Nuktaq

Setting
Nuutavik (IPA: Nutavik) is an a-priori language created by John Stevens. Its grammar is inspired by Welsh, which the author can speak fluently as a second language. It is spoken by the Nuutavik elves, a tribe of about 300 forest elves who live in the kingdom of Unaasseq. The elves live a traditional and simple life and have no modern technology, so their language lacks many modern words you'll find in English. The Nuutavik like their language to be unique, so they avoid borrowing words from other languages. Instead, they create new words by combining existing morphemes together. Nuutavik is written in the Latin alphabet, although originally it had its own script which is no longer used. The language has a fairly simple grammar with few irregularities. It is an isolating head-initial language with SVO word order. It has a rich five-term evidential system.

Phonology
Nuutavik has a phonemic inventory consisting of 14 consonants, seven oral vowels and seven nasal vowels. The most distinguishing feature of the language’s phonology is the presence of the voiceless bidental fricative and its voiced counterpart, two incredibly unusual sounds. The only natural language known to contain a bidental consonant is the Shapsug dialect of Adyghe. Nuutavik has a voicing contrast for fricatives but not for plosives. Consonants occur at the labial, bidental, alveolar, velar and glottal points of articulation. Nuutavik has a symmetrical vowel system consisting of the following seven vowel qualities, each of which can occur oral or nasal: /i e ɨ ə a o u/. There is no phonemic vowel length and there are no diphthongs. There is little to no allophony in the vowel system, but there is a small amount in the consonant system which is described later in this section.

Consonants
Nuutavik has the following 14 consonants:

Vowels
Nuutavik has the following seven oral vowels and seven corresponding nasal vowels:

Allophony
/w/ is realized as [v] when occurring before front vowels, and this is shown in the orthography.

/ɾ / is realized as [l] in the syllable coda. This is also shown in the orthography.

Phonotactics
Syllable structure is CV(C). Open syllables are about three times as common as closed syllables. Morphemes never begin in the consonants /ɬ/ or /ɾ /. The consonants /h m n w/ do not occur in the syllable coda. Root words can contain the following two-consonant clusters across syllable boundaries:

/p/ + /t k h̪͆ s ɬ/

/t/ + /p k/

/k/ + /p t h̪͆ s ɬ ɾ/

/f/ + /t k n ɾ/

/h̪͆/ + /p t k m n/

/s/ + /p t k m n/

/ɦ̪͆/ + /m n/

/z/ + /m n/

/ɬ/ + /p t k m/

/l/ + /p t k f h̪͆ s h ɦ̪͆ z m w~v/

Basic Grammar
The grammar of Nuutavik has few irregularities and is fairly simple, and so is easy to learn. Nuutavik is a predominantly isolating language which uses particles and prepositions rather than inflection to convey the meaning of grammatical case, number, mood, tense, aspect and voice. Nuutavik is strongly right-branching and is prepositional rather than postpositional. Word order is strictly Subject-Verb-Object. Nuutavik has no grammatical gender. Tense and aspect are indicated simultaneously by particles preceding the verb. There are three tenses (past, present, future) and three aspects (perfective, habitual, continuous/progressive). There are five evidential paradigms (visual sensory, nonvisual sensory, inferential, reportative, assumed) that are indicated by suffixes. Nuutavik has three grammatical numbers: singular, dual and plural. Each root word in Nuutavik belongs to a default part of speech. Particles are used to turn root words into a different part of speech from their default. Nuutavik makes no distinction between adjectives and adverbs.