Qal̀i Sketch

Note for teacher: The following is an example language sketch a conlanger might produce when first starting a new language:

Қаӆи is a language spoken by a hypothetical space-faring race long separated from their homeworld by war and tension with a greater power. The design goals of the language are to sound fluid, with parts touching Slavic languages and Irish, but staying away from Asian languages and Central European languages as I've used them too much in previous conlangs. Syntactically, the language will be OVS, and attempt to follow most of the linguistic universals listed on http://typo.uni-konstanz.de/ (link broken). This is similar to an earlier language also bearing the name "Qali", and many things may be drawn from that work, but as no more than simple influence. Inspiration is also drawn from Khelish, the language of Mass Effect's Quarians.

Phonology

The current phonology is inspired by Slavic languages, with some additions of my own. To achieve the desired effect, the Red Army Choir was listened to while producing this portion of the document. Allophones are written in square brackets after the phoneme they belong to. Two scripts are also included, a Cyrillicization and a Romanization. The Cyrillic version is the preferred one, and the romanization available for transliteration.

Consonants

Phonemes	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular-Glottal
Nasal	m [ɱ]	n			ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	p b	t d			c ɟ	k g	q
Pal. Plosive	pʲ bʲ	tʲ dʲ				kʲ gʲ
Fricative	f [v ɸ β]	θ ð	s z	ʃ~ç ʒ~ʝ		x ɣ	h
Other	w	r [ɾ ɹ ʁ] ʰr̥ l			j	ɬ

Orthography	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular-Glottal
Nasal	М м	Н н			Њ њ	Ӈ ӈ
Plosive	П п, Б б	Т т, Д д			Ќ ќ, Ѓ ѓ	К к, Г г	Қ қ
Pal. Plosive	ПЬ пь, БЬ бь	ТЬ ть, ДЬ дь				КЬ кь, Гь гь
Fricative	В в	Ҫ ҫ, Ҙ ҙ	С с, З з	Ш ш, Ж ж		Х х, Ғ ғ	Һ һ
Other	Ў ў	Р р, ҺР һр, Л л			Й й	Ӆ ӆ

Romanization	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular-Glottal
Nasal	M m	N n			Ǹ ǹ	Ñ ñ
Plosive	P p, B b	T t, D d			K̀ k̀, G̀ g̀	K k, G g	Q q
Pal. Plosive	PJ pj, BJ bj	TJ tj, DJ dj				KJ kj, GJ gj
Fricative	F f	TH th, DH dh	S s, Z z	SH sh, ZH zh		X x, GH gh	H h
Other	W w	R r, HR hr, L l			J j	L̀ l̀

Currently, there are no affricates denoted in orthography, though that may change in the future.

Vowels

Phonemes	Front	Near-front	Center	Back
Close	i	ɪ	ɨ ʉ	u
Close-mid	e
Middle			ə	o̞
Open-mid	ɛ [æ]
Open	a			ɑ ɒ

Orthography	Front	Near-front	Center	Back
Close	И и	Ӥ ӥ	Ы ы, Ӱ ӱ	У у
Close-mid	Е е
Middle			Ӹ ӹ	О о
Open-mid	Э э
Open	А а			Ӓ ӓ, Ӧ ӧ

Romanization	Front	Near-front	Center	Back
Close	I i	Ï ï	Ì ì, Ù ù	U u
Close-mid	E e
Middle			Ä ä	O o
Open-mid	Ë ë
Open	A a			À à, Ò ò

The syllable structure isn't strictly defined, but is roughly PʲFG(V)VGGFPʲ, nucleus denoted in parenthesis, all others optional (though palatalisation cannot exist without a consonant there).

Syntax

Beyond the basic OVS word order, clauses are head-final without fail, and the grammar is agglutinating. There is a case system, with numerous locative cases, and the alignment is Marked Nominative (nom-abs).

Tenses: (denoted on verb)

• historic past
• past
• hesternal
• recent past
• hodiernal
• present
• near future
• crastinal
• future

Mood:

• Potential (may); with auxiliary verb - never used for desire
• Interrogative; with fronted auxiliary verb conjugated for tense and aspect
• Optative (hopeful may)
• Imperative; with auxiliary verb
  • Adhortative ("soft imperative"; ex. "You may want to go; it'll be fun"); auxiliary and verb suffix
    • Cohortative ("mutual imperative"; ex. "Let's eat!"); auxiliary and verb suffixes
  • Exhortative (encouraging imperative; ex. "You really should try this!"), merged wih suprahortative(intensive); auxiliary and verb suffix
  • Dehortative (discouraging imperative; ex. "Maybe you might not want to..."), merged with inhortative(intensive); auxiliary and verb suffix
  • Infrahortative (pleaing discouragement; ex. "You can't do this! It'd be suicide! (wikipedia)"); different auxiliary and suffix
• Subjunctive-conditional; with "if" and suffix
• Realis, default.

Aspect:

• Perfective (default)
• Inchoative/Inceptive; with auxiliary verb "begin"
• Cessative/Terminative; with auxiliary verb "finish"
• Progressive; with suffix - No continuous, it's absorbed into the progressive and perfective
• Durative; with imperfective auxiliary verb and suffix
• Frequentative; with imperfective auxiliary verb and suffix - see Hungarian "-gat"
• Habitual; with suffix

In addition, verbs agree with the subject in person and number, and the object in the case of a ditransitive verb. The numbers are singular and plural.

A passive voice auxiliary exists.

Cases:

• Locative-Adessive; location/adjacency, "near/at/by"
  • Temporal also. "at midnight", etc.
• Inessive; inside
• intrative; intrative - only appears with the plural
• subessive; under
• superessive; on
• Ablative; away from
• Elative; out from
• Dative-Allative; to
• Lative; into
• Vialis; through, by
• Prosecutive; across/along - connotation "across, crossing"
• Preceding; in front of
  • Temporal: before
• Following; behind
  • Temporal: after
• Nominative (marked)
• Absolutive (default)
• Instrumental (done with)
• Comitative (with)
• Possessive
• Partative (wheel of cheese)
• Causal (because of)
• Benefactive (for the benefit of)
• Distributive (per)
  • Temporal; ex. "daily", "on sundays"
• Ornative (wearing, adorned with, equipped with) ex. "the man having a hat"
• Vocative
• Translative (combines with locatives to form changes in state)

There is also a suffix for definiteness. I'm probably going to mix these up so there aren't quite as many, but this is basically how they'll appear.

Pronouns:

		Singular			Plural
		Nominative	Absolutive	Possessive	Nominative	Absolutive
1^st^		шоуса	шоу	шоута	шоуноса	шоуно
2^nd^		иса	и	ита	иноса	ино
3^rd^	m.	вроса	вро	врота	вроноса	вроно
	f.	бруйса	бруй	бруйта	бруйноса	бруйно

Example:

врота ӄйевониҫ прадьэшто бруйса

fro-ta cjefo-ni-dh pradj-ë-shto bruj-sa

3s.m-poss house-ine-all go-3s.f-pst 3s.f-nom

Note for teacher: The above is an example of what one might find in the average conlang sketch. Not a terribly large amount of information, but enough to be vaguely interesting. This particular language will be further developed during the 2015 ReCoLangMo event, for which I do not know what the acronym stands.