Turisan languages

Turisan
Proto-language	Proto-Turisan
Subdivisions	North Turisan
Demographics
Spoken in	Dróstsiśtsi
Spoken by	most Métdróstsiś

The Turisan languages are a family of languages in Dróstsiśtsi. Most languages in the family are characterized by somewhat simple phonologies with variants of a five or six vowel system and relatively analytic grammar.

Structure

The historic ancestor of all Turisan languages is today known as Proto-Turisan, and was spoken likely in modern Ruxese or southern Cumocalu provinces. The date range is not widely agreed upon, but the most prominent suggestion puts the family as diverging about 2000 years ago.

The only universally agreed upon branch is North Turisan, characterized by a vowel shift and general final vowel loss; "South Turisan" is used to categorize all non-North Turisan languages, but it is disputed whether this also forms a clade or is simply a paraphyletic grouping of all non-North Turisan languages.

Characteristics

Turisan languages are generally analytic, with small to medium sized vowel and consonant inventories. Affixes commonly occur but do not affect the words they attach to, and are often limited to clitics.

Members

The family has three main members: Tosï, Turis, and Kośtsiśtsi. All three use either the logographic Kośtsiźda script or a syllabic variation of it. They are all also official languages of Dróstsiśtsi. A number of other smaller languages exist in Dróstsiśtsi.

North Turisan

Kośtsiśtsi

main article: Kośtsiśtsi

This is the most prominent Turisan language in Dróstsiśtsi and contributed the country's name. However, it is also the most divergent, abandoning the simple phonology and analytic grammar of its relatives and developing a complex phonology and polysynthetic grammar by extensive vowel dropping, cluster reduction, and grammaticalization of helper words.

Turis

Turis is spoken roughly in Sunflower Island. With Kośtsiśtsi, it forms the "northern branch".

	labial	alveolar	palatal	dorsal
nasal	m	n	ni [ɲ]	g [ŋ]
stop	p (b)	t (d)	ci [tʃ], di [dʒ]	c [k], (g)
fricative	f, (v)	s, (z)	si [ʃ], (zi)
lateral		l	li [ʎ]
approximant	u [w]	r	i [j]

Obstruents are voiceless in initial position and voiced in medial position; in final position voicing is phonemic and indicates various grammatical markings, although is not written. The nominative case and non-past tenses are voiceless while the oblique case and past tense have voiced final obstruents. For sonorants there is no alternation. The oblique case and past tense are -[d], the future tense is [t], and the nominative and present forms are [Ø].

	front	central	back
closed	i	y	u
open	e	a	o

Vowels are written the same as IPA.

Words typically have a disyllabic CV(C)CVC structure, resulting from apocope of proto-Turisan final vowels still reflected in South Turisan. Affixes are non-existent; plurals are indicated via reduplication, and almost all of the affixes of Kośtsiśtsi correspond to separate helper words or clitic in Turis.

Sks

Sks [sks] is a North Turisan language of central Cumocalu province. Words in this language are typically three sounds long. The phonology is considered the most divergent of all Turisan languages, with unique vowels, vowel nasalization, and frequent syllabic continuants; it is also the only Turisan language to feature phonemic consonants further back than than velar, and one of two to have them allophonically alongside Kośtsiśtsi. It is believed these derive from consonants and vowels in North Turisan merging, along with the general tendency towards vowel deletion in North Turisan extending to include all vowels. Consonants:

	labial	alveolar	palatal	velar	uvular
stop	p b	t d		k g	q ɢ
fricative	f	s z	ʃ ʒ
trill	pʙ̥	r
lateral		l	ʎ	ɫ	ʟ̱

Vowels:

	front	front round	back	back round
high	i ĩ i̥	y ỹ y̥	ɨ ɨ̃ ɨ̥	u ũ u̥
low		ɵ	a	o õ o̥

The vowels are sometimes all considered to be syllabic consonants, supported by their diachronic origin where they all correspond to different CV syllables in proto-Turisan. The corresponding consonants are as shown below:

	front	front round	back	back round
high	j ɲ ç	ɥ ɲʷ çʷ	ɰ ŋ x	w ŋʷ xʷ
low		v	Ø	ʁ ɴ χ

Tōnisūkasi

Tōnisūkasi [tə̄ɲɯsɨ̄kaʃi] is spoken in western Ruxese Province, but has become a minority language there due to the influence of languages like Tosï.

Proto-Turisan

This is the hypothetical ancestor of the Turisan languages.

Phonology

		Labial	Alveolar	Dorsal
Nasal		m	n
Plosive	Voiceless	p	t	k
	Voiced	b	d	g
Fricative	Voiceless	f	s	x
	Voiced	v	z	ɣ
Approximant			l
Trill			r

	front	back
closed	i i:	u u:
mid	e e:	o o:
open	a a:

The ten vowel model is based on Tōnisūkasi, with the six vowels of Turis and Kośtsiśtsi reflecting a shift in proto-North-Turisan.

North Turisan vowel shift
Proto-Turisan	Proto-North-Turisan
a	a
a:	ɔ
e	a
e:	e
i	e
i:	i
o	ɔ
o:	o
u	o
u:	u

Based on this shift and occasional lax distinctions in some languages, it is believed that proto-Turisan long and short vowels may have been phonetically tense and lax respectively.

Syllables were CV only, with words typically being di- or trisyllabic. Stress fell on the second to last syllable, preserved fully in Tōnisūkasi. Turis and Kośtsiśtsi reflect this, with one or both of the other vowels in the word being deleted.

Grammar is believed to have been exclusively analytic, since the grammar categories indicated are often only the simplest, and limited to suffixation. Gender was not present, and is currently not found in any Turisan language except Tosï.

Tosï

Tosï is a language in southern Dróstsiśtsi, near Tōnisūkasi. Historically it was the primary language of the CMCic Federation, and had significant contact with Amuj-Shudrowan languages and Pisco-Imerchali Languages.

Its grammar is somewhat analytic, but with a few affixes, similar to Turisan languages; however, Tosï has grammatical gender, not found in any Turisan languages, but found in both the Amuj-Shudrowan and Pisco-Imerchali families. It has a relatively simple phonology, and stress typically falls on the middle syllable. There are many Turisan cognates in the lexical field, as well as many of the affixes having possible cognates in other Turisan languages. Originally, it was not considered a member of the Turisan family, but today it is generally considered a South Turisan language.

The main shift from Proto-Turisan is believed to shift of stress to long vowels and the centralization of short vowels in words with long vowels.