Archive:Jáhkarrá language

Jáhkarrá
Jáhkarrá
Pronunciation	[ˈjahːkɑrːaː]
Region	Atsiq
Native speakers	800,000  (2018)
Language family	Isolate Jáhkarrá
Writing system	Jáhka script
Official status
Official language in	Jáhkavarra
CWS code	jhk

The Jáhkarrá language is the sole official language of the country of Jáhkavarra. Spoken by about 800,000 people, it is classified as a language isolate, with a postulated genetic relationship to the Osveraali languages remaining doubtful.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m			n nʲ			ŋ
Plosive	p			t tʲ			k
Fricative			θ	s	ʃ			h
Affricate				t͡s	t͡ʃ
Approximant		ʋ				j
Trill				r
Lateral app.				l

Jáhkarrá does not distinguish voicing. All consonants can be long (geminated).

Vowels

	Front	Near-front	Back
Close	i		u
Close-mid	e
Open-mid			ɔ
Near-open	æ
Open		a	ɑ

The vowels /a/, /ɔ/ and /e/ may be analysed as having an underlying chroneme, which surfaces as vowel length in open syllables and syllables with a single coda consonant but not if the vowel is followed by a long consonant. The case of /i/ is more complex since it occurs both with and without the chroneme, but before consonants the chroneme becomes /j/, effectively forming a cluster. In final position, long and short /i/ effectively contrast, but on the whole vowel length is not distinctive.

Jáhkarrá also has the diphthongs /uɔ/, /ie/, /eɑ/ and /ɔɑ/.

Stress

Jáhkarrá stress is non-fixed but predictable. Stress is on the first superheavy syllable, that is, on the first vowel followed by more than a single consonant. If no such syllables are present, the last underlyingly long vowel or diphthong receives stress. If a word has none of the aforementioned vowels, stress falls on the penultimate syllable.

Morphology

Jáhkarrá is a highly inflected, exclusively suffix-agglutinating language. There is no grammatical gender, but a three-way number distinction (singular, dual, plural), clusivity (inclusive-exclusive) on first person dual and plural pronouns and a synthetic impersonal, as well as a fourth person that refers to a non-topical noun phrase.

Nouns

Nouns inflect in five grammatical (nominative, accusative, ergative, genitive and vocative) and seventeen local cases (allative, adessive, ablative, illative, inessive, elative, translative, essive, exessive, supralative, superessive, delative, sublative, subessive, subelative, abessive, comitative) and express demonstrativity and possessedness via suffixes.

Jáhkarrá features a category of nominal suffixes called postbases, which are effectively verbalisers corresponding to light verbs in other languages. The most frequent of these is haid "to be", which is attached to inflected nouns to form a copula clause: orgŋojohai "I am that man", vuodnarahea "he is at home".