Amafjk language

Amafjk (pronunciation: /æṽæɸiᵑkˣ/; or sataxjx Jmefjk, pronunciation: /r̝̊ætˣæx̪͆ix̪͆ iṽeɸiᵑkˣ/) is the de facto lingua franca of Matkha and the official language of Tantj Mafjx Province. It is spoken natively by 92% of Tantj Mafjx Province and 65% of the Scattered Islands Census Area, and the overwhelming majority of Matkhans are either conversational or fluent in the language.

Amafjk is generally considered to be a language isolate, or otherwise part of a tentative microfamily known as East Matkhan containing itself and (PLACEHOLDER), the latter of which is only attested in toponyms, anthroponyms, and a transcription of a song found in (BOOK PLACEHOLDER). However, recent scholarship has attempted to link the language to the Ngyoic languages under the Macro-Matkhan phylum, though this theory remains highly contested.

Phonology

Amafjk is typically analyzed as having 11 phonemes, giving it the second smallest phoneme inventory of any attested natural language, solely surpassed by the Seŋoŋ language spoken in Xjetjeŋ. These phonemes are divided into 7 consonants and 4 vowels.

Consonants

The consonants, and their underlying pronunciations in Xassj Efjnes dialect, are given here.

	Labial	Alveolar	Velar
Nasal	m /ṽ/	n /ɾ̃/
Plosive		t /tˣ/	k /ᵑkˣ/
Fricative	f /ɸ/	s /r̝̊/	x /x̪͆/

Vowels

Amafjk has a vertical vowel system.

Close	j /i/
Near-close	i /ɪ/
Mid	e /e̞/
Near-open	a /æ/

In many analyses, Amafjk vowels are said to have secondary phonemic status due to the fact that the vast majority of roots in the language are vowelless before the application of transfixes, as well as the fact that sentences can have the vowels of their transfixes freely exchanged without changing the meaning, so long as the relations between transfix vowels (i.e. which ones do and do not match) remain unchanged. However, vowels occasionally do appear in roots and have semantically meaningful minimal pairs, such as fjm–kx– (sp. of fish) and fam–kx– (promontory).

Amafjk's syllable structure is (C)V(C), with consecutive vowels being prohibited.

Allophony

As a result of its small phonemic inventory, the phonemes of Amafjk are often quite fluid in pronunciation, and in informal speech each one tends to have free variation between a large range of realizations. Most commonly, they are limited to the following ranges, but exceptions can be found in highly informal speech.

• m: any nasal fricative or approximant, excluding fricative trills
• n: any nasal stop or nasal tap
• t: either any non-guttural stop, or any non-prenasalized stop. Most often, it is in the intersection of these two groups.
• k: any prenasalized guttural stop
• f: any non-dorsal non-trill fricative or non-dorsal approximant
• s: any trill
• x: any dorsal fricative or approximant
• j: any close vowel
• i: any near-close or close-mid vowel
• e: any mid or open-mid vowel
• a: any near-open or open vowel

Formal pronunciations

Allophony in acrolectal forms spoken in Xassj Efjnes is rather complex, entailing several feeding and bleeding orders. The order of rule application is as follows:

• Clusters of two plosives become a geminate form of the second plosive.
• Vowels before dorsal or guttural sounds are backed.
• The vowels of a given word undergo a process called iterative dissimilation. First, even-numbered vowels in sequences of two or more front vowels (ignoring any intermediary consonants) are backed, and then the same process is applied with fronting of alternating vowels in sequences of two or more back vowels. For instance, the word sefjfsakj, which becomes [r̝̊eɸiɸr̝̊ɑ̝ᵑkˣi] after the first two allophony rules, becomes [r̝̊eɸɯɸr̝̊ɑ̝ᵑkˣi], then [r̝̊eɸɯɸr̝̊æᵑkˣi].
• /ɾ̃/ becomes [ŋ] before back vowels.
• /x̪͆/ becomes [j] after vowels other than /i/.
• Various simple contextual changes are applied, shown in the table below:

	word-initial	after mora gap	intervocalic	word-final
/ṽ/	[β̞̃]
/ɾ̃/		[ʀ̆̃]		[ŋ]
/tˣ/		[bˠ]	[dˠ]	[t]
/ᵑkˣ/			[ᵑgˠ]	[ᵑk]
/ɸ/	[s]	[s]	[ɹ]
/r̝̊/	[ʜ]	[ʜ]
/x̪͆/	[ɰ]

• Vowels before [j] are raised.
• [ɸ] is elided postvocalically, and the previous vowel is given compensatory lengthening.
• Epenthetic [ɡ] is added before words which begin with a vowel.
• In sequences of a vowel and a nasal or prenasalized consonant, the vowel is nasalized and the consonant loses its nasal quality.
• Velar aspiration is lost word-finally.

Prosody

Amafjk is a mora-timed language. In the Amafjk system, which includes half-morae, syllables are divided into three sizes: ultralight (half a mora), light (one mora), and heavy (one and a half morae). In addition, a mora can be classified as fixed or movable – the distinction, however, only exists in light morae, as all ultralight or heavy morae are inherently movable.

The ultralight morae are limited to the plosives /tˣ/ and /ᵑkˣ/ in coda position. Light morae include all syllable bodies (onset-nucleus combinations as well as standalone nuclei), with the exception of those with /r̝̊/ as the onset, as well as all codas with the exceptions of /tˣ/, /ᵑkˣ/ and /r̝̊/. The only heavy morae are the aforementioned /r̝̊V/ bodies and /r̝̊/ in coda position.

A nucleus without an onset is the only movable light mora. Movability refers to whether or not a mora's timing will be "quantized" to the following one-mora unit if it is placed immediately after a mora whose ending is not unit-aligned: fixed morae will be quantized, while movable morae will not. The distinction is best demonstrated with a few illustrative examples:

kaxjt efjnes "three clouds"

1		2		3		4		5		6		7		8
ka		xj		t	e			fj		ne		s

kaxjt sjkke "four clouds"

1		2		3		4		5		6
ka		xj		t	sj			k		ke

kaxjt mjtex "five clouds"

1		2		3		4		5		6
ka		xj		t		mj		te		x

Stress and timing

In syllable timing, all coda consonants are transferred to the preceding mora, and all half-aligned morae are rounded down to the next-earliest unit multiple. For instance:

1		2		3		4		5		6
ka		xj		t	sj			k		ke
ka		xjt		sjk						ke

Stress is on the second mora of the word, or if this would be a coda mora, stress is moved to the first. For this reason, the capped form of "black" natat is stressed as na-tá-t but the uncapped form nattj is stressed as ná-t-tj.

Morphology

The morphology of the Amafjk language is based extensively upon transfixation, with almost all words, accounting for the exception of a handful of particles, being comprised of a discontinuous root intercalated with vowels which indicate syntactic connections. Although the use of a root-and-pattern system is superficially similar to some languages such as Tova, an analog for the treatment of vowels has not been demonstrated in any other natural language, aside from possibly the (PLACEHOLDER) language, though this is uncertain due to the lack of attestation.

Terminology

Due to this idiosyncrasy, technical terminology has been developed for analysis of Amafjk grammar. Vowels which are not part of the root itself but are instead transfixed are referred to as "nodes", and these can be further specified by stating the vowel which is used to indicate them – for instance, a node which is marked using the phoneme /i/ would be known as a J-node. Nodes are further classified based on their polarity, a criterion which indicates which other nodes they are capable of forming connections with. Per common convention, the two nodes of an ordinary binodal word (such as the vast majority of nominals) are used as the benchmark for any other node's polarity: the left node of such a term is considered a positive node, and the right is considered negative. These two terms can be combined, such that one can speak of a "positive E-node".

Nodal connections

Under ordinary circumstances, any newly-added node will form connections with all nodes which are of the same vowel and opposite polarity. Take, for instance, the sentence fragment kaxjt sjkke, meaning "four clouds". The first word, kaxjt, consists of the root k–x–t (cloud) with two nodes added: a positive A-node and a negative J-node. The second word, sjkke, consists of the root s–kk– (four, tetrad, quartet) supplemented with a positive J-node and a negative E-node. When it is added to the sentence, the positive J-node of sjkke forms a connection with the negative J-node of kaxjt, indicating a syntactic connection. The grammatical significance of these syntactic connections varies based on their directionality as well as the parts of speech of the words which are linked, and in this case, as a nominal-to-nominal connection, the fragment indicates that the positive-side nominal forms an appositive expression to the head nominal on the negative side – i.e., "clouds, a quartet", or translated more idiomatically, "four clouds". Due to the fact that connections can be formed starting from either direction, it is also valid to express this as sjkke kaxjt.

Exceptions

There are a few mechanisms in Amafjk to prevent the formation of connections in circumstances in which they would normally occur. The most common of these is the cap particle, which causes all previously-constructed nodes of a certain vowel and polarity to become incapable of forming new connections (though it does not apply to nodes that are constructed later, causing this to be one of the handful of circumstances in which word order is significant in Amafjk). The particle which applies to negative nodes is f–, with the targeted vowel being placed in the empty node slot; for positive nodes, –n is used instead.

For a more temporary solution, there exists a pair of particles n–kj and sen, which constitute a sort of spoken brackets, and thus another instance in which word order is relevant. Words which are enclosed between these two particles cannot form connections to those which are outside of this enclosure, with the exception of connections that are formed between nodes whose vowel matches the vowel which is inserted into the root n–kj. For example, if the particle nakj was used, A-nodes of opposite polarities could connect regardless of if one is inside the enclosure while the other is outside, but the same could not be said of nodes of the other three vowels. n–kj-sen pairs can be nested, although this rarely occurs in practice.

The application of a cap can also be done to a single word by metathesizing the last two sounds of a word to cap its negative pole(s), supposing this does not violate the language's phonotactics. For instance, the name Amafjk actually comes from the root –m–fkj, altered to indicate that the negative A-node is incapable of creating connections.

Parts of speech

Due to its unorthodox structure, Amafjk has some parts of speech that are specific to itself, but most overlap with the divisions of other natural languages.

Nominals

Nominals are typically binodal, with positive-to-negative connections indicating the positive-side nominal modifying the negative-side. This part of speech encompasses the functionalities of both nouns and adjectives in Amafjk, with almost all nominals having both an adjectival and standalone meaning. Usually, these meanings are trivial, with a word meaning "X" as an adjective tending to mean "someone/something which is X" as a noun – for example, as stated above, the root s–kk– denotes either "four" or "quartet" depending on its context. Nonetheless, there are also some lexicalizations such as k–mn– "gray; seal (i.e. the gray one)" and some apparently irregular correspondences such as –ms– "glass; crooked". When used to modify a nominal that is itself used adjectivally, it takes on an adverbial meaning of "in an X way".

Some uninodal nominals also exist, which can be either positive or negative. Positive uninodals are typically highly abstract adjectives that do not have a clear meaning for nominal equivalents by virtue of the adjective having different meanings depending on the noun it modifies, such as s–x–x "cold (of places); holy (of people and things)", as well as various determiners and nominal particles that pattern as adjectives, such as t–k "of some sort" or the nominal tense marker –m "-to-be". Negative uninodals are much rarer, consisting of a handful of nouns considered "highly animate", such as kinship terms, pronouns, deities, and a few natural phenomena (such as t–ntj "wind").