Öhat

From KneeQuickie

Öhat, created for the ZBB Conlang Relay, is a descendent of Yhát, which was a descendent of E'át, which was a descendent of Aθáta, which was a descendent of Adāta (which itself was a descendent of Ndak Ta).

Contents

Sound Changes

  1. [ə], the unstressed allophone of a, is lost when in the syllable immediately preceding the stressed syllable, or when word-final in a polysyllabic word and not following a consonant cluster.


  2. k, kh, and gh become alveolars s, s, and z when the following syllable contains q, qh, or r.


  3. Vowels became long before word-final fricatives; they also lengthened compensatorily when preceding a syllable- or word-final r or a syllable-final (but not word-final) fricative, which were then lost. Vowels preceding a cluster of l+another consonant were lengthened and the consonant following l was lost. The sequence vowel+w or j collapsed into a long vowel, and if another vowel immediately followed the semivowel w or j, it was lost.


  4. r became gh.
  5. Intervocalic z became r (now an alveolar trill rather than a uvular), and l became r unconditionally.
  6. ng changed to n word-initially, gh word-finally, and h elsewhere.
  7. s became h word-initially or when following an alveolar consonant.
  8. ts and dz became s and z unconditionally
  9. The velar fricative kh merged with the uvular fricative, though both were now spelled <kh> rather than <qh>.
  10. q changed to w before round vowels and word-finally, k before front vowels or before consonants, and h before a or ə.


  11. Long ō changed to ā when unstressed.
  12. Long ȳ and ū diphthongized to öü, while long ē and ī diphthongized to ei.
  13. Unstressed i became ü.
  14. y and o became ö.
  15. Long ə̄ changed to o, while ə changed to ü.
  16. Vowel length was lost.


  17. pf became f.
  18. Nasals before fricatives were lost.
  19. v after a consonant changed to w.


  20. Stress shifted universally to the second syllable of a word.

Phonemes

There are three stops, /p t k/, written p t k; four voiceless fricatives, /f s χ h/, written f s kh h; three voiced fricatives /v z ɣ/, written v z gh; two nasals /m n/, written m n; two semivowels /w j/, written w y; and a trill, /r/, written r. There are also seven monophthong vowel phonemes, /i y e ø u o a/, written i ü e ö u o a; and two diphthongs, /ei øy/, written ei öü (the diphthongs are phonetically [ɛɪ] and [œʏ]).

Pronouns

Pronouns distinguish three persons (1, 2, 3); two numbers (singular, plural); and four cases (nominative, accusative, dative, vocative):

NOM ACC DAT VOC
1SG vin in hin
2SG ren ran san hun
3SG seif / en an han
1PL vi i hi
2PL zogh
3PL e a ha



The 2SG nonvocative pronouns gained a final -n, not present in Yhát, by analogy with the singular 1st and 3rd person pronouns. The 2PL accusative pronoun irregularly lost its original final -k, perhaps by analogy with the other 2PL pronouns. seif is the neuter/inanimate 3SG nominative pronoun (it derives from a demonstrative), while en is used with animate referents.

Nouns

There are two noun classes, here called Class-I (derived from Yhát /a1/ and /a2/ nouns) and Class-II nouns (derived from /i/ nouns); Yhát /a2/ nouns merged with /a1/ nouns. There has been a significant amount of analogical leveling and reformation in the nominal inflections. Nouns are marked for number (singular, plural); and the person (1, 2, 3) and number (singular, plural) of their possessors, if they are possessed. A noun is pluralized by prefixing he- (ho-, if the first vowel of the noun is -u-).

Nouns are made definite with a proclitic definite article, seif=, e.g., seif narür, "the horse".

Class-I

SG noun PL noun
1SG -(h)ün hV- -(ü)hon
2SG -(h)ö hV- -(ö)ho
3SG -(h)öün hV- -(öü)hon
1PL -(ü)r hV- -(ü)kor
2PL -(e)n hV- -(ü)won
3PL -(h)e hV- -(ü)ke

Class-II

SG noun PL noun
1SG -(h)ün hV- -(ö)hon
2SG -yö hV- -(ö)hö
3SG -yein hV- -(ö)hön
1PL -yür hV- -(ö)kör
2PL -(ö)n hV- -(ö)wön
3PL -ye hV- -(ö)ke

Verbs

Verbal morphology is agglutinative. The verb shape is:

Mood.prefix=VERB.ROOT-passive.suffix-aspect.suffix-person/number.suffix

Mood prefixes

There are five modal prefixes, whose shapes may vary depending on the initial sound of the verb root:

Desiderative öw-/ök-/öh-
Subordinative h-
Imperative üh-
Negative üz-/ür-
Conditional pöw-/pök-/pöh-


The desiderative (which represents the merger of the Yhát imperative and optative) varies depending on the following sound, as does the conditional. If the verb root begins with -u-, -öü-, or -ö-, the prefix will be öw-/pöw-; if the root begins with -i-, -e-, or -ei-, the prefix will be ök-/pök-; and if the root begins with -ü-, -o-, or -a-, or a consonant, the prefix will be öh-/pöh-.

The negative, derived from the Yhát non-potential, is ür- when the verb root begins with a vowel, and üz- when the root begins with a consonant.

The subordinative derives from the Yhát benefactive, and the imperative from the Yhát energetic.

  • This page was last modified 03:31, 10 January 2007.