My method for this is to define a phonology plus some vague aesthetic objectives, and then translate some short texts to develop the morphology and syntax. Y'all'll get to guess what the text translated is and get a shiny prize! Without further ado, here's the phoneme inventory:
/i e a o u ɨ ə r/<i e a o u y ä r>
/p b t t͡s k s z x ɣ~ʕ m n r l j w/<p b t c k s z h g m n r l j v>
Diphthongs are hella legal, hiatus is utterly prohibited.
There's an Inuktitut-esque opposition between voiceless obstruents/voiced obstruents/nasals in the formation of clusters. Clusters must be homorganic in this regard, or they must be sequences of C+<r j v>. This can get a little screwed up in the morphology though.
Voiceless Obstruents: <p t c k s h>
Voiced "Obstruents": <b l g z>
Nasals: <m n>
Blagona, cr'ca.
go-1p.PL.HORT 1p.SG=2p.SG.FEM
Lravanug mnäkrstigig noku inär.
night-beginning when-PASS-put-3p.F sky.FEM LOC-3p.FEM
Aminäa ogoatr bza brgä in gäb.
CAUS-sleep-NMLZ client-GEN lie-3p.SG.NOM table.MASC LOC-3p.MAS like
Blagona, cr'ca, tkäkon tkesen tägrcä lon.
go-1p.PL.HORT 1p.SG=2p.SG.FEM specific sparse city.street.MASC through-3p.MASC
Hobäbobä sinblar kavi.
muttering going.back.MASC-GEN be
Lränä lravr bgrbas jutinar,
wideawake night-GEN cheap hotel.FEM-GEN
Juak jitbzär, juak nä'l kavi,
bark restaurant.FEM-GEN bark 3p.MASC=DAT be
I'm leaving off here because I realized the syntactic structure I want for relative clauses would mess up the flow of the language.
So, a few notes:
1. The syntactic structure is SVO, but largely left branching outside of that, with some flexibility. Probably shifted out of SOV pretty recently. Since this is poetic language, there's very odd syntax.
2. The phonotactics do rough things to the appearance of this language. I may either let up on the words with syllabic /r/, but it's vaguely inspired by BCS, so maybe not.
3. Pervasive M-F distinction. Seems to be mostly marked on postpositions.
4. Adjectives and Genitives don't seem to differ; both are marked with -r.
5. These are the inflectional affixes created so far:
Code: Select all
1. -gona 1p.PL Hortative
2. m- when (not sure of the technical term for this)
3. nä- Passive
4. -ig 3p.FEM, for verbs
5. -är 3p.FEM, for postpositions
6. a- Causative
7. -äa Nominalizer
8. -r Genitive/"Ezafe"