As mentioned, this will be an isolating language, so there is not much in ways of morphophonology that can be enabled by clever phonological things, but some sandhi-like processes still could be interesting.
I want to avoid the standard Chinese-like sound that one would expect from a conlang, and even avoid tones. However, a detail that I want to incorporate is having bisyllabic verbs have high pitch accent on the first syllable when perfective or inchoative, and low pitch accent on the second syllable when habitual. This would not be recognized in most prescriptive grammars of the language, though.
The language has a congruence-like thing with topics and subjects, where sometimes, a pronoun may appear after the verb:
Now, a special quirk is, if the topic is a postpositional phrase with a pronoun, the preposition may be left alone at the onset of the sentence, and the pronoun appears in the congruence position:
This also prompts a discussion of the pronominal system of the language. The pronouns come in two forms: emphasized and subdued. These are basically results of stress-related sound changes - the subdued forms are strongly reduced: talokt (we, masculine), teu (we, masculine), reɣin (those), ran (those).
The post-verbal topic/subject congruence spot invariably has the reduced form. When appearing as a subject, a topic or fronted focus, a pronoun always is in the emphasized form, otherwise it mostly appears as a subdued form. If confusion as to whether a pronoun is coreferential with the topic or not, the emphasized form is preferred.
I want to avoid the standard Chinese-like sound that one would expect from a conlang, and even avoid tones. However, a detail that I want to incorporate is having bisyllabic verbs have high pitch accent on the first syllable when perfective or inchoative, and low pitch accent on the second syllable when habitual. This would not be recognized in most prescriptive grammars of the language, though.
The language has a congruence-like thing with topics and subjects, where sometimes, a pronoun may appear after the verb:
TOPIC1 (SUBJECT2) VERB PRONOUN1 (OBJECT3)The subject often is the topic, but only in those cases will the pronoun agree with the subject in some manner. The manner of congruence is often noun-class based (but at times, the doubling pronoun may be a demonstrative that does not distinguish the same amount of noun-classes).
Now, a special quirk is, if the topic is a postpositional phrase with a pronoun, the preposition may be left alone at the onset of the sentence, and the pronoun appears in the congruence position:
GAP1 POSTPOS (SUBJECT2) VERB PRONOUN1 (OBJECT3)In sentences with no verbs, the location of the congruence pronoun is less obvious, but statistically it appears somewhat more often in such sentences than in sentences with a verb.
This also prompts a discussion of the pronominal system of the language. The pronouns come in two forms: emphasized and subdued. These are basically results of stress-related sound changes - the subdued forms are strongly reduced: talokt (we, masculine), teu (we, masculine), reɣin (those), ran (those).
The post-verbal topic/subject congruence spot invariably has the reduced form. When appearing as a subject, a topic or fronted focus, a pronoun always is in the emphasized form, otherwise it mostly appears as a subdued form. If confusion as to whether a pronoun is coreferential with the topic or not, the emphasized form is preferred.
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