Riktas

General information
Ddiktas(/ˈɾik.tas/) is a small language family or dialect continuum spoken primarily in the archipelago of ''Sumpa Ddammay. The language of trade and governance in the islands, described here as the standard variety, is a dialect most often called Ddiktas Ddammay. ''

Alphabet
Standard Ddiktas has a small phonemic inventory, contrasting sixteen consonants and just three vowel qualities. The Latin orthography for Ddiktas mostly follows the standards of the International Phonetic Alphabet, but represents IPA /ŋ/ as "ng" and /j/ as "y" (as in written English). "Dd" is used to represent an alveolar tap as in the American English pronunciation of "peddle."

The complementary allophones /p/, /b/, /d/, /k/, /d͡z/, and /t͡s/ substitute for /f/, /v/, /ɾ/, /h/, /z/, and /s/ (respectively) in consonant clusters following nasal consonants (/m/, /n/, or /ŋ/), fricatives (/f/, /v/, /s/, or /z/), and liquids (/l/ or /ɾ/). /p/ is also substituted for /f/ before /a/, and /t͡s/ occurs phonemically in the word-final syllable /-t͡si/.

Phonotactics
The canonical syllable structure of Ddiktas is CV(C), where V is any vowel and C is any consonant, though /h/ never occurs as a coda and /t͡s/ occurs phonemically only as an onset before /i/. As such, vowel sequences do not occur in Ddiktas, and consonant clusters are short and occur only between vowels.

Word Order
Sentence construction in Ddiktas is relatively flexible, as arguments are usually explicated through inflection rather than word order, but in everyday usage VSO order is the most common.

Case
Nouns in Ddiktas are declined with suffixes marking case, although the nominative case (indicating the subject of a clause) is a null or unmarked morpheme.

The causal and attributive cases are used only infrequently. The former occurs primarily in the construction ting-wa, "therefore" or "because of that," while the latter is used primarily in conjunction with the locative case marker -tak in classifying groups of people, as in ddag-tak-wus, "borderlands people" or "shoreline people."

"Thematic" Suffixes
Thematic suffixes are special inflections that may be affixed to noun stems before case-marking suffixes in order to express various shades of meaning related to the meaning of the stem.


 * The thematic suffix -si becomes -sin when it is followed by a case-marking suffix other than the nominative -Ø. On verbs in the nominative case it is potentially ambiguous with the oblique case marker, and this will typically be clarified by context and word order.

Verbalizing Suffixes
Ddiktas includes two nominal inflections which may be applied to a noun stem in order to produce a related verb stem. The first is -dda, which functions similarly to the thematic suffix -si ~ -sin, creating verb stems meaning "to have" or "to be characterized by" the modified noun, as in nu-dda, "to contain or be associated with (many) people". The second verbalizing suffix is -ti, which creates verb stems meaning "to be" or "to behave like," as in nu-ti, "to be human."

Pronouns
Pronouns in Ddiktas can take one of two forms. Most typically, they occur as enclitics following the first word in a clause, usually a verb. Pronominal enclitics take different forms marking voice and the nominative and oblique cases, the latter often directly following the former as in pafka-ti-ki=lu=mas, "I have heard you."

Pronouns may also take the form of independent words, usually as a way of marking emphasis or providing specificity. Unlike regular nouns, pronouns mark person and number as well as case, and decline irregularly in the oblique case. First person plural pronouns also take on distinct forms depending on whether or not they are intended to include the listener or reader of a statement.


 * Demonstratives (see below), declined in the appropriate case, are used interchangeably as 3rd-person independent pronouns.

Demonstratives
Demonstratives in Ddiktas (words analogous to the English "this," "that," "these," and "those") differentiate three degrees of distance, indicating whether the described object or person in closer to the speaker, closer to the listener, or distant from both. Like pronouns, demonstratives decline according to number as well as case, and as in English they may be used either pronominally or adnominally. Distal demonstratives are also used to mark definite articles; indefinite articles are never marked in Ddiktas.


 * ti becomes ting when it takes a case-marking suffix other than the nominative -Ø. There is potential for ambiguity between the distal singular nominative and the listener-proximal singular oblique, as well as between the nominative and oblique forms of the distal plural. These ambiguities are usually resolved through context and word order.

Possessives
Possession is marked by a proclitic preceding the noun over which possession is claimed, which takes one of three forms based on person.