Nauhi

Setting
Hello fellow Conlangers. This is my new language which I have named Nauhi. It is supposed to be a simple language, but also one which can convey many different emotions and feelings. As a fluent Welsh speaker, I like the idea of incorporating some influences of Welsh into the grammar and vocabulary of Nauhi. However, I intend to make Nauhi a unique language with only a distant similarity to Welsh or any other language. Nauhi is intended to be spoken by the fictional Nauhi gnomes, who I have considered writing a book about. I won't go into detail about the Nauhi gnomes here though, as I want to focus on this page on the language.

Phonology
Nauhi has a small phonemic inventory consisting of the following 3 vowels and 9 consonants (sounds in brackets are allophonic):

Opening diphthongs: /ui~ue/, /ua/

Closing diphthongs: /ai~ae/, /au~ao/

Allophony

1. /i/ and /u/ are realized as [e] and [o] respectively when occurring before uvular consonants.

2. /p/, /t/, /k/ and /h/ are voiced to [b], [d], [g] and [ɦ] respectively when occurring between two vowels within a word.

3. /n/ is realized as [m] before labial consonants, as [ŋ] before the velar [k], as [ɴ] before the uvular /ɢ/, and as a lateral [l] between two vowels within a word.

4. /ɹ/ is realized as [ɾ] between two vowels within a word.

Phonotactic constraints

1. Words never start in a vowel or in the consonants /w/, /ɢ/ or /ʁ̞/.

2. Over 96% of words end in a vowel. The only word-final consonant that can occur is /ʁ̞/.

3. Diphthongs are limited to stressed syllables.

4. Consonant clusters are limited to a length of two consonants and only occur word-medially.

5. Vowel clusters do not occur (adjacent vowel qualities are always pronounced as a diphthong).

6. Root words do not exceed three syllables in length.

Word stress

Stress in Nauhi words is fairly weak and is also not phonemic. Stress is always predictable and falls on the penultimate syllable when the word has more than one syllable.

Root morphemes

There are 750 root morphemes in Nauhi. Due to this fairly small root vocabulary size, Nauhi relies heavily on joining root morphemes together to form compound structures. When forming compounds, root morphemes are placed side by side and maintain their original form, rather than being agglutinated into a single longer word. Nauhi morphology is discussed in more depth in the grammar section of this page (please see below). Of the 750 root morphemes in Nauhi, 22 are monosyllabic, 352 are disyllabic, and 376 are trisyllabic. The basic structure of Nauhi syllables is CV(C) or CD(C), where 'C' stands for 'consonant', 'V' for 'vowel', and 'D' for diphthong.

Orthography
The Nauhi alphabet is written using the latin script and consists of the following 16 letters: a, e, h, i, l, k, m, n, o, p, q, r, t, u, w, x. The alphabet is entirely transparent and so it can be learnt quickly and easily. Some of the cases of allophony are indicated in the alphabet. For example, [e] and [o] occur only as conditioned allophones of /i/ and /u/ respectively, but each is still indicated in the orthography in places that it occurs. The table below shows each symbol of the Nauhi alphabet and its associated pronunciation(s). The letters 'h', 'k', 'p', 'r' and 't' each have two pronunciations, and the letter 'n' has three. 'h', 'k', 'p', 'r' and 't' are pronounced as [ɦ], [g], [b], [ɾ] and [d] respectively when occurring between two vowels within a word, and as /h/, /k/, /p/, /ɹ/ and /t/ respectively elsewhere. 'n' is pronounced as [ŋ] when preceding the letter 'k', as [ɴ] when preceding the letter 'q', and as /n/ elsewhere.

Basic Grammar
Nauhi is a nominative-accusative language with a strict Subject-Verb-Object word order. It is postpositional and predominantly left-branching. Adjectives appear before the nouns they modify in cases that the adjective and noun are linked together into a compound. Elsewhere adjectives appear after the nouns they modify. The indirect object precedes the verb.

Nauhi has a morphology that is almost entirely isolating, with very few cases of agglutinativity. To help compensate for this lack of agglutinativity, Nauhi relies heavily on the use of postpositions. In fact, every noun or pronoun that occurs is followed by a postposition that indicates its grammatical case. The same words can function either as nouns or as verbs in Nauhi, and the presence of the case-marking postpositions following nouns is an important way to distinguish the noun forms from the verb forms. A small number of words can function also as an adjective in addition to a noun or verb, and in these cases the adjectival form is distinguished by a postpositional adjective indicator. There are eight different parts of speech present in Nauhi; the noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, postposition, conjunction and interjection.

Nouns

Nouns is Nauhi are not marked by definite or indefinite articles, as no such articles exist in Nauhi. Plurality in nouns is indicated by the presence of a postpositional plural marker, which takes the same form for all nouns. All Nauhi nouns are either masculine or feminine. Gender is predictable in the majority of cases, as nouns ending in /u/ or /oʁ̞/ are always masculine and nouns ending in /i/ or /eʁ̞/ are always feminine. Nouns ending in /a/ or /aʁ̞/ are unpredictable, however, with about half masculine and half feminine. Gender only applies when nouns occur in either the nominative (subject), accusative (direct object) or dative (indirect object) grammatical case. Gender is marked in each instance by a postposition which also marks the grammatical case of the noun. There are a total of 47 different grammatical cases that are conveyed by postpositions in Nauhi. The following is a complete list of these grammatical cases:

Adessive (e.g. near/at/by the building); apudessive (e.g. next to the building); inessive (e.g. inside the building); intrative (between the buildings); pertingent (touching the building); subessive (under the building); superessive I (on the building); superessive II (over the building); ablative (away from the building); initiative (beginning from the building); lative (to the building); terminative (as far as the building); perlative (through/along the road); prolative (via/ by way of the building); antessive (before the game); temporal (at eight o clock (only used for describing time)); accusative masculine; accusative feminine; instructive (by means of the building); instrumental (with/using the building); nominative masculine; nominative feminine; ablative (concerning the building); aversive I (avoiding the building); aversive II (fearful of the building); benefactive I (for the benefit of the building); benefactive II (for/intended for the building); causal (because of the building); comitative (with the building); dative masculine (for the building); dative feminine; distributive (per / for each building); genitive (of the building); posessive (belonging to the building); ornative (endowed/equipped with a building); partitive (three (of the) buildings); comparative (similar to the building); equative (comparable with the building); essive ((temporary state of being) as the building); excessive ((transition from a state) from being a child (is not a child any more)); identical (being the building); orientative (turned toward the building); revertive (backwards to/against the building); translative ((change from one form to another) turning into an adult); multiplicative ((number of times) six times); vocative ((used to adress someone) O father!); disjunctive ((used in isolation or other special situations) What is it? A building).

Pronouns

There are seven personal pronouns in Nauhi: 1st person singular; 1st person plural inclusive; 1st person plural exclusive; 2nd person singular; 2nd person plural; 3rd person singular; 3rd person plural. Personal as well as non-personal pronouns in Nauhi are marked for case and gender with the same postpositions that are used for nouns. Personal pronouns are marked as either masculine or feminine depending on the gender of the person(s) / thing(s) the pronoun is referring to. Plural 2nd or 3rd person personal pronouns take the feminine gender when the people or things described comprise a mixture of both male and female individuals. 1st person plural personal pronouns take the gender of whomever the speaker is. In addition to the postpositions that mark grammatical case and gender, postpositions indicating intensity, reflexivity, reciprocity and expletivity can mark personal pronouns.

Nauhi only contains one demonstrative pronoun that corresponds to the both the word ‘this’ and the word ‘that’ in English. A separate word does not occur for the plural form of this pronoun, but instead a plural postpositional marker is used. There are two relative pronouns corresponding to the English words ‘who/which/that’ and ‘whose’. There are also two interrogative pronouns in Nauhi corresponding to the words ‘who’ and ‘what’ respectively in the following English sentences: 1) Who is in the garden?; 2) What is his name?. Nauhi contains 19 different indefinite pronouns that are equivalent to the following English words: any; anybody/anyone; anything; each; either; enough; everyone/everybody; everything; little/few; more; most; much/many; one/you; other; plenty; somebody/someone; something; such; whatever. As with plural demonstrative pronouns, plural indefinite pronouns in Nauhi are indicated by the presence of the plural postpositional marker. Some English equivalents to plural indefinite pronouns in Nauhi are; both/all; others; they/people in general. Negative indefinite pronouns are indicated by a postposition that means ‘opposite of’ (e.g. ‘anybody’ + [opposite] = ‘nobody’, ‘more’ + [opposite] = less, ‘either’ + [opposite] = neither). Demonstrative, relative and interrogative pronouns take the gender of whomever or whatever it is that they are describing. When there are multiple people/things of different genders that they are describing, they take the feminine form. Some of the indefinite pronouns are marked for gender in the same way as demonstrative, relative and interrogative pronouns, whereas others are always marked with the same particular gender.