Late Gallifreyan

Late Gallifreyan is a language spoken by the Gallifreyans, including the Time Lords, on Gallifrey, and in particular in the Capitol.

Classification and Dialects
Late Gallifreyan belongs to the family of the Gallifreyan languages spoken across Galifrey, and ultimately derived from Old High Gallifreyan. Specifically, it is one of the two languages born from Classical Gallifreyan (itself derived from Old High Gallifreyan through Middle Gallifreyan), the other being Arcadic, spoken as a vernacular in Arcadia.

Late Gallifreyan is mainly spoken as a vernacular in the Capitol on Gallifrey in the last period of dwelling of the Time Lords on the planet until the Battle with the Daleks, with Classical Gallifreyan serving mainly as a literary and formal language, only rarely spoken colloquially and mostly by high-rank Time Lords.

Consonants

 * 1) When at the start of a stressed syllable, all fricatives (except the pharyngeal) become the nasals /m/, /n/, /ŋ/ and /ɴ/.
 * 2) /x/ has, particularly in lower-class speech, a /ç/ allophone before /i/ and /y/.
 * 3) Contrary to Classical Gallifreyan, consonants cannot be geminated and have no voiceless/voiced distinction.
 * 4) /ɬ/ and /ɫ/ are in free variation with /ɮ/ and /ʟ/ respectively.
 * 5) The pharyngeal /ʕ/ is often elided, especially in unstressed syllable.

Vowels

 * 1) All vowels can be long or short; sometimes, long schwas are shortened.
 * 2) /ɯ/ and /u/ do not have a short variant.
 * 3) Late Gallifreyan marks stress by nasalizing the vowel; the stressed syllable is usually the penultimate.
 * 4) Before /q/ and /r/, mid vowels become mid-low.
 * 5) Back mid vowels have an ample range of realizations, spanning from a high quality to low-mid.
 * 6) All vowels can have three modalities: modal, breathy and creaky.

Diphthongs
As opposed to Classical Gallifreyan, that only exhibited diphthongs as allophones of monophthongal vowels, Late Gallifreyan distinguishes as much as 17 "true" diphthongs: ɪɛ, ai, aɛ, ɜa, aɜ, ay, ɒa, aɒ, ɜɛ, ɒœ, ʊʌ, ɘʌ, ʊɔ, aɔ, ɜʌ, ɒɔ. Just like vowels, diphthongs can act as a component of a word root on their own right.

Just like the monophthongs, the diphthongs distinguish three modalities, two lengths and three tones.

Beside the true diphthongs, we can identify "impure diphthongs", made from a sequence of an approximant and a monophthong. Among these, only jɪ and ɥʏ are noteworthy, but in addition to being extremely rare, they are often simply pronounced as /ji/ and /jy/. /jɜ/ and /wʊ/ are more common in native vocabulary, but have largely been displaced by /jə/ and /wu/.

Contrary to monophthongs, which are fairly stable in this stage of the language, diphthongs exhibit considerable differences between speakers, especially in the pronunciation of mid-high elements, of quasi-high elements and the precise pronunciation of specific diphthongs. We can identify three groups of speakers, the first prevailingly older speakers, the second comprising a sizeable portion of younger speakers, and the third making a minority of all age groups: A minority of speakers from group B, mostly low-class, simplify diphthongs so much further that only three are present, and the series looks like this: je, ai, ai, ja, a:, ai, ɒ:, a:, ə, oy/oi, wʌ, ə, wɔ, au, ə, ɒ:.
 * Group A keeps the original pronunciation of the diphthongs: ɪɛ, ai, aɛ, ɜa, aɜ, ay, ɒa, aɒ, ɜɛ, ɒœ, ʊʌ, ɘʌ, ʊɔ, aɔ, ɜʌ, ɒɔ.
 * Group B only has mid elements, has no "unrounded-to-rounded" monophthongs and doesn't use quasi-high vowels, so that the diphthongs are je, ai, ae, ea, aə, ay, ɒ:, a:, əe, ɒœ, wʌ, əʌ, wɔ, aɔ, əʌ, ɒɔ, so that the number of true diphthongs is actually 11; for some of these even aə is simplified to /a:/.
 * Group C has the same 17 diphthongs as group C but turns quasi-high vowels to high, so that ɪɛ ʊʌ ʊɔ become iɛ uʌ uɔ (still staying distinct from impure diphthongs).

The distinction between clusters of vowels and diphthongs are often blurry, especially for speakers of group B and C, so that the diphthong /ai/ may merge with the sequence /a.i/.

What's even more notable is how diphthongs usually only appear in one tone, and it almost never is the mid tone: specifically, /aɜ aɒ/ have a low tone, while all the others have a high tone.

This table illustrates how diphthongs evolved:

Vowel fusion
When, due to the position on the vowels within a root, two of them come into contact, they may merge into a glide.

In particular, the diphthongs of the series ɪɛ, ai, aɛ, ɜa, aɜ, ay, ɒa, aɒ, ɜɛ, ɒœ, ʊʌ, ʊɔ, aɔ, ɜʌ, ɒɔ arise from the merger of the sequences i+e, a+i, a+e, ə+a, a+ə, a+y, ɒ+a, a+ɒ, ə+e, ɒ+œ u+ʌ, u+o, a+o, ə+ʌ, ɒ+o. Also, in general, any sequence beginning in the high vowels /i, y, u/ creates an impure diphthong beginning in the correspondent semivowel, unless this is preceded by another semivowel.

In addition to that, when two vowels with the same height and frontness touch (hereby including /a/ and /ɒ/), they are usually merged as a lengthened first element.

The matter is further complicated when a true diphthong precedes a monophthong (monophthong-diphthong sequences are usually left intact). As a rule, when the first element of a monophthong has at most different rounding from the monophthong, this first element lengthened is the result. Barring that, the following combinations produce:
 * ɪɛ+ɛ=ɛ

ai/aɛ/ay/aɜ/aɔ/aɒ+i=ai

ai/aɛ/ay/aɜ/aɔ/aɒ+y=ay

ai/aɛ/ay/aɜ/aɔ/aɒ+e=aɛ

ai/aɛ/ay/aɜ/aɔ/aɒ+ɔ=aɔ

ai/aɛ/ay/aɜ/aɔ/aɒ+ə=aɜ

ɜɛ/ɜa/ɜʌ+ɛ=ɜɛ

ɜɛ/ɜa/ɜʌ+a=ɜa

ɜɛ/ɜa/ɜʌ+ʌ=ɜʌ

ʏœ+œ=ʏœ

ɒa/ɒœ/ɒɔ+œ=ɒœ

ɒa/ɒœ/ɒɔ+a=ɒa

ɒa/ɒœ/ɒɔ+ɔ=ɒɔ

ʊʌ/ʊɔ+ʌ=ʊʌ

ʊʌ/ʊɔ+ɔ=ʊɔ

Because of this phenomenon, many nouns end up with irregular declensions (albeit predictably).

Nevertheless, some constraints exist on vowel fusion; for example, a creaky vowel and a breathy vowel cannot fuse together. On the other hand, if one of them is fused with a modal-voice vowel, their modality is preserved in the resulting diphthong.

The tone of the diphthongs arising from vowel fusion differs depending on the speaker's group; in particular, speakers from group B and C, and sometimes group A, the tone is always the one inherent to the diphthong regardless of the inherent vowels; on the other hand, the remaining speakers from group A may apply older, more complex rules. However, for most of them, any diphthong arising from vowel fusion preserves the tone of the second element, very simply.

Stress
In late Gallifreyan, the stress of a word normally falls on the antepenult syllable, where a word by definition includes all the suffixes and clitics attached to it. Historically, in Classical Gallifreyan, stress fell on the first syllable, but because most Classical words were bisyllabic and lacked affixes, this came to be reanalysed as antepenult stress.

The stress is nasal, like in Classical Gallifreyan, but stronger and less reliant on intensity.

Consonantal reduction
This phenomenon works similarly to vowel reduction in many languages of the Earth - consonants can be merged and reduced to a less articulated form in unstressed syllables.

In normal speech, three levels are present: Fast speech may implement on all unstressed syllables level three, and further merge all neutral plosives with the respective fricatives.
 * 1) In every unstressed syllable, all "neutral" (non-palatal, non-velarized and non-aspirated) plosives are weakened to voiced plosives. Additionally, /q/ is pronounced as a glottal stop.
 * 2) In every unstressed syllable except the last, the neutral plosives further weaken to voiced fricatives, and palatal stops merge into /j/, while velarized stops merge into /w/. This can give rise to double approximants.
 * 3) In every unstressed syllable except the first and the last, the lateral fricative merges with /j/, and the velarized lateral merges with /w/; furthermore, depending on their point of articulation, all fricatives merge with aspirated plosives into approximants, while /l/ is weakened to a tap and the pharyngeal falls away.

Level 1 can be used throughout a word, in order to precise what consonant is being pronounced, like in a misunderstanding.

This table sums it up:

Phonotactics
Late Gallifreyans, contrary to Classical Gallifreyan, does not allow syllables with consonantal codes; hence, only two types of syllable are allowed, the scheme being (C)V.

Evolution from Classical Gallifreyan

 * The Classical system of nine declensions, based on opposition between stops and fricatives, withers away; however, they respectively colour the preceding vowels with creaky and breathy voice respectively, and further changes will make this allophony phonemic; however, vowels that were followed by both throughout the declension of the word usually ended up with modal voice.
 * Double consonants, which already could be pronounced as affricates in the Classical standard, eventually developed into fricatives, which definitely discarded the declension system.
 * Loss of the allophonical lengthening of high rounded vowels.
 * Tendency to slightly round vowels between two labials, with weaker rounding than true rounded vowels.
 * Loss of the voiceless/voiced opposition in consonants; because voiced consonants usually triggered allophonic lengthening of the preceding vowel, vowel length became phonemic.
 * Merging of /d ð z/ into a single phoneme /ɾ/; this already happened sporadically in the Classical standard.
 * Debuccalisation of /s z/ into glottals; later, all glottals (including the glottal stop) were dropped.
 * Development of allophones of the remaining consonants /p f t θ ɾ/, expanding on previous allophony: see the table in the Morphology section below for details. Further developments will cause the allophones to split into distinct phonemes.
 * Deletion of all consonants in the coda of a syllable, which eliminated the Classical phonotactics based on opposition of closed and open syllables, thereby leaving open syllables only. Because final consonants were thus lost - this made the previous rounding of vowels between labials phonemic, and the weakly rounded vowels soon merged with fully rounded vowels, and cemented the distinction of vowel length and modality. Furthermore, the inflections relying on final consonants such as cases and mood were reduced, and only preserved in the way the vowels were coloured. This also made the voiced pharyngeal phonemic.
 * Development of initial mutations: as a rule, vowels between two dentals acquired a clear mutation, while a vowel between two labials acquired a dark mutation. The istances were the voiced pharyngeal was produced word-initially as a vowel-cluster breaker gave rise to the throat mutation.
 * Loss of Classical tonal sandhi and simplification of the five-tone system to three (with the rising and high, and falling and low tones merging). This also made the diphthongs phonemic.
 * Loss of the initial syllable in many function words, that were subsequently reanalysed as clitics and then suffixes.
 * Switching from initial stress to antepenult stress.
 * Merging of many vowels: short high, mid-high and mid-low vowels all merged into mid vowels; later, merging of long mid-high and mid-low vowels into mid vowels as well; loss of central high vowels, which merged with their front counterparts; merging of /ɐ ə ɵ/ into a schwa; merging of /æ ɑ/ into a single vowel /a/ and of /ɶ ɞ ɒ/ into /ɒ/. Because many allophones of consonants were conditioned by the surrounding vowels, these mergers made many of the consonants phonemic.

Writing System
Late Gallifreyan, like Classical and Middle Gallifreyan, is written in the Gallifreyan script, and much more often in the cursive form than in the two ancestor languages.

Being Classical Gallifreyan the literary language, the orthography is very conservative and usually based off the Classical orthography; although significant variation exists between speakers, the distinct morphemes are written the way they would be written in Classical Gallifreyan.

Because of the vowel root system underlying Gallifreyan morphology, spelling of the vowels requires knowledge about the etymology of words, while writing of the consonants requires knowledge of the grammar. More detail will be given in the specific sections.

Grammar
The most notable features that underlies both Classical and Late Gallifreyan morphology is the presence of a vowel root system, meaning that while vowel signify the lexeme, consonants are inserted between them to express grammatical categories, much like Semitic languages on Earth.

Late Gallifreyan roots more often include three consonants, but many also only have two, especially when directly inherited from Classical Gallifreyan.

Root order
Vowels and consonants within a word occur at fixed position. Although one-vowel roots no longer exist in Late Gallifreyan, they show up like this: Rarely, three-vowel roots can be of the form VCVVC; see the section on noun incorporation for more.
 * Two vowels: VCVC
 * Three vowels: VCVCV
 * Four vowels: VCVVCV
 * Five vowels: VCVVCVV
 * Six vowels: VVCVVCVV

Most words, especially when directly inherited from Classical Gallifreyan, break clusters of vowels by insertion of a pharyngeal, so the last three would be more accurately described as VCVʕVCV, VCVʕVCVʕV, VʕVCVʕVCVʕV.

This one rule is often wobbly in actual speech; although it is always correct to insert a pharyngeal between the vowels, in practice many common words, especially verbs with noun incoporation and more recently coined words, have dropped some pharyngeal, most commonly the middle one, altogether, so that the two now adjacent vowels can also undergo vowel fusion when possible. Variants of these words must be learnt on a word-to-word basis.

Nouns
Late Gallifreyan nouns normally inflect according to tense, space and case. Nouns in dictionaries and examples are usually shown in the past earthly genitive form, as it makes it possible to completely determine a noun’s declension on its own.
 * The tenses are three: present (the default form of the noun), past (signifying "something that was X", with X being a past state of the designed entity) and future (signifying "something that will be X", with X being a future state of the designed entity). Contrary to Classical Gallifreyan, no aorist tense exists, and it is substituted by the present.
 * The spaces are two, earthly (signifying X is in contact with the ground of any planet or star) and celestial (when X is not connected to the ground).
 * The Classical Gallifreyan 13-case system is simplified to six: accusative (indicating the direct object and rarely the indirect object, which is usually otherwise expressed through prepositions); genitive (indicating the possessor, but rarely a cause when coupled with a verb in flowery language); instrumental (indicating both the instrument and the physical location); nominative (indicating the subject), vocative (acting as a true vocative when standing alone, and meaning "with" like a comitative when within a sentence) and ablative (signifying the source).

Time-space marking
Time and space are marked by a single inflectional archiphonemic infix between the first two vowels of the root. As a rule, the present is marked by labials, the past is marked by a coronal, and the future by liquids (a system inherited from Classical Gallifreyan), while celestial forms are marked by fricativization (derived from Classical geminates). As shown, the future has no space difference. Additionally, beside infixing marking, this tense also triggers lengthening of the first root vowel.

All upper case letters represent variable phonemes, whose surfacing form depends on the surrounding vowels and etymology; the rules for choosing the specific consonant can be very complex, and also sometimes unpredictable.

As a guideline, the infixes can be said to be:
 * aspiration-conditioned, i.e. when following a historical back non-high vowel (Classical /ɤ o ʌ ɔ ɑ ɒ/). These vowels surface in Late Gallifreyan as /ʌ o a ɒ/. The first two can be recognized as aspiration-conditioning if they are not raised to a high vowel when undergoing lengthening throughout the inflection of the word; on the other hand, the status of the last two can only be ascertained by looking at the root's etymology, which can only be known for certain by looking at the word's spelling. As a rule, very few instances of /ɒ/ are aspiration-conditioning, while more of /a/ are, especially when derived by a previous Middle Gallifreyan abstract noun marker (and thus abounding in abstract nouns), even though this latter regularity is usually useless in determining the time-space morpheme.
 * velar-conditioned, i.e. when following a historical back high vowel (Classical /ɯ u/). These vowels always surface in Late Gallifreyan as /ʌ o/, and can be recognized as velar-conditioning if an inflected form of the word (normally the future when determining the time-space morpheme) wherein they are lengthened raises them to high vowels.
 * when palatal-conditioned, i.e. when following a historical high front vowel (Classical /i/ and /y/). These vowels surface in Late Gallifreyan as /e ø/, and can be recognized as palatal-conditioning with the exact same criterion as in velar-conditioning.
 * unconditioned in all other cases;

The variation of the infixes can be summed up in a table like this:
 * front-conditioned, i.e. when followed by a historical front vowel (Classical /i y e ø ɛ œ a ɶ/). These surface in Late Gallifreyan as /i y e ø a ɒ/. While /e ø/ are always unquestionably front-conditioning, /i y/ only are if they appear as lengthened and inflection causes them to be shortened to mid vowels. /a/ is often front-conditioning (and it depends on etymology), while /ɒ/ rarely is.
 * central-conditioned, i.e. when followed by a historical central vowel (Classical /ɨ ʉ ə ɵ ɐ ɞ/). These surface in Late Gallifreyan as /i y ə ɒ/; /i y/ are not central-conditioning only if they can be determined to be front-conditioning; the latter two, on the other hand, /ə ɒ/ are respectively always and almost always central-conditioning.
 * back-conditioned, i.e. when followed by a historical back vowel (Classical /ɯ u ɤ o ʌ ɔ ɑ ɒ/. These surface in Late Gallifreyan as /ʌ ɔ a ɒ/; while /ʌ ɔ/ are exclusively back-conditioning, /a/ is less often so (depending on etymology), and /ɒ/ almost never is.

Case marking
Case is marked by tweaking the second root vowel, and in the case of three-vowel roots, by insertion of an archiphonemic infix; also, all nouns follow a different declension pattern depending on whether the noun in declined in the present or in the past/future, and in particular, the accusative is merged into the genitive, as well as the ablative into the instrumental (so that only the present tense preserves a full declension, while the other tenses show a reduced four-case declension).

Specifically: As can be observed, the main change from present to past/future lies in the lack of rounding in the vowels associated to the cases.
 * The (present) accusative causes the vowel to round.
 * The genitive is identical to the bare form of the root.
 * The instrumental causes the vowel to lengthen.
 * The nominative adds creaky voice to the vowel.
 * The vocative adds breathy voice to the vowel.
 * The (present) ablative causes the vowel to round, and to lengthen.

Prepositions
Late Gallifreyan, as opposed to Classical Gallifreyan, which widely made use of morphology to link the different words in a sentence, boasts a wide array of prepositions with varied origins. All prepositions take a specific case when coupled with a noun; on the other hand, when coupled with verbs, they always rule a subjunctive. Also, all prepositions cause a mutation.

The most important prepositions are shown in the following table:

Evidentiality
Gallifreyan verbs are marked for evidentiality, distinguishing four types of evidence: These suffixes, barring any numeral suffix, are always the last to be appended on a verb, coming in the very final position.
 * Visual sensory, marked by -pø̤̄;
 * Nonvisual sensory, marked by paí̤;
 * Reportative, which is unmarked;
 * Inferential, which is marked by laí̤ for past-tense verbs and by kaí̤ for non-past verbs.

Although the suffixes are fairly stable, unless vowel fusion happens with a following numeral, evidentiality inflection is further complicated when personal suffixes are added to a verb; see the dedicated section for more.