Kannayn

Background
Kannayn is the official language of several provinces in the Kingdom of Gwallonia. While Gwallon is the official language of the kingdom overall, Kannayn has a reputation as a refined and sophisticated literary language, and there is little stigma against it. Kannayn is technically not an exonym, as the name that the rest of the world uses comes from a different dialect from the standard. The "native" endonym for the Standard Dialect is Kaññaun (literally "our language"). Kannayn is the dominant language among several hundred interconnected clans living in the highlands on the northern plateau of the Naidha Mountains. Censuses count approximately 3.9 million speakers, though not all speak Standard Kannayn, in fact very few actually do. Kannayn could be thought of as a dialect continuum.

Consonants

 * 1) The plosive series have allophonic voicing when in intervocalic environments e.g. /p/ may be realized as /b/, /t/ as /d/, /c/ as /ɟ/, and /k/ as /g/ between two vowels.
 * 2) The plosive series are unaspirated unless when a syllable boundary contains /h/ or /ʔ/, in which case they become aspirated. This is phonemic as this phenomenon creates minimal pairs in the lexicon.
 * 3) The glottal stop /ʔ/ is often elided when it begins a word, but this is usually avoided in clear educated formal speech.
 * 4) Most consonants can be geminated (/m/, /n/, /ɲ/, /ŋ/, /p/, /t/, /c/, /k/, /s/, /ɾ/, and /l/), but the consonants /ʔ/, /v/, /h/, /ʃ/, and /j/ cannot be geminated. The aspirated plosives /ph/,  /th/, /ch/, and /kh/likewise are not geminated since they are technically consonant clusters.
 * 5) The aspirated plosives /ph/, /th/, /ch/, and /kh/ can never begin a word in the standard dialect.
 * 6) The alveolar nasal and plosive(s), and the liquid  /n/ and /t(h)/ and /l/ may be pronounced as dentals without hampering understanding, but it would be considered crude, almost to the point of speech impediment among some speakers.
 * 7) The rhotic consonant can be realized as either /ɾ/ or /r/, but /r/ tends to be the pronunciation word finally and when geminated.
 * 8) The liquid consonant is never pronounced velarized: it is always /l/, never /ɫ/
 * 9) The palatal plosive /c/ may be pronounced as a postalveolar affricate /t͡ʃ / without hampering understanding, but again could be considered problematic by some speakers and would strike most native speakers as non native.

Vowels

 * 1) The short high central vowel /ɨ/ is often realized as a schwa /ə/ when in unstressed syllables or word finally.
 * 2) The mid vowels /eː/ and /oː/ tend to be pronounced much laxer (and slightly lower) when short, surfacing as /ε/ and /ɔ/ respectively.
 * 3) The short low central vowel /ä/ is often realized slightly higher as /ɐ/ or even /ə/ in unstressed syllables or word finally.
 * 4) The low central vowel /ä/ can be slightly fronted or backed to /a/ or /ɑ/ respectively, depending on the region, village, or even individual speaker.

Diphthongs

 * 1) There are no rising diphthongs in Kannayn, only falling diphthongs.
 * 2) The offset is given more weight than a mere glide, where both elements are somewhat equally pronounced in sequence.

Phonotactics
The basic syllable structure of Kannayn is (C)V(CF), where V can be any vowel or diphthong, C can be any consonant, and CF can only be a consonant that is allowed to end a syllable. Disyllabic words introduce syllable boundaries where two consonants interact, and these consonant clusters are heavily restricted in the forms that can surface in the spoken language. Similarly, two vowels abutting at a syllable boundary will surface differently than a mere vowel sequence, as V.V is not allowed.

Syllables in Kannayn can be heavy or light. Light syllables contain a vowel (V) as the nucleus. Heavy syllables contain a long vowel or diphthong (W) as the nucleus. A disyllabic word cannot have two heavy syllables, and trisyllabic words and beyond cannot have two heavy syllables in a row. Therefore the syllable structure for disyllabic words in Kannayn can be represented: (C)V(CF)(C)*V(CF) || (C)V(CF)CW(CF) || (C)W(CF)CV(CF) (The second C is considered required as V.W or W.V will result in the insertion of a buffer consonant, most often /v/ or /j/). When both syllables are light a buffer consonant might be added when two vowels exist on the syllable boundary. However, a long vowel or diphthong may be created instead depending on the qualities of the two vowels. Trisyllabic words can be (C)V(CF)CV(CF)CV(CF) || (C)V(CF)CV(CF)CW(CF) || (C)V(CF)CW(CF)CV(CF) || (C)W(CF)CV(CF)CV(CF) || (C)W(CF)CV(CF)CW(CF).


 * 1) All nasals assimilate to the same places of articulation no matter which underlying nasal is the coda. A final /m/, /n/, /ɲ/, and /ŋ/ will all yield /nt/ when followed by a syllable starting with /s/, so there is no need to give each nasal its own unique row.
 * 2) All plosives that do not assimilate into a following nasal are unreleased.
 * 3) When /ɾ/ is followed by a nasal it disappears and instead lengthens the preceding vowel where possible (if the preceding nucleus is heavy, the /ɾ/ disappears without changing anything further.
 * 4) When /l/ is followed by a nasal it will palatalize and create a diphthong out of the preceding vowel. If the nucleus is already long, it will shorten and create a diphthong. If the nucleus is a diphthong offsetting in /ɨ̯/ or /u̯/, they will be replaced by an /i̯/ offset.
 * 5) Similarly when /l/ is followed by /s/ it will velarize to the point of creating a diphthong out of the preceding vowel, following the same pattern as when followed by nasal. However the diphthong offset will be /u̯/ instead of the /i̯/ offset.
 * 6) /j/ will create a diphthong with an /i̯/ offset preceding most consonants, and the same assimilation rules for the preceding vowel apply.
 * 7) The exception to the above is when /j/ is followed by /ɾ/ or /l/ in which case the /j/ disappears, and any diphthong is made a monophthong (diphthongs cannot precede /ɾ/ or /l/ in any context).

Pronouns
Kannayn distinguishes between singular, dual, and plural referents across 4 persons. 1st person pronouns can be inclusive or exclusive; vaak means "I and another person", xaak means "you and I", eññan means "I and others", and eññas means "all of us". The 4th person functions as an obviative during a discourse, in order to introduce a new 3rd person referent without losing clarity. Pronouns are declined for 5 cases: nominative (subject of a sentence), accusative (object of a sentence or static prepositions), dative (indirect object of a sentence or prepositions of motion toward), genitive (possessor or object of a preposition of motion away from), and construct (possessed object, but also an instrumental).

Verbs
Verbs in Kannayn are conjugated according to person, number, tense, aspect, mood, voice, and evidence. There are 2 numbers (dual pronouns are conjugated the same as plurals) across 4 persons, as well as 2 tenses (past, nonpast), 6 aspects (imperfective, progressive, perfective, habitual, inchoative, and terminative), 2 moods (realis, irrealis), 2 voices (active, passive), and 5 evidential morphemes (gnomic, experiential, inferential, reported, intuited). There are 3 main conjugations of verbs: those whose stem ends in a short vowel, those whose stem ends in a diphthong or long vowel, and those whose stem ends in a consonant.

The default verb form is the nonpast imperfective real gnomic active. That is, a verb that is occurring during the discourse, it is not important whether the action is ongoing, habitual etc. (only that it is not completed), this can be seen as the closest to a simple present c.f. English. The action is also known to be real, and the interlocutors do not care how verifiable the information conveyed is (if it even can be verified), i.e. the facts presented in the discourse are brushed off as common knowledge. Finally, the speaker is the agent of the verb in question. This is the most unmarked a verb can be in Kannayn.

The 3 conjugations for nonpast imperfective realis gnomic active verbs are:

The past tense is used to describe any action that occurred before the present discourse. The past imperfective denotes an action that occurred at some point and whether or not that action resulted in anything, was completed, came to fruition etc. is not known or not important to the discussion. The past imperfective is the closest Kannayn has to an aorist tense.