Šantaquj

[Omzinesý]

Vowels

i: i u: u <ii i uu u>
ee: oo: <ee oo>
ai au <ai au>
a: a <aa a or e>

Allophony
- High short vowels become mid next to an uvular
- High long vowels become diphthons next to an uvular
- Sort /a/ is pronounced /ə/ in an open, unstressed syllable not next to an uvular

Consonants
p t tʲ k q
s sʲ ʃ ɕ
m n nʲ
l lʲ
j ɣ ʁ

Allophony
All consonants are palatalized before /i, i:,e:/ and after /i/.
The dorsals can be palatalized also before /u:, u, aa, ee, a/. So palatalization is phonemic. It's written above the vowel <ûû, û, ââ, â~ê>

Edit: It's written by replacing the first vowel letter by <i>, i.e. iu, ia, ie.

Phonotaxis
Syllables can be: V, VV, , VC, VVC, CV, CVV, CVC or CVVC. Unstressed syllables cannot be CVVC.

Stress falls on the last 'strong' syllable, i.e. VV, VC, VVC, CVV, CVC or CVVC.

[Frislander]

I like those inventories! Weirdly it makes me think a bit Uralic, Samoyedic in particular (Nenets for the vowels, Selkup/Khanty for the consonants).

[Omzinesý]

I like those inventories! Weirdly it makes me think a bit Uralic, Samoyedic in particular (Nenets for the vowels, Selkup/Khanty for the consonants).

I looked at those languages, and you are right, Šantaquj phonology is very similar to Samoyedic. It isn't intentional though.

If I have to name one Natlang that gave me inspiration for the vowels, I say Sanskrit. I think the consonant inventory resembles West-Greenlandic. The palatalization of dentals is intentionally Uralic but I thought about Mordvian.

[Omzinesý]

Some basic synthetic info

Šantaquj is SOV. If some participant appears after the verb, it's very focused. Dependents precede the head noun. Subordinate clauses are usually non-finite.

There are three cases:

Nominative (actually the direct case, but it's more intuitive to call it the nominative):
- subject of all clauses
- object of transitive clauses (clauses with 2nd argument in the oblique are not called transitive)
- recipient of (the most common) ditransitive verbs, primary object
- vocative

Oblique
- 2nd argument of some verbs, the stimulus of experiential verbs especially
- case of topicalized words (Engl. 'When it comes to X...')
- case of theme arguments of the ditransitive verbs, i.e. secondary object
- 'concerning'

Genitive
- case of nominal attributes of a noun
- object of prepositions
- object of specifiers
- object of quantifiers
- when preceding a verb, can code arguments that are indefinite and not very important for the discourse, i.e. resembles incorporation

[Omzinesý]

There are two basic inflectional classed of nouns.
The first distinguishes all three cases. The endings are:
NOM -a~Ø
OBL -u
GEN -i
The nominative /a/ appears if the stem ends is /a/ or a constant cluster.

The second merges the oblique and genitive.


1.
NOM -a ~ zero
OBL -u
GEN -i

'House'
Maar
Maaru
Maari

'Sand'
Tunka
Tunku
Tunki

'Shirt'
Piraa
Pirau
Pirai

2.
NOM -i
OBL -ja
GEN -ja

'Cottage'
Maari
Maaria
Maaria

3.
NOM -s
OBL -š
GEN -š

'Desert'
Joos
Jooš
Jooš

4.
'Houses'
Maarii
Maaree
Maaree

5.
'Oasis'
Unuu
Unoo
Unoo

[Omzinesý]

Noun class and gender system

There are three genders: masculine, feminine, and collective/plural. There are words that only appear in collective/plural, so I regard it a gender.

Nouns of the i-ja-ja declension belong to feminines. Other declensions have nouns from all classes.

Furthermore, there are noun classes for some groups of words. Most nouns though belong to the unmarked noun class.
Special classes:
1.Bad/poisonous things, pejoratives
2. Foreign things
3. Royal things and people
4. Mythical things and people
...

Adjectives and participles agree with their head.

[Omzinesý]

I'm considering adding a series of semantic cases.

Locative (at, in, on)
Perlative (through, over, around)
Ablative (from)
Terminative to (as far as)
Orientative to (towards)

They are less integrated than the three syntactic cases. 1. Adjectives and participles agree them only in some positions.
2. Their suffixes follow the possessive suffix, while the suffixes of the syntactic cases precede it.
3. They have less allomorphy and portmanteau morphy, i.e. are agglutinative, than the syntactic cases.

Should I add them?

Edit: I'll add a 'case' suffix for 'and'. Only one of the coordinated words agrees case.

[Omzinesý]

Possessive constructions

The possessor in the genitive + the head noun, [N+G N], is a very integrated NP and corresponds to compound nouns in English.

tunk-i joos
sand-GEN decert.NOM
'sand desert'

For less integrated relations, possessive suffix -n is added at the end of the possessed word. In the first conjugation the nominative marker /a/ is present before the possessive suffix.

lier-i maar-a-n
girl-GEN house-NOM-POSS
'girls's house'

If the possessive suffix appears without an explicit possessor, the subject of the clause is interpreted the possessor of the noun.

[Omzinesý]

Copula
Pronouns are used as copulae, but they have tense inflection.
sg1 present
NOM šuu
OBL šoo
GEN šooj

sg1 past
NOM ees
ACC eeš
GEN eeš

sg1 future
NOM oos
ACC ooš
GEN ooš


sg3 present
NOM ak
ACC aku
GEN aki

sg3 future
NOM pol
ACC polu
GEN poli

sg3 past
NOM neš
ACC nešu
GEN neši

šuu patoom 'I am happy.'
ees patoom 'I was happy.'
oos patoom 'I will be happy.'

Tom, ak patoom. 'Tom is happy.'
Tom, neš patoom. 'Tom is happy.'
Tom, pol patoom. 'Tom is happy.'

Real verbs have only one tense, but tenses of the imperfective aspect can be formed by participles ~ converbs and copulae.

Tom ak-jureel Lisu. 'Tom has loved Lisa'.
Tom neš-jurum Lisu. 'Tom was loving Lisa.'

Jureel is the past participle and jurum the present participle of jura 'to love'.

There are three particples: simultaneous, anterior, and posterior. They agree the gender/number of their head and they have some case inflection.

Simultaneous:
MASC -um-a
FEM -um-i
PL -um-e

Anterior:
MASC -eel-a
FEM -eel-i
PL -eel-u

Posterior:
MAC -ool-a
FEM -ool-i
PL -ool-u