| A'Leamona a'lĩmena | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Synthetic | ||||||||||||
| Alignment | Ergative-absolutive | ||||||||||||
| Head direction | Head-initial | ||||||||||||
| Tonal | No | ||||||||||||
| Declensions | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Conjugations | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Genders | Neutral | ||||||||||||
| Nouns decline according to... | |||||||||||||
| Case | Number | ||||||||||||
| Definiteness | Gender | ||||||||||||
| Verbs conjugate according to... | |||||||||||||
| Voice | Mood | ||||||||||||
| Person | Number | ||||||||||||
| Tense | Aspect | ||||||||||||
| Meta-information | |||||||||||||
| Progress | 0% | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| Creator | [[User:|]] | ||||||||||||
A'Leamona is an ergative-absolutive language. Its ISO-639-2 code is alm.
General information[]
A'Leamona isn't a language spoken in some untimely-fantastic otherworldly world. It's not Elvish or Klingon, and it's not the language spoken by a vast and powerful empire that exists only in an alternative universe. I've never thought of the people who might speak that kind of language. Anyway, A'Leamona is a language that can be spoken by the Leamonese empire.
The phonology of this language consists of 26 consonants, and it is heavily influenced by Basque because it makes the distinction between apical and alveolar consonants. There are 11 vowels, making it a total of 37 phonemes.
Nouns are inflected for case, number, predication, possession, honorifics and evidentiality, but not for definiteness nor gender. Verbs are the most complex part, with 20 moods, 5 voices and 10 types of evidentiality (tense and aspect are not defined as lexical categories in A'Leamona). There are no adjectives in A'Leamona, so verbs take over these.
Phonology[]
Consonants[]
| Labial | Dental | Post-alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| apical | laminal | |||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ ‹ng› | |||||
| Plosive | p b | t̺ ‹t›
d̺ ‹d› |
c ‹ki-,
-ik-› ɟ ‹gi-, ig-› |
k g | ||||
| Fricative | f v | s̺ ‹s› | s̻ ‹z› | ʃ ‹x› | j ~ ɟʝ ‹y› | h ~ x ‹h› | ||
| Affricate | ts̺ ‹c› | ts̻ ‹j› | tʃ ‹q› | |||||
| Approximant | w ‹ṽ› | |||||||
| Trill | r̺ ‹r› | r̻ ‹ṟ› | ||||||
| Lateral | l̺ ‹l› | l̻ ‹ḻ› | ||||||
The laminal approximants /l̻, r̻/ may be realised as retroflex /ɻ, ɭ/.
Vowels[]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | ɨ ‹ẅ› | u |
| Near-high | ɪ̈ ‹w› | ||
| High-mid | e ‹ĩ› | o ‹ũ› | |
| Mid | ə ‹ï› | ||
| Low-mid | ɛ ‹e› | ɔ ‹o› | |
| Near-low | ɐ ‹ã› | ||
| Low | a |
All vowels can be lengthened, and they are orthographically made by doubling the vowel.
Phonotactics[]
The maximal syllable structure is CVVCCC, where C is a consonant and V is a vowel. Central vowels (excluding /a/) rarely appear in the syllable coda. [ŋ] is restricted to codas (else it becomes [n]), and /s̻/ and /w/ do not occur in codas (otherwise they become /s̺/ and /v/ respectively). For two-and-three-consonant clusters in codas, the following restrictions obtain:
- a laminal consonant can be preceded only by another laminal consonant or sometimes by /g l tʃ ʃ/
- /ŋ/ may precede only /ʃ k x ɡ ɟ c/
- /l̻/ does not seem to appear in second position
- /s̺ v/ do not occur as first consonant and as second consonant only if preceded by /r l/ or their laminal counterparts.
- dental consonants can only appear in third position
Clusters that do not conform to these restrictions will be broken up by an epenthetic nonphonemic vowel in a syllabification that takes place from right to left.
Stress[]
Syllable hierarchy[]
In order to determining stress, A'Leamona distinguishes four syllable types:
Light
- An open syllable containing a short vowel and a consonant, or vice versa (CV, VC)
- An open syllable containing a single short vowel without any consonant (V)
Semi-light
- An open syllable containing a long vowel, or vice versa (CVV, VVC)
- A closed syllable containing a short vowel followed by one consonant (CVC)
Heavy
- A closed syllable containing a long vowel followed by one consonant (CVVC)
- A closed syllable containing a vowel of any length followed by two consonants (CVCC, CVVCC)
Super-heavy
- A closed syllable containing a vowel of any length followed by three consonants (CVCCC, CVVCCC)
Rules[]
A'Leamona is a non-phonemic stress language (does not have minimal pairs regarding stress position) and thus is considered to depend entirely on syllable structure. There are 5 rules governing stress in A'Leamona:
- A final vowel, long or short, may not be stressed.
- Only one of the last three or two syllables may be stressed.
- Given that restriction, stress may or may not fall on the rightmost semi-light syllable.
- If the final syllable is heavy, it receives stress.
- If the final syllable is neither of heavy type, then it goes into the 3rd syllable.
Grammar[]
Nouns[]
Inflection:[]
| A'Leamona noun template | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Slots | ROOT | derivation | case | honorific | possession | number | predication | evidentiality |
| 0 | +1 | +2 | +3 | +4 | +5 | +6 | +7 | |