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 /ɹ (ɾ)/.

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.

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 cases of allophony are indicated in the alphabet. For example, [e] and [o] occur only as lowered allophones of /i/ and /u/ respectively, but each still has its own symbol in the alphabet. 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 the grammatical case of the noun or pronoun. 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 mark the grammatical case of the noun. There are a total of 47 different postpositions that mark nouns with grammatical case. The following is a complete list of the grammatical cases marked this way in Nauhi:

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

Pronouns in Nauhi are marked for case with the same postpositions that are used for nouns. 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. In the subjective case personal pronouns can have a further postposition to indicate intensivity. Personal pronouns in the objective case can have postpositions to indicate reflexivity and reciprocity. Postpostions indicating intensivity, reflexivity or reciprocity always precede those indicating case and gender when present in the same word. Expletive/dummy pronouns are indicated with a postposition to indicate expletivity. 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 the 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).