wiki/Asteron/Mosici.md

#language

Sounds ⁊ Letters

Phonology and phonotactics

Mosici has the following phonemes:

	Labials	Coronals	Palatals	Dorsals
Nasals	m	n
Stops	p	t		k
Fricatives	f v	s z	ɕ ʑ	ʀ
Approximants	w		j	ʟ

	Front	Back
Close	i y	u
Close-Mid	e ø	o
Open-Mid	ɛ	ɔ
Open	a
Vowels can also all be long, nasalised, or both.
There are also the following allophony rules:

• Plosives are realised as voiced next to voiced fricatives and approximants.
• Plosives are realised as non-sibilant fricatives at the end of words
• For the dorsal plosive and approximant:
  • They are realised as palata before /i y e j/ or their long and/or nasalised variants
  • They are realised as uvular before /u o w/ or their long and/or nasalised variants
  • They are realised as palatal after /i e j/ or their long and/or nasalised variants
  • Otherwise they are realised as velar
• The dorsal approximant /ʟ/ is realised as [ẅ] in coda position
• The dorsal approximant /ʀ/ is realised as [ɐ̯] in coda position
• The dorsal fricative /ʀ/ is realised as [ʁ] after consonants
• /n/ nasalises a preceding vowel
• /n/ is silent in coda positions (still nasalising tho)
• /n/ assimilates to [ɲ] after a palatal consonant as well as before /i e j/, and to [ŋ] after a velar consonant

Coalescence

Mosici doesn't allow consecutive vowels inside of words. To resolve would-be hiatuses, a coalescence process is used. This process is historic for all native words, but it still current to resolve diphthongs in loan words and is necessary to understand to read the written language, as the spelling was fixed before that sound change occurred.

The process goes thusly (before applying the allophony):

1. Group all consecutive vowels by pairs, starting at near the start of the word; ^coal-proc-1
2. Combine all pairs of vowels according to the table below (the first vowel indexes the row, and the second vowel indexes the column);
3. If any vowel is long, the resulting vowel is long;
4. Repeat from #^coal-proc-1 until all hiatus has been resolved.

	a	ɛ	ɔ	e	ø	o	i	y	u
a	ɔ	a	ɔ	ɛ	ɛ	ɔ	e	ø	o
ɛ	ɛ	i	ø	i	e	ø	i	ø	ø
ɔ	ɔ	ø	ɔ	ø	ø	o	ø	ø	o
e	ɛ	i	ø	i	e	ø	i	ø	ø
ø	ø	e	ø	e	y	ø	y	y	y
o	ɔ	ø	o	ø	ø	u	ø	ø	u
i	ja	jɛ	jɔ	je	jø	jo	ji	jy	ju
y	ø	ø	ø	ø	y	ø	i	y	y
u	wa	wɛ	wɔ	we	wø	wo	wi	y	u

The Nahan Script

Mosici is written in the nahan alphabet (also named the Polia(h)r alphabet), which has the follwoing letters, digraphs and diacritics. The diacritic on the vowels is called the sitrapaóha [ɕdʁapɔː] (plural sitrapaóhaa [ɕdʁapoː])

Letter	Transliteration	Value (IPA)	Name	Name (IPA)
p	p	/p/	paí	[pe]
o	o	/o/	ós	[us]
l	l	/ʟ/	lán	[ʟɔ̃]
i	i	/e/, /j/	írne	[iɐ̯nɛ]
a	a	/a/	ánp	[ɔ̃ɸ]
h	h	/∅/1	hapfe	[apfɛ]
r	r	/ʀ/	fastesiec hapfe 2	[fasteɕɛx apfɛ]
c	c	/k/	cal	[kaẅ]
n	n	/n/	naol	[nɔẅ]
e	e	/e/	éstal	[istaẅ]
s	s	/s/	sipal	[ɕpaẅ]
z	z	/z/	fastesiec sipal	[fasteɕɛx ɕpaẅ]
f	f	/f/	fasoh	[fasoː]
v	v	/v/	fastesiec fasoh	[fasteɕex fasoː]
m	m	/m/	milá	[miʎɔ]
t	t	/t/	tecio	[tɛɟjo]

Spelling	Transliteration	Value (IPA)
ó	ó	/u/
í	í	/i/
á	á	/ɔ/
é	é	/i/
si	si	/ɕ/
zi	zi	/ʑ/
The Nahan script also uses a number of punctuation marks:

Symbols	Transcriptions	Notes
,	,	Comma, indicates a short pause in the sentence
.	.	Period, indicates the end of a sentence
( )	“ ” or [ ]	Used as quotes, as well as around numerals3
-	· or ’	Middle dot, used to separate clitics
:	: or . depending on use	Introduces lists, or indicates an abbreviation

Examples

• tráiheíns tráiheíns “fox” 〈tʀɔiːɛins〉
  • */tʀøːins/ (Coalescence 1)
  • /tʀyːns/ (Coalescence 2)
  • [dʁỹːs] (Allophony rules)
• moséceec moséceec “of the isles” 〈mosicɛɛk〉
  • /mosikik/ (Coalescence)
  • [mosiciç] (Allophony rules)
• an-nielvc an·nielvc "of Nyelaf" 〈annjɛʟvk〉
  • /anjɛʟvk/ (Particle shenanigans)
  • [ãnjɛẅɣ] (Allophony rules)

Morphology

Nouns

Number

Number is marked by a change of the last vowel of the root according to the patter in the following table. in practice the pronunciation of the plural isn't derivable from the pronunciation of the singular.

Singluar	Plurau
o	oo
ó	óo
i	ii
í	íi
a	aa
á	áa
e	ee
é	ée

Simple cases

For the main roles, there are 7 patterns: the concatenative pattern and the 6 substitutive patterns: s, z, ts, tz, cs, and cz.

	Concat	Subst s	Subst z	Subst ts	Subst tz	Subst cs	Subst cz
Topic	∅	-s	-z	-ts	-tz	-cs	-cz
Oblique	-t	-t	-t	-t	-t	-t	-t
Genitive	-c	-c	-c	-c	-c	-c	-c
Dative	-si	-si	-zi	-tsi	-tzi	-csi	-czi
Ablative	-via	-via	-via	-tvia	-tvia	-cvia	-cvia

Topic

The topic case (TOP) indicates the topic of the sentence. it is the agent of active clauses and the patient of passive clauses.

loarne aint ilálapih. loarne aint ilálapih. Loarne.TOP DEM.OBL say.PAST.`3SA Loarne said that

Compound cases

---

1. Lengthens a preceeding vowel ↩︎

2. Literally “sounded h” ↩︎

3. in shortend or informal writings as well as for dates, a middle dot either side of the numeral is used instead ↩︎