Luñothir

General Information
Luñothir is a language spoken by the Ondir people of the Riosníthe Archipelago, a descendant of Proto-Ondese. While there are many local varieties, the standard Luñothir dialect represented in this document is the most widely spoken dialect, originally spoken by the Kiñoquilnir tribe, which came to dominate the region three centuries ago.

Luñothir (literally, “that of the tongue”) is a poly-synthetic, loosely head-first language; notably, modifiers come before their subject. Suffixes dominate its word construction, however there are a number of prefixes of more recent origin. Verbs decline for three tenses and two moods. Nouns decline for six cases, in singular and plural number, with four genders (neutral, male, female, abstract). Word order is loose, but defaults to SOV.

Vowels
All vowels have phonemically distinguished long versions.

Romanization
* (x) is an allophone for /k/ that only occurs in word-final position.

Phonotactics
Word initial syllables are always a simple open (C)V(V)(C) structure. Word-final syllables are more complex with a (C)(C)V(V)(S) structure. Stops and nasals are disallowed in word-final positions (stops become fricatives, nasals vocalize). Interior syllables can have consonant clusters and geminates in both onset and coda positions, but not along with long vowels or diphthongs, in which case consonant clusters can only exist in the onset position. Stops can only cluster with sonarants, and only in the second position. Nasals cannot follow liquids (/ml/ or /nr/ are disallowed).

Verbs
Verbs in Luñothir are relatively simple. Descended from a more complex verbal system, many verbs in Luñothir that are understood as independent words are in fact descended from aspectual and modal versions of the same root. Verbs conjugate to reflect three tenses: present, past, and future; and express two moods: perfective (or simple) and imperfective. Verbs, aslo, will contract with postpositions, forming new verbs. Verbs conjugate to agree with subject grammatical persons: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. 1st person simple present tense verbs are unmarked and do not decline.

Postpositional Prefixes
This is a recent innovation, and does not include all postpositions, only the most commonly used and simplest ones.

Aspects
Luñothir only has two aspects: Perfective (meaning a whole act) and Imperfective (meaning an ongoing act, equivalent to the English -ing suffix). The Perfective aspect is unmarked; however, the Imperfective aspect is marked by reduplication descended from Proto-Ondese. This results in some peculiar verb forms, some almost unrecognizable from the perfective for, while others may be identical.

Increasingly, native speakers of Luñothir have gotten around this complication by using the copular verb (to be) before a verb’s infinitive form (-r suffix).

Valency
Proto-Ondese had a grammatical valency operation by adding the -toa suffix to create valency, and the -atwa suffix to make a verb invalent. And while the relationship to these verbs is still evident in many of their Luñothir descendants, they are understood as separate words with their own nuanced meanings. Many invalent forms were reanalyzed as either adjectives or nouns.

Example:

Regular Verb Conjugation Patterns
Luñothir verbs conjugate to match the personage and plurality of their subject in present tense. Only some irregular verbs do so in the past and future tenses.

The simplest way to view conjugation patterns is by examining the way root-final vowels affect them. The following are the 5 most common verb conjugation patterns. * Stops become unvoiced fricatives, nasals vocalize and form diphthongs

Irregular Verbs
Luñothir has several irregular verbs. Some irregularities are the result of phonemic shifts (e.g. mer “to die”), while others are from word mergers (e.g. eamar “to be”).

Nouns
Nouns in Luñothir are heavily inflected. They decline for six cases, four genders, and plurality. While there are some irregular nouns, it is easiest to view the noun gender-case system by evaluating how the final vowel of the root word affects declension patterns.

Noun Gender/Case Declension
Many nouns in Luñothir descend from the same root with a different gender modifier attached, creating a slightly different noun. For example “kinsman/family member” (oner) compared to the words for “aunt” and “uncle” (oné and ombo respectively) and the word for “kinship” (onede).

Often, the neutral plural is used when a masculine of feminine subject might be used, because the gender of a group cannot be easily discerned. It does not help that in most nouns, the plural versions are mostly identical due to phonological shift. Some neuter nouns do not have plural versions, such as the word for “blood” (sour); additionally, all abstract nouns lack plural marking.

The Oblique Case applies to nouns in postpositional phrases and indirect objects.

A unique feature of Luñothir is its distinction between the Possessive, Genitive, and Essential Cases. Where an English phrase like “the men of the tribe” could be translated into either case depending on context, Luñothir would distinguish if the men belong to the tribe, if the men are from the tribe, or if the men compose the tribe.

Numerals are treated not as adjectives, but as nouns (you would not say “eleven dogs” but “dogs of eleven”).

Modifiers
Luñothir only distinguishes between adjectives and adverbs by declension. An adjective declines by gender to match its subject (with the exception of neutral nouns), whereas a matching adverb does not decline to match its verb. Luñothir lacks a definite article, but has two indefinite articles for singular and plural nouns, declined by gender. If a noun does not have one of these articles before it, it is assumed to be definite.

Vocabulary
Dictionary in progress

Example Text
Luñothir poetry: