Fyelli

Fyelli (/ˈfiel.li/ or /ˈfjɛ.li/) is the language originally spoken by the inhabitants of the Fyel mountain range and later the city of the same name. It has a history of sporadic contact with English and its writing system, resulting in several lonewords and possible phonological and morphosyntactic changes. Since the Accord of Noncombat, the language had declined in use until the treaty was broken and is experiencing an incomplete resurgence. It is notable for the conservative dialect's lack of labial consonants and vowels, owing to the physiology of its original speakers, large vowel system including a number of falling diphthongs, and complex articles in an otherwise grammatically isolating system.

=General information=

=Phonology=

Consonants

 * 1) /p̪ʰ/ is realized as a fricative [f] in New Fyelli.
 * 2) /x/ is realized as uvular [χ] immediately after back vowels, and palatal [ç] immediately after front vowels (including diphthongs).
 * 3) /r/ and /l/ are realized as uvular [ʀ] and [ʟ] immediately after back vowels.

Monophthongs

 * 1) /ɯ/ and word-finally is usually devoiced or unpronounced following a stop.
 * 2) /ɤ/ is realized as [ʌ] by some speakers and may be realized as [ə] in unstressed positions.


 * Marked graphemes represent a stressed syllable, or the onset of a diphthong.

=Grammar=

Morphology
Open-class Fyelli words are almost entirely uninflected, with the exception of a single verb morpheme for the passive voice. Its articles, however, are inflected for possession or definitiveness and case, likely a remnant of a much earlier form of the language that may have been more synthetic. For the amount of information included in the article, they are more obligatory in Fyelli than in English, even on proper nouns, although may be omitted in casual speech.


 * Word-final monophthong /i~ɪ/ is often devoiced in determiners in casual speech.

Determiners inflected for possessive person are homonymous with the grammatical person itself inflected for the appropriate case. It can therefore be considered that Fyelli inflects pronouns for case, apart from the nominative/accusative which are accounted for by words apart from this system.

Syntax
Fyelli is a VSO language, returning to SVO in interrogatives (which are unmarked beyond this movement). Beyond this reversal, it is a staunchly head-final language, with determiners considered the parent of a noun phrase.

The following depicts the typical word order of the language. Prepositional phrases may come anywhere after the subject phrase, separately from the object phrase. The negative auxiliary ikh and intensifiers are relatively free, but generally come first in an adjective or adverb phrase (with the negative usually preceding the intensifier). Within noun phrases, word order is freer than implied here, and adjectives, numbers, and plurality markers may be moved to follow the noun. The determiner is, however, always phrase-final.

=Lexicon=

Verb Auxiliaries
There is also an optional prefix on the verb denoting passive voice: u- (or v- if the verb begins with a vowel, but not a glide).