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User:Mbartelsm/Muna

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Typological sketch

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Mostly isolating language with an active-stative fluid-S alignment and a dominant SOV word order with postpositions and preceding genitives.

Phonology

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Inventory

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Consonants
Labial Alveolar Velar Glottal
Plosive p b t d k g
Nasal m n
Flap / tap ɾ
Fricative f s x
Approximant ʋ l h
Vowels
Front Central Back
High i ɨ u
Mid e o
Low a

Phonotactics

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Syllables are minimally V and maximally CrVVK

Syllable structure
Syllable
Onset Medial Nucleus Coda
(C) (r) V (V) (K)
  • Any consonant
  • /ɾ/
  • Any vowel
  • Any diphthong
  • /n/
  • /s/
  • /ɾ/
  • /l/
  • Medial /ɾ/ can only go after a voiceless consonant and reduces to [l] after a fricative.
  • Coda /n/ and /s/ assimilate by place of articulation to the following consonant
  • Intersyllabic /ɾ.ɾ/ are fortitioned into /r./

Stress

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It has a pitch-accent system that is mostly used to differentiate verbs from non-verbs.

Closed word classes

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Open word classes

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Nouns

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Noun phrase
...Genitives Noun Case particle
Stem Case
  • Agentive
  • Patientive
  • Genitive

Noun classes

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The classification system can be divided into two kinds: absolute and relative. The absolute classes are defined by animacy and deal with non-person things. The relative classes are defined by social status and position and deal with people.

List of noun classes
Kind Class Definition
Relative 1c Familiar: friends, family and oneself in informal settings
1b Friendly: coworkers, acquaintances and oneself in formal settings
1a Formal: people you've just met or haven't met yet and oneself in extremely formal settings
2 Derogatory: insulting or derogatory when used for people
Absolute Animate: animals and naturally moving things like fire, water, machines, computers
3 Inanimate: objects which aren't supposed to move, including living things like plants
4 Miscellaneous: abstract and invisible concepts as well as anything that doesn't fit elsewhere

Verbs

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Verb phrase
...Arguments Verb Coverbs...
Stem Tense Agreement
  • Past
  • Non-past
  • 1a
  • 1b
  • 1c
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4

Verbs agree with their agent (monovalent) or subject (multivalent) in noun class

Tense

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There are two grammatical tenses that verbs inflect for: non-past and past

Other tenses can be expressed through serial verb constructions

Register

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Register is divided in two parts, the register for the setting and the register for the addressee. The register for the setting somewhat follows this table:

Register Speaker Listener
Formal Supra-formal Generic noun (1a) Title
Formal Zeroth person (1b)
Infra-formal Honorific (+ name)
Regular Supra-regular First person (1c)
Regular Name
Informal Informal

The register for the addressee depends on the familiarity with them, which is reflected on the verb agreement as per their classification into the noun classes.