Nāmic

Nāmic is an Indo-European influenced, mixed a priori-posteriori language, by Waahlis. Formely known as Nāmaς, until wikicode drove it to extinction.

General information
Nāmic, [ˈnɑːm.ɪk], natively Naṃkrthāvāka [ˌnã.kr̩ˑ.ˈtʰaː.faː.xa] translated as "named constructed speech" and written "नँक्र्थावाक", in the Nāharā script- is a mixed constructed a priori/ a posteriori language. It draws inspiration from mainly the Indo-European branch, yet makes a decisive stance to preserve artificial features.

Since there is a tendency in Nāmic to blend characteristics of both artificial and natural languages, a rather unholy mixture has arisen, for example: It is a fusional language, like its predecessors Latin, Sanskrit, Greek and Germanic - yet displays the highly unnatural ergative-accusativ alignment, or tripartite, - which is rarely seen outside conlanging.

Concerning the vocabulary, both words derived from Indo-European stems, as well as complete a priori words, appear; such as "dhrā" - tree, from Indo-European *dóru, and the word for heaven, "ıāmna" - from... me.

Setting
The Nāmic language is a Indo-Aryan language with a number of speakers totalling over 5.6 million. It is designed to be closely related to the Sanskrit language with clear influence from the Old Avestan language. Naṃkrthāvāka is spoken in Central Asia and Indian subcontinent, but is not the official language of any region.

The language has remained extant especially in the Namasthani and Maharaya regions in India, Pakistan and Tibet, despite the lack of official status. There is an exclave of speakers of the Pārsa dialect of the Nāmic language in Iran, spoken around the Sistan Lake. The dialect is heavily influenced by the Farsi language.

Phonology

 * See also: IPA for Nāmic

Consonants
The following table portraits Nāmic's phonetic inventory of consonants. All consonants, except aspirated ones, may be geminated, which is phonemic, and represented by doubling the grapheme. The letter /h/ represents aspiration when succeding consonants, and breathy-voice when preceding vowels. "Nh", is an exception, being a velar nasal.

Please note that all retroflex consonants and the dental trill rhoticise the surrounding consonants. The pronunciation of ⟨ v ⟩ is considered dialectal.

Lenition
In addition to the consonants above, Nāmic suffers from severe allophony, lenition, caused when:


 * Consonants lie in medial position between two vowels.
 * Consonants lie in final position in lexemes - Not in syllables.

The aspirated consonants become completely spirantisised, whilst the unaspirated phonemes become affricates. The exceptions are the velars, which all become fricatives. The nasal consonants, affricates, trills and approximants remain unaffected.

Please note that the phonemes without brackets are the non-lenitioned consonants.

Nota bene

There is additional allophony, regarding phonation. The pairs [c - ɟ], [ç -ʝ], and [v - f]/[w - ʍ], are only represented by one grapheme each: ⟨ ȷ ⟩, ⟨ hy ⟩ , and ⟨ v ⟩ respectively. Their voiced counterpart is an allophone - see Consonant Assimilation.

Thus, our conclusion is that the word vāka- voice, speach - shouldn't be pronounced [ˈvaːka], but rather [ˈfaːxa].

Affricates
In addition to these, there's a multitude of digraphs with corresponding affricates. It is important to note that the four digraphs ⟨ pt ⟩, ⟨ vt ⟩ , ⟨ kt ⟩ , and ⟨ ȷt ⟩ symbolise consonant clusters with an affricate onset. They are not affected by lenition.

Consonant Assimilation
Nāmic possesses a progressive consonant assimilation word-internally, based upon phonation, or voicedness.

The consequence is that a consonant, a cluster, or an affricate, is pronounced differently, depending on whether it is preceded by a voiced or voiceless consonant. There are exceptions to this rule, since the alveolar trill [r] and the retroflex tap [ɽ] do not differ between voicedness.

The nasal stops are affected quite differently, with a complete nasalisation of the preceding vowel - and loss of the stop - if the initial or first consonant is voiced. However, nasals are perceived as neutral in nature, and does therefore not affect voiceless nor voiced phonemes.

There are, however, two dialects of Nāmic;


 * Sthānta, which means "current, dominating".

The Sthānta dialect will be featured in this article, and is the main dialect that distinguishes consonant assimilaton upon voicedness.
 * Austikā, which means "golden, posh".

Vowels
The representation of Nāmic's vowels. There are are 12 vowel phonemes, yet only 6 graphemes, thus, it may be assumed some are allophones during certain circumstances. It is obvious that many of the vowel graphemes are recycled, since many phonemes are allophones. The background is covered in the Metaphony section.

Diphthongs
There are a limited number of diphthongs in Nāmic, with the same amount rising as falling diphthongs. [ɪ̯] is most often equivalent to [j], and [u̯] is often just [w]. The left diphthong is its front value, and the right one is the back value. All other vowel clusters are diaeresis. The main phoneme in all diphthongs may be geminated.

Synaeresis
Similarly to Sanskrit and Modern Greek, the Nāmic language is affected by synaeresis, which causes diphthongs to collapse into monophthongs.

No falling diphthongs occur in between consonants, as a nucleus, nor do the falling diphthongs appear geminated in open coda position. They are transformed into geminated or short monophthongs, depending on the length of the diphthong. The arisen monophthongs are inconsistently written as their monophthong equivalents., however it isn't compulsory. The allophony adheres to this schedule:

Front diphthongs on the left, back ones at the right.

Vowel Metaphony
The Naṃkrthāvāka suffers from a certain kind of vowel harmony, called progressive vowel metaphony. This urges all vowel phonemes in a lexeme to be of the same kind of the preceding one. That is: Va = type-a vowel, Vb = type-b vowel, C = consonant: VaVb Vb > VaVa Va

There are tqo exception, causing the metaphony to be regressive instead; when a word is initialised by an [ɛ], or an [ә]. The [ɛ] and [ә] the gets assimilated by the succeeding consonant: Vb Va Vb > VaVa Va

These modified [ɛ-ә] -sounds will occurr later in text, and will be referred to as "affected" [ɛ-ә].

Nāmic's metaphony is based upon backness, with exceptions being when /ә/, /e/ and /o/ are followed by an [r], which ignores the harmony, and modifies the phoneme.

Vowel Quality
There are four different vowel qualities: The vowels will be represented by a default /a/. Please note that any nasal can nasalise the preceding vowel, however in non-voiced environments, only the letter ⟨ ṃ ⟩ may.
 * Short and geminated Oral
 * Short and geminated Nasal

Phonotactics

 * Any consonant - C
 * Sonorant - S
 * Fricative - F
 * Nasal - N
 * Vowel, also diphthong when final - V

A Nāmic syllable have two different maximal syllabic structures, the by far most common structure is (F)(C)(C)V(C)(F/N) initially, and (F)(C)CV(C)(F/N) medially and finally. The conclusion is that a syllable's maximal consonant cluster is FCC, that a medial and final syllable minimally must look like CV, and that all syllables must terminate in either a F, fricative, a nasal- N, or a vowel - V. Since most lexemes in Nāmaς are disyllabic, a common lexeme might look like this: FCVN.CV, like stānta - "state" [ˈstaːn.ta]. It should herefore be noted that ēkva - either, is pronounced [ˈɛː.kʍa], and not [ˈɛːk.ʍa].

The second structure is very uncommon, but does occur: (C)CS(C), and sometimes (C)CVS(C), where a sonorant occupy the syllable nucleus. Most of the syllables are free, that is, without the coda. Examples include vṙkas - wolf [ˈfr̩ˑ.kas], and ēktrva - any of them [ˈɛː.ktr̩ˑ.ʍa]. Interestingly, all syllabic sonorants are half-geminated.

Other
Some phonemes develop new pronunciations when adjacent to each other:
 * [h] + [r] = [xr]
 * [s] + [r] = [ʂr]
 * [s] + [u] + [vowel] = [sfV]

Grammar
The grammar of the Nāmic language is that of a constructed language, that is, fairly regular.

Lexical Stress
The lexical stress of the Nāmic language is completely irregular in the lemma forms. Declension, conjugation and prosodic stress may manipulate the stress however. All stressed polysyllables in Nāmic are geminated, but note that all geminated syllables are not stressed. That is, a lexeme may contain several geminated syllables. If so, the second one is stressed.

Stress must always be marked in all polysyllabic words - except verbs in the infinitive, or rather lemma, to avoid confusion in the vocabulary.

The alternative set of diacritics, the acute (´) and grave (`) accents, are not commonly used, but provide information which syllable to stress - both being geminated, but with the acute accent signifying stress in polysyllabic lexemes.

Stress Apophony
A pecurious detail of Nāmic is that it is possible to manipulate the stress to convey different meanings. In Nāmic linguistics called stress apophony.

The manipulation of stress in conjugations and declensions change the meaning of the word radically. The most common usage of changing the stress, is in the conjugations; the stress may be pressed forward to the ultimate syllable, to change the tense from present to preterite. See the Verbs section.

In the first nominal declension, nouns terminating in an unstressed open syllable, may be stressed on the ultimate syllable in the genitive case.

1 This form possesses an irregular form present in the language's name: Naṃkrthāvāka, pronounced: [nã]. The genitive is quite often used in compound words.

Intonation
The intonation of the Nāmic language is phonemic, and is primarily used to distinguish grammatical moods. There are three common pitches used in Nāmic, and one for further emphasis. The intonation is not phonemic, but should be used to keep a native pronunciation.
 * Rising [↗] Intonation.
 * Falling [↘] Intonation.
 * Rising-Falling or Peaking [↗↘] Intonation.
 * Falling-Rising or Dipping [↘↗] Intonation.

The intonation is used to emphasise certain words - that is, if you want to stress a certain action, location or noun in the sentence. It is very similar to the case in English. If not necessarily sad, the pitch is normaly rising [↗].

For the grammatical intonation, certain moods are associated with certain intonation, which may vary by dialect and accent. The standard however dictates a rising pitch [↗] during interrogative moods and the interrogative words, followed by a dipping intonation in the end [↘↗]. The conditional mood however - the subjunctive mood when used in main clauses - is characterised by a peaking [↗↘] intonation. The English language doesn't really distinguish the intonation in the conditional mood, but a rising pitch is fairly common.

Prosodic Stress
Another use of the stress manipulation, other than grammatically, is prosodically. The interrogative mood is not expressed phonemically in the Naṃkrthāvāka, other than by intonation - see above. It is therefore possible to manpulate the stress on certain non-interrogative pronouns and pro-adverbs. This is equivalent to the English rise in pitch on interrogative nouns:
 * Here. →
 * Here? ↗

Syntactics
Considering the fusional nature of the Naṃkrthāvāka, the word order's rather free. It does possess tendencies towards SOV and SVO. It sould however be noted that the word order may alter depending on transitivity. Only SOV, VSO and SVO orders will be presented here.

Transitive Orders
SVO with ergative verbs is rather common, similarly to English.

Since focus lies on the patient, the verb phrase often moves further back.

Intransitive Orders
The intransitive order SV(O) is not very common, but it does occur.

Since focus lies on the verb in the Nāmic languages intransitive orders, the VS(O) is much more common. Please note that the pronoun may be dropped, but it is not custom regarding intransitive verbs.

Noun Phrase
The Naṃkrthāvāka does not possess particular positions for the adpositional phrase, thus it will be prepositional for the sake of simplicity. It is quite similar to English.

Possessive noun phrases can be formed by the means of a possessive pronoun, or a dative construction. Nevertheless, they remain after the noun.

Verb Phrase
In the Naṃkrthāvāka, adverbial phrases always precede the modified verb. The noun phrase may be freely positioned,or it may depend on transitivity - see further up.

Pro-forms
I have, out of simplicity, assembled a table of correlatives of corresponding pronouns and pro-adverbs. They are a mixture of irregular and regular structures, and are by no means the full collection. It is a selection.

Please note that the pronouns decline as common nouns, according to the phonological characteristics, except kō, keı, kā, and their respective relative pronouns. See the "Declensions" section.


 * 1) The "elective" pro-forms, is quite obsolete. It always identified with the similar "existential". For example, for Nāmic native speakers the difference between "Do you have any peas?" and "Do you have some peas", translated as "a tvāya ēke phāpama hānṭ"? The difference ıs determined simply by context.
 * 2) Many adverbs are simply hyperbolic, and "auhrauyār", is simply translated as from "from everywhere", which of course is not possible.
 * 3) Likewise, the adverb "ahrauyār" - "to everywhere", or "going everywhere."

Nouns
The nouns of Nāmic decline according to case, gender, and number. There is no inflection for definiteness, however. There is a sparingly used article though.

Person
There are two proper persons in the Nāmic language, the first and second, known as addresser and addressee respectively. These are irregular and only present in the personal pronouns and verbs. Other than that, the language possesses a number of demonstratives, which serve as, and are called, the third person.

Impersonal Person
In addition, the Nāmic has an impersonal person. This is a substitution for the passive voice in the language, which melded with the subjunctive. It could be variously called a fourth person or autonomous person, and is equivalent to the English indefinite pronouns of "you","one" and "they".

Other corresponding pronouns are the German, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian "man", the French "on" and the Finnish "ei", with similar uses. The Irish Gaelic autonomous person is the closest correspondent.

Genders
There are three genders in the Nāmic language. They are the following:


 * Masculine


 * Feminine


 * Neuter

They do not simply represent natural gender. The distinction between genders is irregular and difficult, though there is for example a tendency among feminine nouns to be abstract. The demonstratives, or third person, decline according to three genders, though the personal pronouns do not.

Cases
Nāmic possesses nine cases, and all nouns in a clause must be declined by one, and one only. The cases are often followed by a particle, for example the instrumental and locative cases that often are preceded or replaced by such particles as sām [saːm] "with" and ım [ɪm] "in, within". The links will display the usage of each case. Please note that the ergative-absolutive distinction is not made in the third nominal declension, nor in the comparative, cercative nor the superlative degrees of comparison of adjectives, whence they form the Nominative case.
 * 1) Absolutive
 * 2) Ergative
 * 3) Accusative
 * 4) Dative
 * 5) Instrumental
 * 6) Locative
 * 7) Genitive
 * 8) Benefactive
 * 9) Ablative


 * 1) In Nāmic, should the focus lie on the patient, and not the object, the patient ought to be marked with the benefactive case.
 * 2) In Nāmic, the following Adpositions correspond to the locative case.
 * 3) The dative can also be used to construct different dative constructions.
 * 4) Considering the use with movement, a better name ought to be benefactive-allative, or alike.
 * 5) "Species" should be in the genitive case.

Number
There are two standard numbers and one other number in Nāmic. All nouns decline by the singular and plural numbers. In addition, the first and second person personal pronouns decline according to the archaic dual number.

Pronouns
Nāmic pronouns are no different to other languages' pronouns, with exception of the rather uncommon impersonal person. There are relative, interrogative, personal and demonstrative pronouns which decline similarly to other nouns. There are no reflexive pronouns, thus, you'll be forced to use the objective personal pronouns.


 * It ought to be noted that the Impersonal has merged with the old reflexive pronouns in appearance.
 * The declension is irregular.

Pronominal Declension
Nota Bene:


 * The first person singular pronouns, and the impersonal, possesses more formal alternatives to the accusative. In respective order: mēga, tēga and sāga.
 * The dual number pronouns sort as plural in conjugations.

Word order
In transitive phrases with pronouns, the syntax is modified. The subject is most often omitted, however, if enclitic pronouns are used, the subjects become almost compulsory. The cause is the phonological change in the verb.

Demonstratives
The demonstratives serve as determinatives. However, since Nāmic doesn't have a third person personal pronoun in the English sense, its demonstratives fulfil this function instead, by standing independently without a noun to be modified. The demonstratives decline by gender, number, and case. The declension is equivalent to English he, she and it, and will be called the third person in conjugations. Consider the following:

Nota Bene:
 * The demonstratives only decline according to singular and plural, and not the dual number - unlike the personal pronouns.


 * The declensions are irregular.

Distal Declension
The distal, or normal declension, corresponds either to he, she and it, or that. It is a cognate to the Sanskrit distal "ayám"-declension.

Proximal Declension
The proximal declension, corresponds well to the English demonstrative this. It is a cognate to the Sanskrit distal "etát"-declension.

Interrogatives
There is but one interrogative pronoun, kyā, which declines. It congruates with gender, but does not distinguish the dual number. It is essentially similar to the First front declension, though it's somewhat irregular.

Relative Declension
The relative declension is indeed identical to the interrogative one, with exception for three enclitics. In case they are suffixed postvocally, they receive an initial ⟨ a ⟩.

Nominal Declension
There are four nominal declensions in the Naṃkrthāvāka, each declined differently, based upon phonological differences in the terminating syllable.

Nota bene:
 * Many case endings are determined by the vowel harmony.
 * Many case endings are determined by diphthongisation, and monophthongisation.
 * The stress of the lexemes is irregular in the radical, but changes regularly with case.

First Declension
The characteristic of the First declensions is the vowel stem. There is little difference between gender, however [...]. The pluralisation of the nouns is mainly due to diphthongisation of the ultimate vowel.

Front First Declension
The First declension is split into two suptypes, depending on the vowel metaphony of the word. The Front declension is recognised should the lexeme:


 * Initiate with a front vowel.
 * Initiate with an [ә] or [ɛ] and continue with front vowels.


 * Contain only front vowels.


 * Contain only [ɛ]'s.


 * 1) For polysyllables which are not stressed on the first syllable, the genitive may be formed through postponing the stress of the absolutive to the ultimate vowel.

Back First Declension
There are, as mentioned, two separate subtypes of the first vowel stem declension. These are distinguished through whether the word has a back or front vowel harmony. The back declension is used should the word have a single back vowel, have an initial one, or a second one succeding an "affected" [ɛ/ә].

Please note,
 * that ⟨ṃ⟩ is pronounced /n/ intervocally.
 * the ⟨ṿ⟩ indicates an intervocal ⟨u⟩, pronounced /w/.

Second Declension
The second declension declines nouns with a fricative coda. There is no distinction of number in the accusative, locative or ablative cases.

Please note that the ⟨ṭ⟩ is pronounced /ʂ/ intervocally and finally.

Third Declension
The third declension is based upon nasal stems, and have peculiar function, since it affects the other declensions, especially in the accusative. Third declension monosyllabic nouns always have an ungeminated vowel.

Please note that the neuter declines identically to the masculine, however, this does not apply to the so called "s-neuter". The s-neuter includes nouns which terminate with a nasal and an /s/.

Fourth Declension
The fourth declension handles nouns ending in ⟨r⟩ or ⟨ar, ur⟩. These are exclusively agentive nouns and entails human agents only, thus you may only decline the neuter in the plural, because no neuter agents exist.

Examples include:
 * , सउास्तर, (sister)
 * , पीतर, (father)
 * , पातर, (pedestrian)

Forms
The Naṃkrthāvāka distinguishes five different adjectival forms, which are all perceived as functions of the corresponding noun in Nāmic:

Predicative
Predicative adjectives are conjuncted to the object with copulae or another verb, that is, a predicate. The adjectival predicative is indeclinable to case and number, but not gender. It can be compared.

Please note that the adjectival predicative above in reality is derived from the nominal predicative, declined to the accusative case.

Nominal
The nominal form stands independently or with a demonstrative, to represent the full object. In Nāmic, it's identical to the nominative attributive form.

Attributive
Attributive adjectives differ in the sense that they congruate with the nouns regarding case, number and gender. They describe a feature of the object in a state.

Adverbial
The last form describes a verb, in which manner it's conducted. Adverbs are not perceived as a lexical category in Neumatic linguistics, separate from adjectives. Please note that adverbs decline by gender and number of the verb's subject.

Voice
The Nāmic language only possess one voice, the active. In the Proto-Indo-European language, the passive and medio-passive voices merged, only to produce the Nāmic impersonal pronoun, instead of a voice.

However, a passive construction is possible using the instrumental case on the former subject, and the absolutive on the former patient, if you want to emphasize the subject.
 * The English equivalent, for example: "The girl was killed by him", uses the past participle and an oblique argument.
 * The Nāmic equivalent uses the instrumental case on the former subject, him, and the absolutive case on the former patient, the girl. In addition, the verb is intransivitised, similarly to the use of the past participle killed in English.

Please note that this is however only used in formal contexts.

Mood
Nāmic possesses four moods, which all verbs conjugate by. The conditional is simply the subjunctive used in main clauses, and is therefore identical in form.


 * 1) The verbal root √kānha means "to hunger".

Tense
In Nāmic there are two simple tenses, which denote the temporal place. The difference between the past and the present, is simply a manipulated stress. All tenses are dependent on the aspects.

Aorist
There is however a more complicated tense, which intertwines with the perfect aspect, to form the aorist. This tense is similar to its Sanskrit and Ancient Greek counterparts but is on the whole quite facile. The aorist marks events akin to its name, "unlimited", "indefinite"; which means that the most simple statements go here, as long as the temporal place isn't important, equal to English colloquial speech. For example:
 * What did you do today? - I danced.

Which more colloquially would be:
 * What did you do today? - Dance.

Simple statements in the future also class into this category:
 * What did you want to do when you get older? - Be a pilot.

Aspect
There are three or two aspects in the Nāmic language, although not all aspects may be combined with other moods.

Transitivity
The transitivity distinction in Nāmic is derived from the Proto-Indo-European causative verb form, which it shares a lot of attributes, lost in most other Indo-European languages. The characteristic is known foremostly in Uralic languages and Siberian ones.


 * Transitivity is, how many, and if, a verb accepts a direct object. If it doesn't, it is called an intransitive verb. This is Nāmic's basic verb form.
 * Confer the intransitive I see and the transitive I see the man.


 * The transitivity is distinguished in all verbs, with a few exceptions, and may also signalise a stative versus dynamic distinction. Something the English language retains traces of.
 * Confer the stative and intransitive I sit versus the dynamic I set.

I chose not to write that I set is transitive, only because the Nāmic language would translate this clause intransitively because it has no object, that is, I am a person who set (things).

Differentiating between the transitivity is made through an old causative infix from the Proto-Indo-European language, initially /aja/. This infix did however go through mutation and formed firstly /ja/, then just /j/. Eventually it grew to form falling diphthongs from the preceding vowel. These diphthongs were exposed to synaeresis and formed the following table:

This table is half the table found in the Synaeresis section.

The development can be seen in transition from Old Nāmic: The transitive form is always considered a part of the intranistive complement, and is not recognised as a verb proper. In Nāmic linguistic notation the intransitive and transitive roots of verbs are marked as √ and t√ respectively. Confer the reduplicated root, r√. The lemma form of the verbs is almost exclusively the intransitive root √ + an "a".

Reduplication
The Nāmic language utilises reduplication. Perhaps it is no surprise considering the tight bonds with Proto-Indo-European and Sanskrit. Reduplication in the language serves the purpose of creating the imperfective and retrospective aspects of the verb in the subjunctive and indicative moods. The system of reduplication is quite regular but depends heavily on the initial letters, but can be mapped. First remember these:
 * C = Consonant
 * G = Voiced consonant.
 * S = Plosive consonant; stop
 * F = Fricative
 * R = Rhotic
 * V = Vowel


 * The most basic reduplication occurs on onsets similar to the one below. It represents the second to maximum onset in the language, but the FC cluster is unaffected.
 * (FC)C1V which creates S1V.(FC)C1V
 * sthā- → tāstha-
 * hkānt- → kāhkant-
 * nām- → nānam-

If the first vowel is an "e", the scheme becomes:
 * (FC)C1e which creates S1ı.(FC)C1e


 * If the onset possesses a rhotic consonant, like the absolute maximum onset:
 * (FC)CR1V creates R1V.(FC)CR1V
 * trānya- → rātranya


 * If the root starts with a vocalic syllable and the second syllable is a consonant:
 * V.C/N creates V.G/NVC/N
 * āt- → ādat-


 * If the root starts with a vocalic syllable and the first consonant is a rhotic:
 * V.R creates RV.R
 * ārg- → rārg-

Other useful reduplication schemes are:
 * CRC → CeCRC
 * pV → pupV

The reduplicated form is in Nāmic linguistic notation always marked with the lemma form in conjugations and dictionaries, marked as r√. Confer the transitivity root markers √ and t√.

Intransitive Conjugation
This section is subject to change. Reduplication has received a new purpose, and paradigms shall now be derived from PIE.

Transitive Conjugations
This one, on the other hand, is finished. Descriptive texts will come.

Conjugation Classes
Nāmic possesses a few classes of conjugations, which conjugate slightly differently, because of their phonological attributes, or irregularity. They are named after the most prominent word conjugated in the class.