Nuktaq

Setting
Nuutavik (IPA: Nutavik) is an a-priori language created by John Stevens. Its grammar is inspired by Welsh, which the author can speak fluently as a second language. It is spoken by the Nuutavik elves, a tribe of about 300 forest elves who live in the kingdom of Unaasseq. The elves live a traditional and simple life and have no modern technology, so their language lacks many modern words you'll find in English. The Nuutavik like their language to be unique, so they avoid borrowing words from other languages. Instead, they create new words by combining existing morphemes together. Nuutavik is written in the Latin alphabet, although originally it had its own script which is no longer used. The language has a fairly simple grammar with few irregularities. It is an isolating head-initial language with SVO word order. It has a rich five-term evidential system.

Phonology
Nuutavik has a phonemic inventory consisting of 20 consonants, seven oral vowels and seven nasal vowels. The language has a pair of extremely unusual sounds, the voiceless and voiced bidental fricatives. The only natural language known to contain a bidental consonant is the Shapsug dialect of Adyghe. Nuutavik has a voicing contrast for fricatives but not for plosives. Instead, it contrasts voiceless plosives with voiced implosives. Consonants occur at the labial, bidental, alveolar, velar, uvular and glottal points of articulation. Nuutavik has a symmetrical vowel system consisting of the following seven vowel qualities, each of which can occur oral or nasal: /i e ɨ ə a o u/. There is no phonemic vowel length and there are no diphthongs. There is little to no allophony in the vowel system, but there is a small amount in the consonant system which is described later in this section.

Consonants
Nuutavik has the following 20 consonants:

Vowels
Nuutavik has the following seven oral vowels and seven corresponding nasal vowels:

Allophony
/w/ is realized as [v] when occurring before front vowels, and this is shown in the orthography.

/ɾ / is realized as [l] in the syllable coda. This is also shown in the orthography.

/ʁ/ is generally an approximant but may also be pronounced with slight frication.

Phonotactics
Syllable structure is CV(C). Open syllables are about three times as common as closed syllables. Morphemes never begin in the consonants /q ɬ ʁ ɾ /. The consonants /ɓ ɗ h w m n ŋ/ do not occur in the syllable coda. The CV combinations /wu/ and /wũ/ are impossible. Close vowels (/i ĩ ɨ ɨ̃ u ũ/) do not occur before uvular consonants (/q ʁ/). Root words can contain the following two-consonant clusters across syllable boundaries:

/p/ + /t k q h̪͆ s ɬ/

/t/ + /p k q/

/k/ + /p t h̪͆ s ɬ ɾ/

/q/ + /p t s ɬ/

/f/ + /t k n ɾ/

/h̪͆/ + /p t k m n/

/s/ + /p t k q m n/

/ɬ/ + /p t k q m/

/ɦ̪͆/ + /ɓ ɗ m n/

/z/ + /ɓ ɗ m n/

/ɣ/ + /ɓ ɗ m n ɾ/

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">/ʁ/ + /ɓ ɗ m n/

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">/l/ + /p t k q ɓ ɗ f h̪͆ s h ɦ̪͆ z ɣ w~v ʁ m/

Orthography
Nuutavik originally had its own script but nowadays is written in the Latin alphabet. Its alphabet is entirely transparent and manages to avoid the use of diacritics. The following tables show the spelling of each consonant and each oral and nasal vowel. As can be observed, nasal vowels are written by adding a following <n> to the symbol for the corresponding oral vowel. There is no ambiguity caused by this, as the consonant /n/ never occurs in the syllable coda. The phoneme /w/ is spelled as <v> when realized with the [v] allophone, and the phoneme /ɾ/ is likewise spelled as <l> when realized with the [l] allophone.

Basic Grammar
The grammar of Nuutavik has few irregularities and is fairly simple, and so is easy to learn. Nuutavik is a predominantly isolating language which uses particles and prepositions rather than inflection to convey the meaning of grammatical case, number, mood, tense, aspect and voice. Nuutavik is strongly right-branching and is prepositional rather than postpositional. Word order is strictly Subject-Verb-Object. Nuutavik has no grammatical gender. Tense and aspect are indicated simultaneously by particles preceding the verb. There are three tenses (past, present, future) and three aspects (perfective, habitual, continuous/progressive). There are five evidential paradigms (visual sensory, nonvisual sensory, inferential, reportative, assumed) that are indicated by suffixes. Nuutavik has three grammatical numbers: singular, dual and plural. Each root word in Nuutavik belongs to a default part of speech. Particles are used to turn root words into a different part of speech from their default. Nuutavik makes no distinction between adjectives and adverbs.