Isharian-1
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? Serafín posts: 48
, 農, Canada
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<Slereah__> Let's make the #isharia conlang
<Slereah__> We will call it... isharian

Is there any interest in making a collablang? It seems like it has never been tried in this community.

We were talking about it for a little bit, and a few people seemed interested, but without making a huge commitment to it. Which is very fair of course, collablang threads tend to move very fast.

I just hoped I'd have better luck making a collablang here...

<Ser> I've participated in about 5 group conlanging projects
<Ser> and every time, I got out because I hated the language being created
<Ser> last one I tried participating in, the people in it agreed to have 10 pitch accents for words
<Ser> and they were, literally, 10 steps of height
<Whimemsz> lol
<Ser> 1 was very very very low, 2 was very very low, 3 was very low, 4 was low, 5 was mid, etc.
<Ser> gosh, I wanted to murder them
<Ser> something like this has happened every single time
<Whimemsz> well as we know most conlangers are fools
<Whimemsz> NOT ME THOUGH
<Ser> I mean, I knew I would need some degree of flexibility from my personal aesthetics
<Ser> but my flexibility never ends up being enough to deal with random Internet conlangers
<Slereah__> Do you have to speak like Tiny Tim for tone 10
<Slereah__> And James Earl Jones for tone 1
<Ser> it is quite possible a collab here would go better

So far, we've got (both are Izambri's suggestions):
- Etymologies should be of interest (creative? funny?)
- A phonological inventory that's similar to that of Kabyle

I've called the language Isharian-1 because who knows, there might be other Isharian languages in the future...
? con quesa posts: 13
, Layperson, California
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What sorts of typological features are people interested in exploring?
? Serafín posts: 48
, 農, Canada
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I don't particularly care about the typology of the conlang. I'd be okay with something very analytic or something very synthetic, something with many affixes or something with a lot of root compounding, something with European-style standard negation (a single invariable particle before or after the verb) or something with a more exotic kind of standard negation, say, negative inflectional affixes that have a different tense system from that of positive (non-negative) verbs (cf. Mandarin bu4 and mei2, which don't match directly with positive zai4, zhe and le).

Just don't make the vocabulary have too many unpredictable stems per word. Learning another Ancient Greek with 6 stems per verb, rather unpredictable for most roots, will make me unhappy. 1-2 stems, and maybe 3 for a few words, is as far as I'll go...
? con quesa posts: 13
, Layperson, California
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Here's a potential phoneme inventory just to get that over with (all values IPA):
consonants:

pʼ pʰ b    tʼ tʰ d    tʃʼ  tʃʰ dʒ    kʼ kʰ ɡ
f              s            ʃ                x                h
w                          j
m            n                            ŋ
                            ɾ 

-voiced stops and fricatives merge intervocalically as voiced fricatives
- /w/ can sometimes be [ʋ] why not?
-ŋ can occur word-initially

vowels:

ɪ  iː              ʊ  uː
ɛ eː              ɔ oː
æː              ɑ ɑː

-ɛ comes from a merger of older short /ɛ/ and /æ/, maybe this has morphological consequences

Some random words:
yostí [jɔstiː]
mæneŋí [mæːnɛŋiː]
sobosru [sɔvɔsɾʊ]
áfak'  [ɑːvɑkʼ]
wek'né  [wɛkʼneː]


Feel free to edit this heavily if you don't like it, I just wanted to throw something out there.
? con quesa posts: 13
, Layperson, California
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For negation, why not copy English on this? A negative auxiliary verb analogous to "don't" transparently formed from an older negative particle, used in some TAM classes, with that same negative particle (let's say its ga to be concrete) used for negation in other TAM contexts?

Soŝna ɡás wek'né
Soŝna-NOM NEG.DO catch.fish
"Soshna doesn't catch fish"

Soŝna ga móch'í wek'né
Soŝna-NOM NEG want.to catch.fish
"Soshna doesn't want to catch fish"
? Serafín posts: 48
, 農, Canada
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quoting con quesa, Layperson, California:
Here's a potential phoneme inventory just to get that over with (all values IPA):
consonants:

pʼ pʰ b    tʼ tʰ d    tʃʼ  tʃʰ dʒ    kʼ kʰ ɡ
f              s            ʃ                x                h
w                          j
m            n                            ŋ
                            ɾ 

-voiced stops and fricatives merge intervocalically as voiced fricatives
- /w/ can sometimes be [ʋ] why not?
-ŋ can occur word-initially

Doesn't look much like Kabyle, but it looks good. Just let me Kabyle-ize it a little bit, adding [θ ð qʼ qʰ ħ ʕ].

Suggested romanization:

/pʼ pʰ b tʼ tʰ d tʃʼ  tʃʰ dʒ kʼ kʰ ɡ qʼ qʰ/ <p' p b t' t d c' c j k' k g q' q>
/f θ ð s ʃ x ħ ʕ h/ <f þ ð s S x H 3 h>
/w j/ <w y>
/m n ŋ/ <m n N>
/r/ <r>

The use of <H> is from Klingon and Arabic, <3> /ʕ/ is from Kabyle ɛ and Arabic, <N> is sometimes used for /ŋ/ when romanizing languages from India. Regarding /ʃ/ <S>... do we allow /sh/ to happen at all? If we don't we could simply use <sh>. I can type ŝ or ś or š easily, but I think of our mates on Windows 10...

Alternatively, /ʃ ħ ʕ ŋ/ <S H 3 N> can be written with the IPA symbols. We should agree on only using one set or the other when making the Annie dictionary though.

vowels:

ɪ  iː              ʊ  uː
ɛ eː              ɔ oː
æː              ɑ ɑː

-ɛ comes from a merger of older short /ɛ/ and /æ/, maybe this has morphological consequences

To Kabyle-ize this I'll just take out a bunch of vowels. What do you think of cutting the length distinction down to the Persian system?

The phonemes, with suggested romanization:

/i e æ ɑ o u/ <i e æ a o u>

We could kind of keep your idea about /ɛ/ by saying /æ/ is always unchecked (can only appear in open syllables), and if it gets morphologically checked then it becomes /e/ <e>. So if we have a singular-plural paradigm like sg. */kæbi/, pl. */kæbnu/, then we get /kæbi/ and /kebnu/.

Some random words:
yostí [jɔstiː]
mæneŋí [mæːnɛŋiː]
sobosru [sɔvɔsɾʊ]
áfak'  [ɑːvɑkʼ]
wek'né  [wɛkʼneː]

yosti [josti]
mæneNi [mæneŋi]
sobosru [sovosru]
afak' [ɑvɑkʼ]
wek'ne [wekʼne]


Meanwhile:

<Slereah> Oh god
<Slereah> I just noticed that I sparked the collablang
<Slereah> What have I done
? Serafín posts: 48
, 農, Canada
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Suggested stress pattern: Word-initial, or near the beginning of the word (maybe there's derivational prefixes that never take stress?).
quoting con quesa, Layperson, California:
For negation, why not copy English on this? A negative auxiliary verb analogous to "don't" transparently formed from an older negative particle, used in some TAM classes, with that same negative particle (let's say its ga to be concrete) used for negation in other TAM contexts?

Soŝna ɡás wek'né
Soŝna-NOM NEG.DO catch.fish
"Soshna doesn't catch fish"

Soŝna ga móch'í wek'né
Soŝna-NOM NEG want.to catch.fish
"Soshna doesn't want to catch fish"

Hmm... what is -s? Some sort of habitual-aspect marker for only auxiliary verbs?

soŝn-a ga-s wek'ne
Soŝna-NOM NEG-HAB catch.fish
'Soshna doesn't catch fish.'

soŝn-a ga moci wek'ne
Soŝna-NOM NEG want catch.fish
'Soshna doesn't want to catch fish (at the moment).'

soŝn-a ga moci-s wek'ne
Soŝna-NOM NEG want-HAB catch.fish
'Soshna never wants (or doesn't usually want) to catch fish.'


Some suggested morphological distinctions:
- determiners: number (singular, plural), case
- - probably with some syncretism

- nouns:
- - number: singular, plural (with an affix), supraplural (meaning "many many Xs", and let's make it easy using full reduplication of the plural: "x.PL x.PL", or maybe "x.PL from x.PL")
- - - - something similar to the supraplural is attested for some collective nouns in Arabic, where collectives can take plural morphology
- - cases: NOM, GEN, INST (instrumental)
- - - - this is inspired from Georgian, which doesn't have an accusative
- - - - for direct objects we could use NOM in positive verbs or sentences, and GEN in negative ones, cf. de in French j'ai un problème 'I have problems' vs. j'ai pas de problème 'I don't a(ny) problem'.
- - - - a paradigm of 2 numbers x 3 cases seems good and fairly easy to learn to me, even with morphophonological complications

- verbs: no idea yet, but maybe distinguish habitual, present, past, irrealis at least?
? con quesa posts: 13
, Layperson, California
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quoting Serafín, 農, Canada:


Suggested romanization:

/pʼ pʰ b tʼ tʰ d tʃʼ  tʃʰ dʒ kʼ kʰ ɡ qʼ qʰ/ <p' p b t' t d c' c j k' k g q' q>
/f θ ð s ʃ x ħ ʕ h/ <f þ ð s S x H 3 h>
/w j/ <w y>
/m n ŋ/ <m n N>
/r/ <r>

The use of <H> is from Klingon and Arabic, <3> /ʕ/ is from Kabyle ɛ and Arabic, <N> is sometimes used for /ŋ/ when romanizing languages from India. Regarding /ʃ/ <S>... do we allow /sh/ to happen at all? If we don't we could simply use <sh>. I can type ŝ or ś or š easily, but I think of our mates on Windows 10...

I'm really not a fan of using capital letters with distinct meanings in romanization, and I think that in the year of the lord 2018 we can expect people to figure out how to type characters outside of the ASCII range, regardless of OS. I suggest:

/pʼ pʰ b tʼ tʰ d tʃʼ  tʃʰ dʒ kʼ kʰ ɡ qʼ qʰ/ <p' p b t' t d c' c j k' k g q' q>
/f θ ð s ʃ x ħ ʕ h/ <f þ ð s š x ħ ɛ h>
/w j/ <w y>
/m n ŋ/ <m n ŋ>
/r/ <r>

I'm fine with the vowel system changes
? con quesa posts: 13
, Layperson, California
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quoting Serafín, 農, Canada:
Suggested stress pattern: Word-initial, or near the beginning of the word (maybe there's derivational prefixes that never take stress?).
quoting con quesa, Layperson, California:
For negation, why not copy English on this? A negative auxiliary verb analogous to "don't" transparently formed from an older negative particle, used in some TAM classes, with that same negative particle (let's say its ga to be concrete) used for negation in other TAM contexts?

Soŝna ɡás wek'né
Soŝna-NOM NEG.DO catch.fish
"Soshna doesn't catch fish"

Soŝna ga móch'í wek'né
Soŝna-NOM NEG want.to catch.fish
"Soshna doesn't want to catch fish"

Hmm... what is -s? Some sort of habitual-aspect marker for only auxiliary verbs?

What I had in mind was that -s (+ vowel length, but we've gotten rid of the length) is the fossilized remnant of a light verb, in the same way that the /d/ in "don't" is the fossilized remnant of the light verb "do". ga is a particle, not a verb in and of itself.


Some suggested morphological distinctions:
- determiners: number (singular, plural), case
- - probably with some syncretism

- nouns:
- - number: singular, plural (with an affix), supraplural (meaning "many many Xs", and let's make it easy using full reduplication of the plural: "x.PL x.PL", or maybe "x.PL from x.PL")
- - - - something similar to the supraplural is attested for some collective nouns in Arabic, where collectives can take plural morphology
- - cases: NOM, GEN, INST (instrumental)
- - - - this is inspired from Georgian, which doesn't have an accusative
- - - - for direct objects we could use NOM in positive verbs or sentences, and GEN in negative ones, cf. de in French j'ai un problème 'I have problems' vs. j'ai pas de problème 'I don't a(ny) problem'.
- - - - a paradigm of 2 numbers x 3 cases seems good and fairly easy to learn to me, even with morphophonological complications

- verbs: no idea yet, but maybe distinguish habitual, present, past, irrealis at least?


I like those TAM distinctions. Let's also mark subject and object person on the verb, with minimal syncretism. I like the case ideas, but want to add at least one more - I suggest a DATive case for indirect objects. Georgian of course has some interesting mappings from syntactic roles to case assignments based on TAM category, which I wouldn't mind trying to build something analogous to.


? con quesa posts: 13
, Layperson, California
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I'm going to posit an -a declension here, coining a noun "p'at-a", "stone"

[pre]
            SG    PL
NOM  p'at-a  p'at-u
GEN    p'at-ak' p'at-uk'
DAT    p'at-abi  p'at-ob
INST  p'at-awa p'at-uma
[/pre]

Sošn-a wek'ne-s p'at-awa
Soshna:NOM fish-HAB stone-INST
"Soshna fishes with a stone"

Sošn-a gaas wek'ne-d p'at-ak'
Soshna:NOM NEG.DO fish-3sOBJ stone-GEN
"Soshna doesn't have a stone"

? Rhetorica Your Writing System Sucks
posts: 1292
, Kelatetía: Dis, Major Belt 1
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Woah, hold up. Kabyle has two approximants and two trills, not just a weeby tap. It's very out-of-place to have such an undiverse PoA given how many series of plosives and fricatives there are.

And now a rant about transliteration schemes.

As far as I can tell from their Wikipedia recordings, [ʕ] is barely audible, and contrast between [ħ] and [h] is ridiculously hard to hear. If you want those sounds, make them allophones, not distinct phonemes. Even if they get distinct graphemes, there should be some contextual rule about which is used, e.g. [ħ] in word-initial positions but [h] elsewhere. [ʕ] probably doesn't even deserve a grapheme, but could maybe work as the sound of lenition-in-progress as applied to a [ʁ] or [ɣ] consonant (as a counterpart to [x], since otherwise it seems there's plenty of voiced/unvoiced/aspirated-unvoiced contrast in the inventory.)

I think if this collablang is going to be safe from the level of autistic xenophilia that presumably brought about the aforementioned ten-tone lang, then attention really does need to be spent on naturalism. The original writing system of the Berber family, Tifinagh, is quite inexact about phonology—it was originally an Abjad with numerous variants and redundancies. Even today all three common orthographies (Latin, Neo-Tifinagh, and Arabic) have some amount of ambiguity in what a given letter represents. I can understand that, while constructing the language, it might be desirable to have an exact system of phonics1 but no everyday orthography has a perfect 1:1 correlation for more than a few minutes after its creation.

_________________________
1. "Hukt on fonix wurkt fer mi", as the kids used to say.
? con quesa posts: 13
, Layperson, California
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quoting Rhetorica, Kelatetía: Dis, Major Belt 1:
Woah, hold up. Kabyle has two approximants and two trills, not just a weeby tap. It's very out-of-place to have such an undiverse PoA given how many series of plosives and fricatives there are.

And now a rant about transliteration schemes.

As far as I can tell from their Wikipedia recordings, [ʕ] is barely audible, and contrast between [ħ] and [h] is ridiculously hard to hear. If you want those sounds, make them allophones, not distinct phonemes. Even if they get distinct graphemes, there should be some contextual rule about which is used, e.g. [ħ] in word-initial positions but [h] elsewhere. [ʕ] probably doesn't even deserve a grapheme, but could maybe work as the sound of lenition-in-progress as applied to a [ʁ] or [ɣ] consonant (as a counterpart to [x], since otherwise it seems there's plenty of voiced/unvoiced/aspirated-unvoiced contrast in the inventory.)

I think if this collablang is going to be safe from the level of autistic xenophilia that presumably brought about the aforementioned ten-tone lang, then attention really does need to be spent on naturalism. The original writing system of the Berber family, Tifinagh, is quite inexact about phonology—it was originally an Abjad with numerous variants and redundancies. Even today all three common orthographies (Latin, Neo-Tifinagh, and Arabic) have some amount of ambiguity in what a given letter represents. I can understand that, while constructing the language, it might be desirable to have an exact system of phonics1 but no everyday orthography has a perfect 1:1 correlation for more than a few minutes after its creation.


Yeah like I said I missed the line about a phonology like Kabyle being a desideratum before I came up with what I came up with. To be honest, I'm not super into Berber languages myself, don't know a whole lot about them, and don't have any particular desire to create a language that's particularly similar to Berber languages. I think collapsing the [ħ]/[h] distinction into a single phoneme is a good idea, and if people want to make other changes to the phonological inventory, they should suggest them. I also think that talking about how the writing system (if one exists) ought to work is a bit premature, that should wait until the phonology is completely ironed out and we've made a lot more of the language.


Also I reject your claim that a language having /ɾ/ as it's only liquid is "weeby". Lots of languages lack /l/.

_________________________
1. "Hukt on fonix wurkt fer mi", as the kids used to say.
? Rhetorica Your Writing System Sucks
posts: 1292
, Kelatetía: Dis, Major Belt 1
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quoting con quesa, Layperson, California:
Also I reject your claim that a language having /ɾ/ as it's only liquid is "weeby". Lots of languages lack /l/.

Sure—but these two statements can coexist. The tongue-in-cheek insinuation comes down to a matter of the motivation for only including one liquid/approximant/trill/etc. As I understand it, the Berber languages are generally pretty rich in this area, so the inspiration isn't immediately apparent.

I also think that talking about how the writing system (if one exists) ought to work is a bit premature,

Divergence between a written language and its spoken counterpart can fossilize etymological relationships that would otherwise be less obvious, e.g. any fluent English speaker could intuit a definition for "complication" by back-forming from "relation", "relate", and "complicate", essentially intuiting what "-tion" does. But the homophone "shun" is of no help at all. (And if that doesn't convince you, just think about how many homophones French has...)

In short, I'm arguing against generating morphemes based purely on phonology. Assuming the culture is highly literate, the written form of the language shouldn't match 1:1, and if we were to, for example, just use IPA to create the language and completely forgo any attempt at an official transliteration, the result would be like Tok Pisin, or some other really immature creole—which is very unlikely to have a phonological inventory as rich as the one proposed.
? con quesa posts: 13
, Layperson, California
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Morphology suggestions:

In bringing up the gaas thing, I've already implicitly suggested that there be some kinds of light verbs that modify a non-finite semantically meaningful verb (in this case, some light verb meaning "do" whose phonetic shape is something like as). I've also implicitly introduced the affix -d as a 3rd person object agreement marker on the verb, and I've added it to the non-finite verb rather than the finite one. (Maybe this system grew out of something akin to that of Spanish, where object pronouns can attach to infinitives, cf. yo quiero mirar-lo)

Do people like this idea? What sorts of pronoun distinctions should Isharian-1 make? Gender? Politeness? Formality?
? Hallow XIII Primordial Crab
posts: 539
, 巴塞尔之侯
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mostly I want to see some stuff happen so I can come in, declare it Insufficiently Historically Opaque and come up with a list of sound changes that will require rejiggling the entire grammar hth

at least that is how I conlang usually

quoting Rhetorica:
As far as I can tell from their Wikipedia recordings, [ʕ] is barely audible, and contrast between [ħ] and [h] is ridiculously hard to hear.

have you ever heard Arabic in the wild
x/X is a much harder distinction to hear than the distinction between any of X H h
? con quesa posts: 13
, Layperson, California
message
Pronouns and object affixes:

I want to run with this object-agreement marking thing, so why not create a set of pronouns so that some but not all of the object-agreement markers can phonetically resemble them?


1sg pat
2sg ŋun
3sg t'o
3sg - Fem t'one

1pl iba
2pl ic'i
3pl ino
3pl-FEM (i)nobe

In this system, one 3rd person pronoun is specifically marked as feminine and used for feminine animate antecedents, and the other pronoun is unmarked and used for all non-animate-feminine antecedents. Basically as if English "it" and "he" were a single pronoun. These are only the nominative stems, and I'll leave it to someone else to decide how different case forms of the pronouns should be formed - maybe there's an oblique stem? A genitive stem for only that case?


I've already coined -d as a 3rd person singular object marker, so let's fill out the rest of the series:

1s -(a)p
2s -(i)ŋ
3s -(i)d
3sF -e
1pl -(a)pi
2pl -(i)ŋi
3pl -(i)n
3plF -(i)ne

Let's coin a couple of verb stems, mæk'o "visit, call upon", and job "work for, be paid by", and a couple of nouns - ebsa "person", yukna, "priestess", roba, "fortune teller", to use as examples:

Wæka (pat) mæk'op
Wæka 1sg visit-1sOBJ
"Wæka visits me"

Wæka (pat) jobap
Wæka 1sg work.for-1sOBJ
"Wæka works for me"

Wæka (ebsu) jobin
Wæka person-NOM.PL work.for-3pOBJ
Wæka works for them

Yukna roba mæk'od
priestess fortune.teller visit-3sOBJ
"A priestess visits a fortune-teller"

Roba yukna mæk'oe
fortune.teller priestess visit-3sOBJF
"A fortune-teller visits a priestess"

Yukna mæk'oŋi
priestess visit-2pOBJ
"A priestess visits you all"

Roba (ic'i) jobiŋi
fortune.teller you.all work.for-2pOBJ
"A fortune teller is in the employ of you all"
? tiramisu posts: 76
, Baron message
Some body parts:
qaš head
c'æp shoulder
ŋær knee
pot' toe

These are zero-declension nouns.

            SG    PL
NOM  qaš  qaš-u
GEN    qaš-k' qaš-uk'
DAT    qaš-bi  qaš-ob
INST  qaš-wa qaš-ma

            SG    PL
NOM  c'æp  c'æp-u
GEN    c'æp-k'a c'æp-uk'
DAT    c'æp-pi  c'æp-ob
INST  c'æp-wa c'æp-ma

Note the labial stop assimilates to the stem's labial. Coda non-ejective stops are unreleased when they have the same point of articulation as the initial consonant of the following syllable: c'æp-ma [tʃʼæp̚.ma]. This could also be an opportunity for conditioning an environment for [ʋ] as an allophone of /w/? c'æpwa could be either [tʃʼæp̚.wa] or [[tʃʼæp.ʋa]. I like both.
A vowel is provided with the -k’ because of the preceding stop.

The reflexive pronoun is derived from the word for 'shoulder' c'æp combined with object markers (functioning as possessive suffixes): c'æpap ‘my shoulder’/’myself’. Formerly, the reflexive pronoun was derived from 'head' qaš combined with possessive affixes: qašap ‘my head’/’myself’. This has since been grammaticalized as an auxiliary verb for mediopassives.

Yukn-a sæp-e.
priestess-NOM bathe-3sfOBJ
A priestess bathes her.

Yukn-a qaš-e sæp.
priestess-NOM head-3sfOBJ bathe
A priestess bathes.

Yukn-a c’æp-e sæp-id.
priestess-NOM shoulder-3sfOBJ bathe-3sOBJ
A priestess bathes herself/washes her shoulder.

Yukn-a qaš-e sæp-id.
priestess-NOM head-3sfOBJ bathe-3sOBJ
A priestess washes her head.

P’at-a t’iɛ box-id.
stone-NOM ice break-3sOBJ
A stone breaks ice.

P’at-a qaš-id box.
Stone-NOM head-3sOBJ break
A stone breaks.

C’æp-e qaš-id box.
shoulder-3sfOBJ head-3sOBJ break
lit. Her shoulder is broken.



There. I contributed to lexicon, phonology, and morphosyntax all in one post
? tiramisu posts: 76
, Baron message
This language seems to tend towards dependent-marking strategies.

It has postpositions that coincide with case.

DAT + fæþ in
DAT + yuŋ on
DAT + ra above
DAT + gor under
GEN + xe with (concomitative)
INSTR + xe with/by (instrumental)

wek'-a t’iɛ-bi yuŋ
fish-NOM ice-DAT on
a fish on some ice

Yukn-a rob-ak' xe qaš-e sæp.
priestess-NOM fortune.teller-GEN with head-3sfOBJ bathe
A priestess takes a bath with a fortune teller.
? Cev Grammatis Qaghan
posts: 80
, Operon message
omlauts