Vukhu

Vukhu
Language family	Isolate
Era	today
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Spoken in	Vuyanaa
Speaker
Endonym	Vukhu
Exonym	Vuyish
Number of speakers	1
Technical information
Language code	VUK

Phonology

Vukhu Consanants

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal		m	n	ɲ ⟨ny⟩	ŋ ⟨q⟩
Plosive	Plain	p	t	tʃ ⟨c⟩	k
	Aspirated	pʰ ⟨ph⟩	tʰ ⟨th⟩	tʃʰ ⟨ch⟩	kʰ ⟨kh⟩
	Voiced	b	d
Fricative	Plain	f	s	ʃ ⟨x⟩	x ⟨h⟩
	Voiced	v	z	ʒ ⟨j⟩	ɣ ⟨g⟩
Continuant		w	l r	j ⟨y⟩

• The phonemes /pʰ tʰ tʃʰ kʰ b d ɲ ŋ/ do not appear in syllable coda.
• Aspiration may be realized as [f] before /u/ and [ç] before /i/.
• The phonemes /v z/ are written ⟨b d⟩ when in coda position.

Vukhu Vowels

	Front		Central		Back
	Short	Long	Short	Long	Short	Long
Close	i ĩ	iː ĩː	ə ə̃	əː ə̃ː	u ũ	uː ũː
Mid	e ẽ	eː ẽː			o õ	oː õː
Open			a ã	aː ãː

• All vowels contrast in both length and nasality.
• The six vowel qualities // are written ⟨i u e ă o a⟩.
  • Length is shown by doubling the letter.
  • Nasality is shown by an ⟨n⟩ following the vowel, or an ⟨m⟩ is the coda consonant is one of ⟨p b f⟩.
• Nasality is not contrasted before the coda phonemes /m n w l r j/.
  • Vowels are always nasal before coda /m n/, and always oral before coda /w l r j/.

Grammar

All words, except for particles, can be used as a noun, adjective, adverb, or verb. It is possible to tell which part of speech a word takes by the context in which it appears.

• Noun: followed by a noun case particle.
• Adjective: followed by a noun or other adjective.
  • Note that the augmentative and diminutive particles may apply to adjectives as well as nouns, both of which they follow directly.
• Adverb: followed by a verb or adjective.
  • The only part of speech ambiguity in Nn is whether a word followed by an adjective is an adverb or another adjective.
• Verb: at the end of a clause, optionally followed by a TAM particle.

Word Order

Word order in Vukhu is extremely head-final, similar to Japanese (I think). The verb is always the final element of a clause, and most commonly is preceeded by the subject. Besides these, other noun phrases are ordered by the speaker's perception of their importance, with those determined to be more important being found later in the sentence.

Nouns

Nouns are typically single morphemes. However, compound nouns can be formed using classifiers or the genetive case.

Nouns can take a large number of cases or postpositions to create phrases, which are arranged to create sentences.

table tba

Verbs

Verbs are always found at the end of a sentence or clause. Verbs can be followed by tense, aspect, and/or mood particles These can come in any order. Here they are:

table tba

** The subjunctive mood works in strange ways. It works similarly to a gerund, except it applies to an entire clause. This means that you can add a noun case to a subjunctive clause and use it as if it were a simple noun. The same applies to the gerund, but this is less noteworthy.

The copula "i" may be dropped, as a clause without a verb is ungrammatical.

Adjectives and Adverbs

Adjectives in Vukhu are simple. They go before a noun and can be stacked in any order. An adjective can be placed before a classifier to become a compound noun.

Adverbs function similarly to adjectives. They are placed before an adjective or verb.