable is designated as Strong and it is not the last syllable of the word, then it may or may not change tone depending on the following syllable.

If the syllable is designated as Weak and it is not the first or the last syllable of the word, then the following changes occur:

If the syllable is designated as Weak and it is the first syllable of the word, then the following changes occur:

Note that the last two cases are identical except for syllables beginning with an aspirated consonant. Note that phy /phj/ and ph /ph/ do not go through the above sandhi process and become y /j/ and a glottal stop q /ʔ/ instead (this is because Ëangluk does not like ejective p).

Syllables beginning with vowels
When these syllables are combined into compound words, then their tone depends on both the preceding and following syllables. However in isolation, syllables beginning with a vowel can only be of two types, Glottalised Tone or Dipping Tone. Here is how they change:

As can be seen, in syllables that do not begin with a vowel, the original tone only matters at the end of words.

Going back to the examples above - to export was broken down to ëx and ''phoñl. Likewise imvòhm - to inform was broken down to ìhn / ìhm and vòhm''. Then using the rules above they were combined to make verbs like ëxvòhm. By changing the 1st syllable from Weak to Strong and the 2nd syllable from Strong to Weak, nouns can be derived from these verbs e.g. exphoñl - (to export) -&gt; ëxpoñl (an export), imvòhm (to inform) -&gt; ïmvòm (information), exvôm - (to leak information) -&gt; ëxvòm (a leak of information). This is analagous to (and indeed descended from) English words like "impact" which are nouns when the stress is on the first syllable e.g. IM-pact and verbs when the stress is on the second syllable e.g. im-PACT. This process is extremely productive in Êangluk as in the following examples:

phaeleys - security guard (from English police)

qaelëys - to employ security for a venue

phartsàw - protected / secure area (from English patrol)

qartsâw - to patrol

ëapfòy - application

ëaphfòy - to apply

hrzékòñt - record (noun)

hrzékhòñt - to record (verb)

= Basic Grammar =

Nouns
Plurals are marked by a -s suffix in words ending in a vowel, ñ, y or w. e.g. b e  - bear -&gt; b e s - bears. Note that this is pronounced voiceless like in English hiss, not as a voiced /z/ like in English his. In words ending with a -k the plural form has -x in instead e.g. bók - book, bóx - books. Likewise words that end in -g or -t change this to -s e.g. - slave, lâys - slaves and - record, - records. In other cases plurals are unmarked e.g. by ai n - brain / brains.

Word order in phrases is head-initial. Numbers and adjectives follow the nouns they modify e.g. bók hl a n - one book, bóx thì - two books, bóx thì kyêyp - two cheap books. Note that tone sandhi does not operate across word boundaries.

Ëangluk morphology is highly fusional, with a single noun affix being able to mark case, possession and topicality. There are different series of affixes for animate and inanimate nouns, being further divided by whether or not the noun root consists of a single syllable. Below is a table with the complete series of noun affixes. An initial hypen indicates a suffix e.g. -ùts, while a hyphen at the end indicates a prefix e.g. hm o y-. Note that the affixes here are shown in their base forms, and undergo tone sandhi when combined with a word.

Collective number is used for nouns such as c a gmén - government, which is one entity but consists of many individuals, politicians, bureaucrats etc. The future suffix -ò is only used for nouns which do not exist yet e.g. an unborn child. Likewise the past suffixes -òats and - are only used for nouns which do not exist anymore e.g. a deceased person. The 1st person suffix -èam can be used for objects the speaker owns or is associated with e.g. héotsèam - my house.ERG.

Possessors are unmarked and come after the noun they possess e.g.

leñlâyg                                phaeleys

ERG.POSS3PSPL-slave.SG security guard

The security guards' slave.

However if the possessor is a noun that consists of only one syllable, then possession is unmarked e.g.

lâyg khùng

slave king

The king's slave.

One other thing that is important is that uncountable nouns usually take plural affixes e.g. jútsàñ - juice.ERG, ïmvòm a ñ- information.ERG. If the singular affix is used, then this implies a very small quantity e.g. jútsùts - a drop of juice.ERG, ïmvòm u s - a small piece of information.

Suffixes can also trigger mutation of the final consonant in a word, as shown in the table below:

These mutations do not affect the tone of the word.

Below are some examples:

by e t - bread.ABS.SG (bread is uncountable, so it means a crumb of bread)

by e r u s - bread.ERG.SG (bread is uncountable, so it means a crumb of bread)

by e s - bread.ABS.PL

by e ts a ñ - bread.ERG.PL

rtsôñ - straw.ABS

rtsôñs - straws.ABS

rtsôñrz u s - straw.ERG

rtsôñts a ñ - straws.ERG

Also if the last syllable of the word ends with the diphthongs ae or eo (with no coda consonant after these) then these change to al and el respectively e.g.

thàe - toe.ABS

thàes - toes.ABS

thàl u s - toe.ERG

thàets a ñ - toes.ERG

khèo - cow.ABS.NONTPC

khèos - cows.ABS.NONTP

khèl u s - cow.ERG.NONTPC

khèots a ñ - cows.ERG.NONTPC

Adjectives
Adjectives never consist of more than one syllable, and always follow the noun they modify, and are uninflected e.g. bók - book, bók kyêyp - cheap book. Comparatives and superlatives are formed by putting h and hm ae ny respectively after the adjective e.g. - cheaper book, - cheapest book. In fact in Ëangluk, it could be said that there is no category of adjective distinct from nouns, as they can be inflected like nouns as in the sentence below:

lokvôñ hny a ng u s          phaeleys

search young-ERG.SG security guard.ABS

Some young people are looking for security guards.

lokvôñ hny a ng u s          hm o ñ  phaeleys

search young-ERG.SG COMP security guard.ABS

Some younger people are looking for security guards. = Dictionary =

Numbers
1 - hl a n

2 - thì

3 - hr e y

4 - vôñ

5 - vôyg

6 - tsüx

7 - tsêañv

8 - äyl

9 - hn o yn

10 - thèn

11 - thèn hl a n

12 - thèn thì

20 - thì thèn

21 - thì thèn hl a n

30 - hr ey thèn

100 - h a n

200 - thì h a n

1,000 - khày (from English "K" e.g. 10K)

1,000,000 - hm i w

1,000,000,000 - b i w

1,000,000,000,000 - khyìw

9,876,543,210,987 - hn o yn khyìw äyl h a n tsêañv thèn tsüx b i w vôyg h a n vôñ hr e y hm i w thì h a n thèn khày hn o yn h a n äyl thèn tsêañv

= Example text = ...