Shataranjan

Shataranjan was the language of Shataranjans, inhabitants of the tidally-locked planet of Shataran, located around 500 light years from the Solar System.

There are two main descendants, the one spoken on the always bright side which eternally is illuminated by their star, and the other spoken in the darkness of the hemisphere facing against the star.

= Phonology =

Consonants
The consonant inventory in noteworthy for having a retroflex series of sounds, no labiodentals and a contrast between voiced and voiceless bilabial trills. [ɾ] is an allophone of /d/ before another voiced stop.

Vowels
The vowel inventory is rather small and mundane, with [ɨ] being the realization of /i/ after a retroflex consonant.

Diphtongs
All diphtongs and are made of either /j/ or /w/ followed by with a vowel. /i/ and /u/ cannot be combined with /j/ and /w/ respectively.

Phonotactics
The maximum syllable structure is (C)(L)V(C).

Onset
All consonants can serve as onset (for some speakers, /ŋ/ and /ŋʷ/ have merged with null and /w/ in onset). The following onset clusters are permitted:

Nucleus
The nucleus of a syllable must contain at least one vowel.

Coda
/m, n, ŋ, p, t, ts, ʈʂ, k, s, ʂ/ are permitted syllable codas. Obstruent codas are often voiced whenever the following syllable begins with a voiced sound. /t/ becomes [ɾ] when it serves as a coda before a voiced obstruent.

= Transcription =

English-based transcription
This transcription was created mainly to appeal to English speakers.

Technical transcription
This transcription is used for more technical causes.

= Grammar =

Negative
To negate a verb, a prefix su- is added to the word.

Voice
There are three voices, from lowest to highest valency, passive, active and causative. A reflexive suffix -dzo- might also be added after the voice suffix.

Agreement
Verbs exhibit polypersonal agreement.

Auxiliary verbs
Despite its rich verb morphology, Shataranjan makes use of a few auxiliary verbs, which are often located at the very beginning of a sentence. Some of those include:

Nouns
Nouns have several cases, despite the amount of verb agreement present. This is a relic of Old Shataranjan's extensive case system and less inflected verbs. Nouns also have possessive prefixes. There are multiple types of stems.

Consonant stems
Consonant stems, as their name suggests, end in a consonant in their root form and may or may not take an epenthetic vowel if followed by a suffix beginning with a consonant. Their codas undergo voicing when followed by a voiced obstruent or nasal, and are assimilated by place of articulation when they are a nasal. Consonant stems are the most common type of noun in Shataranjan.

h-stems
h-stems are often roots without a coda. Whenever they take a suffix beginning with a vowel, an -h- is inserted between it and the stem. Whenever a voiced obstruent follows the stem immediately, it gets devoiced.

j-stems and w-stems
Some nouns used to end in -w or -j in Old Shataranjan. Those resulted into -i and -u mutating into -j and -w when followed by a vowel suffix.

r-stem and l-stem nouns
A few nouns, descended from words that used to end in -r and -l in Old Shataranjan, have since lost those finals, unless followed by another vowel. This creates a set of nouns that gain -r- and -l- in their declension.

Adjectives
Adjectives, like nouns, decline for case and number. They have a superlative form marked by reduplicating the root, as such džang = old, džangdžang = very old. To compare two nouns, one of them is placed in the ablative case, and becomes the noun with lesser value compared to the one in the nominative case.

Syntax
The following table shows the default word order of an extended Shataranjan sentence.

Relative clause
The particle lem links a relative clause to the main clause.

Numerals
Shataranjan uses a base 8 number system.

= Lexicon = See Shataranjan/Vocabulary.

Example text
= Miscellaneous =