Harish language

Harish language
Harle Tally
Ethnicity	Harish people
Native speakers	38,000,000  (no date)
Language family	Tzulhonic Central-Tzulhonic Harish language
CWS code	xbf

The Harish language is a language spoken in Tzulhon, it is the de facto language of Tzulhon.

Classification

Harish language belongs to the Central Tzulhonic branch of Tzulhonic language family.

Phonology

Phonemes

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar and Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasals	m		n		ŋ
Plosives and Affricates	p b	(t͡s)	t d	(t͡ʃ) (d͡ʒ)	k g
Fricatives	f (v)	θ (ð)	s z	ʃ		h
Sonorants			ɹ l	j	ʍ w

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-Mid	ɪ		ʊ
Open-Mid	ɛ	ə~ʌ	ɔ
Open	æ		ɑ

Diphthongs: /aɪ/ /aʊ/ /ɔɪ/ /eɪ/ /oʊ/

Morphology and syntax

Morpholopgy

The morphology of Harish is mostly analytic; however, traces of inflections remain.

Nouns

Nouns don't decline for case or gender, but decline for number. The plural of most nouns are marked with -n.

The use of plural is always optional, especially when the context is clear i.e. when the noun is used with numerals.

Verbs

Verbs conjugate for tense, the personal agreements in older stages of Harish have been lost.

There are two classes of verbal conjugations: strong verbs and weak verbs. Strong verbs conjugate by changing the stem vowel; while weak verbs conjugate by using suffixes; besides, there are also some irregular verbs.

Derivational morphology

Derivational affixes

While the Harish language is mostly analytic, several derivational affixes exist, and derivational affixes play an important role in creating new words.

Compounds

Compounding is less commmon in the Harish language; however, they do exist, and most compound words in the Harish language involve the use of prepositions.

Syntax

Word Order

The Harish language has a verb-second word order, in main clauses, the V2 constraint holds, the finite verb must be in the second position; however, any non-finite forms must be in final position. In embedded clauses, the V2 constraint does not hold. The finite verb form must be adjacent to any non-finite at the end of the clause.

The subject is usually in the first position, but when a topical expression occupies the position, the subject follows the finite verb.

Other Word Order features are listed below:

• Adpositions are prepositions
• Conjuctions are in the initial position of the clause
• Negations directly precede the word they negate.
• Demonstratives, articles, numerals, possessors precede the noun they modify; Adjectives may precede or follow the noun they modify; Relative clauses follow the noun they modify.

Object Marking

In Harish language, direct objects that are specific require a special marker, which is the preposition ge.

• se githe nare ges shafe - DEF girl bring.PST ACC=DEF fish - "The girl brought the fish"(note: ges is the contraction of ge and se)

Indefinite objects do not usually allow this marker. For example:

• se githe nare i shafe = the girl brought a fish - DEF girl bring.PST a fish - "The girl brought a fish"

Subordinating Clauses

All subordinating clauses, including relative clauses, are marked by the use of the initial complementizer sat.

The subject, the direct object and the indirect object of a sentence can be relativized by employing the gapped strategy; while the complements, the possessor of a noun, must be relativized by employing the pronoun-retention strategy.

Verb framing

The Harish language is a satellite-framed language, that is, the motion path is typically encoded by prepositions and adverbs, and its verbs usually show manner of motion.

Vocabulary

Most words of the Harish language are inherited from Old Harish; however, there are some loanwords from Middle Kwang and modern Kwang, usually through the Wanabi language.