Caohi

SettingEdit
Hello and thank you for visiting my language page. This language I'm creating is called Caohi (/Kao̯hi/). I am trying to make it a very simple language that is easy to learn.

PhonologyEdit
Caohi has the following 5 vowels and 11 consonants: Diphthongs: /ei̯/, /e̯a/, /eo̯/, /əi̯/, /əo̯/, /ai̯/, /ae̯/, /ao̯/, /oi̯̯/, /o̯a/. Caohi has a five-vowel system consisting of the vowels /i/, /e/, /ə/, /a/ and /o/. The vowel /o/ is pronounced with a height about three quarters of the way between a low vowel and a high vowel, significantly higher than /e/ and /ə/ which are true mid vowels. The vowel system contains no significant allophonic variance. Vowel quality is the only contrastive feature within the vowel system (features such as length and nasality are not phonemically contrastive). The consonant system of Caohi is small with only eleven consonants. There is only one bilabial consonant, /m/. Similarly to the vowel system, there is no significant allophony within the consonant system.

Word stress

Stress in Caohi words is fairly weak and is not phonemically contrastive. Stress is predictable and falls on the penultimate syllable.

Root morphemes

There are about 1500 root morphemes in Caohi. Due to this fairly small root vocabulary size, Caohi relies heavily on the joining of root morphemes to form compound structures. When forming compounds, root morphemes are placed side by side and maintain their original form, rather than being agglutinated into a single longer word. Caohi morphology is discussed in more depth in the grammar section of this page. Caohi root morphemes never exceed three syllables in length. The following word structures are found for Caohi root morphemes (C = consonant, V = vowel or diphthong): Monosyllabic: (C)V(C); Disyllabic: (C)VC(C)V(C) Trisyllabic: (C)VC(C)VC(C)V(C).

OrthographyEdit
Caohi is written using the Latin alphabet. The following table shows each letter of the alphabet and its associated IPA pronunciation:

Grammar overviewEdit
Caohi is a nominative-accusative language with a strict Subject-Verb-Object word order. The indirect object, however, precedes the verb. Caohi is postpositional and predominantly left-branching, with modifiers preceding the parts of speech they modify in most environments. The morphology of Caohi is strongly isolating. To help compensate for the lack of agglutinativity, Caohi relies heavily on the use of postpositions. Nouns and pronouns are marked in all environments by obligatory postpositions indicating their grammatical case. Many words in Caohi can function either as a noun or as a verb. The verbal forms in these cases are followed by a postpositional marker indicating the word is functioning as a verb. There are eight parts of speech present in Caohi; the noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, postposition, conjunction and interjection.

NounsEdit
Nouns is Caohi are not marked by any definite or indefinite articles. Neither is there any noun gender in Caohi. As mentioned above, nouns are followed by obligatory postpositions indicating their grammatical case. The nominative and accusative cases each have two different postpositions depending upon whether the noun is animate or inanimate. The animate category does not only include humans and animals, but also living things that are not capable of thought, such as plants, trees and flowers. There are a total of 46 different grammatical cases that are conveyed by postpositions in Caohi. The following is a complete list of these:

Adessive (e.g. near/at/by the building); apudessive (e.g. next to the building); inessive (e.g. inside the building); intrative (between the buildings); pertingent (touching the building); subessive (under the building); superessive I (on the building); superessive II (over the building); ablative (away from the building); initiative (beginning from the building); lative (to the building); terminative (as far as the building); perlative (through/along the road); prolative (via/ by way of the building); antessive (before the game); temporal (at eight o clock (only used for describing time)); accusative animate; accusative inanimate; instructive (by means of the building); instrumental (with/using the building); nominative animate; nominative inanimate; ablative (concerning the building); aversive I (avoiding the building); aversive II (fearful of the building); benefactive I (for the benefit of the building); benefactive II (for/intended for the building); causal (because of the building); comitative (with the building); dative (for the building); distributive (per / for each building); genitive (of the building); posessive (belonging to the building); ornative (endowed/equipped with a building); partitive (three (of the) buildings); comparative (similar to the building); equative (comparable with the building); essive ((temporary state of being) as the building); excessive ((transition from a state) from being a child (is not a child any more)); identical (being the building); orientative (turned toward the building); revertive (backwards to/against the building); translative ((change from one form to another) turning into an adult); multiplicative ((number of times) six times); vocative ((used to adress someone) O father!); disjunctive ((used in isolation or other special situations) What is it? A building).