User:Kalathei95/sandbox/CGAW/Test-List-Countries/Caro-Valdic/Urlexian language
IUrlexian language
[edit]Urlexian is a Caro-Valdic language spoken natively by the ursine people of Southern Noxorea, primarily in the vast taiga regions of Urlexia. It is one of the commonly spoken languages, prestige dialect and academic language among the Urlexic dialect continuum.
Urlexian is one of a dozen Urlexic languages of the Urlexo-Valdic branch of the Caro-Valdic languages, one of the earliest branches that broke off from the Caro-Valdic language family. Like all Valdo-Urlexian languages, Urlexian's relative isolation in the southern taiga of Noxorea have posed numerous challenges in linking the Urlexian languages with Caric languages.
Phonology
[edit]Urlexian has retained Caro-Valdic's lack of independent nasal consonants (though /m n/ occur as allophones of /b/ and /d/, as well as loanwords) and an extensive vowel system. All voiced consonants were lost, but lateral affricate consonants appeared, mostly likely influenced from an extinct paleo-Urlexic substratum. Unusually, Urlexian features the voiceless labiodental affricate /p͡f/, though it only appears in a handful of words.
Consonants
[edit]Labial | Dental | Palato-alveolar | Velar | Uvular | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ten. | velar. | ten. | velar. | ten. | velar. | ten. | velar. | |||
Nasal | (m̥) | (n̥) | (ŋ̊) | (ɴ̥) | ||||||
Stop | p | pˠ | t | tˠ | c | cˠ | k | kˠ | q | |
Fricatives | plain | f | fˠ | s | sˠ | ɕ | ɕˠ | x | χ | |
lateral | ɬ | ɬˠ | ||||||||
Affricates | plain | p͡f | t͡s | t͡sˠ | q͡χ | |||||
lateral | t͡ɬ | t͡ɬˠ | ||||||||
Approximants | w | l | lˠ | ʟ |
Vowels
[edit]Front | Central | Back | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Short | Long | Short | Long | ||||||
Plain | Nasal | Plain | Nasal | Plain | Nasal | Plain | Nasal | ||
High | ɪ | ɪ̃ | iː | ĩ | ʊ | ʊ̃ | uː | ũː | |
Close-mid | eː | ẽː | (ə) | o | õ | ɔː | ɔ̃ː | ||
Open-mid | æ | æ̃ | |||||||
Low | a | ã | aː | ãː |
Grammar
[edit]Urlexian has a rich derivational morphology, albeit minimal inflectional morphology. Linguists generally agree that interactions between historic Urlexian migrants and pre-Urlexian languages have resulted in modern Urlexian's analytical morphology. Nouns and adjectives do not decline for case, and verbs do not inflect, except for a few irregular verbs in common use. Urlexian sentences are strictly SVO to indicate active statements, and VSO for passive statements.
Independent pronouns and demonstratives are extensive, ranging from inclusivity and exclusivity, remoteness, obviation and unusually, four-way distance contrast. Pronouns in Urlexian do not make use of grammatical gender.
Pronouns
[edit]Singular | Plural | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
1st person | Inclusive | informal | su | sẽglu |
polite | tlxoqx | |||
Exclusive | informal | kæf | ||
polite | ifxa | |||
exalted | kõõqis | |||
2nd person | informal | u | tles | |
polite | tsec | pet | ||
exalted | qxos | qxosti | ||
3rd person | informal | işa | pfoi | |
polite/exalted | sxit | sxitlæ̃ | ||
Demonstratives | proximal | klũ | tluk | |
medial | 'ol | ħoxid | ||
distal | þ'iw | þ'oek | ||
Obviate | es'õ | esik |