Common Saakkih

Common Saakkih is the earliest attested of the Saakkih languages, named so for their urheimat - the Saakkih peninsula in the modern-day Shinsali confederacy.

General information
Common Saakkih is a fusional ergative-absolutive language. It has a relatively small consonant inventory (12 consonants) and a moderately-sized vowel inventory (10 vowels; 5 long and 5 short).

Consonants

 * Consonant gemination is contrastive and occurs in roots, across morpheme boundaries, and in affixes

Vowels

 * There are five diphthongs: /ai ae ao oi eo/

Allophony

 * /r/ is tapped before other consonants or word-finally
 * /l/ is velarized in the syllable coda
 * /n/ becomes [ŋ] before /k/ and /w/
 * /i/ is realized as [j] pre- and intervocalically
 * Two of the same vowels (i.e. /ee/) occuring across morpheme boundaries are realised as a single long vowel ([e:]) and the resulting long vowel may be stressed
 * A geminate consonant (for example, /s:/) followed by the same consonant, geminate or non-geminate, across a morpheme boundary will be realized as a single geminate consonant
 * Two different adjacent vowels that do not make up a diphthong are realised as seperated by hiatus
 * Vowels become more lax before (not after) the pharyngeal fricative
 * /i/ > [ɪ]
 * /u/ > [ʊ]
 * /o/ > [ɔ]
 * /a/ > [æ]
 * /e/ > [ɛ]

Writing system

 * Except for below, all sounds are written as in the IPA
 * /ħ/ is written as h
 * Long vowels are written by doubling the vowel
 * Geminate consonants are written by doubling the grapheme
 * Two of the same geminate consonants or a geminate consonant followed by the same non-geminate consonant will retain the spelling (i.e., sss or ssss) despite being realized as a single geminate consonants. This is not necessary for long vowels.

Phonotactics
Any syllables derivable from (C)(R)V(C) that do not violate the rules below is permissible, where C is any consonant, R is any consonant other than a stop or nasal, and V is a short or long vowel or a diphthong. Stress
 * Geminate consonants do not occur word initially
 * A long vowel followed by a long or short vowel of the same quality or vice versa (i.e., a and aa or ee and ee) will not occur and is broken up by an intrusive consonant, /n/. This is not true for vowels of different quality, meaning that sequences such as aaioo are allowed.

Stress is very regular and stress positioning is determined by the structures of respective syllables in a root. A syllable is considered light if it has a short vowel and long if it has a long vowel or a diphthong. Stress is characterized by a lengthening of the vowel that is stressed.

Stress in Common Saakkih follows these rules:
 * 1) If a word is monosyllabic, it is stressed.
 * 2) In a multiple-syllable word, stress always falls on either the penultimate or ultimate syllable of a word.
 * 3) Stress always falls on the penultimate syllable if it is heavy.
 * 4) If the penultimate syllable is light and the ultimate syllable is heavy, stress falls on the ultimate syllable.
 * 5) If both final syllables are light, stress falls on the penultimate syllable.

Nouns
Nouns are made distinct based on semantic animacy, wherein animate is further made distinct into human and non-human, providing for three noun classes: human, animate non-human, and inanimate. Most nouns are classified semantically, but as with any animacy system, there are digressions, and in Common Saakkih, these are reflective of their culture. Nouns that name things in nature, things dealing with astrology, or things dealing with weather, despite being semantically inanimate, commonly are classified under animate human or animate non-human. Noun endings across all three classes are similar, but they are, in fact, declined differently according to their animacy class.

The nominal system is mostly agglutinative, wherein nouns decline for eight cases: ergative, absolutive, dative, genitive, instrumental, ablative, locative, and inessive, and two numbers: singular and plural.

The ergative suffix across all three declensions is -e but it will become -i if the stem ends in /i/ due to a historic vowel shift of /ie/ to /i:/. If the stem ends in /i:/, an intrusive -n- will appear and the ergative suffix will be -e as expected.

Human noun declension
The plural suffix for human animate nouns is -k. There is an intrusive -a between the stem and case/number suffix(es) if the declined noun does not agree with Common Saakkih phonotactics. Below is an example declension of an animate human noun (haam [ħa:m] - man). Suffixes are in bold.

Non-human noun declension
The plural suffix for non-human animate nouns is -k as well. The intrusive vowel, used if suffixing the plural or case endings to a noun, is not -a as with human animate nouns, but -ee. Below is an example declension of an animate non-human noun (aleoti [aleoti] - fire). Suffixes are in bold.

Inanimate noun declension
The plural suffix for inanimate nouns is -a. If a declined noun would defy Common Saakkih phonotactics, there is an intrusive -i between the stem and case/number suffix(es). Below is an example declension of an inanimate noun (ilabb [ilab:] - piece (of something)). Suffixes are in bold.