Yoketian

The Yoketi were the first civilization of Hudar. Their written history started around the year -2000 and reached its heyday around -700. They were organized in a number of rivaling slave-owning city-states, ruled by a duke (acway, literally 'strong man'). The cities constantly fought each other.

Their religion was polytheistic and featured multiple human sacrifices (wirawča), mostly of prisoners of war. Once a year, there was a feast during which a slave was crowned duke and everything normally considered sinful was allowed. After the feast, the Yoketi sacrificed the slave to the sun god Ma'elchōr.

The Yoketi were ultimately conquered by the Nolikan emperor Amelati in the year 78.

Etymology: Yokēt literally means 'the nurturing place'.

=Language=

The Yoketi language (yokēttu) was the first written language of Hudar. Writing started with logograms but later evolved into a syllabary, which was borrowed to write Nolikan. The writing system was never standarized. There were often two or three glyphs for the same syllable; and their shapes varied from city to city.

Phonology
Vowels: a e i o u, with contrastive length (marked with a macron)

Consonants:
 * Stops: p t k q
 * Aspirated stops: ph th kh qh
 * Affricates: c č
 * Aspirated affricates: ch čh
 * Fricatives: s š h
 * Approximants: w l y
 * Tap: r ŕ; the latter probably a palatal flap given treatment in words borrowed into Nolikan, which turn it into /j/ or /h/.

Syllable structure is CVC. Details such as stress and allophony are unknown

Morphology
Yoketi is an agglutinating language. Its vocabulary consists of basic roots which can be extended into different parts of speech, their meaning changed or modified, with various suffixes. Most of the suffixes are optional, so that there is a choice of what sort of information to convey with a given word.

Nouns
Yoketi nouns are inflected for case, number and possessor.

There are 13 cases, whith the following endings:


 * Nominative - Ø
 * Accusative -u (animated masculine nouns), -a (other nouns)
 * Dative -or
 * Locative -tin
 * Ablative -sā
 * Allative -mun
 * Instrumental -isse
 * Comitative -lla
 * Prolative -pe :Abessive -inti
 * Comparative -iš
 * Essive –aq
 * Vocative -ā

Number endings come after the case endings. The basic dual ending is -r. However, -l is used in the dative as well in words whose stems end in an /r/. The plural ending is -n.

If inflections would result in an illegal consonant cluster, an /e/ is inserted, for example arkōt means 'friend', 'friends' is arkōten and 'with friends' is arkōtellan.

Verbs
Verbs are inflected for tense, mood and person. The conjugation depends both on subject and object.

There are four tenses, whith their endings:


 * Present -Ø
 * Past -the
 * Future -īk
 * Conditional –pho

There is a rather complicated system of moods:


 * Imperfective -Ø
 * Perfective –un
 * Progressive -čē
 * Durative -mal
 * Iterative –cō
 * Inchoative –qa
 * Finitative -ut

Person is expressed by prefixes. There are separate nominative and accusative prefixes, making Yoketi a double-marking language.


 * 1sg a- / ra-
 * 1pl (inclusive) phi- / phu-
 * 1pl (exclusive) po- / pol-
 * 2 ti- / tu-
 * 3 Ø- / hu-

Number is not marked, except of first person pronouns. This is actually similar to the use of "you" in modern English.

There are separate honorific prefixes for second and third persons:


 * 2 tequn- / toqun-
 * 3 qon- / hon-

Separate pronouns are used for emphatic purposes and can be easily formed by prefixing i- before the accusative personal morpheme, e.g. ira 'me', ihu 'she'. These constructions can receive number ending, as in ipoler 'we two'.

Negation is expressed by adding –pu at the end of the entire verbal structure: ahunehmalpu 'I don't love him anymore'.

Adjectives
Adjectives and adverbs are morphologically identical and cannot be inflected, except for the comparisons:


 * mu'āl 'beautiful'
 * womu'āl 'be more beautiful than'
 * semu'āl 'be less beautiful than'
 * mu'āl kan 'the most beautiful'
 * mu'āl nēŕ 'the less beautiful'

Syntax
The basic word order is SOV, but it can vary since noun cases allow understanding even most bizarrely mangled sentences.