Ashouctian

General information
Ashouctian is a fusional nominative-accusative mostly head-intial language. Word order is strictly SVO. It is mostly head-initial in that adjectives follow the nouns they modify, adverbs follow the verbs they modify, the language has postpositions, but genitive phrases preceed the head noun. The language makes extensive use of consonant modification in it's declensions and conjugation. The language, despite its fusional nature, makes heavy use of infixing on verbs, but seldom uses infixes on nouns.

Nouns decline for four cases: nominative, oblique, genetive, and adverbial, as well as to indicate plurality. Verbs conjugate for person, number, tense (past, present, and future), aspect (imperfect, perfect, and progressive), mood (indicative, optative, interrogative, imperative, and conditional), and voice (active, passive, and mediopassive). Some of these are expressed periphrastically, however. Adjectives agree with the noun they modify in case and number, and adverbs simply follow the verb they modify.

Phonology
Ashouctian has a rich consonant inventory of 70 distinct consonants, but only 4 distinct vowels.

Consonants

 * Consonant gemination is distinctive but does not occur in root words, only as a result of morphophonological processes.

Vowels

 * There are also four diphthongs: /ai/, /au/, /əi/, and /əu/

Allophony

 * After (but not before) a labialized consonant or in between two labialized consonants, unrounded vowels are often rounded.
 * Alveolar plosives become retroflex before a retroflex fricative or approximant.
 * Word-final labialized consonants are often, but not always, pronounced as a plain consonant

Phonotactics
Syllable structure is (E)(C)(ɻ, r, S)V(P) where E is an ejective plosive, C is any consonant, S is a sibilant, and V is any vowel or diphthong. Onsets including all three of (E)(C)(ɻ, r, S) do not occur, nor an onset of (N)(S) where N is a nasal and S is a sibilant, nor an onset of (E)(F) where (E) is an ejective plosive and (F) is a fricative. Any non-ejective consonant may end a syllable.

Orthography

 * Main article: Ashouctian Orthography

Ashouctian uses the Latin alphabet and employs a complex orthography using only the following letters:


 * a á b c d e é f g h i í l m n o ó p r s t u ú

Consonant mutation

 * Main article: Ashouctian consonant mutation 

Ashouctian consonants undergo multiple forms of mutation during declension and conjugation. This generally only effects word-final consonants or ultimate consonants, but it can effect other consonants due to infixing as well. Different conjugations, declensions, and infixes trigger different mutations and not all mutations are regular.

Nouns
Nouns in Ashouctian decline differently for a multitude of word structures, deemed "classes" for convenience. There is a hierarchy of endings, beginning at -VCVC, -VVCV, -VVC(C), -V and -C. If a noun does not end in the first three, it will decline for simple ending in a vowel or consonant, where a consonant final ending is simply suffixation.

-VCVC nouns
The pattern of -VCVC noun declension is in the table below (in IPA), followed by an example declension, in which IPA is available by hovering over the word.

-VVC
This declension is identical to the -VVCV, but there is no final vowel truncation.

Verbs
Ashouctian verbs conjugate for person, number, 3 tenses (past, present, and future) 3 aspects (imperfective, perfective, and progressive), 5 moods (indicative, imperative, optative, conditional, and interrogative), 3 voices (active, passive, and reciprocal) and polarity. There are two conjugations depending on the verbs syllable structure.

All Ashouctian verbs end with -e or -iae in the infinitive.