Aqͣqarͤrhat

General information
Aqͣqarͤrhat is a language spoken by a civilization of the same name, that once has ruled in the region of the great river Thailassar; the very name (which is the Middle Aqͣqarͤrhat form, by the way) means "Riverland". Several periods of formation of this language are known, ranging from Proto-Aqͣqarͤrhat, from which also a few other languages come from, through Old and Middle (also called High) stages up to what is nowadays known as the New Aqͣqarͤrhat, with some major changes occuring between these steps.

Old Aqͣqarͤrhat Vowels
As we can see, the Old Aqͣqarͤrhat distinguished its 6 vowels by length (short, medium and long) and by nasality (nasal vs. not nasal). It also retained some of its Proto-language's tonality: its accented vowels (long or medium only) had a pitch accent (High, Mid, or Low), but this was lost in the later stages of development.

High Aqͣqarͤrhat Consonants
As we can see here, some changes occured during the transition of the Old Aqͣqarͤrhat into the Middle. First, all ejectives disappeared, and pharyngealized stops appeared instead (in the sibilants, the change was in length: the old ejective sibilant changed into a new short, but pulmonic version, and the old 'normal', pulmonic one was lengthened). Also, old aspirated stops became fricatives, with the retroflex fricative getting sibilantized and the uvular and velar ones merging together. The old glottal phonemes started to show different ways of pronuncing two vowels i they were set one just after another: where there used to be a glottal stop, there it remained, although non-phonemically, separating the two vowels (like in Indo-European languages); but, if there was a glottal fricative instead, it eventualy disappeared via the lenition process (it became voiced, and then it ceased to be pronounced completely). Thus was established the system of the so-called soft and hard transition, which remained in the later stages of the language's evolution. The hard transition meant that the two vowels where to be pronounced separately; and the soft transition caused the vowels to be pronounced without any pause, effectivelly turning them into a diphthong (or even a triphthong or oligophthong, sometimes).

High Aqͣqarͤrhat Vowels
Except of the addition of the new soft and hard transition system, the vowel structure of the language didn't change, except that the vowels became shorter and lost the pitch (even in the accented syllables). They also retained the nasalization. The old short vowels became reduced ones, written as a superscript (qͣ) or with a respective diacritic (ă). They could occur only after consonants, if they weren't directly followed by a medium or long vowel. If such a reduced vowel was nasalized, its nasality extended onto the preceding consonant. In the Old Aqͣqarͤrhat, there was a rule that forbade nasal vowels from following ejectives; this was moved into the High Aqͣqarͤrhat, thus keeping the pharyngealized consonants from being followed by a nasal vowel.

Phonotactics
Old Aqͣqarͤrhat didn't permit any consonant clusters; this was keeped in the High Aqͣqarͤrhat. The New one actually permits some (prenasalizd stops, for example), but it's still quite stiff in this matter.

Nouns
Aqͣqarͤrhat nouns decline by cases (14) and number (6); the Old one had also genders (4), but in the later stages it was preserved in the pronouns only.

Verbs
Verbs don't conjugate by tense, voice or person, but they have 6 aspects (Perfect, Inchoative, Stative, Active, Cessative, Progressive) and 4 moods (Indicative, Interrogative, Potential, Optative).

Syntax
Aqͣqarͤrhat has a generally free word order, although the predicate and the subject are always just beside one another, without any other word intruding between them. This language is interesting because of its unusual morphosyntactic alignment: apart from Ergative and Accusative cases, which are used to mark the agent ad the patient, respectively, it also has a third case, Direct, which is neither, but can act as any (or both). The Direct-marked subject is obligatory in the Aqͣqarͤrhat sentences; it can be intransitive (alone), act as an agent (with Acc.), a patient (Erg.) or even the two at the same time, with both Accusative patient and Ergative agent (Or 2 Acc. patients, or 2 Erg. agents), each with its own predicate; this way Aqͣqarͤrhat languages are able to form the so-called dipredicative sentences.