Lalakhmet

General Information
Lalakhmet (also known as Proto-Lalakhi) is an a priori, proto- lang. Its descendents will speak in (constate for Nomidian) where Nomidian is spoken.

Proto-Lalakhi is an acient language being spoken along the same period as Ancient Egyptian.

Consonants

 * The lenis voiced plosives are voiced before liquids
 * /*ʀ/ is pronounced [ʁ̥~ʀ̥]
 * /*q/ is pronounced [ɢ̥~ɢ]
 * /*ł/ is pronounced [ɬ]
 * /*ć/ is pronounced [tʃ]
 * /*ś/ is pronounced [ʃ]

Phonotactics
C(L)V(C)(C) C - consonant | V - vowel | L - liquid
 * Nasals and glottals cannot be in a cluster
 * except /*ŋ/ and /*ŋ́/
 * /*s/, and liquids cannot follow another consonant
 * [j] and [w] cannot come before another consonant
 * Liquids cannot follow consonants at the end of a syllable
 * Two alveolar consonants cannot be in a cluster except as a geminate
 * /*ŋ/ and /*ŋ́/ become /*j/ in between vowels
 * /*w/ becomes /*p/ finally

Ablauts

 * Consonant

There is a basic consonant ablaut. There are two common uses of the consonant ablaut. The first is in verb paradigms when going from active to passive where the active indicative ending undergoes the ablaut. Secondly is when changing lexical category from verb to noun where the stem's root consonant (if there are multiple, it will be the initial one) undergoes the change and the stem takes the declensional change.


 * Plosives > Nasals
 * p > m
 * t > n
 * ć > nj
 * k > ŋ
 * q > ŋ́
 * Fricatives > Liquids
 * s > r
 * ł > l
 * ś > hj
 * h > j
 * ʀ > r
 * Nasals > Liquids or Fricatives
 * m > w
 * m > p (word-finally)
 * n > r
 * ŋ > j
 * ŋ́ > ʀ
 * Liquids > Fricatives or Nothing
 * w > ∅
 * w > p (finally)
 * r > s
 * l > ł (before/after a consonant)
 * l > s (elsewhere)
 * j > x
 * Vowels

Most often, this ablaut is used with irregular or athematic declensions/conjugations (namely, singular/countable > plural/uncountable and present > past).


 * Pure Vowels
 * i > a ; ī > ai
 * a > e ; ā > ei
 * u > ū ; ū > ā
 * e > o ; ē > ō
 * o > a ; ō > āe
 * ü > ai ; ǖ > jū
 * y > ei ; ȳ > īe
 * Diphthongs
 * ai > ē ; āe > jei
 * oi > ī ; ōe > wē
 * ei > īa ; ēa > jē

Verb
Verbs are the most complicated aspect of Lalakhmet conjugating to voice, aspect, tense, and mood (and person/number in the passive). Verbs are split into 5 morphological categories, sometimes referred to in Lalakhi grammar asgrammatical form, dependent on their stem (some verbs may not have some forms because of their lexical definition): dynamic, static, reflexive, and metamorphive.

Each verb has two stem forms for sandhi which is used depending on whether the following consonant is a consonant or vowel (semi-vowels count as consonants). For example, poe- is used before consonants while poj- is used before vowels.

Voice

There are two voices: active and passive. All verbs must have an object ("object" here does not refer to the accusative, but the object in the subject-agent-object trifecta).

The passive voice therefore is not a passive in the English sense. Instead, it creates an ergative-absolutive statement. The object is raised subject and the agent is removed. In other words, the accusative / direct object is made the subject of the sentence, the nominative, and the previous subject is removed.

Tense/Aspect Timeline of Events Start <––––––––––––––––––|–––––––––––––––|-|––––––––––––|-|––––––––––––––––––––>                   Past              Present            Future Present, past, and future are the three main verbs. They are not specific, however, and change aspect to grammatical forms. (*) Reflexives are special as they do not have mood or aspect.
 * Dynamic > present imperfective, imperfect, future imperfective
 * Static > gnomic present, perfect, future perfect
 * Reflexive* > present, past, future
 * Metamorphive > present progressive, past progressive, future progressive


 * Auxillaries


 * *ysk- : habitual auxillary
 * *uʀła(t)- : relative tense auxillary

Mood

Moods are productive and can be used to have meaning. The negation of each mood does not negate the fact but reverses the mood's definition (as in, negative indicative = untrue statement, lie; negative optative = wish not to, desire not to). Form
 * Indicative, IND : facts and statements
 * Optative, OPT : desire, wish, want, &c
 * Potential, POT : positive possibility, ability to, can, &c
 * Epistemic, EPI : doubt, uncertainty, negative possibility, &c

Grammatical "form" is how the verb carried about. Although productive, it is a fully different paradigm. Nominal/Adjectivial Forms
 * Dynamic - a continuing action indicating motion; it is characterized by being only in moving action verbs (such as, "I am running" - "I am walking" - "I am thinking" ; however, phrases like "I am thinking" or "I am crying" do not apply because they do not contain motion). It can also be a continuing state such as "I am attending" or "I am waiting"
 * Static - a single, basic verb; for verbs of motion, this is almost of a gnomic aspect (such as, "I possess" - "I confess" - "I think" ; in motion verbs, "I run" - "I walk" - "I swim")
 * Reflexive - a verb done onto oneself; these may have a reciprocal sense in the plural (such as, "I eat myself" - "I run over myself" - "I kill myself")
 * Metamorphive - denotes a change of state or the beginning of an action. As in, "to freeze" is intrinsically metamorphive as it denotes a change from not frozen to frozen (such as, "to melt" - "to boil" - "to mold" - "to turn into" - "to cook" - "to begin to eat" - "to begin to run"). Metamorphive is understood as the inchoative aspect in the present tense.

Nominal forms are not marked, as in, verbs do not specific endings for gerunds or supines. Instead, they are conjugated as usual, but are preceded by prepositions to mark purpose (gerund -- je + __ "in __" ; supine --

Regular
Each verb is conjugated fully to tense, mood, and form. Passive voice is constructed by applying the consonant ablaut to the ending (not the stem). The past tense has the stem's stressed vowel applyed to the vowel ablaut. Verbs also come in  A perfectly regular verb is poe- / poj- meaning "to eat".
 * *pōe- / poj- : (dyn) to be eating ; (sta) to eat [in general] ; (ref) to eat oneself; (met) to begin/start eating

Examples

 * pōe- / poj- : to be eating, eat, eat oneself, begin eating
 * sȳpoi- / sypoj- : to live, be alive, --, begin life
 * śyʀu- / shyr- : to be sleeping, sleep, set oneself down to sleep/rest, begin sleeping
 * sȳśyʀu- / syshyr- : --, to be rested/alert, --, --

Pronoun
Pronouns are quite common in Lalakhmet with a large variety as well. Usually, these are split into four general types: personal, possessive, prepositional/clausal, and relative/interrogative.

Personal
Personal pronouns in the first and second person do not make a difference between animate and inanimate. The fifth and third persons do, however. Unlike the regular four genders in nouns, there is only an animate/inanimate difference made.

3rd person inanimate pronouns are treated as demonstrative pronouns as well.

Noun
Nouns are dependent on its base noun phrase of: noun-case + article-definiteness-plurality (+ preposition). In addition, each noun has four genders: masculine, feminine, abstract, and inanimate. Masculine and feminine pertain to an animate creature's (i.e. people and animals) biological gender. The abstract gender is put on anything that is "abstract" in nature (such as ideas, theories, philosophies, etc.). The last gender, inanimate, is applied to, as the name of the gender, inanimate objects such as rocks, furniture, and water. Note that mixed groups of both males and females use the abstract gender.

Case Declension
Nouns case is surprisingly simple with only four genders, but there are often contraction rules that affect the stem which make frequent quasi-irregulars. Sometimes, a noun stem will interfere with the suffix or the phonotactics. However, there are various rules to fix this:
 * C-r > C-er
 * l-r > ll
 * V-V
 * Two of the same vowel will merge (e-e > ē)
 * Long diphthongs ending in /e/ will elongated the /e/ too (āe-e > āē)
 * Long, mid-close vowel + [j] will make [j] become [a] (ē-i > ēa; ǖ-i > ǖa)
 * /*i/ + vowel will become [j] (i-e > je)
 * /*u/ + vowel will become [w] (u-e > we) except before /*o/ where it elongated to /*ō/ (u-o > ō but u-oi > woi)
 * /*y/ + /*i/ will become /*ī/, but before another vowel, it becomes /*j/ (y-i > ȳ but y-e > je)

Article Declension
Each article declines to definiteness (definite, indefinite) and number (countable, uncountable); each article fits into a certain type of noun which is measures (such as Chinese measure particles).

Most article stems end as such:

Stem list
Countable > Uncountable stems changes occur often (*) masculine articles start as ēt and ēj, other vowels use j-

Examples

 * paqq- (m/f) : chicken
 * ʀās- (ina.) : tree

Adjective
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Ideas:
 * Adjectives with degrees of connotativeness (heinous, bad, neutral, good, glorious) and voice (positive/negative, active/passive) with comparativeness made with another specifically declining adjective
 * Roots be at the base with verbs, noun, and adjectives being formed therefrom
 * Strong emphasis on reflexive/passive
 * Ergative-absolutive descendents