Yoketian

The Yoketians were the first civilization of their world. Their written history started around the year -2000 and reached its heyday around -700. They were organized in a number of rivaling slave-owning city-states, ruled by a duke (acway, literally 'strong man'). The cities constantly fought each other.

Their religion was polytheistic and featured multiple human sacrifices (wirawča), mostly of prisoners of war. Once a year, there was a feast during which a slave was crowned duke and everything normally considered sinful was allowed. After the feast, the Yoketi sacrificed the slave to the sun god Ma'elchor.

The Yoketians were ultimately conquered by the Nolikan emperor Ahmelati in the year 78.

Etymology: Yōket literally means 'the nurturing place'.

=Language=

The Yoketi language (yōkettu) was the first written language of Hudar. Writing started with logograms but later evolved into a syllabary, which was borrowed to write Nolikan. The writing system was never standarized. There were often two or three glyphs for the same syllable; and their shapes varied from city to city.

Allophony
As in any language, there were some allophonic variations:


 * /e i o u/ before /h ʔ/ are lowered to.
 * /n/ assimilates to place of articulation of a following obstruent, which in turn is voiced
 * dental and palatal consonants followed by y turn into geminates, for example s+y -> ss, n+y -> nn
 * /pj kj qj mj/ turn into
 * a stop or affricate followed by a glottal stop becomes geminate

Stress and phonotactics
Stress falls always on the penultimate syllable. Long vowels are found only in open syllables. /l r/ do not occur in word-initial positions, and aspirated obstruent occur only before vowels.

Noun
Nouns are declined in four cases and three numbers. There are two genders: animate and inanimate.

Inanimate declension - holko 'hill':

Animate declension - ya'ak 'sheep'

The typical processes are consonant sandhi (described above) and glottal alternation (/aɁ/ becomes /aɁa/ before a syllable-final consonant). Vocatives are stressed on last syllable.

Nouns get also possessive prefixes:

Alienable and inalienable possession is distinguished, so 'my horse' is yephec, but 'my heart' is aruhiš.

Verbs
Yoketian verbs also get possessive prefixes: inalienable for agreement with subject and alienable with object. Atōle'pu is 'I love you' and Issele'pu (sandhi from is-ye-le'pu) is 'You love me'.

There is also a system of suffixes, used to express tense:
 * Present -Ø
 * Past -kha
 * Future -'it
 * Conditional –pho

Yoketian has also a rather complicated system of aspects:


 * Imperfective -Ø
 * Perfective –'un
 * Progressive -che'
 * Durative -mul
 * Iterative –šo
 * Inchoative –ya

Adjectives are a form of verb in Yoketian. Because subject in the third person requires no agreement prefixes, only word order differentiates between:


 * pirpa ohor 'a bird is white'
 * ohor pirpa 'a white bird'.

as well as


 * pirpa čolte' 'a bird sings'
 * čolte' pirpa 'a singing bird'

Degrees are expressed by means of prefixes:


 * mual 'to be beautiful'
 * X-Acc wimual 'to be more beautiful than X'
 * X-Acc sēmual 'to be less beautiful than X'

Imperative is formed by adding stressed -ē (or -hē after a vowel) to a verbal root.

There is no morphological passive, but the subject can be replaced by indefinite ap 'someone' or even omitted altogether.

There is a special ending for subordination, -'on:


 * Phuay āmara o'kelkha'on oritkha 'a boy heard that the cow was stolen'