Anyēa

Classification and Dialects
Anyēa (pronounciation: /aˈɲeːa/; known in the Si language as Yanyu) is the language of the Ēnyu people inhabitating the Shenwan mountain region. It has official status in both Tielilinji and Ganhou cantons in the Union of Si, and also in Tamin province of the Republic of Cheki.

It is an agglunative language with a relatively rich consonant inventory, and many fascinating features yet to be discovered.

Phonotactics
The basic syllable structure of Anyēa is (C)(C)V(V)(C). Of course, not all verb combinations might show up, but there are too many possible combinations to list.

A general rule is that only nasal consonants appear at the end of a syllable. /ɲ/ is always followed by a vowel, and /ŋ/ always follows a vowel. But there are exceptions, some from Toishan loanwords, but native words like d́ūk ('mold; greyish green') appear.

Nouns
Nouns in Anyēa do inflect, but it is sometimes difficult to tell if a word is inflected, or simply modified by a suffix with some meaning. For example, Lila-zho can be explained as both 'the aloe' or 'this aloe', making the suffix -zho undecided between a definite marker and a demonstrative pronoun. Furthermore, the habit of writing in syllables instead of distinct words (like 'li-la-zho' instead of 'lila zho') in traditional Anyēa script blurs the boundary between an affix and an additional word even more.

Generally speaking, there are as many as 14 cases in Anyēa, which are categorized as noun-like, adjective-like, verb-like and isolated. The following table shows the cases and what they stand for (as there aren't so many cases in most languages on the Earth): * Please note that the Behaviorial and Counter-behaviorial cases are invented by myself; they are not real-life language cases. Contact me if a better name for them is suggested.*

Other useful suffices that take up the roles of articles, demonstrative pronouns and numbers are: The Anyēa language doesn't have pronouns as subjects or objects, as they are fully absorbed into verb suffices.

Verbs
Verbs in Anyēa conjugate for the following categories:


 * 1) Person
 * 2) Tense
 * 3) Mood
 * 4) Aspect
 * 5) Voice

As there are no pronouns in the Anyēa language, verbs take on the function of indicating the doer and done-to of itself when they're not indicated otherwise.

A verb takes on personal information like arguments: For example, the English sentence 'He (gender not important) robbed us (less than 10 people) of our bag' translates into:

Aȷ́ia-ki-b́a-nti-plhā sosonyu.

Rob-past tense-third person-singular-first person-few-direct object bag-indirect object.

(The dashes between suffices are optional; I just placed them to distinguish the suffices)

The Anyēa tenses are: When an action happens in the future of a moment in the past, but still in the past, both the past and future tenses will be used.

Like, 'Rain was hard that day and would be harder' translates into:

Lūma-ki sie jü-qing, d́o lūma-ki-lüs-ich.

Strong-past tense rain day-that, and strong-past tense-future tense-comparative.

(Note that the adjective 'lūma' acts as the predicate. In Anyēa, they act this way without any inflection)

Syntax
Anyēa is a Predicate-Subject-Object language, with both verbs and adjectives functioning as predicates.

Anyēa is head-initial, meaning adjectives and adverbs come after the words th.ey modify.

Example text
See Anyēa/Phrasebook.

Additional information can be found at Anyēa/Textbook.