Deinau [DEJ]
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Registered by
[Deactivated User] on 28 May 2015
Language type
Artistic Language (Artlang)
Species
Human/humanoid
About Deinau
Deinau is a language spoken in Tnaaq, on the Nousian territories. It belongs to the East Vajusan branch of the Vajusan language family. It is a very conservative language in its phonology, retaining the 10 vowels developed since the split and few phonological changes. The morphology has been reworked, though, and both nouns and verbs have become more inflected.
Some features:
Some features:
- It is a SOV, tripartite language, mostly dependent-marking.
- It has 10 short and 6 long vowels. There is also a vowel harmony system that controls the backness of vowels within a word, and a disharmony system that rules over highness. Some suffixes have special harmony rules.
- There are 17 consonants that can be at syllable onsets and 6 at the coda. There is an aspirated-plane contrast in plosives and fricatives, and Four points of articulation including retroflex sounds. Deinau has only a liquid, but lateral fricative is present in some dialects. There is right-spread coronal harmony.
- Its nouns are inflected for 4 numbers, 7 cases and definiteness by suffixes and tone. There is also a noun-class system of prefixes. Locative cases add an infix l- to argument cases.
- Verb stem formation and tone depend on transitivity. Verbs are inflected for four numbers with suffixes and 3rd-non3rd person with tone position. There is a system of TAM suffixes that comes from older auxiliaries and sometimes codes a past-non past distinction and plurality. Some verbs have suppletive plurals
- Pronouns have a clusivity contrast, and 3 persons including paucal/collective. The only proper pronoun paradigm is in the absolutive case, pronouns for other cases are conjugated postpositions.
- Deinau's word derivation includes about 20 deverbal noun suffixes and a set of participles according to verb class.
- Interrogative and indefinite pronouns are used only for core arguments, obliques are verbal and subordinate the rest of the sentence.
Sample of Deinau[view] Báz bláŋa ·dluboṇletpa ·ene ·kaapkata.
She sells sea shells by the seashore.[view all texts]
She sells sea shells by the seashore.[view all texts]
Language family relationships
[view] About NolianDeinau and friends
Phonology
| Consonants | Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Other | |||||||
| Nasal | m | n̪ | ɳ | [ɲ]1 | ŋ | |||||||||
| Plosive | p [ʰp]2 pʰ | [b]3 | [t̪]4 [ʰt̪]5 t̪ʰ | [d̪]6 | ʈ [ʰʈ]7 ʈʰ | [ɖ]8 | [c]9 [ʰc]10 [cʰ]11 | [ɟ]12 | [k]13 [ʰk]14 kʰ | g | ||||
| Fricative | [ɸ]15 | [θ]16 | s [ʰs]17 sʰ | [z]18 | ʂ [ʰʂ]19 ʂʰ | [ʐ]20 | [ç]21 | [x]22 | ||||||
| Lateral approximant | l | [ɭ]23 | [ɫ]24 | |||||||||||
| Approximant | [ɻ]25 | |||||||||||||
| Flap | [ɾ]26 | |||||||||||||
- with front vowels, allophone of /ŋ/
- allophone of /pʰ/
- allophone of /p/
- allophone of /t̪ʰ/
- allophone of /t̪ʰ/
- allophone of /t̪/
- allophone of /ʈʰ/
- allophone of /ʈ/
- with front vowels, allophone of /k/
- allophone of /kʰ/
- allophone of /kʰ/
- with front vowels, allophone of /k/
- allophone of /kʰ/
- allophone of /kʰ/
- allophone of /pʰ/
- allophone of /t̪ʰ/
- allophone of /sʰ/
- allophone of /s/
- allophone of /ʂʰ/
- allophone of /ʂ/
- with front vowels, allophone of /kʰ/
- allophone of /kʰ/
- allophone of /l/
- allophone of /l/
- allophone of /ʈ/
- allophone of /l/
| Vowels | Front | Back | ||
| Close | i i: [í]1 | y y: [ý] | ɯ ɯ: ɯ̂ [ɯ́]2 | u u: û [ú]3 |
| Close-mid | e ê [é]4 | ø ø̂ [ǿ]5 | ɤ ɤ̂ [ɤ́]6 | o ô [ó]7 |
| Near-open | æ æ: æ̂ [ǽ]8 | |||
| Open | ɑ ɑ: ɑ̂ [ɑ́]9 | |||
- allophone of /i/
- allophone of /ɯ/
- allophone of /u/
- allophone of /e/
- allophone of /ø/
- allophone of /ɤ/
- allophone of /o/
- allophone of /æ/
- allophone of /ɑ/
Orthography
Below is the orthography for Deinau. This includes all graphemes as defined in the language's phonology settings - excluding the non-distinct graphemes/polygraphs.
 DeinauOrthography [edit] | ||||||||
| Aa/ɑ/ | AA aa/ɑ:/ | Bb/p/ | Cc/g/ | Ḍḍ/ʈ/, [ʈ] | Dd/t̪/, [t̪] | Ee/ɤ/ | Gg/k/, [k] | Ii/ɯ/ |
| II ii/ɯ:/ | Kk/kʰ/ | Ll/l/ | Mm/m/ | Nn/n̪/ | Ṇṇ/ɳ/ | Oo/o/ | Pp/pʰ/ | Ṣṣ/ʂ/ |
| Ss/s/ | Ṭṭ/ʈʰ/ | Tt/t̪ʰ/ | Uu/u/ | UU uu/u:/ | Ẓẓ/ʂʰ/ | Zz/sʰ/ | Ŋŋ/ŋ/ | |
| ✖ Unknown alphabetical order [change] | ||||||||
Latest 8 related articles listed below.
Indefinites and interrogatives 14-Dec-19 21:41
Deinau nouns 14-Dec-19 20:46
Deinau verb
Verb conjugation
09-Aug-19 04:03Derivation
Making new stems in Deinau
23-Jul-19 23:32Deinau noun phrase 11-Jun-19 04:45
Kinship terms
Classes according to possesive marking
31-May-19 02:54Joining sentences in Deinau 31-May-19 00:03
Relative clauses 18-Mar-19 04:20
