Nāmaς

Introduction
Denavēnens! - Welcome!

This page uses IPA phonetic notation as standard.

Nāmaς, ([ˈnaːm.as], translates as "name, noun, meaning or thing"), or Sēnha Namēa [ˈsɛː.ŋa nam.ˈɛːa] "'Namian' language" - is a mixed constructed a priori/ a posteriori language. It draws inspiration from mainly the Indo-European branch, yet makes a decisive stance to preserve artificial features. For the sake of simplicity I suppose it could be called the Namian language, or whatever. Doesn't really matter.

Since there is a tendency in Nāmaς to blend characteristics of both artificial and natural languages, a rather unholy mixture has arisen, for example:

It is a fusional language, like its predecessors Latin, Sanskrit, Greek and Germanic - yet displays the highly unnatural ergative-accusativ alignment, or tripartite, - which is rarely seen outside conlanging.

Concerning the vocabulary, both words derived from Indo-European stems, as well as complete a priori words, appear; such as "dhrȳa" - tree, from Indo-European *dóru, and the word for heaven, "iāmnas" - from... me.

Other than that, other, rather unique features are included, such as: Plus an extremely constructed characteristic:
 * Phonemic and manipulated stress.
 * Progressive metaphony.
 * Partial regressive metaphony.
 * Consonant harmony, based upon voicedness.
 * Distinguished transitivity

Consonants
The following table portraits Nāmaς' phonetic inventory of consonants. All consonants may be geminated, which is phonemic, and represented by doubling by the grapheme. Nota bene

The retroflex consonants, with the approximant [ɽ] as the exception, are allophones when preceded by [ɽ]. The phonemes in brackets exist only as allophones. The pairs [ɸ-β], [f-v], [ʍ-w], [h-ɦ] and [ç-ʝ] are represented by only one grapheme each, since the voiced part is an allophone.

Affricates
In addition to these, there's a multitude of digraphs with corresponding affricates. It is important to note that the four digraphs /pt/, /vt/, /kt/, and /jt/ symbolise consonant clusters with an affricate onset.

Orthography
In the orthographic table, the letters of the latin alphabet is represented.

Nota Bene

The letters and digraphs bh, v, vh/w, h, and hy, all represent two phonemes - [ɸ-β], [f-v], [ʍ-w], [h-ɦ], and [ç-ʝ] respectively. The letters c and k may be used interchangeably to represent both [c] and [k], as well as in the combination ky or cy - [c͡ç].

Allophony
All plosive consonants, the dental approximant [r] and the labiodental fricatives [v-f] have allophonical values intervocally. These are either pure fricatives, or plosives with a fricate release. However, both [r] and [v-f] become approximants. Simple.

Herefore should the word "vāka"- voice, speach - not be pronounced [ˈvaːka], but rather [ˈfaːxa], or [ˈfaːk͡xa]

Consonant Assimilation
Nāmaς possesses a progressive consonant assimilation word-internally, based upon voicedness.

The consequence is that a consonant, a cluster, or an affricate, is pronounced differently, depending on whether it is preceded by a voiced or voiceless consonant. There are exceptions to this rule, since the alveolar trill [r] and the retroflex tap [ɽ] do not differ between voicedness.

The nasal stops are affected quite differently, with a complete nasalisation of the preceding vowel - and loss of the stop - if the initial or first consonant is voiced. However, nasals are perceived as neutral in nature, and does therefore not affect voiceless nor voiced phonemes.

Examples:

Sandrā - [san.ˈtraː], not pronounced [san.ˈ d raː] - "moon"

Dāntis - [ˈdãːd.ɪz], not pronounced ['ˈdaː nt .ɪ s ] - "tooth"

Āsvyas - [ˈaːs.fʃas], yet again, not pronounced ''[ˈaːs. vʒ as]'' - "he owns"

Vowels
The representation of Nāmaς' vowels. There are are fourteen vowel phonemes, yet only 6 graphemes, thus, it may be assumed some are allophones during certain circumstances.

In conjunction with the orthographic table. It is obvious that many of the vowel graphemes are recycled, since many phonemes are allophones. The background is covered in the "Metaphony" section.

Diphtongs
There are a limited number of diphtongs in Nāmaς, with few more rising than falling diphtongs. [ɪ̯] is most often equivalent to [j], and [u̯] is often just [w]. The left diftong is its front value, and the right one is the back value. All other vowel clusters are diaeresis. The main phoneme in all diphtongs may be geminated.

Nota Bene

No diphtongs occur inter consonants, as a nucleus, nor do the falling diphtongs appear geminated in open coda position. They are transformed into geminated, or short monophtongs - and are inconsistently written as monophtongs, however it isn't compulsory. The allophony according to this schedule:

Front diphtongs on the left, back ones at the right.

Nota Bene

For the sake of simplicity, all phonemes and graphemes have been marked as geminated, even though they need only to be in between consonants to become monophtongs.

Vowel Metaphony
Sēnha namēa suffers from a certain kind of vowel harmony, called progressive vowel metaphony. This urges all vowel phonemes in a lexeme to be of the sam kind of the preceding one. That is: Va = type-a vowel, Vb = type-b vowel, C = consonant: VaVb Vb > VaVa Va

There is one exception, when the metaphony is regressive instead, when a word is initialised by an /e/. The /e/ the gets assimilated by the succeeding consonant: Vb Va Vb > VaVa Va

The metaphony is present, and affect for example the plural endings of many case declensions, where the coda vowel gets completely assimilated by the former.

Horse - thētosya (abs. sing.) > thētosyoi (abs. plu.)

But not, "fire" - kēma (erg. sing.) > *kēmei, but rather kēmai (erg. plu.)'

Nāmaς' metaphony is based upon backness, with eceptions being when /e/, /y/ and /o/ are followed by an [r], which ignores the harmony, and modifies the phoneme.

Vowel Quality
In Sēnha namēa, all vowels possess four full qualities; they may be short and voiced, geminated and voiced, short and nasalised as well as geminated and nasalised. Since nasalisation occurs as a consequence of voiced consonant assimilation and a nasal succeding the vowel, the "r" - phonemes can't be nasalised. A default nasal /m/ will represent the nasalisation.

Stress
A pecurious detail of Nāmaς is that it is possible to manipulate the stress to convey different meanings.

There are three diacritics in Nāmaς: The acute accent, "ó" which marks stress on a short syllable, the the grave accent "ò" which may be used to replace the macron "ō". These indicate geminated stress. Stress must always be marked in polysyllabic words, except verbs in the infinitive, and gemination in all words.

In many of the pro-adverbs, a question may be abbreviated from "Shall I put it here?" Vērem dās sdises hēra? [ˈfɛːr.ɛm daːz ˈstis.ɛs ˈʔɛː.ra] into "Here?" in English and "Her ā ?", not ''"H ē ra?" ''in Namian. By moving the stress to the ultimate syllable in adverbs and nouns, you may produce an interrogative meaning.

Concerning nouns in the nominative case, all stress is irregular, and a multitude of minimal pairs exist: such as "burden" nāutoς [ˈnœːt.œs], and "meaning" nautōς [nœˈt.œːs]. Only in certain cases is the stress moved from one syllable to another - "snake" nāga [ˈnaː.ga], in the nominative, becomes in the genitive; naganēς [na.ga.ˈnɛːs] "snake's".

In verbs, the stress plays an important part in the conjugations: Stress is for example never marked in the infinitive, and always occurs on the first syllable. It also denotes the transition from present tense to the preterite, in all aspects: "We say" means kāham [ˈkaː.ham] in Namian, while "We said" is called kahām [ ka.ˈhaːm]. The stress on all verb conjugations are always regular.

If there are two geminated syllables in one lexeme, the second one's stressed, for example pāraktīra [paː.ra.ˈt͡ʃtɪː.ra], which means "torso".

Moods
Nāmaς possesses three moods, which all verbs conjugate by: "I eat." - Ēdem ēga [ˈɛːð.ẽ ˈeːɣ.a] "I eat if I am hungry." - Ēdem ias ēga kānhar [ˈɛːð.ẽ ˈeːɣ.a] i̯as ˈɛːga ˈkaːŋ.ar].
 * Indicative mood, indicates factual actions. It's generally used in main clauses.
 * Subjunctive mood, indicates hypothetical actions, and is always used in dependent clauses.

Tenses
In Nāmaς there are three tenses, which denote the temporal place.


 * 1) The present tense.


 * 1) The past tense, though it will be called preterite hereafter.

All tenses are dependent on the aspects.
 * 1) The future tense.

Aspects
There

Nouns
Nouns in Nāmaς are declined by three genders masculine, feminine and neuter. They are also declined by no less than 8 cases, and the single number, and a simple plural.

Genders
The genders in Nāmaς are three in number. The genders are masculine, feminine and neuter. There is no way to predict the class of a noun, except for the fact that female and male humans and animals are included in the feminine and masculin genders, respectively. There is however, a tendency towards abstract nouns to be feminine, and objects tend to be neuter.

Cases
Nāmaς possesses eight cases, and all nouns in a clause must be declined by one, and one only. The cases are rarely followed by a particle, but there are exceptions, since the instrumental and locative cases are often preceded or replaced by sām [saːm] "with" and im [ɪm] "in, within".

Absolutive
The absolutive case is used to name something as well as to denote the subject of an action with a target. The suffix -sya is not compulsory, however distinguishes it from the ergative null suffix.
 * "The dog"
 * " The dog bit the man"

Ergative
The ergative case denotes an action or state, not affecting the surroundings directly. The ergative case is indicated by intransitive conjugations of the verb.
 * " The dog bites"

Accusative
The accusative case denotes the direct object of a transitive verb.
 * "The dog bit the man "

Dative
The dative case denotes the indirectly affected object of a verb. If focus lies on the patient rather than the object, the benefactive case is preferred.
 * "I gave a book to him "

Instrumental case
The instrumental case lllustrates the the aid, or means by which you perform an action.
 * "He writes with his best pen "
 * "The museum was opened by the mayor "
 * "You can get to the school quicker via that shortcut "
 * "I'm going to the shops for some milk"
 * "The house is surrounded by the police "
 * "He got caught by speed cameras "

Locative case
The locative case denotes a location, such as in, at, on, under et cetera. The appropriate particle is needed per location.
 * "Moscow is in Russia "
 * "I can't talk at the moment, I'm at work "
 * "He ran around the track several times"
 * "The lamp is on the desk "
 * "Our dog is under the table "
 * "Keep this between us "
 * "Pick a number between one and ten "
 * "I'm in front of your house "
 * "I stood near the bus stop "
 * "We'll wait by the bridge "
 * "The plane is now over Rome "
 * "What's behind that door ?"
 * "The house is beyond those hills "
 * "There is a bridge across the river. "
 * "We're waiting outside your house "
 * "There is a fence around the park"
 * "The ladder is leant against the wall "

Genitive
The genitive case denotes possession or relationship and lacking, but also origin. Replaceable with the particle na [na] "by, of".
 * " The boy's  father"
 * " The party member"
 * "We can't go without him "
 * "Everyone is here except her "
 * "Amongst the contestants was last year's winner"
 * "For the sake of the plants, it must rain"
 * "Do you know any of them "
 * "He knelt in the presence of the King "

Benefactive case
The benefactive case is used to indicate an object intentionally affected by actions, as well as movement to, towards or away from something or somewhere.
 * "I did it for you "
 * "Please, open the door for  her "
 * "Throw it against the house "
 * "They moved into their new house last week"
 * "Can we away from those hills ?"
 * "Jump over the fence !"
 * "He got out of the car "
 * "Get off of that roof "
 * "Are we going to Michael's house tonight?"
 * "I'm just leaving Michael's house "
 * "These are for adults, not children !"
 * "They moved away from the city centre a while ago"
 * " What are you talking about?"

Ablative
The ablative case is used to indicate source, as well as cause, but also concerning matters.
 * "He is from England "
 * "We're talking about  the match "
 * "Get out from under the table !"
 * "On the Origin of Species"
 * "According to the papers that restaurant is fantastic"
 * "The school had to close because of the snow "
 * "Thanks to the rain, the field was flooded"
 * "Despite the snow  the school was open"

Declension
There are four declensions in Nāmaς, each declined separately by phonemic differences. Please note that noun endings sometimes are a consequence of vowel metaphony, and diphtongisation. Stress falls on the same syllable no matter case or number, with a few exceptions.

First Declension
The characteristic of this declension are the vowel stems. Nouns decline rather similar between genders, with the exception the instrumental case, and the feminine dative. Please note that the plural of many cases, is a assimilation of the preceeding vowel, and diphtongisation. Since the accusative ends in a bilabial nasal, plural is formed through the third declension of nasal stems. The locative modifies the root in singular, but the stem in plural.

Second declension
Second declension always end a closed fricative coda. The second declension accusative and ablative are always indentical across genders. The accusative plural, and the feminine dative plural, is actually formed through diphtongisation > monophtongisation, [aːɪ̯] > [ɛː], since the coda is'nt open - nor short. The feminine instrumental is declined according to the third nasal declension. The genitive is special and "irregular". Front vowels become /i/ and back vowels becom /u/.