Ceraomi

Setting
Hello and thank you for visiting my language page. Please also see my other language called Nauhi. This language I'm creating is called Ceraomi (pronounced /Kerao̯mi/), and it is supposed to be spoken by the fictional Ceraomi elves who inhabit a large forest Northeast Siberia. Ceraomi is an isolating language with SOV word order. It has a root vocabulary of about 2000 words. There are a large number of words corresponding to things found in nature and particularly in forests, whereas there are a comparatively small number of words corresponding to man-made things. Apart from a few borrowed words from Chukchi and a few from Russian, Ceraomi has had very little influence from any other language. It is also a language isolate, unrelated to any other language.

Phonology
Ceraomi has the following 5 vowels 11 consonants: Diphthongs: /ae/, /ai/, /ao/, /au/, /ei/, /eo/, /eu/, /oi/, /ou/.

Allophony
Voiceless /p/, /t/, /k/, /f/, /s/ and /h/ become voiced to [b], [d], [g], [v], [z] and [ɦ] respectively when occurring between two vowels within a word, and /l/ becomes a flap [ɾ] in this environment. /t/ and /s/ and their voiced allophones [d] and [z] each become strongly palatalized before front vowels, becoming [tʲ], [sʲ], [dʲ] and [zʲ] respectively. /n/ assimilates to [ŋ] before /k/.

Phonotactics
All words start in one of the following seven consonants: /p/, /t/, /k/, /f/, /s/, /h/, /l/. All words end in a vowel. Diphthongs occur fairly frequently but are limited to stressed syllables. Clusters of two adjacent vowels pronounced separately are not permitted. Consonant clusters also occur fairly frequently but are limited to a length of two consonants and are mostly found word-medially.

Word stress
Stress in Ceraomi words is fairly weak and also is not phonemic. Stress is always predictable and falls on the penultimate syllable when the word has more than one syllable.

Root morphemes
There are about 2000 root morphemes in Ceraomi. Due to this fairly small root vocabulary size, Ceraomi relies heavily on the joining of root morphemes to form compound structures. When forming compounds, root morphemes are placed side by side and maintain their original form, rather than being agglutinated into a single longer word. Ceraomi morphology is discussed in more depth in the grammar section of this page (please see below). Root morphemes never exceed three syllables in length. The following word structures are found for Ceraomi root morphemes (C = consonant, V = vowel, D = diphthong): Monosyllabic: CV, CD; Disyllabic: CVC(C)V, CDC(C)V; Trisyllabic: CVCVC(C)V, CVCDC(C)V.

Grammar overview
Ceraomi is an ergative-absolutive language with a Subject-Object-Verb word order. It has a strongly isolating morphology. It is predominantly left branching and is postpositional. The subject, direct object and indirect object are all marked by postpositions. There are eight parts of speech in Ceraomi; the noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, postposition, conjunction and interjection.

Counting system
Ceraomi has an 8-base counting system, with root morphemes coding for the numbers 1 to 8. It also has a root morpheme for the number 64, and one for 512 (64 multiplied by 8). The number 9 literally takes the form 'eight plus one', and the number 10 takes the form 'eight plus two', the number 11 'eight plus three', and so on until 16, which takes the form 'two eight' (2 multiplied by 8). The number 17 takes the form 'two eight plus one', and the number 18 'two eight plus two', and so on until 24, which takes the form 'three eight'. The numbers are formed this way until the number 64, which is written with a new morpheme. 65 takes the form 'sixty-four plus one'. 72 is 'sixty-four plus eight', and sevently three is 'sixty-four plus eight plus one'. 80 would be 'sixty-four plus two eight', and 81 'sixty-four plus two eight plus one'. 100 would be 'sixty-four plus four eight plus four'.

Colour terms
Ceraomi has root morphemes for the primary colours red, blue and yellow, and for the secondary colours green, orange and purple. It also has root morphemes for black, grey and white. Other colours can be formed by placing two or more root colour words side by side.