Ook
This is a fan made conlang spoken by the Librarian of the Discworld series. Because of the traditional romanization it is sometimes considered to be primitive, whereas it is really very elaborated. Unfortunately there are not that many full sentence examples given in the books. I would appreciate every example from the original series, that you can give me.
Phonology & Morphology
The phonology of Ook is very different from known languages. If one would try to analyze it in the traditional way, one would end up with ca. 25920 vowels, 11520 consonants and 597196800 possible syllables. All of them are traditionally romanized as either <ook> or <eek>.
That's why I am going to analyze the language as having two basemes, which are already fully specified syllables of the form VC and a limited set of supremes, which are features, that can be prefixed or suffixed to the basemes. These features can sometimes have one of multiple values. Here is a list of basemes and Supremes. Where no value is given, the feature is unary.
Basemes:
- [uk]
- [ik]
- Supremes that can be suffixed and prefixed (A-Supremes)
- Length: short, half-long, long, overlong
- rounding: unrounded, compressed, protruded
- nasalization:
- horizontal: fronted, backed
- vertical: lowered
- Supremes that can only be prefixed (Pre-Supremes)
- centralization:
- state of glottis: voiceless, creaky voice, breathy voiced
- centralization:
- ATR:
- dipthongization: diphthong, triphthong
- tone: high, low, high falling, low falling, high rising, low rising, dipping, peaking
- Supremes that can only be suffixed (Post-Supremes)
- VOT: voiced, aspirated
- airstream: ejective, implosive
- double articulation: labial-velar, alveo-velar
- palatalization:
- velarization:
- pharyngealizaton:
- affricate:
A potential word could look like this [ⁿu̯ⁿa̯˦˥g͡bʲˠˤːˑ]. <ook>. I am currently workig on a non-traditional romanization. This word could be analyzed in the following manner:
Prefixed Supremes: nasalization, length(short), diphthongization(dipthong), tone(high rising)
Baseme: [uk]
Postfixed Supremes: VOT(voiced), length(overlong), double articulation(labial-velar), palatalization, velarization, pharyngealization
There will probabely be some interaction between different supremes, but I haven't gotten to that yet.
Morphosyntax
The Morphosyntax of Ook is likely to be more morphology than syntax, since most SAE sentences are translatable into one word in Ook. However, words will always be monosyllabic.
Here is a list of features I definitely want to include:
- Zero marked existential copulas
- Interrogative markers
- Discourse markers as inflectional categories
- Object Incorporation
- Polypersonal agreement
- Evidentiality
Ook
rainforest.INC.OBJ.see.INT.REC.PST.2SG.HON
"Did you see a rainforest around here a moment ago?"
Feel free to comment, ask and do as you weren't told.