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 changed into the so-called transition system; old glottal stop change into the 'hard transition' (that is, it stayed where it had been, still separating the two syllables), but the glottal fricative changed into 'soft transition' instead, disappearing completely via the lenition process. In the word-initial or final positions the glottal consonants disappeared completely (glottal stop tuning up only to separate vowels from two adjacent words, which otherwise wopuld b in a hiatus). 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, making it slightly voiced in the process. 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. Only vowels could be word-final, though; and so, there could be no consonants not followed by an (at least reduced) vowel in this position; yet, the only non-close reduced vowel that actually could appear there was the schwa, written as reduced e, or not at all. The reduced close vowels i, u and y could, though, happen even there, starting the process of changing these vowels into palatalization, labialization and palato-labialization, respecively, which would apply to these vowels in all positions (not only word-finally) in the New Aqͣqarͤrhat.

Phonotactics
The Old and High Aqͣqarͤrhat permit only syllables with an (optional) one-consonant onset, an obligatory nucleus and no coda; yet, the nucleus may consist just of a reduced vowel (which, especially between unvoiced consonants, might be almost inaudible for most European speakers). Vowels that are linked by a soft transition (that is, no consonant interrupting, not even a glottal stop) are treated as singular vowels, even though they might seem to be diphthongs, triphthongs, etc..

Interestingly, glottal stop may occur at the beginning of words, distinguishing them from the ones that don't have it.

Old Aqͣqarͤrhat didn't permit any consonant clusters; this was kept 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 (7/8); the Old one had also genders (4), but in the later stages it was preserved in the pronouns only.

Cases
As I said above, Aqͣqarͤrhat nouns have 14 cases in total, these being:


 * Direct (the 'subject case'; neither agent nor patient, but can act as any or both);
 * Ergative (the agent; the direct cause (or 'perpetrator') of an action);
 * Accusative (the patient; the direct recipient (object) of an action);
 * Causal (the indirect cause of something happening);
 * Dative (the (indirect) recipient, benefactor, goal or effect of an action);
 * Instrumental (the way, the means or the tool to do something);
 * Comitative (parties that accompany the carrying out of an action, not being directly involved);
 * Possessive (the owner of a thing);
 * Inessive (the surroundings or circumstances);
 * Adessive (all-round indirect case; usually corresponding to the preposition 'about');
 * Ablative (the source; motion from; usually used with adpositions to mark moving away from some position);
 * Allative (in the direction of; motion to; usually used with adpositions to mark the movement into a position);
 * Perlative (through, across, by, along, via; usually used with adpositions to mark movement through or via a position)
 * Locative (in, at; used to mark the location where something occurs, might be thought of as a static counterpart of the 3 cases above; usually used with adpositions to mark placement in a position).

Aqͣqarͤrhat nouns have 3 different stem forms, each used with a different set of cases:


 * form 1 (or direct) - used to form Direct, Ergative and Accusative;
 * form 2 (or middle) - used to form Causal, Dative, Instrumental and Comitative;
 * form 3 (or indirect) - used to form Possessive, Inessive, Adessive, Ablative, Allative, Perlative and Locative cases.

There is yet another, fourth form, though - the adjectival form. It can take any of the aforementioned cases, as well as a fifteenth case, the Adverbial (used to make adverbs).

These forms are usually quite regular, although some irregularities might also occur; there can also actually exist several different variants of each form of a single substantive (that is especially true for the adjectival), sometimes with varying meaning.

Aqͣqarͤrhat noun cases
When in adjectival form, however, the Aqͣqarͤrhat nouns and gerunds tend to use alternative affixes for some cases, as well as a distinct Adverbial case.

The alternative forms are:


 * -sse- [sːɛ] for Ergative
 * -ky̆̃ňu- [ky̆̃ɳu] for Instrumental
 * -nhăthu- [ɴăθu] or -ngangū- [ŋaŋuː] for Dative
 * -ţ'ylĩ- [ʈˤylĩ] for Possessive
 * -qēra- [qɛːra] for Ablative
 * -hŭ̃t'ē- [χŭ̃tˤɛː] or -rhē- [ʀɛː] for the Adverbial case.

These affixes (save the Adverbial) are used only sporadically, though, usually in more formal occasions; normally, the usual noun affixes are used. The exception is the gerund form of verb; it actually should use only the 'alternative' affixes (although it may take the 'normal' ones instead, too, but seldom).

Numbers
There are 7 (or 8) numbers in Aqͣqarͤrhat, these being:


 * Singular (one of an instance of a concept; for single, whole, countable things);
 * Dual (used for countable things that are double or occur in pairs or couples; in later times, used for any symmetric system);
 * Trial (used for countable things that are triple or occur in threes; in later times, used for any asymmetric system);
 * Plural (any set of countable elements);
 * Null (zero of instances of a concept; can be used with both countable and uncountable nouns);
 * Partitive/Paucal (a part of a greater whole; a little/a few; can be used with both countable and uncountable nouns);
 * Collective (all of instances of a concept; can be used with both countable and uncountable nouns).

There also used to be a Quadral number, used for quadruples, fours and 'supersymmetric' systems, but its use was limited for religious purpose only, and so wan't used in everyday speech.

Aqͣqarͤrhat noun numbers
Aqͣqarͤrhat also has a 'blank' or 'unknown' number, with no numerical affix added; this is used when the number is not known, irrelevent or can be derived from the context.

Pronominal particles
Aqͣqarͤrhat doesn't have pronouns as we know them; it rather uses different particles (for example, gender, person or definitness markers) affixed to other parts of speech to convey pronominal ideas (so, the pronoun 'I' would be expressed by a combination 'human-Definite-Masculine/Feminine-1st person-Singular-Direct case').

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

Aspect/tense
As said above, Aqͣqarͤrhat has 6 aspects (I call them aspects rather than tenses, as they depict the manner of an action, not actual time), these being:


 * Perfect (an action completed some time before, but its effects still visible)
 * Inchoative (an action is just commencing)
 * Gnomic (an undefined action; might be constant or habitual; similar to Greek Aorist or English Present Simple)
 * Continous (an action that is happening at the moment of speaking, or a state that is changing)
 * Cessative (an action that is ceasing)
 * Progressive (a future, usually planned or somehow predicted action)

Aspects are marked with special affixes assigned to them.

Mood
There are 4 moods in Aqͣqarͤrhat verbs:


 * Indicative (a real action)
 * Interrogative (used to form questions)
 * Potential/Subjunctive (used to make a hypothesis, usually in conditional sentences)
 * Optative/Jussive (orders, demands, wishes or encouragement)

Each mood has its own verb stem form (similar to the nouns' system), to which the aspectual affixes are added.

There is also the gerund, which has its own stem form (and might thus be called a fifth 'mood'). It doesn't take the aspectual affixes, though, but the substantival ones instead (the same as the adjectival in nouns, so, including the adverbial case). Although, if an aspectual affix is added, the gerund turns into a participle (its temporal relation to the main clause being marked by the aspectual affix).

Like the nouns, the verbs might have even several variants of a single form.

Numerals
Aqͣqarͤrhat numerals use an octal (8-based) system, which is also, perhaps, a cause for number 4 and its multilplications to be considered holy by the Aqͣqarͤrhatians.

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 all of 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, each with its own predicate; this way Aqͣqarͤrhat language is able to form the so-called dipredicative sentences.