User:Mbartelsm/Muna

Typological sketch

Mostly isolating language with an active-stative fluid-S alignment and a dominant SOV word order with postpositions and preceding genitives.

Phonology

Inventory

Consonants

	Labial		Alveolar		Velar		Glottal
Plosive	p	b	t	d	k	g
Nasal		m		n
Flap / tap				ɾ
Fricative	f		s		x
Approximant		ʋ		l			h

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Phonotactics

Syllables are minimally V and maximally CrVVK

Syllable structure

Syllable
Onset	Medial	Nucleus	Coda
(C)	(r)	V (V)	(K)
Any consonant	/ɾ/	Any vowel Any diphthong	/n/ /s/ /ɾ/ /l/

• Medial /ɾ/ can only go after a voiceless consonant and reduces to [l] after a fricative.
• Coda /n/ and /s/ assimilate by place of articulation to the following consonant
• Intersyllabic /ɾ.ɾ/ are fortitioned into /r./

Stress

It has a pitch-accent system that is mostly used to differentiate verbs from non-verbs.

Open word classes

Nouns

Noun phrase

...Genitives	Noun		Case particle
	Stem	Case
		Agentive Patientive Genitive

Noun classes

The classification system can be divided into two kinds: absolute and relative. The absolute classes are defined by animacy and deal with non-person things. The relative classes are defined by social status and position and deal with people.

List of noun classes

Kind	Class	Definition
Relative	1c	Familiar: friends, family and oneself in informal settings
	1b	Friendly: coworkers, acquaintances and oneself in formal settings
	1a	Formal: people you've just met or haven't met yet and oneself in extremely formal settings
	2	Derogatory: insulting or derogatory when used for people
Absolute		Animate: animals and naturally moving things like fire, water, machines, computers
	3	Inanimate: objects which aren't supposed to move, including living things like plants
	4	Miscellaneous: abstract and invisible concepts as well as anything that doesn't fit elsewhere

Verbs

Verb phrase

...Arguments	Verb			Coverbs...
	Stem	Tense	Agreement
		Past Non-past	1a 1b 1c 2 3 4

Verbs agree with their agent (monovalent) or subject (multivalent) in noun class

Tense

There are two grammatical tenses that verbs inflect for: non-past and past

Other tenses can be expressed through serial verb constructions

Register

Register is divided in two parts, the register for the setting and the register for the addressee. The register for the setting somewhat follows this table:

Register		Speaker	Listener
Formal	Supra-formal	Generic noun (1a)	Title
	Formal	Zeroth person (1b)
	Infra-formal		Honorific (+ name)
Regular	Supra-regular	First person (1c)
	Regular		Name
Informal	Informal

The register for the addressee depends on the familiarity with them, which is reflected on the verb agreement as per their classification into the noun classes.