Nuktaq

Setting
Nuktaq is an a-priori language created by John Stevens. Its grammar is inspired by Welsh, which the author can speak fluently as a second language.

Nuktaq is spoken by the Nuktaq elves, a tribe of about 300 forest elves who live in the kingdom of Soqedak. The Nuktaq live a traditional life and have no modern technology, so their language lacks many modern words you'll find in English. The elves like their language to be unique, so they avoid borrowing words from other languages. Instead, they create new words by combining existing morphemes together.

Nuktaq is written in the Latin alphabet, although originally it had its own script which is no longer used. The language has a relatively small sound inventory and a simple grammar with few irregularities. It is an isolating, head-initial language with SVO word order. It has a rich five-term evidential system.

Phonology
Nuktaq has a sound inventory consisting of 15 consonant phonemes and six vowels.

Nuktaq has no voicing contrast among its consonants, but instead contrasts voiceless plosives, voiceless fricatives, voiced implosives, nasals and one liquid. The language has several consonants that are foreign to speakers of English or most other European languages, such as the uvular plosive /q/, the implosives /ɓ/ and /ɗ/, the laminal retroflex fricative /ʂ/, and the lateral fricative /ɬ/.

Nuktaq has a symmetrical six-vowel system consisting of five oral vowels, /i e a o u/, and a nasal schwa, /ə̃/. There is no contrastive vowel length, and there are no diphthongs.

Phonotactics
Roots may be from one to three syllables in length. The majority are disyllabic. The syllable structure of monosyllabic, disyllabic and trisyllabic roots is as follows: monosyllabic: (C)VC; disyllabic: (C)V(C)CVC; trisyllabic: (C)V(C)CV(C)CVC.

Roots may not begin in a uvular consonant or in /ɬ/. Nasals consonants are illegal in the syllable coda. /l/ is illegal in morpheme-final codas, but may occur in non-final codas. Close vowels do not occur before uvular consonants.

Orthography
Nuktaq originally had its own script, but nowadays is written in the Latin alphabet. Its alphabet is entirely transparent, with a one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. The following table shows each letter of the alphabet and the sound it represents:

Basic Grammar
The grammar of Nuktaq has few irregularities and is fairly simple, and so is easy to learn.

The language is strongly right-branching and is prepositional rather than postpositional. Word order is strictly Subject-Verb-Object.

Nuktaq is a predominantly isolating language which uses particles and prepositions rather than inflection to convey the meaning of grammatical case, number, mood, tense, aspect and voice. Particles preceding the verb mark tense and aspect simultaneously. There are three tenses (past, present, future) and three aspects (perfective, habitual, continuous/progressive). There are five evidential paradigms (visual sensory, nonvisual sensory, inferential, reportative, assumed) that are indicated by suffixes. Nuktaq has three grammatical numbers conveyed through particles: singular, dual and plural. There is no grammatical gender.

Each root word in Nuktaq belongs to a default part of speech. Particles are used to turn root words into a different part of speech from their default. The language makes no distinction between adjectives and adverbs.

More on the grammar of Nuktaq coming soon.