Classical Gallifreyan

Classification and Dialects
Classical Gallifreyan is the classical language of Gallifrey, belonging to the family of the Gallifreyan languages ultimately descended from Old High Gallifreyan, with the intermediate stage of Middle Gallifreyan. The time it was an actual spoken language is currently unknown; it was definitely spoken millennia after the death of Rassilon, and then slowly became only spoken by high-rank Time Lords and otherwise a literary written language. It forms however the basis for the orthography of later stages of the language.

When it was spoken, it is known to have had two main dialects: Capitolian, which spawned Late Gallifreyan, and Arcadic, which later spawned the separate language of Arcadian. Although other idioms spoken on Gallifrey are sometimes classified as dialects of Classical Gallifreyan, they are often mutually unintellegible, and are rather separate languages all descended from Old High Gallifreyan.

Consonants
Classical Gallifreyan has a restricted consonantal inventory, with only four places of articulations distinguished (by the time Classical Gallifreyan was spoken, the velars and uvulars of Middle Gallifreyan had become glottals; the glottals themselves of Middle Gallifreyan had disappeared, leaving vowel colouring).

A phone that is not shown here, not being phonemic, is [ʕ], which is often used to break up clusters of two or more vowels.

The stops tend to be tense, while fricatives are lightly aspirated as [ɸʰ βʱ θʰ ðʱ sʰ zʱ].

All consonants except for the glottal fricatives can be geminated; also, /p:/ and /t:/ are frequently affricated to [p͡ɸ t͡θ].

Vowels
In contrast with the consonants, Classical Gallifreyan has a very large vowel inventory, largely due to vowel colouring left mainly by coda /r/ and other phonemes, which expanded the previous inventory of ten vowels, with five qualities and a rounding opposition, of Middle Gallifreyan. They are listed below:

Not all those vowels are however equally common; /ø ɶ/ only appear in a handful of words.

The vowels transcribed as /æ̞ ɶ/ tend to be pronounced as [æ œ̞] in more conservative speech.

Rounded high vowels are often longer than the others. Moreover, all vowels are lengthened before voiced consonants.

Stress always falls on the first syllable; the stressed syllable may also be slightly nasalized.

All syllables can have either a flat, high, low, rising or falling tone.

Phonotactics
Classical Gallifreyan has simpler phonotactics than Middle Gallifreyan did, although still more complex than in Late Gallifreyan. The syllable structure is indeed (C)V(C), with the possibility of simple codas (which are absent in Late Gallifreyan).

Register pronunciations
Two different accents exist in Classical Gallifreyan, one being more conservative and the other being more innovative. The conservative accents closely resembles the pronunciation the language had in its earliest stage, and later survived in formal speech while the spoken language adopted a more innovative accent. When Classical Gallifreyan was relegated to a classical language, the conservative accent was employed almost exclusively in the meetings between Time Lords (ironically, this accent is easier to learn for speakers of Late Gallifreyan), with the innovative accent being used sparingly in informal conversations between a few high-rank Time Lords; it is however frequently used when teaching the language.

Their differences are detailed below.


 * Glottals are pronounced as velars in the conservative accent, so that /ʔ h ɦ/ become [k x ɣ]; the glottal stop is especially often voiced to [g].


 * The vowel /a/ is a fully open [ä] in the conservative accent, while in the innovative accent it approaches [ɐ] or even [ɜ].


 * As detailed in the Vowels section, the vowel /æ/ is fully open in the innovative accent.


 * /z/ is always pronounced as a sibilant [z] in the conservative accent, while in the innovative accent it is in free variation with a tap [ɾ].


 * /ð/ can be pronounced as a dental fricative in both accents; however, in the conservative accent, it may be pronounced as [l] (which was a phoneme in Middle Gallifreyan), while in the innovative accent it is also in free variation with the alveolar tap.

Tone sandhi
Classical Gallifreyan displays some interactions between tones, which largely disappear in Late Gallifreyan. They are mainly displayed when two syllables with the same tone come into contact. Those are the rules followed:


 * Syllables after a syllable with high or low tone preserve their tone.


 * A flat tone after another flat tone becomes a low tone before a voiced consonant and a high tone elsewhere.


 * A low or high tone after a flat tone become respectively a falling or a rising tone.


 * A falling tone after another falling tone becomes a low tone, with the allophony intact.


 * A rising tone after another rising tone becomes a high tone, with the allophony intact.

"With the allophony intact" here refers to the tendency of the falling and rising tone in Classical Gallifreyan to turn the respective vowels into diphthongs (which become phonemic in Late Gallifreyan), and the diphthong is kept even when the tone sandhi process turns a moving tone into a static tone, and vice versa the diphthongization doesn't occur when a static turn is turned into a moving tone.

The diphthongization patterns are as follows: î->ɪi; ǐ->iɪ; ɨ̂->ɘɨ; ɨ̌->ɨɘ; ê->ɘe; ě->eɘ; ə̂->ɜə; ə̌->əɜ; ŷ->ʏy; y̌->yʏ; ʉ̂->ɵʉ; ʉ̌->ʉɵ; ø̂->ɵø; ø̌->øɵ; ɵ̂->ɞɵ; ɵ̌->ɵɞ; ɛ̂->ɜɛ; ɛ̌->ɛɜ; æ̂->ɜæ; æ̌->æɜ; œ̂->ɞœ; œ̌->œɞ; ɶ̂->ɞɶ; ɶ̌->ɶɞ; â->ɐä; ǎ->äɐ; ɞ̂->ɞä; ɞ̌->äɞ; ɯ̂->ʊɯ; ɯ̌->ɯʊ; ɤ̂->ɘɤ; ɤ̌->ɤɘ; û->ʊu; ǔ->uʊ; ô->ɵo; ǒ->oɵ; ʌ̂->ɜʌ; ʌ̌->ʌɜ; ɑ̂->ɞɔ; ɑ̌->ɔɞ; ɔ̂->ɞɔ; ɔ̌->ɔɞ; ɒ̂->ɞɒ; ɒ̌->ɒɞ.

Grammar
Classical Gallifreyan has a considerably richer transfixing morphology than Late Gallifreyan, while prefixing morphology is rare and suffixing morphology is almost absent. Most words are composed of a bivocalic root of the form VCVC, where C represents a consonantal transfix, and sometimes an additional vowel is suffixed when applying derivational morphology.

Nouns
Nouns belong to one of nine declensions and inflect for two states (terrestrial and spatial), five tenses (present, past, future, frequentative and eternal) and thirteen cases (benefactive, accusative, modal, nominative, causative, ablative, materiative, comitative, genitive, instrumental, dative, locative, vocative).

Declensions are signalled by the manner of articulation of the two transfixes of the word. Specifically:


 * The first declension is marked by two stops;
 * The second declension is marked by two fricatives;
 * The third declension is marked by a stop and then a fricative;
 * The fourth declension is marked by a fricative and then a stop;
 * The fifth declension is marked by two mixed transfixes;
 * The sixth declension is marked by a stop and then a mixed transfix;
 * The seventh declension is marked by a mixed transfix and then a stop;
 * The eighth declension is marked by a fricative and then a mixed transfix;
 * The ninth declension is marked by a mixed transfix and then a fricative.

"Mixed transfix" here refers to a situation where the manner of articulation of the transfix is not predetermined, and instead a default form of the affix is used, which can be a stop or a fricative depending on the transfix.

The first transfix carries the information on the state and the tense of the noun, and is declined as follows. The angular brackets <> represent what grapheme is used to transcribe the affix. The default form to be used when a mixed transfix is required is bolded.