Churra

General information
Churra is a mostly isolating language with some fusional elements, and a heavy dependence on word order to illustrate many grammatical concepts, including tense. It has an exceptionally large consonant inventory, with many fricatives, but very few vowels. It is spoken in a small coastal region of the planet Ysla, by a currently-unnamed species of alien "crab-taurs" with a tri-sexual reproductive system.

Palatalization and Labialization
Any consonant can be modified from C to Cʲ or Cʷ (with the exception that /w/ cannot be labialized, and /y/ cannot be palatalized, for obvious reasons; however either can undergo the opposite process). These are phonemic distinctions, effectively tripling Churra's consonant inventory. This is written in the romanized orthography as Ce and Co.

Alphabet
Churra is written in ideographs and sometimes in a syllabry. Both are under development. The romanized alphabet used is included in the phonemic inventories chart. Note that in some instances long sounds may simply be written doubled (e.g. ĥ = hh, í = ii).

Phonotactics
Stress structure: third-to-last when available

Permitted syllables: Regular sound changes (IPA)
 * CV, #V, VC#
 * CF:, #F:, F:C
 * F:V, VF:
 * hʷ > ɸ

Conditioned sound changes (IPA)
 * i > e /j_, Cʲ _
 * i: > eɪ /j_, Cʲ _
 * u > o /w_, Cʷ _
 * u: > oʊ /w_, Cʷ _
 * u, u: > ʉ, ʉ: /palatal_
 * a, a: > ɑ, ɑ: /velar_, uvular_
 * C > C [+voice] / V_V
 * C > C [-voice] / _#
 * ð > <span lang="DSB-DE" style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"MSMincho";mso-ansi-language: DSB-DE;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">θ /F:_
 * h > x /_i

Pronouns
These pronouns are used as the verbal arguments. Despite the fact that all other relevant case-marking elements of Churra make a three-way distinction for Subject, Direct Object, and Indirect Object, the pronouns only have Subj and Obj forms. Pronoun order is relied on to convey case: the order is IO-S-DO.

Other aspects of Churric nominal declension that the pronouns do not exhibit include gender (animacy) or the five-tier grammatical number. However, they can be inflected for these differences in much the same way as other nouns are when it is important. The possessive pronouns are technically determiners.

The Verb
Verbs must show transitivity and tense, and can have modal, aspectual, and further valency information added by means of particles.

Transitivity, Valency & Voicing
Each verb has an inherent transitivity feature, and come in series of related verbs to allow for different transitive forms. There are five different types of verb; transitive, intransitive, ditransitive, 'dative,' and 'passive.' The 'endings' are often violated by exceptions. The transitivity feature was once an inflection on the verb, but for most verbs it has become fossilized and non-decompositional.

Inherent transitivity allows third-person-singular pronouns to be optional. If the verb is IT and has no visible subject, that subject is a third person; if the verb is DT with no pronouns attached, then all three persons are third persons. Other distinctions and combinations of persons may be made with valency-modifying prefixes (also known as voice markers):
 * sa- indicates passivization of the subject pronoun on TR or DT verbs.
 * sataras ilu
 * kill.TR 1SG.OBJ
 * 'he is killed by me'
 * fe(a)- indicates causation on DT verbs; with fe-, the IO causes the S to act on the DO.
 * featar<span style="font-family:Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:21px;text-align:center;"> ĥ ilu cu
 * <span style="font-family:Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:21px;text-align:center;">kill.DT 1SG.OBJ 2SG.SUBJ
 * <span style="font-family:Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:21px;text-align:center;">'he made you kill me'
 * ju- is the counterpart to fe-: the DO causes S to act on IO.
 * jubalir ilu cu
 * speak.DT 1SG.OBJ 2SG.SUBJ
 * 'he made me speak to you'
 * ci- indicates 'dipassive,' or a verb with both a DO and IO.
 * cigufiz ki muzaqoi i m<span style="font-family:Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:21px;text-align:center;">ŝ a 
 * DP.pull.PA the.IO ground the.DO flower
 * 'the flower was pulled from the ground'

Tense
Churra has a two-tense system, future and non-future (which will be referred to as 'past' at times for sake of simplicity, despite inaccuracy). There is no morpheme, auxiliary verb, or verb form that indicates tense; instead this is acheived through word order.

In future-tense phrases, the arguments will appear before the verb; in the non-future, the arguments appear after the verb. This is true regardless of the argument form (pronoun vs noun vs imbedded clause).

Since the third-person pronouns are optional, many phrases will have no visible arguments or other methods of indicating tense-aspect or temporal information. In this case it is generally assumed that the phrase is in non-future tense, except in certain narrative conditions (e.g. following a future-tense phrase).
 * moga (run.IT) 'he runs/ran'
 * vu moga (3SG.SUBJ) 'he will run'

Aspect
Another important set of distinctions of the Churric verb are its aspects. These always appear directly before the verb (except for voice markers). The first six aspects must, in a way, agree with the phrasal tense. Adding su to a future phrase, for instance, would cause an ungrammatical and infelicitous utterance.

The remote-perfect tense, frequently called simply 'remote,' indicates that an event occured a long time in the past or will occur far in the future. This is therefore one of the few ways to know for sure that a non-future phrase is past, and not present. It has been partially co-opted to merely indicate past tense for this reason.

Aspects are only allowed to stack if one has future/non-future distinction and the other does not; in this case, the gnomic or stative particle appears before the other. In this method the stative and progressive may be combined to create the pluperfect.
 * sa bu sirif zu lu
 * ST PR.P wait.DA 2SG.OBJ 1SG.SUBJ
 * 'I have been waiting for you'

Mood
== Vocabulary==