Egeriac language

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Egeriac language
Egeriac
HeNozzani Eger
EthnicityEgeriac people
Native speakers49,596,676  (2020)
Language family
Alcian
  • North Alcian
    • Egeriac language
Early forms:
Old Egeriac
  • Egeriac language
CWS codeaaaaa

The Egeriac language is a language spoken in Notzel. It is the main language of the Egeriac people and the official language of Notzel.

Classification

The Egeriac language is an Alcian language, it is one of the north Alcian languages of the Alcian language family and is the only surviving language of the north Alcian languages.

History

Phonology

Phonemes

Labial Dental Alveolar Post-Alveolar/Palatal Velar Pharyngeal Glottal
Nasal m n
Plosive p b t d k g ʔ
Fricative f v (θ) (ð) s z ʃ (x) (ɣ) ħ ʕ h
Approximant l ɾ j
  • [θ] [ð] [x] [ɣ] are allophones of /t/ /d/ /k/ /g/ respectively.
  • geminated /ɾ/ is pronounced as the trilled /r/.
  • The use of [θ] [ð] [ɣ] [ħ] [ʕ] is diminishing, in colloquial speech, [θ] [ð] [ɣ] [ħ] [ʕ] are often merged with [t], [d], [g], [x], [w] respectively.
Front Central Back
Close i (ɪ) (ɨ) u
Mid e o
Open ɛ ɑ

[ɪ] and [ɨ] are allophones of /e/. The pronunciation of /e/ varies between [e], [ɪ] and [ɨ], it is a subject of dialectic and even personal variations. In some dialects, /e/ has been merged with /ɛ/ or /i/; also, while [e] is the standard pronunciation of /e/, most people pronounce it as [ɨ] and sometimes [ɪ], because [e] can mix up with [ɛ] easily.

Phonotactics

All syllables start with a consonant. Syllables that seem to start with a vowel actually start with the glottal stop.

Morphology and syntax

Morphology

The Egeriac language relies on the use of internal vowel changes alongside with affixes for certain grammatical functions. Some affixes also trigger internal vowel changes.

Nouns

Nouns in Egeriac does not inflect for case, but nouns inflect for number and possession.

The plural form of nouns are marked by adding the suffix -oth, or by internal vowel change, or by the combination of both; besides, some nouns follow collective-singulative pattern, in which the unmarked form is a collective form, and the singulative form is created from the collective form by adding -u or -i, the -u suffix is used for humans, and the -i suffix is used for everything else.

Adjectives

Adjectives agree with nouns in number; besides, adjectives have an elative form, which is used as both of the comparative and superlative form of an adjective. The superlative form is created by adding the definite article to the elative form of an adjective.

Verbs

Derivational Morphology

Like all other languages, it is possible to form new words with existing morphemes in Egeriac. In Egeriac, new words can be derived from existing roots by affixation or internal vowel change. Compounding is less common and is generally restricted to the formation of nouns.

Syntax

Word Order

The word order features are listed below:

  • Basic Word Order: Subject-Object-Verb(SOV)
  • Adpositions are prepositions
  • Conjuctions are in the initial position of the clause
  • Demonstratives, articles, numerals precede the noun they modify; Adjectives, Possessors and Relative Clauses follow the noun they modify

The Egeriac language has SOV as the main sentential word order, and the order between the subject, the object and the verb is pretty rigid due to a lack of nominal case system; however, Egeriac word order shows a lot of syntactic features expected to VO languages like the tendency to use prepositions, the use of initial conjugations and relative clauses follow the head nouns, and some related languages have VO as the main word order. Therefore, there's a theory that the ancestor language of Egeriac had an VO word order, and its word order shifted to SOV due to contacts with Adzamic and Baredan languages.

Positions of Adverbial Phrases

Possession

Definiteness

Negation

Relative Clauses and Content Clauses

Relative clauses start with the invariant complementizer zed, the complementizer zed does not decline according to number, case, etc., and the relativized word is left blank in the relative clause. The relative clause follows the noun it modifies.

Whether the head noun is the subject or the direct object in the relative clause, is sometimes ambiguous, however, in most circumstances, the context and background knowledge may help disambiguate a sentence.

For example:

  • h-an zed he-xeneth kanadi yon nudi - the person, who found the sun, lives here.
  • he-num zed h-an hamami zovol - the house, which the person bought, is big.

Content Clauses can also be introduced by zed. For example:

- zed Ebith he-num hamami virozath - I know that Ebith bought the house.

Resultative

Verb Framing

Egeriac is a verb-framing language, that is, the verb of a sentence usually shows the path of motion, and the adverbs or particles show the manner of motion.

The manner of a verb is often in the adverbial form.

Vocabulary

Most words in Egeriac are inherited from Old Egeriac; however, there are also some loanwords. Some loanwords may have their vowels altered to fit in the morphology of Egeriac.

Some words in Egeriac

Personal Pronouns

  • 1st person singular(I/me): ni
  • 2nd person singular(you(sg)): mi
  • 3rd person singular(he/she/it): ki
  • 1st person plural(we/us): neth
  • 2nd person plural(you(pl)): meth
  • 3rd person plural(they/them): heth
  • reflexive(self): demel

Interrogative Pronouns

  • who: mar
  • what: man
  • which: maz
  • where: manezed
  • when: makex
  • how: mach
  • why: mal
  • how much/how many: maza

Indefinite Pronouns

In Egeriac, irregular pronouns are derived from generic nouns

  • anyone/anybody: anvalan
  • anything: anvalzen
  • any: anval
  • someone/somebody: anan
  • something: anzen
  • everyone/everybody: imvalan
  • everything: imvalzen
  • every: imval
  • nobody: menan
  • nothing: menzen

Demonstratives

  • this: ti
  • that: yo
  • these: tith
  • those: yoth
  • here: tin
  • there: yon

Numerals

  1. one: ana
  2. two: avora
  3. three: mera
  4. four: zbada
  5. five: mev
  6. six: neva
  7. seven: brava
  8. eight: mrava
  9. nine: mitoza
  10. ten: nemba
  11. eleven: anemba
  12. twelve: avoremba
  13. thirteen: meremba
  14. forteen: zbademba
  15. fifteen: mevemba
  16. sixteen: nevemba
  17. seventeen: bravemaba
  18. eighteen: mravemba
  19. nineteen: mitozemba
  • twenty: namod
  • thirty: namod nemba (20+10)
  • forty: avara-mod
  • fifty: avara-mod nemba (40+10)
  • sixty: mera-mod
  • seventy: mera-mod nemba (60+10)
  • eighty: zbada-mod
  • ninety: zbada-mod nemba (80+10)
  • hundred: mevnez
  • thousand: blug
  • million: gozog
  • zero: men/menath

Egeriac is base-20 with 10 as a subbase for numbers below 100, base-10 for numbers larger than 100. Cardinal numbers precede the noun, ordinal numbers follow the noun. The ikndicators mevnez "hundred", blug "thousand", gozog "million", etc. are always accompanied with a preceding numera.

For example, to say 256, one says "avora mevnez avara-mod nevemba", which literally is "two hundred two-twenty and sixteen", or "2*100 + 2*20 + 16", with 16 being analyzable as "6+10"; to say 135, one says "ana mevnez namod mevemba", which literally is "one hundred twenty and fifteen", or "1*100 + 20 + 15".

Writing and literature

The script used to write the language is called Egeriac script, which is ultimately derived from Letzic script from the north.