Niplandish language

Niplandish language
North Harish Nipkezi telt
Region	Nipland county, State of Hareland, Tzulhon
Native speakers	220,000  (no date)
Language family	Tzulhonic Central-Tzulhon Niplandish language
CWS code	xbf

The Niplandish language is a language spoken in the State of Hareland of Tzulhon. It is one of the two surviving languages of the Central Tzulhon language family.

Despite facing pressures from Harish speaking communities, the use of the Niplandish language is still robust, as children in the Niplandish communities still speak the Niplandish language at home. Approximately 20% of Niplandish speakers in Tzulhon speak Harish "not well" or "not at all", according to results of the 2000 Census, and among the younger Niplandish speakers, approximately 15% were reported as speaking Harish "not well" or "not at all".

Classification

The Niplandish language belongs to the Central Tzulhon branch of Tzulhonic language family. The only other surviving member of Central Tzulhon languages is the Harish language, and the Harish language has become the standard language of Tzulhon.

Phonology

Phonemes

	Bilabial	Dental/Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	m	n		ŋ
Plosive	p b	t d		k (g)
Fricative	v	s z	(ç)		(χ)	h ɦ
Approximant		r l	j

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i y		u
Mid	ɛ œ	ə	ɔ
Open		a

Notes:

• [ç] and [χ] are allophones of /h/. /h/ is pronounced as [χ] after back vowels and not followed by any vowels; [ç] after front vowels and not followed by any vowels; [h] when followed by a vowel.
• /ə/ is a reduced vowel and only appears in unstressed syllables.
• /ɦ/ was [g] before the 20th century, and some older speakers still use [g]

Phonotactics

The Niplandish language has a quite complex syllable structure, there are a variety of consonant clusters.

Morphology and syntax

Overview

Niplandish is a synthetic language with an ergative alignment; however, the verbal person agreements follow a nominative-accusative alignment, which qualifies Niplandish as a spli-ergative language.

Due to the case-marking system, Niplandish has a relatively free sentential word order, all six sentential word orders are possible; however, the unmarked word order of Niplandish is SOV.

Morphology

Nouns

Niplandish nouns are divided into 12 cases and two numbers.

Cases

Below are the nominal cases in Niplandish:

• Absolutive: -
• Ergative: -(ë)k
• Genitive: -(ë)h/-i
• Dative: -(ë)n
• Instrumental: -(ë)k
• Comitative: -(ë)m
• Ablative: -(ë)l
• Locative: -(ë)n
• Allative: -(ë)z
• Elative: -(ë)ll (from earlier -ln)
• Inessive: -(ë)nn
• Illative: -(ë)t (from earlier -dn)

Numbers

Niplandish nouns have two numbers: singular and plural. For most nouns, the plural form end in -(ë)r, with the stem vowel being umlauted; for few nouns, the plural is formed soley by the umlaut on the stem vowel.

Adjectives

Adjectives agree with nouns in case and number. The formation of cases and numbers for adjectives are the same as those for nouns.

Syntax

Word Order

The word order features are listed below:

• Basic Word Order: Subject-Object-Verb(SOV)
• Adpositions are postpositions
• 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.

Vocabulary

Most words of the Harish language are inherited from Old Harish; however, there are a significant amount of words that can have their origins be traced back to Ngerupic languages, especially Mani and Kwang languages. Ngerupic loanwords have form a large amount of the vocabulary. Most of the Ngerupic words are borrowed before the modern era.

Also while the Harish language and the Niplandish language are both central Tzulhon languages, and they share most of the basic vocabulary, they are not mutually intelligible.