Valannō

Valannō Lyore or Valannic is the language of Valanne, and lingua franca of the main lands and regions around the Holy Sanctuary of Ilarúnen.

Classification and Dialects
Valannic is an agglutinative, polysynthetic and highly inflected language. The classical form Valannō pertheä, which will be the main subject of this page, has many features that will seem familiar to those who have basic knowledge of the early Proto-Indo-European language and of Uralic/Altaic languages. It means that nouns and adjectives are inflected in up to eleven cases, nouns and verbs have four numbers, including a dual form, and verbs are conjugated for all grammatical verb-related features. There are rudimental traits of vowel harmony, which stem from the Proto-Valannic language. A few features from Bantu languages, mainly Kiswahili, may also occur, such as word classes and implementation of (in)direct object and preposition markers within the verbs.

With the passing of time, more vulgar and simplified variations have emerged, mainly the vernacular Low-Valannic tongue Valannō mangreä ( 'vulgar Valannic'), spoken in the valleys around Mēoran.

Consonants
Consonants in Valannic are regular and are always pronounced as given in the table below. Voiced consonants at the end of a word or syllable for instance, will not lose its voice, as is common in some languages. However, some consonants may undergo changes in conjugations or contraction of words. This depends heavily on the consonants that they interact with, or a probable shift of word accent. Mostly voiceless plosives may become aspirated or voiced in such cases.

Geminated consonants are pronounced longer than their single equivalents, but do not undergo other changes. The following consonants appear also in geminated form: mm, nn, ll, rr, pp, tt, cc, ss.

When two consonants are in the same box, they represent the voiceless (left) and voiced (right) variation of the same sound. The consonants marked with an asterisk * qualify as a voiceless alveolar fricative trill (hy) and the voiced equvalent (ry), respectively. The /rh/-sound is an aspirated version of the regular alveolar tap.

All of the above consonants are represented in the alphabet by one letter, geminated consonants will have a diacritical mark to identify them as geminated. Some consonants have a labialised equivalent, which do not qualify as an single sound, even though they are represented by a single letter. These consonants are: Note that in the latinised representation, /qu/ and /gu/ are written with a u and not a w.

Vowels
All vowels - except for ý an éa - have a short and a long equivalent. The long vowels carry a macron to indicate its lenghtened pronunciation. The length of the short vowels can be under the influence of its position before a stop or a liquid/sibilant consonant ,but so will their long equivalents.

All written vowels are pronounced. Lyore is pronounced with two syllables: Lyo - re. [LYO -ray].

Valannic has several diphthongs, these diphthongs can also appear in short and long variations, in which the lenghtening is expressed in the first part of the diphthong: In conjugations of nouns and verbs, and a few other words, one will sometimes find a tilde ~ over a letter. A tilde also lengthens a vowel sound, but slightly more melodical. These vowels or diphthongs are the result of contraction or ellipsis of phonemes when conjugated, e.g:
 * quenāin (inf. to grow) -> aorist equẽinan (I grew)
 * auvāin (inf. to wake (s.o. up)) -> aorist hãuvan (I woke)
 * laulõin (inf. to tell).

Phonotactics
Not all combinations of consonants are allowed in Valannic, though the amount of phonemes is significant.

The nucleus of a phoneme is always a vowel, which can be any of the above listed vowels or diphthongs. Though a single vowel can technically form an entire phoneme, most phonemes also contain at least one consonant, typically preceding the vowel. Hence the typical structure of a phoneme or syllable is:

(C)(C) C V (C)(C).

Allowed onsets are all single consonants and labialised consonants, including /ng/, /ps/, /ts/ and /x/, i.e. essentially all single consonant letters from the alphabet. Geminated consonants are not allowed. Consonant clusters can be non-palatal plosives followed by liquids /r/ and /l/. This includes the aspirated plosives. Of these clusters, the ones with a voiceless non-palatal, non-aspirated plosive can also be preceded by an /s/. The labiovelar /qu/ sound preceded by an /s/ is also allowed as an onset.

The coda of a phoneme is mostly a vowel, but consonants are common. Fairly common consonant endings are a nasal /n/ of /m/, a liquid /l/ or /r/, or a sibilant /s/. Fricative or plosive endings are also allowed. Non-palatal plosives tend towards their voiced equivalents. The voiceless equivalents will tend towards the the fricative, aspirated sounds. The velar nasal sound /ng/ is also allowed.

The only consonant clusters at the end of a phoneme are /nd/ /ld/ and /rd/. At the end of a word, these phonemes change to /ns/, /ls/ and /rs/ respectively. Earlier phonemes in Proto-Valannic may have been other clusters of a nasal, fricative, sibiliant or liquid, followed by a plosive or fricative, but these all seem to have been simplified to less complex sounds.

More consonant clusters are allowed in Valannic words, and it would go too far to make a table of every single one of them. However, these consonant clusters will only occur as a merging of multiple syllables, and thus phonemes, within a single word, and when broken down into syllables, they will obey the above rules.
 * Ereb Umbreon ['E-reb Um-'BRE-on] - The Land of the Black Wolves.
 * Vangyorolar [Van-'GYO-ro-lar] - the zodiac.

Stress and pitch-accents
Valannic does not qualify as a tonal language: tone does not affect the meaning of function of a word. The stress in a word is often easy to recognize and will not be influenced by conjugation. However, since Valannic is an highly agglutinitive and inflected language, words can become very polysyllabic. Vowels are mainly open and often multiple long vowels appear in one word. Under these circumstances, in some longer words a second pitch accent will occur, aside form the main stress.

Stress in a word is expressed by tonal height; the stressed syllable has a high (H) tone, the unstressed ones are low (L). In short words (two or three syllables), the main stress is on the second- or third-to-last syllable, so HL(L) of LHL. In words from the vowel classes, the stress does not change during conjugation, as in non-compound words conjugations never have a tonal influence. So sýnome (HLL) and sýnomelerun (HLLLL) ('of the specific temperaments') have the same stress, and no second pitch accents,
 * Calba  'bull' [CAL-ba]: HL
 *  Sýnome  'temperament' [SÝ-no-me]: HLL
 * Anyara  'queen' [a-NYA-ra]: LHL

In words from the consonant classes, the main stress may change during conjugation, but this effect is consistent during more extended conjugation. This phenomenon is known as 'metric stress' in the singular nominative and accusative cases. In longer coumpound words and long conjugated verbs with object markers, a second pitch-accent may occur.
 * Orrýn'    'horse'  [OR-rýn], but orrýnā   'horses: [or-RÝN-a:] and orrýnyainen: [or-RÝN-yai-nen]
 * Nomoguntýs 'archer' [no-mo-GUN-tys], but nomoguntýrā  'archers': [no-mo-gun-TÝ-ra:]
 * Lyorongarodhār  'the Speaking Mountains' [LYO1-ron-ga-RO2-dha:r]:  HLLHL
 * Lauleōiquelyamen  'May I tell (it) you all some day' [LAU1-le-OI:2-que-lya-men]: HLHLLL

Writing System
The writing system of Valannic is an alphabet, consisting of 42 consonant sounds and 15 vowel sounds, so 57 in total. These do not only represent single letters, but also the vowel diphthongs and some of the consonant clusters, mentioned above. These letters also have adjustments for length by applying diacritical marks.

Grammar
Valannic grammar is rather regular and there are very few exceptions to the rules.

Nouns
Nouns are divided in a/e-class, o/u-class, and consonant classes. These classes do not qualify as genders, and there is no gender congruency with for instance adjectives. A noun can be declined in eleven different cases and in four numbers, so that a noun has 44 different forms.

The above conjugations are considered regular conjugation. There are on the otherhand some irregular conjugations, mostly in short words with a complex vowel structures:

Verbs
Verbs are conjugated for person, number, voice, mood, tense and aspect. A single verb can therefore take up to 624 forms, if all features are applicable (which is rarely the case).

Person and number
First of all there's person and number: Valannic recognizes a singular form, a dual and 2 plural forms, as well as a first person, a second person and third person animate and inanimate.

Verbs have three root-forms: a-stem, o-stem and consonant-stem. The consonant stem takes a e as conjugational vowel.

Below is the indicative active conjugation of the present tense of the verbs ' auvāin,'  laulõin, and phanein.

Not all of these forms are used regularly and iare mostly 'book language'. Especially the dual form will only be used in relation to specifically paired items such as eyes, ears, or hands. Also a word like ruazis ('twins´) is conjugated with the dual form. The more common plural form is plural 1, which is an aspecific plural. It just refers to multiple items of the singular form, whereas the plural 2 refers to a specific group or earlier mentioned group. One could argue that this is a 'definite' form, but plural 1 can be definite as well. Valannic has no definite articles, so context mostly determines if definition is appropriate in translation.

Since conjugation of verbs is fairly regular, in further examples only the first person singular will be given.

Tense and aspect
Then there's tense and aspect. Valannic has a present tense, a future and exact future tense, an imperfect tense, a perfect tense and a pluperfect tense. Furthermore there is the aorist aspect. The exact difference in aspect between imperfect, aorist and perfect is rather hard to make when taking a close look. In general one could state that imperfect refers to a state of being or an ongoing action in the past, the aorist more or less refers to single actions in the past (like a story-telling past (or present) would), and the perfect aspect refers to closed actions that took place in the past, that altered a state of being with an ongoing effect in the present. * ) note that the diaeresis splits the /ea/ vowel, making it two independent syllables.

Present, imperfect and future tense are formed from the present tense root.

Perfect, pluperfect and exact future tense are formed from the perfect tense root.

Aorist has its own root.

Voice and mood
Valannic has three voices: the active, the medium, and the passive voice. All three voices are formed synthetic, without the use of auxillary verbs, exept for the passive perfect tense.

Sometimes medium is also used to express reflexive verbs:

tastāin - to wash -> tastathein - to wash one's self, in conjugation mostly, but not obligatory, augmented bij a reflexive pronoun incorporated in the verb: tastathenar aliëm ýssē - they wash themselves with cold water.

The last feature according to which verbs can conjugate is mood. There are 5 moods, which are represented in different tenses:
 * The infinitve mood simply describes the action that it expresses, without conjugations.
 * The indicative mood describes an action, possibly conjugated for all verb-related features, as a fact or objective point of view. It does not express any feeling or doubt the subject may have about that which is stated.
 * The conjunctive mood expresses certain points of view that the subject of the sentence may have, related to opinion, feeling, irrealistic situation or an indirect quotation. Also the conditional mood (if..., than...) uses the conjunctive.
 * The optative mood expresses a wish or hope that the subject of the sentence may have. It means anything like:  'I wish...', 'I hope...', or 'may he...' or  'if only...'. 
 * The imperative mood expresses a command or assignment for the one spoken to. The present imperative is used for urgent or direct commands (as one would give a disobedient child or e.g. in the army), whereas the aorist imperative is used for more polite or less urgent ones (cf. 'keep off the grass'-like general orders, or used in prayers). An even more polite way of ordering someone to not do something, would be using the imperative of the verb vessāin -  to not want, followed by an infinitive: vessā ýdāin! - please, don't do it!