Qalaq

Setting
Qalaq is a language spoken by a nomadic tribe in northern Africa, Qalaqrang, originally from the shores of the Nile, but, through a series of migrations, most motivated by the Islamic conquest of northern Africa, now living on largely the same territory as the Tuareg. Despite formally converting to Islam, the tribes still retain an ancient pantheon and a great number of traditional stories and legends. NOTE:


 * As Qalaq has no alphabet or literary standard, I will only use transcription and IPA to represent the language.

Phonemes and Transcription
The forms in the parentheses are approximate phoneme pronunciation using IPA symbols, while the symbol on the left represent how these sounds are transcribed. NOTE: NOTE:
 * While schwa is not within Qalaq vowel inventory, many speakers reduce unaccented vowels to schwa when they are not needed to distinguish words or grammatical forms. This is particularly common in conjuctions and postpositions.
 * The phonetic realisation of mid-vowels in Qalaq is not strictly defined. The e, while it is ideally an open ɛ, can be articulated by various speakers in various contexts as a closed e, or a more open æ. o shows similar variation.
 * There are no true diphthongs in Qalaq, albeit any combination with the two semivowels can be interpreted as a diphthong. All combinations are allowed.
 * (h) is an allophone of (x) world initially. Both are transcribed as kh.
 * All aspirated consonants are aspirated very forcefully and audibly. Some constriction of the throat is also present when they are articulated, similar to Arabic emphathic consonants.
 * s, z, n, l, c, cc and dz are slightly palatalized before e and i.

Phonotactics
Essentially, a syllable in Qalaq can be defined as: (C)(C)V(C)(C). Generally, any combination conforming to this definition is allowed. However, there are additional rules forbidding some few combinations.
 * rs syllable initially is not allowed.
 * th and dh may only appear adjacent to a vowel or an approximant.
 * A word cannot end on an aspirated stop. If it would due to flexion, the stop is deaspirated.

Sandhi
There is also a small degree of sandhi, the rules of which are as follows:
 * While all consonants may be geminated, geminated forms may only appear in intervocalic positions. In consonant clusters, they are reduced to single length consonants.
 * s is palatalized into sh when preceding an r, m, p, k. The equivalent rule applies to z preceding r, m, b, g. Both are also palatalized after r syllable finally and reduced to kh and gh respectively syllable finally after an l.
 * A stop followed by a non-sibilant fricative with the same place of articulation merges into the fricative. e.g. kak+khang>kakhang, awt+tharg>awtharg
 * A nasal followed by a stop adjusts its place of articulation according to the stop. A nasal followed by a nasal remains unchanged, but a schwa is inserted between them to aid articulation if needed. A nasal followed by a stop with the same place of articulation absorbs the stop and, in an intervocalic position, becomes geminate. e.g. am+ter>anter, am+nar>amnar, am+baghzha>ammaghzha
 * Two adjacent consonants of different voicing do not adjust one to the other. Instead, either a short schwa is inserted in between or short s between stops and a short t between fricatives. This is not phonemic, or represented in writing.

Stress
Qalaq has dynamic stress that can be placed on any syllable in a word and is often used to distinguish forms of a word or different words. A single word may hold only one stress, but additional stress may be added to the first syllable in words longer than five syllables to aid articulation. An accent on the final syllable is most common in nouns and adjectives, as many case endings pull the accent onto themselves. Stress elongates the stressed vowel slightly, but does not change vowel quality. The stressed syllable is here written by adding an accent onto the vowel as in é.

Word Order
As Classical Qalaq is a highly inflected language, word order is fairly free and often the topic of a sentence is pushed to the front. However, neutral word order of main constituents in both main and relative clauses is VSO. Noun phrases and verb phrases on the other hand are fairly precisely defined when it comes to word order and, albeit changing the word order is tolerated in verse, it sounds extremely unnatural in speech and prose.

Verb phrase word order is as follows:

Noun phrase word order is as follows:
Adjectives/Attributes and Adverbs also have neutral orders and, should.the order be changed, the Adjective/Attribute or Adverb pushed to the front is considered to be topicalized.

The order is as follows:
 * Color
 * Size/Intensity
 * Age/Time
 * Impression (Beauty, Charisma, Glamour, Goodness)
 * Instrument (with a x)
 * Company (as well as x, with the help of x)

Verb Morphology
Qalaq verbs change in accordance with grammatical person, aspect, mood, tense, voice, number and, to a degree, gender. Tenses are henceforth named simply according to these categories, i.e. Tense Mood Voice Aspect.

There are three grammatical persons, that express the same meaning as they do in Latin or the Slavic languages, i.e. the verb form expresses whether the subject of a verb is the speaker, the one spoken to or a third party.

There are two aspects: imperfective and perfective. The imperfective aspect expresses that an action is continuous or still in progress or, in very few cases, that it is complete but influences current events or actions strongly. The perfective aspect expresses that an action is either complete, short, or a fact independent of duration of time as observed by the speaker. It is also used for all manners of general statements.

Qalaq has five moods, which express the speakers attitude towards the information being given. Indicative is the neutral mood, used for statements and observations. Subjunctive is a verb form expressing that the action the verb entails is dependent on a condition. It is usually the form of a verb in a relative clause, but is also used with modal verbs. Inferential is a mood used to convey that the speaker is not certain that the information he is expressing is true. It usually means that the speaker has heard the information from someone else, concluded it recently or doubts it, despite having seen it. It is sometimes used simply to express surprise. Imperative functions, much like in English, as a direct command. It only has I and II person forms. Jussive expresses a hope, desire or request. It is used extremely rarely, as the same meaning can be conveyed using modal verbs, but it remains in some fixed expressions and particularly old folk tales.

Qalaq has two voices: active and passive. They function much like in English, though both are synthetic. Active expresses that the subject of the verb is also the agent, whereas passive expresses that the subject is the patient of the verb.

Qalaq verbs have singular and plural. The plural agrees syntactically with both the plural and the absolute plural in nouns.

Finally, verbs occassionally express gender, both grammatical and biological, though this is not seen consistently and verbs retain this distinction mostly in third person only.

Most verb flexion consists of adding affixes, mostly vowel only infixes, into a verb root, consisting of two to four consonants. Verbs are accordingly separated into three categories: 2, 3 and 4, according to the number of consonants and their flexion differs somewhat, though it is very similar. 3-roots are the most common and make up over 60% of all verb roots in Qalaq, but a few often used verbs (most modal verbs) belong to the 2 and 4 categories.

The following is a table of all Tense Aspect Mood Voice combinations in Qalaq. All are synthetic.

Causatives
4-roots are actually causatives of 3-roots, as there are no pure verb roots greater than 3 consonants. Causatives in Qalaq are created quite simply by adding -q to a verb root. When -q is added to a 2-root, the resulting causative is conjugated as a normal 3-root. When the same is done to a 3-root, the resulting causative is conjugated as a 4-root. A great number of causatives have become quite common whereas their original roots fell into disuse. For this reason, it is not possible to find a pure verb root in Qalaq for every 4-root, but, as causative creation is simple, one can easily infer what the original verb meant and looked like.

Causatives express the meaning of: if a verb means to x, then the causative means ''to cause smn. to x''.

0 Consonant
At an earlier stage, proto-Qalaq had the glottal stop ('ʔ') as a phoneme which was quite common word initially. Due to it disappearing from Qalaq phonology, there is a small number of Qalaq verbs containing the 0 consonant. It is in fact an absent consonant in the place where the glottal stop was, which causes the verb to conjugate as if it had an extra consonant in the root. e.g. 0-q - to speak, to talk > NIMA I.sg = 0éq > éq.

In such words, some unusual and irregular vowel sandhi occurs:

.Nonperfect Indicative Imperfective Active (NIMA) Roughly the equivalent of English present continuous, NIMA states an action occurring in the present, which is likely to continue in the near future and is not a general fact or state of affairs. It is often used as to express future, as it has somewhat easier flexion and shorter forms than the alternatives.
 * V1+V1=V1
 * V+i=Vj
 * V+u=Vw
 * a+e=e
 * a+o=o

In NIMA, gender is only seen in third person singular and plural, where m stands for masculine, f for feminine and n for neutral. The verb does not consistently agree with the subject when it comes to gender, as the neutral form can be used for any gender, both physical and grammatical, and the masculine and feminine forms are mostly used when being excessively polite or suggesting that the gender of the subject is important.

For 3-roots, the flexion goes as follows, illustrated with the root s-m-kk, meaning to walk.

Indicative Perfective Active (NIPA)
Roughly the equivalent of English present simple, NIPA states a general state of affairs, a fact of the world or a cyclical, constantly repeating action.

Similar to NIMA, grammatical gender is rarely observed in NIPA and the neutral form is most often used with any subject.

For 3-roots, the flexion goes as follows, illustrated with the root  s-m-kk, meaning  to walk.

  For 2-roots, the flexion goes as follows, illustrated with the  root  sh-b, meaning  to please.

Noun Morphology
Qalaq nouns and adjectives change in accordance with grammatical number, gender and case.

Qalaq has nine cases: Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Genitive, Ablative, Allative, Perlative, Comitative, Causative. They communicate roughly the following noun functions in a sentence. A noun in N tends to be the subject of a transitive or intransitive verb, while a noun in A tends to be a direct object of a transitive verb. D represents an indirect object and is used for little else. G indicated possession or source, but not reason or cause. Ab represents the beginning point of movement, a concept off of which other concepts, usually the subject, break off, or the cause or justification for an action. Al represents the goal of movement, a result of accumulation of other concepts, or the result of an action, expected or observed. P is used to indicate movement through or by, but also, metaphorically, for an instrument or condition needed to fulfill and action. Co is used to indicate the company in which an action is done, but also, rarely, to describe thoughts more precisely. As I am not sure whether this is clear, an example would be, should one describe a feeling of envy with a touch of anger, one would express it with the NP: envy-N anger-Co. Finally, Ca represents the direct cause of an action or event. Ca and Ab merged into Ab and Al and D into D in the modern spoken Qalaq varieties, but they are still included here, as they are present in some traditional texts.

There are four grammatical genders: masculine human, shown as m, feminine human, shown as f, concrete nonhuman, shown as c and abstract nonhuman, shown as a. The name of the genders is fairly informative as to what nouns they usually apply to, albeit there are some counter-intuitive exceptions, particularly when it comes to domesticated animals and certain concrete concepts viewed as abstract. Adjectives agree with the noun in case, gender and number and their flexion includes paradigms for all these forms. Each gender has only one declension and all nouns of the same gender are inflected the same way. There are, however, small groups of irregular nouns in all four genders that have unpredictable paradigms, as well as several nouns with flexion according to one gender, but that request agreement according to another. These exceptions are covered later, beneath regular flexion.

Nouns and adjectives are also inflected for number. Qalaq has three grammatical numbers: singular (sg), plural (pl) and absolute plural (ap). Their meaning can be illustrated as man-men-all men. In quick speech, nouns are, when number is not important for understanding the sentence, always presented in their singular form. While, ideally, the verb and subject agree in number, it is often expressed through the verb only, whereas the subject noun is usually in singular unless one wants to emphasize that one is reffering to more than one or all. Nouns in ap take verbs in pl, but, as was explained, this is not strictly adhered to in speech.

Most noun roots are in the form of any number of syllables followed by an incomplete syllable to allow for vowel infixes, a common feature of declensions in Qalaq. The stress is on the affixes in all regular nouns, so the root is always unstressed and inflected forms have the stress on the ultimate or penultimate syllable. Irregular nouns are not as predictable and may have stress on any syllable in any form.

There is a small number of nouns which are non-gendered, in that they can agree with an adjective in any gender, regardless of their own paradigm. They are covered in the irregular section.

Regular Noun Declension
Regular m declension goes as follows, as illustrated by the noun kawt-l meaning husband. Regular f declension goes as follows, as illustrated by the noun b-t meaning girl.

Regular Adjective Declension
Qalaq adjective declension is, for the most part, analogous to the noun declension. Adjectives change gender, case and number to agree with the noun they refer to by taking the same infixes as nouns in regular declension. However, in adjective declension, all suffixes are dropped when an adjective has attributive meaning (e.g. q-l - good, fine, beautiful > D.sg.f = qil).

If an adjective takes suffixes, its meaning changes to something equivalent to definitive article + adjective in English (e.g. qilé = the beautiful (one)).

Adjective Comparation
Qalaq adjectives have three main forms when it comes to comparation: equative, positive, comparative and superlative. Positive is the neutral form and the one cited in the dictionary, and is equal to the adjective root. Comparative, superlative and equative are created by adding affixes to the positive form. If positive carries the meaning of the property x, then comparative carries the meaning of more x, superlative most x and equative as x as. Both equative and comparative take a noun in D to complete the comparison.

This is the flexion for an adjective, demonstrated using the adjective q-l meaning good, fine.

NOTE:


 * There is an additional form for all nouns and adjectives created by an -a- infix that is only used in compounds, but, as compounding is not productive in modern Qalaq, it is not included in the paradigms. It is, however, noticeable in many remaining word roots that were originally compounds. In classical Qalaq, compounding was also rarely used and it is possible that already at that point it had no longer been a productive feature of the language.

Pronoun Declension
Qalaq pronouns show gender in all grammatical persons, however in the I and II person, the gender coincides with one's biological gender, and only in III person must a pronoun agree with one's grammatical gender. When a group is of mixed biological or grammatical gender, one uses the neutral form of the plural or absolute plural. The neutral gender in II person singular existed before, used to refer to a person about whose gender one avoids making assumptions, but is now only used in fixed expressions concerning introductions.

Pronouns in accusative and genitive cannot stand alone. The accusative is added as a prefix to a verb, whereas the genitive, when it describes possession (e.g. Phil's pet = his pet), is added as a suffix to a noun and when it expresses source or belonging (e.g. Phil of America = it's Phil) is added as a prefix to a noun. To ease reading, I will separate the pronouns from the noun and verb with a dash (-).

Classical vs. Modern
There are several differences between Classical Qalaq, the language in which most Qalaq folktales are recited in, and Modern Qalaq, the language used in everyday communication. The language described here is closer to Classical than to Modern Qalaq. Some developments in Modern Qalaq include the almost complete dissappearance of number from both verb and noun paradigms, with a few plural and absolute plural forms remaining in fixed expressions, the simplification of the case system to varying degrees depending on the tribe, the greatest number of cases being 7 (Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Genitive, Ablative, Perlative, Comitiative) and the smallest 3 (Nominative, Oblique, Genitive), simplification of the Mood system, expansion of the vowel system and, in many cases, merging of the aspirated and unaspirated voiceless consonants.

Due to very little semantic drift and largely unchanged syntax, most Modern Qalaq dialects are mutually intelligible, but are far from similar and very different to the Classical variety, though most tribes still understand spoken Classical due to oral tradition. However, in order to preserve folktales despite the changing grammar and phonology of Qalaq, many features of Classical Qalaq are thought to be exagarated in order to compensate for lack of certain qualities in Modern varieties, especially when it comes to pronunciation. Aspirated consonants, for example, are thought to have been substantially more subtly aspirated then they are today when folktales are recited, as Modern Qalaq speakers, who are unable to hear the difference between these two types of consonants, but are aware that it exists, over-aspirate the consonants to make the difference audible to other Modern Qalaq speakers. Furthermore, the e and o sounds are thought to have been substantially less varied in pronunciation, but Modern Qalaq speakers often transpose their greater vowel inventory onto classical words. Other than these few differences, linguistic analysis suggests that Classical Qalaq as it is spoken today is not far from the proto-Qalaq spoken by first Qalaq nomads who arrived in the north of Africa.

Words
Here is the suggested basic vocabulary of Qalaq and english equivalents.

Vocabulary
The following are links to pages where word roots are listed.

Nouns

 * Qalaq\Nouns

Verbs

 * Qalaq\Verb Roots