Nuktaq

Setting
Nuktaq is an a-priori language created by John Stevens. Please also see John Stevens' other conlang, Cuinaom (http://conlang.wikia.com/wiki/Cuinaom).

Nuktaq is spoken by the Nuktaq elves, a tribe of about 300 forest elves who live in the kingdom of Soqedak. The Nuktaq live a traditional life and their language has a conservative vocabulary. The elves like their language to be unique, so when they need to create a new word, they do so by combining existing morphemes together rather than by borrowing from another language.

Nuktaq is written in the Latin alphabet, although originally it had its own script which is no longer used. The language has a relatively straightforward phonology, and a simple grammar with few irregularities. The grammar is inspired by Welsh, which the author can speak fluently as a second language. Nuktaq is an isolating, head-initial language with SVO word order. It has a rich five-term evidential system.

Phonology
Nuktaq has a phoneme inventory consisting of 14 consonants, eight vowels and eight diphthongs.

Consonants occur at the bilabial, alveolar, velar and glottal points of articulation. The language distinguishes between voiceless plosives, voiceless fricatives, voiced implosives, nasals and a lateral approximant, and makes a contrast between laminal alveolar /s̻/ and apical alveolar /s̺/.

The vowel inventory includes seven oral vowels, /i y e ø a o u/, and one nasal vowel, /ə̃/. The vowel /u/ is pronounced with compressed lips, [ɯᵝ], as in Japanese and Swedish. /y/ ad /ø/ are also compressed rather than protruded, as is expected for front rounded vowels. Vowel length is not contrastive. The eight diphthongs of Nuktaq, all falling diphthongs, are as follows: /ei̯ eu̯ ai̯ ae̯ ao̯ au̯ oi̯ ou̯/. Notice that Nuktaq contrasts low-to-mid dipthongs (/ae̯/ and /ao̯/) with low-to-high diphthongs (/ai̯/ and /au̯/).

Consonants
Nuktaq has the following 14 consonant phonemes:

Vowels
Nuktaq has the following seven oral vowels and one nasal vowel. Note that /u/ is a compressed vowel, [ɯᵝ].

Diphthongs
Nuktaq has the following eight diphthongs:

Phonotactics
Most root morphemes are disyllabic. A smaller number are monosyllabic or trisyllabic. Monosyllabic, disyllabic and trisyllabic roots are structured as follows: monosyllabic: (C)VC; disyllabic: (C)V(C)CVC; trisyllabic: (C)V(C)CV(C)CVC.

Orthography
Nuktaq originally had its own script, but nowadays is written in the Latin alphabet. Its alphabet is entirely transparent, with a one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. The tables below show the consonants, vowels and diphthongs of Cuinaom written in orthography, with IPA notation in square brackets. The phoneme /l/ is transcribed as  when realized with the [ɾ] allophone (in intervocalic position).

Basic Grammar
The grammar of Nuktaq has few irregularities and is fairly simple, and so is easy to learn.

The language is strongly right-branching and is prepositional rather than postpositional. Word order is strictly Subject-Verb-Object.

Nuktaq 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. Particles preceding the verb mark tense and aspect simultaneously. 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. Nuktaq has three grammatical numbers conveyed through particles: singular, dual and plural. There is no grammatical gender.

Each root word in Nuktaq belongs to a default part of speech. Particles are used to turn root words into a different part of speech from their default. The language makes no distinction between adjectives and adverbs.

More on the grammar of Nuktaq coming soon.