Sgen language

The Sgen language(Sgen Language: Ikerikete Repevie, literally "Farmer's language") is a language spoken by the Sgen people living in the Soltenna area of Miraria. There are about 250,000 people speaking the Sgen language as the first language in 2015. The Sgen language is known for its phonological minimalism, as it has only six consonants and four vowels, a sharp contrast to the nearby Methinaqhi language, which has more than 50 consonants.

In the past, the Sgen people were virtually all peasants, as a result, the sgen language used to be a language without writting system, and the Sgen alphabet was only introduved in 1890s.

The Sgen language is a language isolate, that is, it has no known relatives, both living ones and historical ones, and records of the historical stages of the Sgen language is poor; however, recently some linguists have proposed that the Sgen language is related to the Methinat languages, and the proposed language family of Sgen language and Methinat languages is generally called the Methic languages.

Despite being a minority language, the Sgen language is not moribund or endangered, it is still spoken by most Sgen people of all age groups and is used in all occasions of daily life, and it is estimated that about 30% of children of the Sgen ethnicity are monolingual in the Sgen language.

Phonology

Consonants

	bilabial	dental	velar
voiceless	p~ɸ	t~t͡s~s	k~x
voiced	β~b~m	ɾ~d~l~n	ɣ~ɡ~ŋ~ɰ

vowels

	front	back
closed	ɪ	o
open	ɛ	ɑ

Phonotactics

• Syllable structure:(C)V
• Stress usually falls on the penultimate syllable, but the distinction between stressed syllables and non-stressed syllables are vague.
• /t/ consistently becomes [s] before /i/ in most variants, and becomes [t͡s] before /i/ in some variants.
• /β/, /ɾ/, /ɣ/ become [b], [d], [ɡ] word-initially respectively.
• [l] and [ɰ] are in free variations with /ɾ/ and /ɣ/ respectively.
• [m], [n], [ŋ] are allophones of /β/, /ɾ/, /ɣ/ respectively, and are in free variations with /β/, /ɾ/, /ɣ/ respectively; however, nasal consonants are almost never used between native speakers and are only used for humor effects or in some recent loanwords.

Transcription

• A - /ɑ/
• E - /ɛ/
• G - /ɣ/
• I - /ɪ/
• K - /k/
• V - /β/
• O - /o/
• P - /p/
• R - /ɾ/
• T - /t/

Note: "aa", "ee", "ii", and "oo" are not long vowels of "a", "e", "i", and "o", "aa", "ee", "ii", and "oo" should be pronounced separately e.g. "ee" is frequently pronounced as /ɛ ɛ/, not /ɛː/ or /eː/

Vowel Harmony

If vowels of the stem of a word are front vowels, the vowels of affixes change into front vowels; If vowels of the stem of a word are back vowels, the vowels of affixes change into back vowels.

The vowel Harmony rule is shown below:

• o(close-mid back vowels or near-close back vowels)<->i(near-close front vowels)
• a(Open-mid back vowels or open back vowels)<->e(Open-mid front vowels)

example:

• rakataka("person/human") --> rakataka-ro("to the person")
• ikerevi("child") --> ikerevi-ri("to the child")
• rakataka("person/human") + teriki("land") --> rakataka-taroko("Sgen Homeland, world")

However, in the modern language, compound words often don't follow the vowel harmony rule

Grammar

Syntax

Word Order

• Basic Word Order: Subject-Object-Verb(SOV)
• Adpositions are postpositions, conjunctions are at the end of the sentence

Morphology

• Noun inflections:
  • Numbers:
    • dual:-po/-pi
    • plural:-pa/-pe
  • Cases:
    • Nominative:-va/-ve
    • Genitive:-ta/-te
    • Dative:-ro/-ri
    • Accusative:-vo/-vi
    • Benefactive:-ga/-ge
    • Instrumental:-go/-gi
    • Locative:-to/-ti
    • Ablative:-ra/-re/-ka/-ke

• Verb inflections:
  • infinitive/adverbial: -paro/-peri
  • Tense-aspects-mood:
    • Indicative:
      • present:-paro/-peri
      • past imperfective:-poka/-pike
      • present continuous:-roka/-rike
      • perfective:-gata/-gete
    • subjunctive: -ra/-re
    • optative:-govo/-givi
  • Other marks:
    • question maker:-kaga/-kege
    • negation:-pavo/-pevi

• adjective:
  • attributive: -ta/-te
  • predicative: -va-paro/-ve-peri(the -paro/-peri suffixes are the standard verbal suffixes)
• dependent clause ender:-varo/-veri

Derivation

• Causative I: -pa/-pe(suffix)
• Causative II: -tapa-/-tepe-(infix between the first and second syllable)

words

This is only a part of the words, the complete word list is under construction.

Numbers

1. one: vo
2. two: pi
3. three: pepi
4. four: evi
5. five: poka
6. (six: pokavopao(5+1))
7. (seven: pokapopao(5+2, vowel mutation))
8. (eight: pokapapopao(5+3, vowel mutation))
9. (nine: pokaavopao(5+4, vowel mutation))
10. ten: taa

• hundred: kaavaa
• plus: pao
• minus: pie
• -th:-ata/-ete

Pronouns

	single	dual	triple	plural
1st exclusive	ako	akopo	akoka	akopa
1st inclusive	ako	akopota	akopotapo	akopotapa
2nd	pite	pitepi	piteke	pitepe
3rd general	avo	avopo	-	avopa
3rd near(this/these)	eri	eripi	-	eripe
3rd far(that/those)	ara	arapo	-	arapa

Conjugations and other words

• And: a
• Or: e
• If: i
• Then: vepi
• Because: ka
• So; therefore: ta
• before(also used with dative nouns): pie
• after(also used with dative nouns): pa
• when(not pronoun); as soon as: apo