Virenese
| Virenese | |
|---|---|
| Language family | Liyuric |
| Early form(s) | Proto-Liyuric |
| Writing system | Lunar (Nuyxo) script Latin script |
| Official status | |
| Spoken in | Aylongam (Viren Islands) |
| Speaker | |
| Technical information | |
| Language code | vrn |
Virenese is the Nguhcraft name for the Liyuric language spoken on the Viren Islands. It is closely related to Xindvâ, and shares a large amount of vocabulary. Compared to Xindvâ, its phonetic inventory is much smaller, and its grammar retains more inflection than its sister, with a more agglutinative morphology, but still has analytic syntax.
Phonology
Consonants
Virenese has either 17 or 18 consonant phonemes, depending on how /j/ is analyzed:
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Dorsal | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ ⟨ng⟩ | |||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t 1 | ts ⟨c⟩ 1 | k | ʔ ⟨q⟩ |
| voiced | b | d 1 | dz ⟨z⟩ 1 | |||
| Fricative | f | s 1 | ɣ ⟨g⟩ | h | ||
| Liquid | w | l ~ ɾ ⟨l/r⟩ 2 | (j ⟨i⟩) | |||
- In some dialects, /t ts/, /d dz/ and /s/ may palatalize to /tʃ/, /dʒ/ and /ʃ/ before /i y/.
- /l ~ ɾ/ is realized as [ɾ] ⟨r⟩ intervocalically, and [l] ⟨l⟩ elsewhere.
Vowels
Virenese has a symmetrical 15 vowel system with long and short pairs, except for /ɨ/, which only occurs in unstressed syllables.
| Front | Central | Back | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | |||||||
| short | long | short | long | short | long | short | long | |
| Close | i | iː ⟨ī⟩ | y ⟨y⟩ | yː ⟨ȳ⟩ | ɨ ~ ɯ ⟨û⟩ | u | uː ⟨ū⟩ | |
| Mid | e | eː ⟨ē⟩ | ø 1 | øː ⟨ø̄⟩ 1 | o | oː ⟨ō⟩ | ||
| Open | a ~ ɐ ⟨a⟩ | aː ⟨ā⟩ | ||||||
- In most dialects, /ø(ː)/ is phonetically [ɵ(ː)]. It is transcribed this way for historical reasons and typing convenience.
Phonotactics
Maximal syllable structure in Virenese is CVC or CVV, where the onset can be any consonant, but the coda can only be a voiceless stop (excluding /ts/), nasal, or /l/. /ŋ/ never occurs word-initially, while /s/ occurs exclusively word-initally. Syllables with a long vowel or diphthong cannot have a coda. Diphthongs are not readily distinguished from two vowels in hiatus. Stress usually falls on the heaviest syllable of a word. A heavy syllable is one with a long vowel or coda. If two or more syllables are equally heavy, the first of these usually takes the stress. There are some exceptions, such as umē /ˈu.meː/.
Grammar
Virenese preserves much of the verbal inflection that has been lost in Xindvâ. Each affix can stack upon others to produce complex inflections, such as putimuseragȳfe “if it had not been being eaten”, though words like these are rare.
Much like Xindvâ, Virenese uses verb-subject-object (VSO) word order.