Old Shataranjan

Old Shataranjan is the earliest form of the Shataranjan language family.

= Phonology =

Consonants

 * /r/ is phonetically [ɾ~ɹ].
 * /x/ is post-velar and varies between [x] and [χ].

Vowels
The small vowel inventory and vertical vowel system, combined with a sonority hierarchy, allows for a wide variety of allophones.

Phonotactics
Each root follows a C(R)V(R)C structure, where C is any occlusive, nasal or fricative, R is any sonorant (w, l, r, j) and V is one of the two vowels.

= Grammar = Old Shataranjan is a lightly agglutinative language.

Verbs
The structure of a verb is as follows: (lit. "Make die!" = "Kill!")

Voice
Verb voice is essential in Shataranjan for deriving new verbs. There are four voices - active, passive, causative and reflexive.

Mood
There are two recognized moods in Old Shataranjan, indicative and imperative-jussive. The indicative has a null marking, while the imperative-jussive is formed by reduplicating the root of the verb. For emphasis, it is also possible to repeat the stem three times rather than two.

Verbs could also be negated by adding the prefix swəh-. A prohibitive mood could be formed by adding the negative prefix before the imperative.

Auxiliary verbs
Old Shataranjan makes high use of auxiliary verbs to express tense or aspect. Auxiliary verbs are placed after their main verb. When followed by an auxiliary verb, the main verb is in its base, stem form.

Nominals
Nouns and other nominals decline for case and number. Usually, a noun can have its plural marking omitted if context is present.

Case
Other semantic meanings are marked using postpositions. For example, the benefactive case is marked using dəlg, "for", with the genitive case, while the meaning of "against something" is marked by xrəjtʼ, "against" and "bad".

Adjectives
Adjectives come before the noun they refer to.

Syntax
Old Shataranjan is a head-final language in most of its aspects, except for its possessor following the possessee. The default word order is Subject-Object-Verb, although VSO and SVO are also common.