Khalan language

The Khalan language, or Mavakhalan (Mavakhalan: mavaxalan [ˈmaβaxalan]) was the language spoken in the city-state of Khalan (Mavakhalan: xalan, Adāta: khalanu) approximately 800 years after the birth of Zārakātias. The empire of Athalē was on the verge of collapse, and the citizens were eager to return to their principles of isonomy and promoted the use of the local dialect as separatist symbol in all aspects of life: literature, debate, trade and religion.

Genealogy

• Ndak Ta
  • Southwestern Ndak Ta
    • Adāta (Southwestern Edastean)
      • Common Vulgar Adāta
        • Mavakhalan (Northern Adātan)

Phonology

The distinguishing characteristic of Mavakhalan phonology was the systematic ±palatal contrast in the consonantal system. The first table below shows the surface consonant inventory, with purely allophonic phones bracketed. The second table shows the underlying phonemic inventory, with the plain and palatalised consonants paired together. Note that palatalised consonants will be denoted elsewhere in the text by the plain consonant followed by the palatalisation marker, so /tʲ/ is equivalent to /tɕ/.

• /ɲ/ is alveolopalatal, not palatal.
• The existence of /h/ as an independent phoneme is debated, since it behaved like /x/ in many ways: see the section below. Prescriptivist texts from the era suggest that /h/ was a "softer" variant of /x/ and attempt to maintain the distinction in spelling. This article uses /h/ where Adāta had */h/ and /x/ where Adāta had */kʰ x/.

Allophony

• Nasal vowels and oral vowels did not contrast before a nasal consonant, however, it is noted that vowels other than /e ɛ a ɔ o/ are very rare before nasal consonants.
• /hʲ/ and /xʲ/ were both /ç/.
• /h/ and /x/ both voiced to /ɣ/, which may have been pronounced [ɦ], and /ɣʲ/ is /ɟ/.
• /ɣʲ/ and /j/ before consonants or a pause were not contrasted after any vowel except /i/.
• /i/ always triggered palatalisation, however, /pja/ and /pʲa/ were contrasted.
• Initial /w j/ disappeared when followed by a consonant.
• /w/ was fricated to /β/ when followed by a consonant or a pause.
• /j/ was fricated to /ɣʲ/ when preceded by /i/ and followed by a consonant.
• /ɹ ɹʲ/ may have been pronounced as taps /ɾ ɾʲ/ or trills /r rʲ/ in syllable onsets, but the evidence for this is not clear.
• Consonant clusters had regressive voicing assimilation where possible, except with /l lʲ ɹ ɹʲ/, and progressive voicing assimilation otherwise.
  • However, /w j/ and /β ɣʲ/ derived from /w j/ did not cause or undergo voicing assimilation.
• A nasal followed by a non-nasal consonant other than /h ɣ ɣʲ/ was pronounced syllabic.
• A sibilant followed by a non-identical sibilant was pronounced syllabic.
• /h hʲ/ preceded by an unvoiced consonant may have been realised as aspiration on the preceding consonant.
• /ɣ ɣʲ/ preceded by a voiced consonant may have been realised as breathy voice on the preceding consonant.

Phonotactics

The syllable structure of Mavakhalan required exactly one vowel in a syllable and permitted initial and final consonant clusters of up to two terms. Consonant clusters of up to three terms arose at the juncture of two syllables, or if the third term was a liquid such as /l lʲ ɹ ɹʲ/, for example, /sʲkɹeɔɹɑ̃/ for the cunning.

/i/ and /u/ were almost always never found immediately preceding another vowel: a glide /j w/ was usually inserted. /wu/ did not occur, though [ji] may have occurred when /ɣi/ is preceded by a vowel other than /i/.

Stress and timing

Mavakhalan had dynamic accent and was stress-timed. The lexical stress of Adāta was more-or-less preserved, though loss of some short vowels had required the stress to move to adjacent syllables. Stress in Mavakhalan was also fixed: inflection did not cause stress to move.

Romanisation

In this article, a phonetic romanised transcription scheme will be used.

A vowel following a palatalised consonant is written with a preceding j unless the vowel is /i/. The apostrophe after the consonant is deleted in that case; note that the mark on ď ľ ť are not apostrophes, but carons. A consonant cluster with /j/ is distinguished from a palatalised consonant by inserting ъ between the consonant and j.

Hence, /mʲemʲ/ is transcribed mjêmʼ, /aβʲβɔ/ is avʼvo, /tʲa/ is ťja and /pja/ is pъja.

Morphology

Like its relative Ayāsth, Mavakhalan morphology was characterised by the presence of both prefixing and suffixing morphology. However, in comparison to Ayāsth, Mavakhalan morphophonology was considerably simpler, in part because the complex system of consonantal and vocalic mutations did not exist in Mavakhalan. As with Ayāsth, this article will use the terms capital inflection and caudal inflection to refer to prefixing and suffixing morphology, respectively.

Nouns

A Mavakhalan noun may take several prefixes and suffixes, but there was a strict order to the morphemes:

1. Prepositional case
2. Article
3. Nominal stem
4. Possessive marker
5. Postpositional case

The capital declension classes are:

1. Strong consonantal, denoted str. con., which are nouns that begin with a consonant and that have a weak vowel in the first syllable. Examples: žzaka ← *dizaka. Some very short words will have irregular behaviour, for example: the genitive of pjêpʼ is apʼ, and the definite singular of tôt is śjêt. These words are considered to have stems pʼ and t respectively, and the pjê- and tô- are regarded as augments added to what would otherwise be a subsyllabic word.
2. Consonantal, denoted conson., which are nouns that begin with a consonant and that have a strong vowel in the first syllable.
3. Strong initial nasal, which are nouns that begin with /m n/ (or, occasionally, /mʲ nʲ/) and which had a strong vowel in the first syllable in Adāta. Example: meze, which has the definite plural śjêgmeze.
4. Weak initial nasal, which are nouns that begin with /m n mʲ nʲ/ and which had a weak vowel in the first syllable in Adāta. Example: mʼna ← *mina, which has the definite plural śkômʼna, and mlą ← *mulan, which has the indefinite genitive singular axômlą.
5. Vocalic, which are nouns that began with a strong vowel in Adāta.
6. Initial waw vocalic, which are nouns that begin with a /w/. Example: waġa, which has the genitive axaġa.
7. Initial waw consonantal, which are nouns that began with a weak /u/ in Adāta. Examples: sêję which has the indefinite plural ovsêję, lêję which has the indefinite plural ovlêję.
8. Initial yod, which are nouns that began with a weak /i/ in Adāta. Examples: ðô, which has the indefinite plural ojðô, jô, which has the genitive aćjô.

A note about nouns beginning with a liquid consonant (one of /l lʲ ɹ ɹʲ/): these behave like vocalic capital stems if, in Adāta, the first syllable contained a strong vowel; if it had a weak vowel then the behaviour would be similar to those of initial waw consonantal capital stems, but without the addition of /β/.

The caudal declension classes are simply divided according to the last vowel of the stem, if any. Note that consonantal stems may or may not have a final consonant in the construct case, for example, la has the stem las-, and oðą has the stem oðan-. There are, however, two classes of stems in /ɔ/, which originate from Adāta stems ending in */aː/ and */o/.

Additionally, nouns were divided into two genders: animate and inanimate (or neuter). Animate nouns were marked for postpositional case, but inanimate nouns were not.

Case (prepositional)

There was only one case marked in this position, the genitive:

Number

Mavakhalan inherited the collective plural prefix *ā- from Adāta, which had been generalised into a simple plural as well as a semiproductive derivational prefix. The two may be distinguished by number concord - a collective noun may take singular prefixes and suffixes, but not a plural noun.

The singulative was also inherited from Adāta, as a derivational suffix -s. The interaction between this suffix and the stem was somewhat more complex than the other suffixes due to the fact that this suffix is consonant initial. Consonantal caudal stems have to be further subdivided into:

• true consonantal stems, which add -s on to the surface form of the construct case,
• false consonantal stems, which gain an -ô- when -s is added, and,
• palatalised consonant stems, which gain a -jê- when -s is added.

-s was usually suffixed to a collective noun formed with o-, but this was not necessarily the case: for example, the noun žzakalas (citizen, subject of the king) is derived from the singular žzakala (kingdom).

Article

Although Adāta had no definite or indefinite articles, Mavakhalan developed a new definite article from the distal demonstrative *si, and a nullar article from the quantifier *mi. However, the short vowel /i/ was prone to weakening and at some stage the two were reanalysed as a proclitics. At that point, the collective plural prefix *ā- was reanalysed as an indefinite article, leading to the development of the following article system:

Possessor

Case (postpositional)

For animate nouns, nominative and accusative case could be marked by a suffixed morpheme in addition to a declined determiner; on the other hand, no such distinctions were made on inanimate nouns: the determiner was the sole marker of case.

This was most likely due to the development of these case suffixes from a cliticised form of the 3sg and 3pl pronouns. This hypothesis would also explain the unusual morphosyntactic behaviour of complex noun phrases, where these morphemes are not suffixed onto the head noun, but onto the last genitive phrase. For example, śjamezeka ažzaka akoxaðą, not **śjamezekǫ ažzaka akoxað.

Note that the allomorphy depends on the vowel the suffix is adjacent to, not the vowel of the stem, hence, keloją, not **kelojǫ.

Pronouns and determiners

Pronouns and determiners were both roughly equivalent to nouns in terms of syntax, though morphologically they differed from nouns in some respects.

Adjectives

Adjectives in Mavakhalan are indeclinable, however, zero-derivation produces deadjectivial inanimate nominals, which are declinable, even if not for nominative and accusative case. Affirmative adverbs are formed with the instrumental preposition ate, and negative adverbs are formed with the abessive preposition al. Superlative nominals are formed by compounding with jêm-, which is prefixed onto the genitive of the deadjectivial noun.

For example:

• Adjective: imo beautiful
• Deadjectivial: imo beauty
• Affirmative adverb: ate-imo with beauty, beautifully
• Negative adverb: al-imo without beauty, not beautifully
• Superlative: jêmaćimo the most beautiful

Numbers

Both ordinal and cardinal numbers in Mavakhalan behave as adjectives. Ordinal numbers are formed by prefixing l- or lъ- or lô- to the number, or the first element of the number phrase. Simple compounding is used to form the numbers from 1 to 99; higher numbers are formed by stringing together number words with the conjunction -ǫ-, for example, ftuxęť-ǫ-ňľjêfʼ-ǫ-êrôv for 4964, which may be pronounced ftuxęťj-oňľjêfj-onêrôv) in rapid speech.

Verbs

Finite verbs in Mavakhalan consist of these morphemes in this order:

1. Mood
2. Verbal stem
3. Voice, aspect and number

The only non-finite verbal form was the participle/gerund which was not marked for mood, voice, aspect, or number, using the suffix -êję, which displaced any final vowel while preserving palatalisation. As a noun, it has the stem -êjen-, and possessive markers were used to indicate the subject, for example, ðazêjenako for their fighting, or nonêjenej for my going. The 3sg participle -êjenaka and the 3pl -êjenako are extremely common and are sometimes abbreviated to -êjęka and -êjęko respectively in poetry in order to fit the meter, and in colloquial speech it is sometimes further abbreviated to just -êję.

Deverbal nouns were formed by taking the bare verbal stem and treating it as a noun.

Seven capital conjugation classes are recognised:

1. consonantal,
2. nasal,
3. vocalic,
4. initial waw vocalic, which are verbs that begin with /w/,
5. initial waw consonantal, which are verbs that began with a weak /u/ in Adāta but begin with a consonant in Mavakhalan,
6. initial yod vocalic, which are verbs that begin with /j/, and,
7. initial yod consonantal, which are verbs that began with a weak /i/ in Adāta but begin with a consonant in Mavakhalan.

Additionally, five caudal conjugation classes are recognised:

1. consonantal, which are verbs that do not end with a palatalised consonant,
2. palatal, which are verbs that end with a palatalised consonant,
3. e-stems,
4. a-stems, and,
5. o-stems.

Mood

Mavakhalan inherited the modal prefixes of Adāta in its entirety, though the negative benefactive and negative obligative had fallen together in some environments due to voicing assimilation.

Voice, aspect and number

Although Mavakhalan inherited the infixed passive voice of Adāta, a new passive form had developed from compound verbs with ovl(a)- (to take). This "compound" passive is marginally more functional than the infixed passive: it can form participles/gerunds and deverbal nouns, whereas the infixed passive may not. Early Mavakhalan tends to use both passives, while late Mavakhalan shows a clear preference for the compound passive.

Additionally, a causative had developed along the same model from compound verbs with þaz(a)- (to make, to do), and a passive-permissive with safʼ- (to give).

There is a small set of irregular verbs with two stems. The stem alternation arises from differences in the voicing pattern of weak vowels, whereby every other weak vowel in a consecutive sequence of weak vowels drops. In traditional terms, the stems are called strong and weak, and each of the voice/aspect/number markers is considered either strong or weak. One such irregular verb is fazôs- (to remove), and its paradigm is as follows:

• Participle: fassêję
• Active voice sg: -fazôs -fazôsę -fassôś
• Active voice pl: -fassôš -fazôzve -fassu
• Passive voice sg: -fassôl -fazôsona -fassuś
• Passive voice pl: -fassuš -fassuve -fassuwa

Compound formation

Although the basic Mavakhalan word order is subject verb object, compounds are head-first, a relic of the original VSO word order of Ndak Ta.

Verbs were a closed class in Mavakhalan, as evidenced by the relative poverty of dependent-incorporation in verbs and verb-forming processes in general.

• noun + noun → noun
  • genitive relation, i.e. downtown
    • instrumental relation, i.e. battle-axe
    • locative relation, i.e. townpeople
  • oblique (purpose) relation, i.e. dog-house
  • essive relation, i.e. god-king
• noun + ǫ/on + noun → noun
  • coordinate relation, i.e. sun-and-moon
• noun + adjective → noun
  • attributive-essive relation, i.e. highland
• adjective + noun → adjective
  • comparative relation, i.e. brick-red
• noun + deverbal → noun
  • agent relation, i.e. fisherman
  • patient relation, i.e. appointee
• deverbal + adjective → adjective
  • adverbial relation, i.e. overcooked
• verb + verb → verb
  • coordinate relation, i.e. go hunting

Syntax and usage

The basic Mavakhalan word order is subject verb object, though this is somewhat oversimplified. Adverbial phrases are in the order place manner time. A more detailed analysis shows that Mavakhalan in fact has an underlying VSO word order, but mandatory topic fronting means that the verb always ends up in the second position. This is similar to Ayāsth, however, Ayāsth has only optional topic fronting, which allows the verb to still be in the first position.

Prepositions and conjunctions

Mavakhalan has several prepositions, most of which take noun phrases as their complement, though some have a more restricted field and only take non-finite verb (gerund) phrases (denoted nvp). Some prepositions take finite verb phrases (denoted fvp) instead of non-finite verb phrases.

All prepositions govern the accusative case and are proclitics.

The noun phrase, genitive phrases and prepositional phrases

The noun phrase consists of several constituents:

1. Quantifier: optional, marked for case and possibly definiteness, may be preceded by another demonstrative.
2. Demonstrative: optional, marked for case, cannot cooccur with any articles.
3. Noun: marked for number and definiteness, marked for case if no genitive phrases follow
4. Adjectives: optional, no agreement.
5. Genitive phrases: optional, the last one is marked for case and number (of the head, provided it is animate).
   • The case of the determiners and articles in the genitive phrases agree with the noun phrase.
   • The non-final genitive nouns, however, are cast in the construct case.
6. Relative clause: optional.

A noun phrase was turned into a genitive phrase by adding the genitive prefix onto the first component of the noun phrase, be it a quantifier, demonstrative or the head noun itself. Other prepositional phrases were formed by adding a particle to the front of the noun phrase.

For example, let us consider the complex prepositional phrase ila-ezę xo mezeko pera aźðefʼ azê la ðazêjenako zô-o:

A preposition may only take one complement, so to construct a prepositional phrase with multiple complements, the preposition was repeated before each complement and each non-initial preposition took the proclitic ǫ-. For example, ila-śmezeo ǫ-ila-śjêmʼno for to the fathers and mothers.

The verb phrase

The verb phrase consists of these constituents:

1. Verb: which may be either of:
   • Finite verb: marked for mood, voice, aspect, and number.
   • Non-finite verb: may be marked for voice (the "compound" voices described in the morphology section) and person of the subject (if pronominal).
2. Subject: a noun phrase, or a series of noun phrases connected by ǫ.
   • With a finite verb, the subject is cast in the nominative.
   • With a non-finite verb, the subject is cast in the genitive.
   • In either case, if the subject is a pronoun and the referent of the pronoun was already mentioned in the sentence, the pronoun was usually omitted with finite verbs and always omitted with non-finite verbs, which would already be marked for person.
3. Object: a noun phrase, or a series of noun phrases connected by ǫ.
4. Complements: nuclear prepositional phrases.
5. Adjuncts: optional prepositional phrases indicating circumstance.
   1. Place
   2. Manner
   3. Time

Any one of those constituents except the verb may be fronted to first position, but only in the main clause. Dependent clauses did not undergo topic fronting.

Nominal and adjectivial predicates

The single copula in Adāta was abandoned in Mavakhalan and replaced with a set of verbs:

• aþe- (to exist), which is the regularised form of the copula, used primarily with inanimate subjects.
• ape- (to sit), which is used with animate subjects.
• źma- (to live), which is used with animate subjects.

The difference between ape- and źma- was that the former had more fleeting and temporary connotations.

A nominal was predicated with the essive preposition jêv:

An adjective was predicated with the instrumental preposition ate or the abessive preposition al:

Serial verbs

The fact that subject pronouns could be omitted facilitated a kind of serial verb construct:

Note the use of a pronominal object after the second verb:

Similar syntax was also used for some constructs using auxiliary verbs with other finite verbs:

Possibly by analogy, in late Mavakhalan, serial verb constructs of the first kind were also expressed a single verbal phrase with a cluster of finite verbs:

In some cases, the coordinating conjunction was omitted in clustering:

Compare an equivalent sentence using a compound verb:

The key difference between the serial verb cluster construct and the auxiliary verb construct it was based on was that the latter could still be analysed as being a sequence of two verbal phrases, whereas the latter can not: for example, in the second example, ňða (bread) cannot possibly be the argument of rôtǫ (to go), while ila-śjązoť (to the feast) cannot be the argument of rôvlą (to take) - it is difficult to analyse this as two verbal phrases without positing verb displacement. Furthermore, the verbs in a serial verb cluster always shared the same aspect and mood, whereas an auxiliary verb may have a different aspect and/or mood to the main verb.

Sample text

The Legend of Emperor Sinakan

Interlinear gloss