History and backround

Hira is a egenkan language of the archipeligan branch spoken in the Great Archipelago. It serves basically as the proto language of that branch. The group that would become the hira speeking population migrated out of Egenka and arrived in the Archipelago somewhere in [INSERT DATE HERE LATER]. It is spoken by the kadakumi. There are a sea faring culture, which is organised into loose federations of small communes, pirate and merchant republics, fisher unions etc. They trade mostly in fish, liquid mana, and other recources found in the ocean. Kadakumi highly value liberty and rights of all people and don't recognise any spirits as gods or higher than other spirits. They also have a very rich history and tradition of poetry.

As for the language itself, it's analitic with a exclusivly CV syllable structure. It has been inspired by polyneasan languages. I also use it as a sort of personal language. I consider this language as the best conlang I made. In universe hira is an egenkan language.

Phonology

Hira's phonology is moderatly sized with 20 consonants and 5 vowels with distinction of length in all vowels.

Hira has also phonemic stress. As said earlier the only allowed syllable type is CV. Other phonotactical constraint is that voiced consonants cannot occur at the beginning of words, but loanwords tend to break this rule. The /l/ phoneme is pronounced as /ɾ/ intervocalicly, and while the /dʒ/ and /ʒ/ phonemes are usually voiced they can be pronounced as voiceless /tʃ/ and /ʃ/ freely. Short unstressed vowels are reduced to [ɪ], [ʊ], [ɛ], [ɔ] and [ɐ].

Consonats are romanised as such: /ɲ/[q], /ʔ/['], /ts/[c], /dz/[j], /dʒ/[g], /ʒ/[x], /l/[r], /j/[y]. If consonant wasn't mentioned, they're written the same as in the IPA. As for the vowels, the long vowels are written doubled, and the stressed ones capitilised.

One thing also worth mentioning is the process of nasalisation. The process of nasalisation is triggered during reduplication and by certain particles, where there used to be a nasal coda that caused changes to the following consonant. These changes include obstrunets becoming voiced(/k/, /h/ and /f/ become /dʒ/, /ʒ/ and /w/ respectably), liquid turning into nasals with the same place of articullation and nasals not undergoing any change, but the vowels before them become long. When a particle that would cause nasalisation occurs at the end of an uterence, then it is suffixed with -nV, where V is the short version of the last vowel of the word.

Grammar

This section will be describing various morphological and syntactical processes and structures that the hira language posseses and will be diveded into smaller sections.

Basic word order and basis of phrases

The basic word order is V1, the order of nouns themself can be free, but the verb must remain the first element of the clause.

1.1 ka 'EEhina ci 'EEhi'eere ta hixA - 'ehi'ere caught fish

1.2 ka 'EEhina ta hixA ci 'EEhi'eere - 'ehi'ere caught fish

Both above examples are grammatical, because in both the verb is the first element of the clause. Subjects and objects can also be dropped from the clause, if they can innfered from context.

As you could see in the above examples each word is preceeded by a short word. This is because content words can't stand by themselfs in hira and must be preceeded by a particle, forming a phrase. The basic word order of phrases is.

[PARTICLE] [CONTENT WORD] [EXTENSION(S)]

The particle has two funstions, signaling the phrase boundaries and the type of phrase it belongs to and it also show grammatical information about the phrase like case and tense. The content word's function is self explanotory. It carries the main meaning of the prase. Extensions in some way modify the main meaning of the phrase. There can be arbitrally many extensions.

Verb phrases

Having duisgissed the basis of phrases in the previous section, we'll delve into(I prommise i'm not clancker) verb phrases specifically.

2.1 hi kahokafO ta pabApaqa - (someone) breaks coconuts

In this section the verb phrase in the above example will be modified to show off the full funtionality of verb phrases.

Let's start with particles. Verbal phrase particles mark for the tense and mood of the verb phrase. There are five of them:
hi - present tense
ka - past tense
hee - future tense
te - irrealis mood
ye - imperative mood
The use cases for the first three particles are self-explanatary. The irrealis mood is used when the action described by the verb phrase is in some way not real. It is used for things that would happen, things, that happen under certain conditions etc. The imperative mood is used for giving commands or when the action described should happen. Below are examples of all five tenses applied to the main example sentence.

2.2 hi kahokafO ta pabApaqa - (someone) breaks coconuts

2.3 ka kahokafO ta pabApaqa - (someone) broke a coconut

2.4 hee kahokafO ta pabApaqa - (someone) will break a coconut

2.5 te kahokafO ta pabApaqa - (someone) would break coconuts

2.6 ye kahokafO ta pabApaqa - break coconuts or (someone) should break coconuts

There is also simple distinction of perfective and imperfective aspects in hira. Perfective verb phrases are left unmarked while imperfective ones are marked by reduplicating the final CV pair of the main verb. Voiced consonants are often devoiced during this process('eqIge => 'eqIgeke - to reconsider). The perfective aspect in the present tense gives the interpretation of an event that is habitually done or just genneraly true in contrast to action being performed specifically in this moment in the imperfective.

2.7 hi kahokafO ta pabApaqa - (someone) breaks coconuts

2.8 hi kahokafOfo ta pabApaqa - (someone) is breaking a coconut

The use of extensions in verb phrases is varied and complex, but to put it in the simplest way, an extension tells that the two actions are happening simultaniously or are somehow connected. Since this is a rather a vague description, some examples will be shown. The first use case is rather simple. It modifies the action of the main verb in some way, mostly acting like adverbs.

2.9 hi kahokafO pEEhi ta pabApaqa - (someone) breaks coconuts hard

2.10 hi kahokafO cAhorumi ta pabApaqa - (someone) breaks coconuts happily

PEEhi and cAhorumi by themselfs mean "strong" and "to smile" respectably, but when used as extensions they modify the main verb, based on their meanings.

The second use of the extensions is merging the main verb and the extencion. It means that the actions expressed by the main verb is happening simutanously to, happenes in sequence, such that the first action is required for the second to occcur or is concidered as a single action with the action expressed by the extencion.

2.11 hi kahokafO rOOra ta pabApaqa - (someone) breaks coconuts and drink from them/p>

2.12 hi kahokafO 'Iku ta pabApaqa - (someone) wants to break coconuts/p>

2.13 hi kahokafO wajAta ta pabApaqa - (someone) break coconuts serving/because he was ordered to/p>

The extentions by themselfs mean "drink", "to want" and "to serve". Notice how each of the extencions impacts the meaning of the phrase.

And thats wraps up the verb phrase section.

Noun phrases

Let's start with the fact that noun phrases are more complicated that the verb phrases. Below is the template of the noun phrase.

[PARTICLE] [SPECIFIER] [DETERMINER] [CONTENT WORD] [EXTENSION(S)]

The funtions of the specifier and the determiner will be discuissed in their respective sections.

Before discuissing anything, we need to talk about the noun class system. Every noun is divided into 2 categories: animate and inanimate. This is important, because there is two unique sets of particles for each noun class. Below will be given an example of a inanimate and animante noun phrase, which will be used as examples for the rest of the section.

3.1 ci kUUmi - person

3.2 ta 'oqO - rock

Now onto the particles, the particles mark for the case of the noun phrase. There are 8 cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, instrumental, ablative and vocative. Below is the table of the noun particles.

3.3 ci kUUmi - person (as a subject of transitive and intransative verbs)

3.4 wOO 'oqO - rock (as a subject of transative verbs)

3.5 nee kUUmi - person (as an object)

3.6 ta 'oqO - rock (as an object and as a subject of intransative verbs)

3.7 hoo kUUmi - to/towards a person

3.8 mu 'oqO - to/towards a rock

3.9 soo kUUmi - of a person

3.10 tayOO 'oqO - of a rock

3.11 fu gUUmi - using/with a person

3.12 hAyu 'oqO - using/with a rock

3.13 'Azo kUUmi - in/on/at a person

3.14 'A noqO - in/on/at a rock

3.15 'OOso kUUmi - away from/about/regarding/by a person

3.16 'OO noqO - away from/about/regarding/by a rock

3.17 ye kUUmi - O! person

3.18 ye noqO - O! rock

There are several things to note. The particles that have a (n) next to them cause nasalisation(see the phonology section) on the following word. The use of the nominative and accusative in animate nouns are straight foward, they mark the subject of intransative and transative verbs and the object respectably. The aformentioned cases behave a bit different in the inanimate nouns. They could be more accuratly called ergative and absolutve. They mark the subject of intransitive verbs and objects for the absolutive and the subjects of the transitive verbs for the ergative. For the rest of the grammar the absolutive will be reffered to as accusative and ergative as nominative. The use of other cases are the same for all the classes. Dative is used to mark indirect objects, movement towards something, benefactors, reasons for doind the action and perspective. Genitive is used for possesion and relation. Instrumental is used for the means of doing something, movement throught something, acompaniment and the confines of the action. Ablative is used for movement away from, causes and topics of discussion(this is separate from the syntactic topic, it's more useful to thing about thes topic as using the preposition 'about'). And lastly, vocative is used for direct adress

Simmilary to verbs, the main noun can undergo reduplicated to show some grammatical information. In this case the reduplication marks plurality and the first syllable is redublicated instead of the last one. When the stress is on the first syllable, the reduplicated syllable takes the stress, otherwise the stress stays on the same syllable. When the second syllable has a voiced consonant, then the reduplication triggers nasalisation on the reduplicated syllable. The nasalisation can also be triggered if the syllable reduplicated is before a nasal(the vowel of the reduplicated syllable will also shorten), but this is not a guaranty and must be memorised on case by case base.

3.19 ci kUguumi - people

3.20 ta 'o'oqO - rocks

It's worth noting that noun phrases are only marked for plurality when reffering to a concrete set of things. For example, the below sentence.

3.21 hi pIyami ku nee meemeewO - I like dogs

Would mean that I like a particular set of dogs not that I like dogs in general. To say I like dogs in general, the noun phrase for dog needs to be put in singualar.

3.22 hi pIyami ku nee meewO - I like dogs(in general)

While the above example is a perfectly valid way to say that I like dogs and would be perfectly understood by the native speakers of hira, a more common way of saying that would be using the determiner meaning all

3.23 hi pIyami ku nee kOra meewO - I like dogs/I like all dogs

Since we already strated talking about determiners, the next section will be dedicated to them. Determiners, as the name sugests, determine the specific thing being talked about. They go between the particle and the main noun and there only can be one determiner per noun phrase. To the determiners belong demonstrative, numerals and possesive pronouns. This section will also discuss pronouns in general

Starting with demonstratives, there are two of them, the demonstrative proper 'Eye, and the interrogative one haa. There are grouped as demonstratives, because the shared behavor of being abled to used alone outside of a noun phrase and agreeing in the case of the noun case. Below will be the table of all the forms of the demonstratives.

The use case of the forms will be given both for demonstratives as determiners and as independent words. The active form is used for when the noun phrase they are determining or replacing is either nominative and animate or accusative and inanimate. The oblique is used for every other case. When used as separate words, the nominative/accusative(depending on the animacy) and dative(exept when it means movement towards) don't requier use of particles, other cases however requier them. The posssesive froms act like possesive pronouns which will be discussed later.

3.24 ka pEqe ku nee 'Eye gUUmi - I saw that person.

3.25 ka pEqe ku nee 'Eyene - I saw that.

As seen in the above examples, a noun phrase with a demonstrative is grammatically interchangeble with the demonstrative in its free form.

The rest of of demonstratives behave the same. They can be used as demonstratives in noun phrases and also be used as a main noun of a phrase with a meaning of "that witch can be descriped by the demonstrative" or "the amount descriped by the demonstrative".

3.26 ka sEfepi ci sEfekomi nee kora EEre 'uu tEnoopeeki ta hee epIge - The thief took all of the money and destroyed my my house.

3.27 ka sEfepi ci sEfekomi nee kora 'uu tEnoopeeki ta hee - The thief took everything and destroyed what is mine.