Taahu

[thetha]

Taahu is a language isolate spoken by the majority ethnic group of the country of Kéeba, and because it is the official language of the state church and is the primary language used in official documents, it is very familiar to minority groups in Kéeba as well. In this thread I aim to describe the language as it is used by the common populace of Kéeba (henceforth abbreviated as Kb.), who are the largest community to speak it.

Phonology

Phoneme Inventory & Orthography:
I'm introducing these two components side by side because the orthography as it stands is about as straightforward as they get. On account of its simplicity, I think there's no need to give it its own section. I have linked a rudimentary table of characters natively used for Taahu here.
This writing system lacks punctuation entirely in its most casual form. Spaces are left between words, but other than that, notes and signs leave out any indicating marks of that type. Official documents and writing for school assignments typically marks boundaries between sentences with an interpunct or dash-like character, and paragraphs/large blocks of text are ended with a character consisting of two concentric circles, which is placed in lieu of the script's "period", or used accompanying it, lying under the lowest line of text instead of next to it (which is the typical place for punctuation marks in this language). The script is written from left to right, unicameral, and as is hopefully clear from the table above, an abugida. It indicates all phonetic contrasts except for the system of tone and stress (which is technically a system of pitch accent). Since that is a very important part of the phonology, and also because it is a pain to write everything out by hand and upload that to the internet, I have developed a romanization which will be used for all examples of the language in this thread. Now, let's talk about the phoneme inventory. It can be seen in the table linked previously in my short description of the orthography, but I'll re-elaborate again since we haven't discussed the pitch accent system properly yet.

Code: Select all

p   t   t͡s      k   ʔ
    θ   s   ʃ       h
m   n           ŋ
b   d           g
w           j   


i     u
 e
    a

The romanization only differs slightly from the IPA. Namely, the affricate is written without the tie-bar, and the phonemes /θ ʃ j/ are written as <x sh y>. One final difference is that the glottal stop is left unwritten at the beginning of words and written as <'> everywhere else.
Vowels can appear long or short; with long vowels distinguishing three different tone patterns in stressed syllables: falling <áa>, high <áá>, and rising <aá>. Falling tone is the most common, while rising is quite rare, appearing only in a small fraction of lexical items (and almost entirely absent from verbs, as a result of the various morphophonemic processes they undergo that I will describe in (a) later section(s)). Short vowels, in contrast, only exhibit a binary stressed versus unstressed pattern, which is realized phonemically as high-versus-low tone.

Up next: Allophony; Phonotactics.

[thetha]

Phonotactics:
The maximum syllable theoretically allowed in Taahu is CCCV:C, although in practice 3-consonant clusters are very rare. Even so, onset clusters are rare outside of stressed syllables, occurring almost exclusively as a result of stress movement induced by some morphemes. Additionally, even medial clusters do not reach past this boundary, with clusters of more than 3 consonants banned in that environment as well.

The full set of onsets is as follows:
-Any of the 17 phonemic consonants. This includes /ŋ/, which appears far more commonly as a coda, but nonetheless appears initially in a significant amount of lexical items and roots, such as ŋapí (tuber).
-Any consonant except the fricatives and /ʔ/, preceded by /h/. It's tempting to add a set of phonemic pre-aspirates as a result of this, but several pieces of evidence suggest this is not the best analysis. For one, pre-aspirated voiced stops; cf. hgé (belt; ring), are extremely unusual. Additionally, they do not pattern as individual units wrt. other clusters.
-/p t k ʔ m n b d/ + /w j/, plus /tsw θw sw hw/. Presumably more clusters involving glides were permitted, but they have merged with other phonemes.
-The phonemes /p k/ + /θ s ʃ/. This is a fairly small set, but it makes up a large portion of the clusters actually encountered in words.
-Clusters of stops with each other (this includes /ts/). Generally /p/ or /k/ is the first element of the cluster, but a few words with /t/ initial clusters have been observed; e.g. tkáŋ (yoke). No stop clusters with /ts/ as the first element seem to exist.
-The only 3 consonant clusters permitted initially are /h/+/p k/+/j w/.

Besides those structured groups, there are several sporadic instances of words that have /ʔ/ before or after another consonant. Examples are s'ááte (mountain) and 'píma (badger). It may be important to note that these clusters always begin stressed syllables.

I don't think nuclei really need to be discussed in detail, they are simply one of the four vowels, long or short, with possible stress. So we'll just move directly onto codas. The set of word-final codas is quite small, consisting of any of /n ŋ ʔ w j/, or possibly excluding the glides if you prefer to think of Taahu as having diphthongs. Word medially this group is larger, allowing any of the fricatives including /h/ preceding another consonant as well. Other word medial clusters need not be looked at as exceptions to previously described rules, as they can be explained as a combination of existing codas and clusters. Word medial 3-consonant clusters, however, are limited to the same set as they are initially.

In spite of the large number of clusters permitted, words tend to be of the form CV(CV)(CV).... Nasal and glide codas appear fairly freely, but the glottal stop is more commonly a coda in stressed syllables. Long vowels tend to only appear once in uninflected lexemes, but are not limited to stressed syllables, appearing in unstressed ones just as frequently. Other common word forms are CVC, often with a long vowel, or (C)VCVC, with the first consonant being the glottal stop. CCVCV and CVCCV words usually appear with short vowels in both syllables. The vowels /e u/ are more likely to be stressed at the end of words; that is, unstressed, final, short vowels are much more likely to be /a i/. Many of these tendencies and limitations on word structure are likely artifacts of the stress system that has developed.


Allophony:
Allophony in Taahu is pretty basic. Among the consonants, a few different processes can be observed. The stops /p t ts k/ are aspirated word initially as well as in stressed syllables, and also before other consonants. Between vowels, when not subject to the previously described aspiration, they are pronounced with light voicing. In this case they are still distinguished from the phonemically voiced plosives, which are fully voiced and sometimes glottalized or tensed. Some speakers also voice fricatives in the previously described conditions. Another common allophonic change is to palatalize consonants adjacent to /i/. /h/ is typically articulated as [ç] or [x] before consonants, depending on the consonant in question as well as the individual speaker.

Some examples:
kadéé [kʰàdé:] - meet
hatééw [hàtʰé:w] - fire
sé'ku [séʔkù] - vine
psaí [psǎj] - nettles
htsáke [xtsʰág̊è] - dusk
tkáŋ [tʰkʰáŋ] - yoke

note that tkáŋ has two aspirated stops in a row: more than one rule can affect a word at the same time.

Vowels are subject to a little bit more variation. Typically /e/ is phonetically [ɛ], but long it is frequently realized as [e:] and sometimes merges into /ej/. /a/ retains the same value value short or long, but both /i/ and /u/ are centered when short and/or unstressed. /a/ is sometimes fronted after the palatals /j ʃ/, going as far as [æ] for some speakers. The typical realization of /a/ is in the general area of the low right hand corner of the IPA chart, and /i u/ are also usually realized pretty much like their cardinal values in most cases.

Vowel examples:
ipitú [ɪ̄b̥ɪ̀tʰú] - to be happy
núŋgi [nʊ́ŋgɪ̀] - death
yaahté [jæ̀:çtʰé] - to like
kadéé [kʰàdéj] - to meet

Taahu also possesses a system of pitch accent. Each word in the language (except for some particles and such) has a single stressed syllable, which as mentioned before, can be pronounced with high, falling, or rising tone. This determines the tone that every other syllable in the word has. No matter what tone the stressed syllable has, any existing syllable directly before it has low tone. Syllables preceding that one will alternate from low to mid-high. Syllables after the stressed one will either all be low tone, or in the case of stressed high/rising tone syllables, slowly falling until the last syllable which is invariably low. Short stressed vowels act the same as long, high syllables wrt. this process, except when they have a glottal stop coda, in which case they are pronounced with a sharply rising tone, and following syllables act as if the stressed syllable was falling (i.e. they are all pronounced low). Note that this effect does not occur if the glottal stop is intervocalic.

détsa [déd̥z̥à] - idea
tsigé [tsʰìgé] - manners
xáane [θâ:nè] - the sun
Ni'áa [nɪ̀ʔâ] - a deity
adú' [àdǔʔ] - a kind of fish
nibiséé'atun [nībìsé:ʔād̥ùn] - may it be declared

As these examples show, if you think of the pitch accent of this language in the most abstract sense, it's like the tones form waves that peak at the stressed part of the word.

That's about all I've got on phonology for now, unless something's unclear or you'd like something else to be described. Coming up whenever: Morphology. Specifically, noun inflection.

[DesEsseintes]

Very detailed and well worked out. It would be great to see some sample words with full phonetic notation to better grasp: a) what constitutes a viable Taahu word; b) the realisations of the allophonic processes, as there are many things going on.

Looking forward to the morphology, as I happen to know that Taahu is polysynthetic.

[thetha]

Very detailed and well worked out. It would be great to see some sample words with full phonetic notation to better grasp: a) what constitutes a viable Taahu word; b) the realisations of the allophonic processes, as there are many things going on.

Thanks for the suggestion. I won't make a special post for any vocabulary lists, but in the future I'll provide IPA with all my examples as they show up in various sections.

[Linguist_Wannabe]

Cool idea to have phonemic tone, but only on stressed syllables. My conlang Kämpya does a similar thing (inspired by Serbo-Croatian). Were you inspired by Serbo-Croatian too, or another language?

You said that the glottal stop is not marked in the orthography word initially. But from my reading of your phonology, it looks as if there is a contrast between /a/ and /ʔa/ ...

Also how is the glottal stop pronounced in clusters with other consonants? My guess is that it would have a strong tendency to turn stops into ejectives, implosives, geminates etc.

[thetha]

I got the tone thing from Crow.

All words begin with at least one consonant, but there are morphemes that act as if they are vowel initial. These, however, do not occur word-initially.

It varies. Preconsonantal /ʔ/ can glottalize consonants, but when /ʔ/ appears after a consonant, it always leaves the consonant unaffected. In any case, C+ʔ clusters tend to act as clusters, that is, they have two distinct releases.

[thetha]

Morphology

Nouns

Content nouns in Taahu can be divided into two salient groups or 'classes' as they are often described: Animates, and Inanimates. The difference between them is solely lexical/semantic, in other words the class of a noun cannot be determined by its phonological form. It's fairly simple to determine the class of a noun from semantics, though. Basically, all animals are animate, except for a few different types. All reptiles and insects are inanimate except for snakes and spiders. Sponges, sea slugs, and other such sea-dwelling creatures are deemed inanimate on account of their general inability to move (or to do so in a sufficiently fast manner; sloths and burrowing creatures are treated as inanimate as well). All plants except poisonous ones and those used for psychoactive effect are deemed inanimate. All other lifeforms are inanimate, except in the sense that some of them cause diseases; the diseases themselves are animate.

Outside of living creatures, animacy can be generally determined through a similar heuristic as the one I alluded to in the previous paragraph. Non-living things that are predisposed to moving 'quickly' such as the sun, rivers, wind, precipitation etc. are animate, but all others are inanimate. While running water is animate, most other liquids are inanimate even if they are entirely lacking in viscosity. Man-made/Constructed objects are inanimate except for vehicles and machines that run on engines or some sort of power. This 'quickness of movement' heuristic is not quite a rule, but it results in the correct classification the majority of the time.

Case Marking:

Nouns are inflected for one of three cases, which I've given some sort of ad-hoc names: Direct Case, Inverse Case, and Oblique Case (written as DIR, INV, and OBL respectively in glosses). They are marked as suffixes on nouns, and their underlying forms are thus:

DIR: -0
INV: -i
OBL: -na
The first two are used as part of the morphosyntactic alignment system, while the third is applied in all other situations, i.e. adverbialization, postpositional phrases, and so on. Whether Direct or Inverse case is applied to an argument is determined by the noun's animacy, and the verb type. Verbs can be split into two groups themselves: active (which can be transitive or intransitive) and stative, where the difference is largely the same as the difference between nouns and adjectives in English. To illustrate the situations where Direct and Inverse case are appropriate, I have provided a table:

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      as.    ao.    is.    io.
vt.   -0     -i     -i     -0

vi.   -0      X     -i      X     

vs.   -0      X     -0      X

As can be seen, there are more cases where the direct case is appropriate, but nonetheless the inverse case is quite frequent, on account of the frequency of animate nouns which will inevitably end up taking the role of the object or patient in a sentence. Some examples of the usage of these cases (including oblique case):

xú duná'-0 tuutsí-na niheŋáani
[θú dùnǎʔ tʰù:tsʰínà nīhɛ̀ŋâ:nì]
1.DIR pit-DIR stick-OBL carve.sth
I carved a notch in the stick.

ipitáŋ-0 ktéga-i patámu
[ʔīpìtʰáŋ ktʰɛ́gà: pʰàtʰámù]
N-DIR a.k.o.goat-INV buy.sth
Ipitang bought a goat.

nííha-i xíi iwéyai'en
[ní:hà: θî: ʔìwɛ́jājʔɛ̀n]
pile.of.snow-INV 1.INV sth.falls.down.to.sth
The snow fell on me.

As you can see, either argument of a verb could be in the direct or inverse case. The usage of the oblique case is a bit more nuanced, so I'll talk about that later. I'm pretty tired right now but I wanted to get just an intro to this section up. There's some variation in the form of the case markers and other morphemes but that is also something that will happen later.

[thetha]

Usage of the Oblique Case:

The oblique case is used for essentially all instances of nouns beyond direct arguments of a verb. One important usage of the oblique case to note is in expressions of movement. The oblique case is used when the movement is in the general direction towards or away from a place, not necessarily a completed action, while the direct or inverse case is used when the place is actually reached in the movement, along with an applicative marker on the verb (more on applicatives later, when we get to the verb section). For example:

xú atámba ni-wé-yiŋ
[θú àtʰámbà nwéjìŋ]
1 market TR-APPL-go
I went to the market

xú atámba-na má-yiŋ
[θú àtʰámbānà mî:ŋ]
1 market-OBL INTR-go
I was going to the market

So in some cases, it can be used for direct arguments as well. We can also look back at a previous example:

xú duná'-0 tuutsí-na niheŋáani
[θú dùnǎʔ tʰù:tsʰínà nīhɛ̀ŋâ:nì]
1.DIR pit-DIR stick-OBL carve.sth
I carved a notch in the stick.

And see a case where it acts somewhat like a dative. It is also a clear component of several postpositions:
súna 'inside' < súyu-na stomach-OBL
áana 'in front of' < áasi-na eyes-OBL
shéŋna 'below; under' < shéŋ-na feet-OBL
etc. etc., but some postpositions stand alone, such as the instrumental ŋí and locative áw.

The oblique case is very stable in form; remaining phonologically the same no matter what word it is attached to. The only irregularities are with the pronouns xún and sán for first and second person respectively, instead of the expected xúna and sána, and sí-na 'water-OBL' becomes séina. Final /n/ is usually elided in speech before -na (i.e. no gemination) but this is not a hard and fast rule.
Inverse case is more complicated morphologically, but generally it is quite regular. After consonants it shows its underlying form, -i. This is also its form after /i/ and commonly /e/, but after other vowels it just induces lengthening. Final high tone vowels will become falling tone, thus the suffix always retains its tone. After diphthongs or long vowels it requires an epenthetic consonant, so it takes the surface form -yi. The pronouns are irregular in this case as well, occurring as xíi (1st) and séi (2nd).

Other noun inflections:
Besides the case markers, there is almost no inflection on nouns. The only two suffixes that remain generally productive are -tsí and -ba. The first acts as a general diminutive and is always the stressed syllable of the word, while the second describes the place where something occurs or exists. It has an even larger scope than nouns, acting as a nominalizer on verbs. There are a number of verb 'sub-bases' which can take nouns as the main root, but they will be discussed as part of the verb section. New nouns are not typically made from modifying old nouns, but rather by nominalizing verb forms. Compounding is more rare, but does occasionally occur, in which case the nouns just occur in series, not really inflecting or changing each other in any phonological way. Some other inflectional pieces can apparently be seen, but none of them are productive and they are not recognized by speakers as being separable from the 'central noun root'. One example is the element t-/ta-, apparently derived from the word for human, táhe, which appears in the name of the language as well as a few words for occupations.

One final type of inflection on nouns is the marking of possession, which occurs as one of several prefixes on the possessed item. Curiously, these prefixes are marked for number, while neither pronouns or content nouns are themselves (verbs are, but that comes later).

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   S     PL
1  xi-   kxíi-
2  sa-   ksáa-
3  i-    kí-

Emphatic possession (e.g. *my* dog and no one else's) in the case of first and second person is expressed by using the oblique pronouns xún and sán as the possessors, and the noun stands on its own. This is one of the few cases where the plural particle kíí' is expected, rather than purely optional with regular nouns or the pronouns themselves. Third person emphatic possession is expressed by appending the particle itsá' (or kítsa' in the plural) before the possessed noun. This disparity comes from the fact that there is no basic, independent, third person pronoun. How is this gap alleviated? Find out next time, on Dragonball Z when I discuss the pronoun system in detail.

[thetha]

Pronouns:
One of the things that distinguishes Taahu from surrounding languages is its quite scanty pronoun system. It possesses only two personal pronouns: xú and sá. These are the first person and second person pronouns respectively, and they are not declined for number or any other semantic qualities other than the previously mentioned cases. As I said before, there is no real third person pronoun. But many generic words are often used for this purpose. Most often, clauses with third person referents will show no surface morpheme for third person at all, but when speakers want to disambiguate or emphasize something, they will usually use one of the following terms:

tsáa - 'one'
táhe - 'person'
ibú - 'place; area'
né' - 'thing; object'
iŋá - 'that'
tsáme - 'this'

The demonstratives and né' are especially common. It is not exceptionally rare to simply use the noun itself over and over, either. That practice is, however, confined to some non-standard dialects and narratives. By and large Taahu tends to act like Japanese, or many Southeast Asian languages, relying mostly on context and dropping pronouns and other nominals (including the first and second person pronouns) whenever context is capable of holding the brunt of the meaning that needs to get across. Personal pronouns often only appear in the first one or two sentences/utterances of a text or conversation, and after the situation is established they are totally absent.

Since the demonstratives appeared in the last section, I'll take the opportunity to talk about those next. Taahu has a basic, binary proximal-distal distinction in the demonstratives.

tsáme - proximal
iŋá - distal

They can appear as determiners or as standalone pronouns:

tsáme xída mágin
[tsʰámɛ̀ θídà mágìn]
PROX animal AN.be
'This is an animal'

tsáme xída xa'néi mágin
[tsʰámɛ̀ θídà θàʔnéj mágìn]
PROX animal thrush AN.be
'This animal is a thrush.'

iŋá kúuka igín
[ìŋá kʰû:kà ʔìgín]
DIST plant INAN.be
'that is a plant'

iŋá kúuka hpagáhi igín
[ìŋá kʰû:kà hpàgáhì ʔìgín]
DIST plant lichen INAN.be
'that plant is a lichen'

Reflexive pronouns, Reciprocals, and other types of pronouns are indicated with verbal morphology. The only remaining 'independent' pronouns are the interrogatives/indefinite pronouns. The interrogative pronouns are a fairly small set compared to English (at least, the ones that aren't derived from other interrogatives).

gú - what; which (when used as a modifier)
úte - who
te'í - why

Those are the three that are clearly not derived from any other pronouns or terms. Derived interrogatives include:
gúna - where < gú-na what-OBL
gú máísa - when ('what time')
gú ŋí - how (what with)

Indefinite pronouns are derived from the three main interrogatives, with the element -tsa' appended.
gútsa' - something
útetsa' - someone
te'ítsa' - for some reason

Somewhere and 'somewhen' have irregular or morphologically unusual forms. Somewhere is either gutsána or gúnatsa' depending on the dialect, and 'somewhen' is either gútsa' máísa or simply máítsa'. Gutsána and gútsa' máísa are the standard/academic forms, but the others are very common colloquially. The form gúnatsa' is unusual because it appears to have the compounding element added after the case marker. This is presumably a result of fossilization. The other form, gutsána, displays evident historical sound change, but this process does not occur with other forms when the oblique is applied to them. It is likely that this is fossilized as well, and if it was ever a regular process it has been phased out through regularization with nominals that lack a final glottal stop.

That's enough for today, I think. I can't really think of much else that needs to be discussed for nouns in this conlang. I guess I could talk about more determiners and quantifiers and stuff. I'll do that soon. And then, verbs.

[thetha]

Just gonna be a short post this time, I think.

Determiners
Taahu lacks a real class of words that can be definitively called 'adjectives', so determiners are the only words that really act as syntactic modifiers the majority of the time. We've already gone over a lot of them--the demonstratives, certain interrogative/indefinite pronouns, etc. But an important class that hasn't been talked about is the numbers.

Taahu is a base-5 language, and the basic numbers are as follows:
tsáa - 1
kyéŋ - 2
aŋú - 3
pyesí - 4
mahá - 5
síye' 52
hkáaden 53
dímai - 54
gú'aga 55

Other numbers are formed by appending the linking morpheme -k- (< kyá' 'and'), e.g.
maaktsáa - 6
maakikyéŋ - 7
siye'kaŋú - 28

or simply juxtaposing two numbers:
siye'gú'aga - 57
pyesisíye' - 100

These two methods can, of course, be used together:
1024=5^4+3*5^3+4*5+4 = dímai-k-aŋú-hkáaden-k-pyesí-maa-k-pyesí > dímaikaŋuhkaadenkipyesimaakipyesi

Note the maa allomorph of mahá, which appears before -k-. Some speakers pronounce maa-k sequences as maah, i.e 9 is maahpyesí.

Other quantifiers include:
sheŋé - some; a few
matsá' - several; a good amount
té'e - many; a bunch (lit. 'a sackful of')
kíí' - many; PL
úpaŋ - most
shú - a minority of
ki'ká - all
tsasá - each; every

In the most formal modes of speech, té'e is not used at all, and kíí' is only used in the previously discussed possessive constructions, or to mean 'many'.

The only modifier/determiner/thing not previously discussed is téhke 'another/the other'; it acts pretty normal, except it has an irregularity: other determiners, quantifiers, and other things have identical standalone forms, but when acting as a noun, this one takes the form tése. It contains a fossilized 'adjectivizer' that is no longer productive, and only appears in a few other words, such as the number gú'aga, which originally meant 'an unknown amount; uncountably many', cf. English 'a zillion', but early on it was metaphorically extended to the large but exact number we see here later. It is sometimes used in the old sense even in modern speech.

I'm done, verbs next I guess

[thetha]

Verbs

Verbs are the most morphologically complex of all Taahu parts of speech. They can be described in terms of a set of slots that each morpheme goes into depending on its type:

[Agreement]-[Voice]-[Secondary Aspect/Thematic Prefix]-[Incorporated Noun]-ROOT-[Primary Aspect/Tense]-[Mood]-[Negation]

There are also a number of particles that commonly appear after verbs. Several of them lack independent stress and so they can be argued to be part of the verb complex, but nevertheless they will be described elsewhere. The different parts of the verb will be described kind of out of order, but the order I describe them in I think is the most natural one. It is very rare for a verb to fill all the available slots, and most verbs only fill a few. The most commonly filled ones (including ones that are required to have some sort of morpheme in them) will be discussed first, and then we will continue on from there. The most commonly filled slots are the Agreement and Primary Aspect/Tense slots, and the root as well, obviously.

The Verb Root

Verb roots take a variety of phonological forms, but the most common for active verbs is a simple CV(CV) (stative verbs are much simpler morphologically, and are quite different in form, so they will be discussed separately). Some end in consonants, such as núh 'to build/construct', and some consist of only a single phoneme, such as g 'to be', and ú 'to ask a question'

These roots are obviously quite small most of the timeBecause the verb complex allows incorporated nouns and other sorts of bits and bobs, a very large amount of roots is not necessary. In fact, the few most common roots take up a very large portion of the verbs used. Some of them are quite semantically vague, such as dé, which means 'to sense; feel' in the most broad sense, it is used along with other morphemes to mean things like see, hear, touch lightly with the hand, etc. Others are more specific, e.g biséé 'to make a religious decree'. So while there are some common tendencies, verb roots vary in many ways. The important thing to remember is that this morpheme is the most semantically salient of all the morphemes that will be present in any Taahu verb form.

Agreement

There are four morphemes that can appear in this slot, and one of them always does. That is, this slot is always filled by something.

The first possibility is that the verb occurs with the prefix p-. This occurs with transitive verbs when all direct arguments of the verb are animate. A basic example is:
xú séi p-aa-dé.
[θú sêj pʰà:dé]
1.D 2.I AN.TR-eye-perceive
"I see you"

If at least one of the arguments are inanimate, then ni- is used instead. We can manage to get even more mileage out of a previous sentence (and save me the trouble of having to deal with the insufficient size of the vocabulary in this conlang) to illustrate the usage of this morpheme:
xú duná'-0 tuutsí-na ni-heŋáani
[θú dùnǎʔ tʰù:tsʰínà nīhɛ̀ŋâ:nì]
1.DIR pit-DIR stick-OBL TR-carve
I carved a notch in the stick.

To emphasize, only direct arguments affect this. So it is duná' and not tuutsí that determines the verb's marking in this case.

When verbs are intransitive, they are marked with má- if the subject is animate, and i- if the subject is inanimate. Thus:

sá má-ni'shiw yaá?
[sá mánīʔʃìw yǎ:]
2.D AN-cold Q
are you cold?

i-ní'shiw yaá?
[ìnǐʔʃìw yǎ:]
INAN-cold Q
is it cold (outside)?

i-tigúŋ
[ītìgúŋ]
INAN-become.dark
"It's getting dark [the sun is setting]"

The first two examples are stative, while the third is active.

Primary Tense/Aspect
The basic temporal distinction in Taahu can be conveniently described as perfective vs. imperfective. However, the bare 'perfective' marker with nothing else involved is more of a momentaneous aspect marker, while the imperfective describes continuous or habitual/repetitive actions; things that take place over a longer amount of time.

The imperfective is unmarked in all cases, and tense distictions are indicated by context or use of adverbs and such. However, the perfective uses a different marker for past and future. The past marker takes the general form -'V-. However, if it is the last morpheme in a word, it is just the glottal stop. When the vowel does appear, it is determined by the first vowel before it according to these rules.
i or e > V=i
a > V=a
u > V=u

If the PTA marker is word final, and the root ends in a consonant, the previous set of rules is applied, and then the PTA marker metathesizes. If that final consonant is velar (k g or ŋ), then the rules are ignored and V is always u.

Examples:
aa-dé-shi - to see; watch; look at >>NEG
aa-dé-'i-shi - to catch a glimpse of, see in peripheral vision >>NEG
heŋ-áani - to carve
heŋ-áani-' - to cut; slash; slice
áŋ - to sleep
y-áŋ-u' - to fall asleep

Perfective/Momentaneous future is indicated with the morpheme -húu-. It is not subject to the level of change displayed in the past marker, but the same vowel harmony processes are applied, unless the final consonant is glottal. In that case it is elided.

One verb root is irregular wrt. these morphemes. yiŋ 'to go' replaces its initial y- with '-, and in the future, it takes -úu instead of the expected *-uhúu.

tsána ni-wé-'iŋ
[tsʰánà nwéʔìŋ]
once TR-APPL-go.PF
"(I) went (there) once"

xáántsu ni-wé-y-'iŋ-úu
[θá:ntsù nwèyīʔìŋû:]
tomorrow TR-APPL-INCH-go.PERF-FUT
"(I) will start walking (there) tomorrow"

more verbs later

[thaen]

I like it!! Keep it coming! I'll be looking at this pretty hard to help me understand polysynthesis. I promise not to copy paste

Anyways, it is all quite fascinating. You've made me a fan

[thetha]

Thanks, thaen. I think Taahu is pretty unusual, but if it helps you understand something I guess that's really good!

[DesEsseintes]

I love what I see here.

I especially like the agreement prefixes. The i- reminds me of areal ho- in Navajo, although I realise it's an altogether different beastie.

[thaen]

Thanks, thaen. I think Taahu is pretty unusual, but if it helps you understand something I guess that's really good!

Anything polysynthetic that makes sense will help me understand how polylangs work.

[thetha]

Incorporated Noun

This is a very common element in verbs as well, although it is not obligatory by any means. Incorporates usually serve to derive new verbs from more semantically broad ones, and the element that is incorporated usually takes an oblique role semantically. Direct objects are rarely incorporated, and it is not quite a regular process in that case. Some examples of verbs with incorporated elements are:

i-ktéga p-si-mú
ʔìktʰégà psímù
3S.POSS-goat AN.TR-water-give
"he watered his goats"

xú ni-ek-ŋ
θú njékàŋ
1 TR-hand-hold/carry
"I carried it in my hands"

sá ni-te'i-xé-'V yaá?
sá nìtēʔìθéʔì yǎː
"How did you do it?"

Curiously, a couple adverbial markers can appear in this position. They're confined to spacial relations and directional markers, and only appear with verbs of motion and the previously seen root -ŋ. Some very common ones are -ti- and -ya-, meaning down and up the mountainside, respectively.

The forms of incorporated elements show evidence of severe attrition in most cases, being reduced to monosyllables in every case. What this syllable is can vary, but usually it is the stressed one, or the one that's most phonologically distinct (hatééw 'fire' is incorporated as -ha'-). Incorporated elements are also stripped of their phonemic stress--they act as unstressed elements in verb morphophonology. One or two elements are apparently unrelated to their noun pairs: -ts- 'soil; sand' does not match up with the corresponding noun dená', but there was probably some sort of semantic drift that occurred.

that's all for now!

[thetha]

Totally forgot I was doing this, oops lol

Secondary Aspect & Thematic Prefixes:
The secondary aspect markers describe things like habituality, seriation, etc. etc. when used with the imperfective form of the verb. When the perfective form is used, one may add a separate set of markers for starting or stopping an action.

Some commonly used Secondary Aspect morphemes are:
-hé'e- : seriative; or just any action that is done multiple discrete times
-y- : inchoative; the beginning of an action
-num- : cessative; the end of an action
-wí- : habitual action; sometimes used for describing actions as culturally expected or typical

-wí- turns into -ú- when preceded by consonants. If the applicative morpheme -wé- and -wí- appear next to each other, they become -úú-.

There are a couple other morphemes that appear in this slot that I've deemed 'thematic' prefixes because I don't know what else to call them. The most common one is -kí-, which is sort of a distributive plural marker. Another in use is -ux'á- which indicates that the subject strongly desired/intended for the action to occur. Other thematic prefixes appear to be oblique prepositions that have gotten into the verbal system, like another set of applicatives.

The secondary aspect markers always 'take priority' over the thematic prefixes, so if an aspect marker appears a thematic prefix cannot occur in the verb complex, and it must be expressed elsewhere.

Examples of usage will hopefully come tomorrow. I think I might have eaten some weird food today and got sick but if I didn't then I will do more then.

[Micamo]

How productive is incorporation in Taahu, exactly? Are incorporable nouns an open class? Can any verb take an IN, or only certain ones?

[thetha]

Any noun root can potentially be incorporated. They are an open class in the sense that spontaneously created nouns like slang terms or whatever can be incorporated, and loaned nouns can as well. However, only roots can be incorporated: the incorporated element can't contain any additional morphology like a diminutive or anything like that, and derived nouns (e.g. verb 'participles') cannot be incorporates.

Only active verbs can have INs, and it's mostly transitive ones that have them in practice. Intransitive ones would have them as instrumental arguments or, in the case of motion verbs, goals/sources.

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Some example sentences for the previous section:

xú tíwa ni-hé'e-tpísa
1 log TR-SER-split.w.axe
I chopped up some logs

númina táhe má-y-áŋ-u'
finally person AN-INCH-sleep-PF
He finally went to sleep.

xíi p-num-haaná'i-' wáa
1.I AN.TR-CESS-yell-PF EMOT
Stop yelling at me!

dáanxa p-wí-néíni
daily AN.TR-HAB-pray
"one [should] pray every day"

[roninbodhisattva]

Have I said I love all of this? And that I'm going to use x for [θ] the next time I need to use something for [θ].