Möxali

Möxale is the primary language of the Lavondu people of T'ugü, and a lingua franca throughout surrounding coastal regions of Fountainhead, particularly those connected to T'ugü by maritime trade. Möxale emerged as a mixed language in bilingual communities of Xiyeru in T'ugü following the Xiyeru Exodus.

Phonology
Möxale is most commonly spoken as a second language, by many peoples over a wide area throughout its long history, so there is much variation in the phonology. There are, however, some patterns and general tendencies common to all speakers or particular subgroups. In order to view Möxale as a whole, its phonology is discussed here using the romanisation of its core phonemic inventory, which is common to almost all varieties of the language. Each phoneme can be understood as representing a diaphoneme, an abstracted phonological unit with an analogous phoneme in each variety of Möxale which may have different phonetic realisations depending on the dialect or historical stage. Particular phonetic varieties are also given in square brackets where relevant.

Front-back allophones
Some consonants have a pair of major allophones determined by the presence of a front (ä ö e i) or back (a o u) vowel in the host syllable. These allophonic pairs or some variants of them are present in the vast majority of speakers, particularly those who speak Möxale as a first language or are in regular contact with those who do. The typical phonetic values of these allophonic pairs are shown below:

Vowels
The vowels (a e i o u) are most typically realised as [ɑ e i ɔ o], though Öb tend to realise e u as [ɪ ʊ]. The vowels ä ö can vary in height quite freely between [e̞ ø] and [æ œ] depending on speaker and phonological environment, but the height hierarchy ä < ö < e is usually maintained. Adjacent vowels at the phonemic level are always separated by a non-phonemic glottal stop [ʔ], which is not represented in the native script but romanised as ⟨’⟩ within words.

Phonotactics
Möxale's syllable structure is (OR/C)V(D), where O is an obstruent (p t c k b d f s x v z j), R is an approximant (v l y) with a different place of articulation to O, C is any consonant, V is any vowel (ä ö e i a o u), and D may be any consonant except y (p t c k b d f s x h v z j l). Later Möxale dialects developed a further restriction on coda consonants which meant plosives were no longer allowed, described in more detail in the Morphophonology section below. Coda n nasalises the preceding vowel and, if there is a following consonant, manifests as a nasal stop which phonetically assimilates to the place of articulation of that consonant. since v patterns both as a fricative and an approximant in the context of syllable structure, it is the only consonant that can occur as a single onset, be either consonant in an onset cluster or be a syllable coda. The allowed syllable onsets are shown in the table below. Those shown in red are merged, single-consonant forms that surface when forbidden clusters are forced together. For example, |-h-y-| surfaces as - x -.

Morphophonology
It is useful to analyse the structure of Möxale as having an underspecified morphophonemic level, with phonotactic constraints and other regular processes yielding the phonemic level. Morphophonemic forms are shown in |vertical bars|. There are four important phenomena; soft morphemes, inversion, vowel elision, and coda neutralisation.

Soft morphemes
Soft morphemes carry a special property which triggers regular internal sandhi processes on its initial phonological segment. This can be any vowel or one of a limited set of consonants which are underspecified and subject to a voicing rule which then yields the surface level phoneme. Soft morphemes with an initial vowel (V₂) avoid placing that vowel adjacent to a previous vowel (V₁) by a process determined by the qualities of the two vowels. The pairs of vowels (ä ö), (o u) and (e i) are labelled Ä, O and E respectively and follow a height hierarchy a < Ä < O < E. If V₁ is higher on this hierarchy than V₂, either y or v is inserted between the vowels, else the two vowels merge. Note that the height hierarchy of the vowel pairs does not necessarily coincide with the relative heights of individual vowels, thus u-o and i-e do not yield *uvo and *iye, but u and i respectively. A table of all possible combinations of vowels V₁-V₂ is shown below: The vowels in brackets are subject to regular elision as described in the next section. Note that these processes apply only to the initial segment, thus soft morphemes are free to express the full range of Möxale’s phonology elsewhere within the morpheme, e.g. |naäm| manifests as na’än, not *nän.

Hard morphemes are those morphemes that do not undergo these processes when preceded by a vowel, either retaining their intrinsic onset consonant unchanged, or by inserting an epenthetic glottal stop before an initial vowel. Vowel-initial hard morphemes may be analysed as having an underlying glottal stop which only arises following vowels:


 * ʼañon| → añon (lid)
 * xu-ʼañon| → xuʼañon (ᴘʟ-lid)

Inversion
Inversion is an ablaut process which acts on both vowels in a disyllabic stem. It developed out of an archaic stress rule in Xiri which is no longer active in Möxale, and through analogy has become a regular process triggered by certain suffixes. Vowels e i u in the first syllable are lowered to ä e o, and vowels ä e o ö in the second syllable are raised to e i u i. For example, consider the noun stem |Fedo| (clothing):


 * Fedo-∅| → fedo (clothing-ᴀʙꜱ)
 * Fedo\⇵-yo| → fäduyo (clothing-ᴀᴄᴄ)

Inversion is only triggered by a small handful of suffixes, even within a grammatical paradigm only some suffixes may trigger inversion while others do not:


 * Fedo-en| → fedin (clothing-ᴇʀɢ)

An inverted stem can never be uninverted by some other morphological process. In compounds of two stems, the first stem is inverted:


 * |cilom\⇵-yuväk| → celuñuväh (bloodfish)

When a polysyllabic word is formed by attaching morphemes to the front of the base stem in this way, the stem itself still undergoes inversion in its inflection:


 * cilom\⇵-yuväk-∅| → celuñuväh (bloodfish-ᴀʙꜱ)
 * cilom\⇵-yuväk\⇵-ä| → celuñovehä (bloodfish-ᴀᴄᴄ)

Exactly what constitutes the Möxale stem is difficult to rigidly define, some polymorphemic structures count as stems while others do not, but stems are always disyllabic. For example, the additive numerals are special forms of the basic numeral roots which were formed in Alöbi with the addition of a suffix -ö. In Möxale, the additive numerals exist only in compounds and are considered disyllabic stems, so are always inverted:


 * |uj-, vib-, nif-, bix-| → uj-, vib-, nif-, bix- (one, two, three, four)
 * |ujö\⇵-kvöj-, vibö\⇵-kvöj-, nifö\⇵-kvöj-, bixö\⇵-kvöj-| → ojikvöj-, vebikvöj-, nefikvöj-, bexikvöj- (51, 52, 53, 54)

Vowel elision
Stressed vowels may never be elided, but there are several circumstances which trigger the regular elision of unstressed vowels. One such circumstance is in the consonant epenthesis of vowel-initial soft morphemes described above:


 * su-aze| → *s(o)ˈvaze → ˈsvaze

This elision is blocked by an approximant in the syllable onset:


 * |kyo-aze| → *ky(o)ˈvaze → kyoˈvaze

If the approximant has the same place of articulation as that preceding onset, it too is elided:

Some morphemes, particularly short inflectional affixes, have two allomorphs, one with a or ä and one where the vowel is elided. These vowels are shown in square brackets in the underlying morphophonemic notation. The presence of the vowel depends on its morphophonological environment and functions as epenthesis wherever phonotactically required. For example, consider the active voice prefix |F[a]-|:
 * eji-aze| → *ij(e)ˈyaze → *eˈj(y)aze → eˈjaze (Note also the inversion of the initial stem ije- → eji-)


 * When affixed to vowel or approximant-initial stem, the [a] is not necessary and so is not present:
 * F[a]-u-ha| → fuha (ᴀᴠ-eat-ᴘꜰᴠ)
 * F[a]-la-ha| → flaha (ᴀᴠ-cook-ᴘꜰᴠ)
 * When affixed to other stems, the [a] is required to break up the fC- onset cluster:
 * F[a]-mum-ha| → famunha (ᴀᴠ-fill-ᴘꜰᴠ)
 * |F[a]-Ti-ha| → fadiha (ᴀᴠ-bite-ᴘꜰᴠ)

Coda neutralisation
The underlying structure of a morpheme allows a final stop which is altered if it arises as a syllable coda at the phonemic level, i.e. if there is no following syllable in which the consonant can act as the onset. This applies to both hard and soft morphemes and occurs across word boundaries. Nasals neutralise into assimilatory coda n:


 * cipäm-∅| → cipän (needle-ᴀʙꜱ)
 * cipäm-en| → cipämen (needle-ᴇʀɢ)
 * cipäm\⇵-yo| → cepeño (needle\ɪɴᴠ-ᴀᴄᴄ)

While Möxale initially allowed coda plosives, the later and more widespread outer dialects did not. In these dialects, plosives undergo spirantisation when they fall in coda position, in which they mutate to the corresponding fricative with the same voicedness and place of articulation: p t c k b d → f s x h v z. This results in inflectional alternation like the following:


 * limok-∅| → limoh (bee-ᴀʙꜱ)


 * |limok-en| → limoken (bee-ᴇʀɢ)

Despite this spirantisation rule being present in the most commonly spoken forms of Möxale throughout history, the native orthography tends to favour more conservative spelling in formal contexts, e.g. ⟨LI-MO-KA⟩ for limoh. For consistency and clarity, romanisation of Möxale will generally use conservative spelling unless otherwise stated, i.e. limok not limoh.
 * limok\⇵-ä| → lemukä (bee-ᴀᴄᴄ)

Dialects
The history of Möxale features two major dialect groups, Inner and Outer Möxale, which each have unique features and geographic distributions.

Inner Möxale
Inner Möxale was spoken primarily as the first language of the Lavondu in T'ugü, thus its evolution was shaped by continued contact with Alöbi. It was generally the most conservative dialect, featuring comparatively little change from the earliest attested Möxale c. 8th century AGS. This conservatism partly stems from the origins of Inner Möxale as a register of the early spoken language, which may have originated from a deliberate effort by the Lavondu to preserve a more "authentic" manner of speech. The early evolution of the speech patterns and vocabulary of this register were primarily guided by historical texts, resulting in many unique features produced by a what was essentially feedback loop. Newly written texts aiming to emulate the styles of older texts often introduced new quirks which informed the speech of later speakers.

The orthographic tendencies of all variants of Möxale are continuations of earlier forms of the language, meaning they most closely resemble the conservative dialect. Despite this association, Inner Möxale should not be confused with a literary language, of which there was no clear standard for most of Möxale's history.

The most characteristic feature of Inner Möxale phonology is the retention of coda plosives, which are not present in the outer dialects. The other unique features are mostly superficial differences in the pronunciation of certain phonemes:


 * the labial fricatives (f v) are bilabial [ɸ β], rather than labiodental [f v]
 * j is typically pronounced as an affricate [dʒ~dʑ], rather than a fricative [ʒ~ʑ]
 * the vowels (e ö u) are realised as [ɪ œ ʊ], rather than close-mid [e ø o]

The front/back consonant allophones described above were present in first language speakers, but less so in second language speakers, i.e. Öb who spoke Alöbi as a first language. In Öb-style Inner Möxale, the coronal obstruents (t d s z c x j) were [t̪ d̪ θ ð tʃ ʃ (d)ʒ] in all environments, never the allophones [t̪ˢ d̪ᶻ s̪ z̪ tɕ ɕ (d)ʑ] which were present next to front vowels for most other speakers.

Outer Möxale
Outer Möxale was a collection of dialects which were spread throughout the coast of Fountainhead beginning around 900 AGS. There was more variation in the outer dialects than in Inner Möxale, but there still existed many common features which distinguished them as a related group. Outer Möxale was spoken as a first language by some Lavondu colonies along Fountainhead's coast, but most commonly as a second language by many other cultures, including but not limited to: the Xiyeru, Ansang peoples, and speakers of Nambāno dialects.

Whereas Inner Möxale adopted many unique monomorphemic verb stems from Alöbi, the outer dialects used far fewer, instead tending to innovate new stems more readily.

All outer dialects exhibit the coda spirantisation rule described in the morphophonology section above, leaving no coda plosives at the phonemic level and inflectional alternation between fricatives and plosives in many words. For example, compare the inflectional set taneh/taneken/taniko "knife" (with underlying |k| to ineh/inehen/enixo "finger" (with underlying |h|). The consonants (f v) are almost always labiodental [f v] in the outer dialects, but /v/ was always a bilabial approximant [β̞] when acting as the medial approximant in a syllable onset cluster. The dental consonants (n t d s z l) are often alveolar [n t d s z l] rather than true dental [n̪ t̪ d̪ s̪~θ z̪~ð l̪], or in some regions these are in free variation.

Another common feature of Outer Möxale is the rhotacism of d to [ɾ~r] when following a vowel, i.e. between vowels and in coda position. Intervocalic /d/ [ɾ] may have been a retention of an original feature of Möxale, as Xiri's [ɾ] (the intervocalic allophone of /r/) became Möxale /d/, and may have continued to be [ɾ] in the earliest stage of the language. This rhotacism generally does not represent a phonemic change, though some dialects later developed a distinction between /r/ and /d/, and [ɾ~r] is sometimes written with a different letter even in those dialects that did not.

Written language used conservative spelling in formal and culturally important texts, perhaps due to the cultural influence of Inner Möxale or just a continuation of older tradition, while more everyday writing frequently featured unique spellings which more accurately represented dialectal forms.

Grammar
Möxale is an agglutinative language, in which words are formed by attaching several classes of affixes to disyllabic word stems. Transitive verbs, statives and numerals have their stems derived from monosyllabic roots with some classificatory suffix attached, while noun stems are disyllabic morphemes which cannot be broken down.

Transitive verbs take inflectional affixes for mood, voice and aspect but are not inflected for person, number or tense. Tense is generally denoted by temporal adjuncts or understood from context. The person of the subject may optionally be marked with a prefix to refer back to a previously established subject, but this is not strictly part of the verb's inflection. Stative verbs take a single inflectional suffix for the grammatical number of their subject.

Möxale's morphosyntactic alignment has characteristics of ergativity and its transitive verbs use a system of symmetrical voice to mark the syntactic role of the subject of the verb. Nouns are marked for absolutive, ergative and accusative case and have additional optional number marking.