Lalakhmet

General Information
Lalakhmet (also known as Proto-Lalakhi) is an a priori, proto- lang. Its descendents will speak in (constate for Nomidian) where Nomidian is spoken.

Consonants
Vowel
 * The lenis voiced plosives are voiced before liquids
 * /*ʀ/ is pronounced [ʁ̥~ʀ̥]
 * /*q/ is pronounced [ɢ̥~ɢ]
 * /*ł/ is pronounced [ɬ]

Phonotactics
C(L)V(C)(C) C - consonant | V - vowel | L - liquid
 * Nasals and glottals cannot be in a cluster
 * [s] cannot follow another consonant
 * [j] and [w] cannot come before another consonant
 * Liquids cannot follow consonants at the end of a syllable
 * Two alveolar consonants cannot be in a cluster

Verb
Verbs are the most complicated aspect of Lalakhmet conjugating to voice, aspect, tense, and mood (and person/number in the passive). Verbs are split into 5 morphological categories, sometimes referred to in Lalakhi grammar as  grammatical form , dependent on their stem (some verbs may not have some forms because of their lexical definition): dynamic, static, reflexive, and metamorphive.

Voice

There are two voices: active and passive. All verbs must have an object ("object" here does not refer to the accusative, but the object in the subject-agent-object trifecta).

The passive voice therefore is not a passive in the English sense. Instead, it creates an ergative-absolutive statement. The object is raised subject and the agent is removed. In other words, the accusative / direct object is made the subject of the sentence, the nominative, and the previous subject is removed.

Tense/Aspect Timeline of Events Start <––––––––––––––––––|–––––––––––––––|-|––––––––––––|-|––––––––––––––––––––>                  Perfect            Present            Future These three are the main tenses: the present, perfect, and future. From this, other tenses are made depending on certain processes and verbal form. The static > dynamic/metamorphic shift is where the tenses always change aspect: perfect > imperfect, present > progressive, future > future progressive.

Mood

Moods are productive and can be used to have meaning. The negation of each mood does not negate the fact but reverses the mood's definition (as in, negative indicative = untrue statement, lie; negative optative = wish not to, desire not to). Form
 * Indicative, IND : facts and statements
 * Optative, OPT : desire or wish
 * Potential, POT : can or able to
 * Imperitive, IMR : demand that or require that; also functions as a jussive.

Grammatical "form" is how the verb carried about. Although productive, it is a fully different paradigm. Ablauts
 * Dynamic - a continuing action indicating motion; it is characterized by being only in moving action verbs (such as, "I am running" - "I am walking" - "I am thinking" ; however, phrases like "I am thinking" or "I am crying" do not apply because they do not contain motion)
 * Static - a single, basic verb; for verbs of motion, this is almost of a gnomic aspect (such as, "I possess" - "I confess" - "I think" ; in motion verbs, "I run" - "I walk" - "I swim")
 * Reflexive - a verb done onto oneself; these may have a reciprocal sense in the plural (such as, "I eat myself" - "I run over myself" - "I kill myself")
 * Metamorphive - denotes a change of state or the beginning of an action. As in, "to freeze" is intrinsically metamorphive as it denotes a change from not frozen to frozen (such as, "to melt" - "to boil" - "to mold" - "to turn into" - "to cook" - "to begin to eat" - "to begin to run")


 * Consonant

There is a basic consonant ablaut. There are two common uses of the consonant ablaut. The first is in verb paradigms when going from active to passive where the active indicative ending undergoes the ablaut. Secondly is when changing lexical category where the stem's root consonant (if there are mutiple, it will be the initial one) undergoes the change and the stem takes the declensional change.
 * Plosives > Nasals
 * p > m
 * t > n
 * k > ŋ
 * q > ŋ́
 * Fricatives > Liquids
 * s > r
 * ł > l
 * x > j
 * ʀ > r
 * h > w
 * Nasals > Liquids or Fricatives
 * m > w
 * n > r
 * ŋ > j
 * ŋ́ > ʀ
 * Liquids > Fricatives or Nothing
 * w > ∅
 * w > p (finally)
 * r > s
 * l > ł (before/after a consonant)
 * l > s (elsewhere)
 * j > x

Conjugation

 * *pōe- : (dyn) to be eating ; (sta) to eat [in general] ; (ref) to eat oneself; (met) to begin eating

Noun
Nouns are made up of two parts: the root and the grammatical suffix. Each noun declines in one of the four paradigms; one for each gender.

Gender

There are four genders: masculine, feminine, abstract, and inanimate. Masculine and feminine pertain to an animate creature's (i.e. people and animals) biological gender. The abstract gender is put on anything that is "abstract" in nature (such as ideas, theories, philosophies, etc.). The last gender, inanimate, is applied to, as the name of the gender, inanimate objects such as rocks, furniture, and water.

The respective genders have these theme vowels: In pronouns, these four genders are simplified to two: animate and inanimate. This is especially important in verbs (see, Voice and Conjugation).
 * Masculine: *o
 * Feminine: *y
 * Abstract: *oi
 * Inanimate: *ei

Plurality

There are three levels of the plural: the singular, the plural, and the partitive. The singular and plural function as in English. The partitive, however, has two parts: one is like that of French where the object being referred to is a part, hence part-itive, of the whole noun which is also achieved in English with the adjective some (i.e. some of the soup, some cake, some coffee). The second aspect is like a paucal where there is a small group of a greater noun (for example: "Can you pass me some of those water glasses" . "We went to see some of those houses down the road" . In both examples, the referred noun is a group of a larger group).

Adjective
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Ideas:
 * Adjectives with degrees of connotativeness (heinous, bad, neutral, good, glorious) and voice (positive/negative, active/passive) with comparativeness made with another specifically declining adjective
 * Roots be at the base with verbs, noun, and adjectives being formed therefrom
 * Strong emphasis on reflexive/passive
 * Ergative-absolutive descendents