Talish

Notation

 * Phonetic transcriptions are denoted by rectangular brackets          [ˈkæːk̚tɪs]
 * Phonemic transcriptions are denoted by slash brackets                 /kæktɪs/
 * Native phonemic transcriptions are denoted by angle quotes         «cactis»
 * Italic front style denotes native words                                          cacto
 * Boldface denotes English approximations                                    cactus
 * Bold letters also indicate suffixes being demonstrated                  tú comerías el cacto
 * Bold letters also indicate emphasis                                             don't complain, you ate the cactus.

Classification and Dialects
Talish (locally Tïlér) is an a priori language. Defining characteristics include:
 * A large number of morphological irregularities caused by sound changes from its predecessor (referred to here as Dalean)

Phonotactics

 * Consonant clusters with more than three consonants are never permitted.
 * Consonant clusters with more than two consonants must begin with a sonorant.
 * Final «z» is not permitted.

Alphabet
In the final position, «i» and «a» are used in place of «y» and «ï» respectively.

Allophony
The allophones listed in this table can be present anywhere and still convey the same meaning -- none of the alternate sounds in the table are phonemic. These generally only occur in specific contexts, however, since they can't form minimal pairs, it's perfectly acceptable to use any one of these sounds for these letters. Keep in mind that this is not a list of all possible allophones of all Talish letters -- it's simply the most common ones.

Unwritten Sound Changes
Some letters produce certain sounds in certain contexts, and the sounds are part of the phonemic sound inventory. Therefore, it's important to get these contextual sounds right, whereas the free allophones are more lenient.

Sound Changes
Note:  This is not a complete list of the sound changes that drove Talish's divergence from Dalean. Rather, these sound changes are the ones still in effect that contribute to Talish morphology. Further irregularities arise from the fact that voicing in consonant clusters sometimes changes to match the first obstruent, sometimes the second, and sometimes the difference in voicing is retained.

rt » d / V_V

r » d / _t

ø » f / m_

c » x / C_V# ! (n,r)_

l » Ø / _xV

l » r / _x

h » k / C_

lø » z ! _#

øl » zl

ls » z ! _#

Nouns
Talish nouns decline to case and number, following a marked nominative alignment, with two regular categories of declension based on grammatical gender and a large number of irregular declensions caused by old sound changes still in effect. Nouns of the opposite gender can be formed by adding the following suffixes to the base form of the noun before declension. When no suffixes are added, the noun is assumed to be gender neutral regardless of its default grammatical gender. To assign femininity to a noun that is feminine by default, or masculinity to a noun that is masculine by default, the following suffixes are used: This allows for sets of words like the following:
 * Masculine « -i »
 * Feminine  « -g  »
 * Masculine « -gi  »
 * Feminine  « -iv  »
 * Nalop     - Student
 * Nalopi    - Male student
 * Nalopiv  - Female student

Masculine
Masculine nouns end in vowels in the accusative.

Feminine
Feminine nouns end in consonants in the accusative.

Adjectives/Adverbs
Talish adjectives are formed by adding « -al » to the singular accusative form of a noun, and adverbs are formed by adding « -s » or « -t » to the end of an adjective. These forms served different purposes in Dalean, but in modern Talish either suffix can be used in any situation, carrying the same meaning.

Verbs
Talish verbs conjugate to tense, aspect, mood, and number in all cases. They also conjugate to person in the present tense. In Talish, the conditional acts more like a tense than a mood, since the conditional can be combined with more than one mood. Verbs are conjugated fusionally as opposed to the more agglutinative noun declensions; all verbs end in vowels in « -ov » in the infinitive. The infinitive suffix is removed and the new suffix tacked on.

Word Order
While Talish has free word order for subjects, verbs, and objects, the most common are SOV, SVO, and VOS. Word order for other elements in a clause are more restrictive.
 * Adpositional phrases must follow what they modify.

Content Clauses
Content clauses are introduced by the conjunction ced, which functions similarly to the english that (used as a subordinating conjunction, not a relative pronoun).