Jamna Kopiai is a language spoken natively by perhaps half a million people, on the savanna of northern Zeluzhia around 1500 YP. There are perhaps another million second-language speakers, as Jamna is a regional lingua franca.
Jamna Kopiai is a synthetic, agglutinating language of principally right-branching syntax and nominative-accusative morphosyntactic alignment. The verb's morphological complexity is comparable to that of many polysynthetic languages, but we will avoid that label here, as it tends to evoke expectations of noun incorporation or polypersonal marking - both of which are largely absent in Jamna.
The language also has a very small phonology comprising only fourteen contrasting segments, and is highly vocalic, permitting few consonant clusters but quite long vowel sequences.
This document is primarily a revision of the original grammatical text, with a few minor modifications to the language itself.
spelling
We will spell /ʤ/ and /ɾ/ with j r.
clusters
Only seven consonant clusters appear frequently: pr kr gr sr mn nj ng. Two additional clusters, fr hr, are far less common. Clusters with r are permitted in word-initial position; all may appear medially.
gemination
Consonant gemination is generally contrastive, but there remain many predictable alternations of single consonants with geminates, for instance in nominal collective forms. In this alternation, m j g become mn nj ng. There are no phonetically geminated versions of these consonants. Clustered consonants do not geminate, and geminated consonants (including mn nj ng) do not appear in initial or final position.
final consonants
Final consonants are permitted, but uncommon, except for those which are suffixes. In no case whatsoever may a word end in a consonant cluster.
vowels
distribution
Vowels can appear in arbitrarily long sequences, but no more than two like vowels appear in a row. That is, /aaa/ reduces to aa. Doubled vowels reduce to single vowels before a geminated consonant - but not a cluster - unless the underlying sequence is of three or more like vowels, which are never reduced to a quantity of fewer than two.
Syllabification is not completely predictable. The surface representations of the vowels /i o/ often consist of the glides [j w]; the rules for when they become glides are complex, and as of this writing have not been fully investigated. The best treatment we can give the topic at this time is to list four rules that appear to hold true in most words, though they often conflict, and in such conflicts the precedence of some over others may vary by speaker and speech variety.
further notes
Intervocalic glides do not clearly syllabify to the left or right, but show a gliding transition in both directions. For example, though naoi is always [ˈnawɪ], neither syllable nucleus is realized as a monophthong: they are [naw] and [wi]. Thus the syllable break in such words may be considered to consist of the medial glide, rather than being placed to the left or right of it.
A double vowel unadjacent to any others does not show gliding, but behaves like a long vowel. The double vowels ii oo, when pronounced as long vowels, are both fully high: [iː uː], but the short varieties (which appear far more often) are typically lower in articulation: [ɪ o].
Stress is consistently placed on the penultimate syllable of a word, unless monosyllabic. However, stress assignment occurs only after syllabification, which is not always predictable.
The stress accent is realized by both dynamic and pitch-contour effects. The accented syllable is pronounced more volubly and carefully than surrounding ones; and in native words, it is also the point of lowest pitch in the word, with the following syllable displaying a marked rise in pitch. However, a substantial number of loanwords gained from the nearby (and substrate) language Tipatirápai were borrowed with their native pitch contours approximately intact. In general, these words have a peak in pitch on the stressed syllable, which we mark here with an acute accent. Though Tipatirápai does not always place its stress on the penultimate syllable, the Jamna have generalized this as their pattern for loanwords, sometimes even for those borrowed from languages other than Tipatirápai.
Notably, however, when accents are moved to the right as morphology lengthens the word, borrowed pitch peaks remain where they were and the moved accent takes the native low pitch instead. Thus the accusative form of the language name, Tipatirápaioa, still bears the acute mark in the same location despite it having gained an extra syllable: the true accent is on the pai syllable, but the preceding ra still bears a pitch peak.
Many morphemes behave as though they have a consonant that isn't pronounced. This is called the "break".
There is a hidden consonant present in the underlying representation of many morphemes, normally realized on the surface by zero, except for its effect on stem reduction. Deriving probably from a historical glottal stop, the break is now a theoretical null entity that remains necessary in order to explain syllabification patterns and stem reduction behaviors. It is unwritten, and can only be found in two environments: at the ends of some words, and in the midst of some word-final vowel sequences. However, all monoconsonantal content roots contain or end in a break.
For example, inaatai ("base, bottom") does not have a break. It is pronounced [ɪˈnaːtaj], with the final ai run together as a diphthong and the primary stress located on the previous, penultimate syllable. The accusative case of this word is inaatoa, where stem reduction (see below, under nouns) has caused removal of the whole final diphthong.
Contrast this with miitoisai ("hallway"), which has a break before the final i. It is pronounced [miːtojˈsa.ɪ], where the final a and i do not merge into a diphthong - instead they are separate syllables, and under the penultimate stress rule, the sa syllable has the primary stress. The accusative case of this word is miitoisaoa, where stem reduction has removed only the final i.
Many morphemes in Jamna Kopiai do not clearly belong to either side of the traditional division between inflectional and derivational morphology. For example, the verbal stem formants operate in both the lexical and inflectional realms, fundamentally altering meanings of roots and deriving new verbs from other parts of speech, while at the same time being obligatory and occurring in an organized paradigm.
Thus we have chosen to divide our description of morphology instead between grammatical morphology, covered in this section, which is syntactically important morphology that is required in order to speak grammatically, and semantic morphology, covered under semantics, which changes the meanings of roots as a lexical process.
Many nouns have two stems apiece - the full stem, and the reduced stem. As a morphophonological behavior, some suffixes trigger stem reduction and others do not. Suffixes beginning with vowels typically trigger reduction and those with consonants typically don't, but there are exceptions to both tendencies, which will be noted when appropriate in this sketch. It is also generally true that suffixes which cause reduction are of older vintage while those which don't tend to be more recent grammaticalizations. Reduction also applies to the first element in most compound words, and sometimes to other affixes.
Stem reduction normally consists of deleting final vowels. Although a few words display irregular reduction, the general rule is that all vowels after the root's last consonant, or after a medial break, are removed. If the root ends in a consonant or break, no reduction can occur.
For an example of stem reduction at work, the accusative of Jamna is Jamnoa, not *Jamnaoa.
Nouns in Jamna Kopiai inflect for the accusative case with the suffix -oa, causes stem reduction, and for the dative case with the suffix -an, which does not.
The nominative case of a noun varies by its class: A-class nouns are unmarked in the nominative, while I-class nouns take the suffix -i, which does not cause stem reduction.
A-class
nioo child.NOM
niooa child-ACC
niooan child-DAT
I-class
gaihi wife-NOM
gaihoa wife-ACC
gaihan wife-DAT
(Nioo has a break at the end, and is not undergoing stem reduction in the accusative. Rather, the rule that contracts three or more consecutive like vowels to two has applied.)
It is important to distinguish the I-class nominative suffix from A-class nouns whose roots happen to end with i. For example, jigi ("eye") is A-class. Such final i is only deleted before the accusative suffix as part of stem reduction, and always retained before the non-reducing dative suffix, whereas the I-class suffix -i is always replaced by the accusative or dative suffixes.
A-class
jigi eye.NOM
jigoa eye-ACC
jigian eye-DAT
In certain circumstances the dative case can be stacked onto the accusative case, resulting in -oan.
Most nouns can be made plural by full reduplication. This is optional, and limited mainly to situations where confusion might otherwise arise.
sori "bone" > sori-sori "bones"
krai "horse" > krai-krai "horses"
In the accusative and dative cases, both instances of the reduplicated noun take the case suffix.
soroa "bone" > soroa-soroa "bones"
Certain nouns can instead take the non-reducing suffix -nan. This is a dual form, and is used for things that naturally come in pairs. However, -nan is mutually exclusive with any case suffix. Therefore, only A-class nouns mark dual number, and only in the nominative case.
jigi "eye" > jiginan "eyes"
jigoa "eye, eyes"
Collective nouns can be formed by reduplicating only the first CV. The newly medial C is then geminated, unless part of a cluster.
sori "bone" > sossori "skeleton"
krai "horse" > krakrai "herd of horses"
jipoi "chip" > jinjipoi "mosaic"
If the root begins with a single or double vowel, the null onset is represented by /h/ in the reduplicant.
ikaa "mountain" > hiikaa "mountain range"
There are a number of irregular collectives. Noun roots with three or more syllables are more likely to be irregular, as are those with a medial /h/, and those beginning in two or more vowels. Some historical reduplicated collectives that have resulted in irregular forms are not always recognized by speakers as based on the same root, and may have undergone substantial semantic drift. A few of these have even developed new regular collective forms of their own.
nihii "person" > niinii "tribe, nation"
kahapai "action" > kakkapai "temperament"
iaofa "branching twig" > haoffa "thicket, complicated situation" > hahhaoffa "politics"
Normally, plural and collective reduplications are mutually exclusive. When needed, plurality may be indicated with quantifiers.
*sossori-sossori "skeletons"
Jamna Kopiai is a synthetic, agglutinating language of principally right-branching syntax and nominative-accusative morphosyntactic alignment. The verb's morphological complexity is comparable to that of many polysynthetic languages, but we will avoid that label here, as it tends to evoke expectations of noun incorporation or polypersonal marking - both of which are largely absent in Jamna.
The language also has a very small phonology comprising only fourteen contrasting segments, and is highly vocalic, permitting few consonant clusters but quite long vowel sequences.
This document is primarily a revision of the original grammatical text, with a few minor modifications to the language itself.
phonology
consonants
| labial | coronal | velar | glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| stop | p | t | k - g | |
| nasal | m | n | ||
| fricative | f | s | h | |
| affricate | ʤ | |||
| flap | ɾ |
spelling
We will spell /ʤ/ and /ɾ/ with j r.
clusters
Only seven consonant clusters appear frequently: pr kr gr sr mn nj ng. Two additional clusters, fr hr, are far less common. Clusters with r are permitted in word-initial position; all may appear medially.
gemination
Consonant gemination is generally contrastive, but there remain many predictable alternations of single consonants with geminates, for instance in nominal collective forms. In this alternation, m j g become mn nj ng. There are no phonetically geminated versions of these consonants. Clustered consonants do not geminate, and geminated consonants (including mn nj ng) do not appear in initial or final position.
final consonants
Final consonants are permitted, but uncommon, except for those which are suffixes. In no case whatsoever may a word end in a consonant cluster.
nuclei
vowels
| front | central | back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| high | ɪ | ||
| mid | o | ||
| low | a |
distribution
Vowels can appear in arbitrarily long sequences, but no more than two like vowels appear in a row. That is, /aaa/ reduces to aa. Doubled vowels reduce to single vowels before a geminated consonant - but not a cluster - unless the underlying sequence is of three or more like vowels, which are never reduced to a quantity of fewer than two.
syllabification
Syllabification is not completely predictable. The surface representations of the vowels /i o/ often consist of the glides [j w]; the rules for when they become glides are complex, and as of this writing have not been fully investigated. The best treatment we can give the topic at this time is to list four rules that appear to hold true in most words, though they often conflict, and in such conflicts the precedence of some over others may vary by speaker and speech variety.
- Vowel sequences that can become falling diphthongs, ai ao oi, are preferentially treated as syllable nuclei - unless a break intervenes between the two vowels, in which case they are assigned to separate syllables.
- A sonority hierarchy is observed: a > o > i. A less sonorous vowel generally becomes a glide before a more sonorous one - again, unless a break intervenes, and except for the oa-rule below.
- A three-vowel sequence is preferentially broken into a bisyllable rather than a triphthong, unless the central vowel is a. That is, oio is always [o.jo], while the more problematic ioi is often [ɪ.wɪ], though this varies with [joj] for some speakers, which is more consistent with the previous two constraints. (Variations like this are what leads us not to posit phonemic glides or diphthongs.)
- Most speakers break oa into a bisyllable rather than [wa] if it directly follows a consonant. For most of these speakers, it is poorly or not at all distinct from ooa. Many, but fewer, treat ia io in a parallel manner.
further notes
Intervocalic glides do not clearly syllabify to the left or right, but show a gliding transition in both directions. For example, though naoi is always [ˈnawɪ], neither syllable nucleus is realized as a monophthong: they are [naw] and [wi]. Thus the syllable break in such words may be considered to consist of the medial glide, rather than being placed to the left or right of it.
A double vowel unadjacent to any others does not show gliding, but behaves like a long vowel. The double vowels ii oo, when pronounced as long vowels, are both fully high: [iː uː], but the short varieties (which appear far more often) are typically lower in articulation: [ɪ o].
stress
Stress is consistently placed on the penultimate syllable of a word, unless monosyllabic. However, stress assignment occurs only after syllabification, which is not always predictable.
The stress accent is realized by both dynamic and pitch-contour effects. The accented syllable is pronounced more volubly and carefully than surrounding ones; and in native words, it is also the point of lowest pitch in the word, with the following syllable displaying a marked rise in pitch. However, a substantial number of loanwords gained from the nearby (and substrate) language Tipatirápai were borrowed with their native pitch contours approximately intact. In general, these words have a peak in pitch on the stressed syllable, which we mark here with an acute accent. Though Tipatirápai does not always place its stress on the penultimate syllable, the Jamna have generalized this as their pattern for loanwords, sometimes even for those borrowed from languages other than Tipatirápai.
Notably, however, when accents are moved to the right as morphology lengthens the word, borrowed pitch peaks remain where they were and the moved accent takes the native low pitch instead. Thus the accusative form of the language name, Tipatirápaioa, still bears the acute mark in the same location despite it having gained an extra syllable: the true accent is on the pai syllable, but the preceding ra still bears a pitch peak.
the break
Many morphemes behave as though they have a consonant that isn't pronounced. This is called the "break".
There is a hidden consonant present in the underlying representation of many morphemes, normally realized on the surface by zero, except for its effect on stem reduction. Deriving probably from a historical glottal stop, the break is now a theoretical null entity that remains necessary in order to explain syllabification patterns and stem reduction behaviors. It is unwritten, and can only be found in two environments: at the ends of some words, and in the midst of some word-final vowel sequences. However, all monoconsonantal content roots contain or end in a break.
For example, inaatai ("base, bottom") does not have a break. It is pronounced [ɪˈnaːtaj], with the final ai run together as a diphthong and the primary stress located on the previous, penultimate syllable. The accusative case of this word is inaatoa, where stem reduction (see below, under nouns) has caused removal of the whole final diphthong.
Contrast this with miitoisai ("hallway"), which has a break before the final i. It is pronounced [miːtojˈsa.ɪ], where the final a and i do not merge into a diphthong - instead they are separate syllables, and under the penultimate stress rule, the sa syllable has the primary stress. The accusative case of this word is miitoisaoa, where stem reduction has removed only the final i.
example words
- naoi "to find" [ˈnawɪ]
- raaipai "village" [ɾaˈajpaj]
- haooi "field" [ˈhawoj]
- koai "ball, sphere" [ˈko.aj]
- kiori "year" [ˈkjoɾɪ] or [kɪˈoɾɪ]
- ojoo "to die" [ˈoʤuː]
- miitoisai "hallway" [miːtojˈsa.ɪ]
- jittiga "to awaken" [ʤɪˈtːɪga]
- srami "priest" [ˈsɾamɪ]
- Jamna "the Jamna people" [ˈʤamna]
- Hiiaona (man's name) [hɪˈjawna]
morphology
Many morphemes in Jamna Kopiai do not clearly belong to either side of the traditional division between inflectional and derivational morphology. For example, the verbal stem formants operate in both the lexical and inflectional realms, fundamentally altering meanings of roots and deriving new verbs from other parts of speech, while at the same time being obligatory and occurring in an organized paradigm.
Thus we have chosen to divide our description of morphology instead between grammatical morphology, covered in this section, which is syntactically important morphology that is required in order to speak grammatically, and semantic morphology, covered under semantics, which changes the meanings of roots as a lexical process.
nouns
stem forms
Many nouns have two stems apiece - the full stem, and the reduced stem. As a morphophonological behavior, some suffixes trigger stem reduction and others do not. Suffixes beginning with vowels typically trigger reduction and those with consonants typically don't, but there are exceptions to both tendencies, which will be noted when appropriate in this sketch. It is also generally true that suffixes which cause reduction are of older vintage while those which don't tend to be more recent grammaticalizations. Reduction also applies to the first element in most compound words, and sometimes to other affixes.
Stem reduction normally consists of deleting final vowels. Although a few words display irregular reduction, the general rule is that all vowels after the root's last consonant, or after a medial break, are removed. If the root ends in a consonant or break, no reduction can occur.
For an example of stem reduction at work, the accusative of Jamna is Jamnoa, not *Jamnaoa.
case and class
Nouns in Jamna Kopiai inflect for the accusative case with the suffix -oa, causes stem reduction, and for the dative case with the suffix -an, which does not.
The nominative case of a noun varies by its class: A-class nouns are unmarked in the nominative, while I-class nouns take the suffix -i, which does not cause stem reduction.
A-class
nioo child.NOM
niooa child-ACC
niooan child-DAT
I-class
gaihi wife-NOM
gaihoa wife-ACC
gaihan wife-DAT
(Nioo has a break at the end, and is not undergoing stem reduction in the accusative. Rather, the rule that contracts three or more consecutive like vowels to two has applied.)
It is important to distinguish the I-class nominative suffix from A-class nouns whose roots happen to end with i. For example, jigi ("eye") is A-class. Such final i is only deleted before the accusative suffix as part of stem reduction, and always retained before the non-reducing dative suffix, whereas the I-class suffix -i is always replaced by the accusative or dative suffixes.
A-class
jigi eye.NOM
jigoa eye-ACC
jigian eye-DAT
In certain circumstances the dative case can be stacked onto the accusative case, resulting in -oan.
number
plurals
Most nouns can be made plural by full reduplication. This is optional, and limited mainly to situations where confusion might otherwise arise.
sori "bone" > sori-sori "bones"
krai "horse" > krai-krai "horses"
In the accusative and dative cases, both instances of the reduplicated noun take the case suffix.
soroa "bone" > soroa-soroa "bones"
duals
Certain nouns can instead take the non-reducing suffix -nan. This is a dual form, and is used for things that naturally come in pairs. However, -nan is mutually exclusive with any case suffix. Therefore, only A-class nouns mark dual number, and only in the nominative case.
jigi "eye" > jiginan "eyes"
jigoa "eye, eyes"
collectives
Collective nouns can be formed by reduplicating only the first CV. The newly medial C is then geminated, unless part of a cluster.
sori "bone" > sossori "skeleton"
krai "horse" > krakrai "herd of horses"
jipoi "chip" > jinjipoi "mosaic"
If the root begins with a single or double vowel, the null onset is represented by /h/ in the reduplicant.
ikaa "mountain" > hiikaa "mountain range"
There are a number of irregular collectives. Noun roots with three or more syllables are more likely to be irregular, as are those with a medial /h/, and those beginning in two or more vowels. Some historical reduplicated collectives that have resulted in irregular forms are not always recognized by speakers as based on the same root, and may have undergone substantial semantic drift. A few of these have even developed new regular collective forms of their own.
nihii "person" > niinii "tribe, nation"
kahapai "action" > kakkapai "temperament"
iaofa "branching twig" > haoffa "thicket, complicated situation" > hahhaoffa "politics"
Normally, plural and collective reduplications are mutually exclusive. When needed, plurality may be indicated with quantifiers.
*sossori-sossori "skeletons"