Qetarch

General information
In-universe:

Qetarch (pronounced [qəˈʈɑᴙ]) is a language spoken by the warrior class of a space-faring race of the same name.

Real-world:

I created this language as a part of a SF conworld I was inventing. The idea was to make a harsh-sounding language suitable for warriors, which resulted in a large numbers of rhotics and creaky voice pronounciation of vowels. I thought it would be a fun making a language in which even very polite questions sound like insults.

Consonants
All flaps are (normally) voiceless and slightly aspirated. Labioental fricative /f/ is often pronounced dentolabial. The alveolar sibilant is laminal (like in Basque). Unvoiced consonants can acquire voicedness when inter-vocalic due to the lenition processes, but this is non-phonemical.

Vowels
All vowels are usually spoken with creaky voice, although with long vowels it's permissible to open the glottis a bit more than with the short ones.

Alphabet
Qetarch has a syllabic alphabet of its own, but the romanised version (created for my own convenience) also exisits, and it looks as follows:
 * ɑ > a
 * ɑː > aa (all long vowels are written as doubles, so it's not necessary to write them all here)
 * ə > e
 * ɪ > i
 * o > o
 * ɯ > y
 * ɳ > n
 * pʰ > p
 * ʈ > t
 * ʈʰ > th
 * qʰ > qh
 * q > q
 * ʔ > |
 * f > f
 * s̻ > s
 * ʂ > z
 * ʜ > hh
 * ɬ > lh
 * r > r
 * ɾ̥ > rh
 * ɽ͡r > rd
 * ɽ > rdh
 * ʀ > rg
 * ɢ̆ > rgh
 * ᴙ > rch

Phonotactics
Qetarch has CV(C) syllable structure, with an obligatory one-consonant onset, one-vowel nucleus (which is also obligatory) and an unobligatory coda (one-consonantal, too). Words are composed of syllabical raher than phonemical units (a feature reflected in the writing system). Each word usually contains one to three sylables (longer words are rare), but these can also be juxtaposed to form longer derived words, although this doesn't influence the inner structure of words.

Grammar
Qetarch uses so-called adjuncts (small, uninflectible words; they can also be called particles) to inflect other words like verbs or substantives (This language doesn't clearly distinguish between nouns and adjectives, so they will be collectively called substantives later in this article). These adjuncts/particles can also be joined into longer forms, thus allowing them to inflect themselves in some way.

Nouns
Qetarch nouns are formed by putting a casual adjunct (that is, an adjunct/particle which defines case) before a bare substantive (a 'pure' form of a non-verb part of speech). There are 3 cases: absolutive, descriptive and ergative/oblique (or nonabsolutive). Nouns don't normally decline by number or gender (although it's possible to put a numeral or gender adjunct in front of a noun), but they do have several definitness levels, marked in several ways.

Cases
Absolutive is the simplest word form found in the language, with no adjuncts. It marks the agent in intransitive clauses and the patient in transitive ones. In a sentence, it's usually just behind the predicate.

Nonabsolutive is a substantive with an adjunct put in front of it. The adjuncts might be either locative (e. g. defining spacial and/or temporal relationships between various subtantives) or grammatical (e. g. defining some other function in a sentence). The first kind is very much like Indo-European prepositions; the second kind is a bit more complicated. (Further information will be revealed when I put here the list of adjuncts).

Descriptive or semblative/adjectival/adverbial case is used in two ways: either to show some similiarity, correspondence and/or affinity between the two substantives; or simply to turn a "noun" into an "adjective/adverb". There are 5 descriptive case adjuncts: one for the positive (thyy), 2 for comparative (one for positive comaparation ("more than"- si) and one for negative comparation ("less than"- rho)) and 2 superlative (as in the comp.: one for "+" and one for "-"; the only differnece is that the superlatives have their vowels prolonged, thus forming sii and rhoo, respectively).

Definitness
Qetarch has several ways of marking definitness of its substantives. One way is marking a substantive we consider definite with a pronoun (either personal or impersonal); this way is used, for example, when we're addressing somebody. The other way is using the context and/or the definitness adjuncts. There are 3 of them: 2 definite and 1 indefinite. The definite adjuncts are further distinguished by marking whether a given person/object etc. is oriented towards the speaker (hhan) or turned from him (hholh) (this distinction roughly corresponds to the difference between close and remote objects, as between this and that). The definite adjuncts are usually dropped if considered unnecessary in a given context (the same applies to the indefinite adjunct |yyrg).

Verbs
Verbs are a bit more complicated. There are 3 forms (or, rather, "positions") a verb can take: finite, gerundive and participial. In each of these positions, though, it can take one of 5 mood adjuncts (indicative/affirmative, negative, volitive, interrogative and archaic subjunctive), 1 tense adjunct (past), 2 quasitense adjuncts (perfect and prospective; named quasitenses because, depending on the situation, the may function as tense markers, aspect markers or both) and 4 aspectual adjuncts (perfective, momentane, stative and progressive). There are also 4 voices (active, antipassive, reflexive and reciprocal), but these are marked not by adjuncts, but with the syntax only.

Finite form
In this position, a verb has a tense/aspect adjunct in front of it. The tense/aspect adjunct is constructed in such a way, that first comes the tense adjunct (when the verb is past; in the non-past it's omitted). To it is suffixed one of the aspectual adjuncts. The quasitense ones may come both prefixed to the aspectual one, or suffixed to the tense one (or even interfixed between them).

But before it, at the beginning of the sentence, there's a mood adjunct, which is obligatory (except that the affirmative/indicative might be dropped if the context doesn't demand it).

Gerundive
The gerundive is almost the same as the finitive in form, except that a casual adjunct is prefixed to its tense/aspect adjunct, and the entire form is put in some other position than sentence-initial. It fulfills the role of the infinitive, as well as that of supine (with an allative adjunct).

It has all the properties of a finitive, except the mood and voice. It can even have its own agent, patient and/or objects, marked with the appropriate cases.

Participial
This form is derived directly from the gerundive (as a matter of fact, it's actually the gerundive in the descriptive case). It informs about the relationship of an activity described with it with the one conveyed by the main verb, from the perspective of one of the prticipants.

Verb's conjugation
Below is a short description of how Qetarch verbs conjugate.

Moods in Qetarch are marked with a sentence-initial adjunct (that is, an adjunct that's placed at the very beginning of every main sentence). There are 5 moods in the language, which are:


 * Indicative/Affirmative- the simplest mood, one that is used to mark reality of a sentence; it's also used as a kind of affirmative (as opposed to the Negative mood) or emphatic (to further emphasize something). Marked by the adjunct |aa (the shorter form, |a, is used as an equivalent of 'yes').


 * Negative- the opposite of the Indicative, it negates a sentence. Adjunct: pii (as with the indicative, shorter form pi is used for 'no').


 * Volitive- used to express thaat the speaker wants something; it covers the Imperative and the Optative. In the modern-day usage, however, it has taken to cover the Subjunctive, too, making the latter a bit archaic. It's marked by the rchaa adjunct (it may be prefixed to an affirmative or negative particle, forming constructions similar to 'may it be/do!' or 'may it not be/do!').


 * Interrogative- used to form questions. Its adjunct is zee (the same adjunct, but shortened, functions as a conjunction 'or').


 * Subjunctive- a mood that's completely fallen out of use nowadays, with the past tense taking some of its qualities; it used to express something completely unrealistic, that couldn't be realised. Its adjunct was tee (it isn't completely out of use, though; its short form, te, is now the past tense marker).

Tense/aspect- as has been said above, there is one tense particle (te), 2 quasitense particles and 4 purely aspectual ones.


 * Past tense- marked by a te prefixed to an aspectual adjunct. Without it, the tense is Present (or, rather, Non-past, as it tends to cover both the present and the future). It has retained some of its old Subjunctive characteristics and function, though that seldom turns out nowadays.


 * Perfect quasitense- similiarly to the one we find in English (or Ancient Greek, for example), it describes an action which, although finished before the time the speaker is describing, has stil some influence on the present situation. It's called a quasitense, because its particle, rgha can be used as an independent aspectual adjunct, but it can also be prefixed to another one like the past tense te; it can even be interfixed between the two, thus forming something like a pluperfect.


 * Progressive quasitense- its position is exactly the same as the Perfect's, but its meaning is the opposite; i. e., it doesn't descibe the past, but the future - planned activities and events, a bit like English 'be going to' construction. It uses the rdhi particle.


 * Perfective aspect- describes actions that are finished (or, at least, considered a single whole). Marked by an adjunct fo.


 * Momentane aspect- like the perfective, it describes finished or somewhat contained actions, but with an emphasis on the short duration; as such, it's often used in literature, but less often in the spoken language. Marked by a lhy particle.


 * Aorist aspect- used as a Stative, that is, for events/activities that are constant and/or habitual. Its particle is rdaa.


 * Progressive/Continous aspect- like its English counterpart, it describes an ongoing/evolving action. Its particle is rii.

Voices- there are 4 of them in the Qetarch, which are the folowing:


 * Active- the most basic one; may be transitive or intransitive.


 * Antipassive- emphasizes the agent.


 * Reflexive- The agent is its own patient.


 * Reciprocal- The agent acts on somebody else, who in turn acts on him.

Syntax
Qetarch is VOS (or, rather, verb-patient-agent) and strongly head-initial. In an active voice sentence, a mood adjunct comes first, then there is a tense/aspect adjunct right before the verb. That is then followed by the absolutive. Next come all the indirect objects, with the ergative coming at the end.

If the voice is antipassive, there's no ergative and the absolutive is put in front of the main verb.

In the reflexive, the absolutive is erased, and the remaining ergative is both the agent and the patient.

In the reciprocal there are 2 or more ergatives with no absolutive and all are considered to be doing something to each other.

Vocabulary
Coming soon...

Example text
Coming soon...