Emat
"Aneezh min akma eefas emtokhin emit" Here I am, as I speak words for beautyCurrent state of Emat Grammar/view Emat or Classical Dwarvish is the oldest written language of Illangar and on the same time the most important one throughout history till the modern day. It is the language the Dwarves spoken when they survived the Damat and recovered. Since this time Emat has spawned many daughter-languages, yet it remains the most prestigous literary language of the world.
History
The so called Golden Age of Dwarves, marks the heyday of Emat. The Classical Emat language was spoken approximately until the sixth century of the dwarven calendar. After this time it began to splitter in many regional dialects. At around the mid of the so called First Age of Humanity, approximately around the 16th century, Emat had split into a small language family. These vernaculars continued to be used from thereon. To mark the different stages of Emat the terms Classical, Common and Post-Emat are used. The vernacular daughter languages of Emat, didn't originally had any written standard, besides the classical language. In the current era, the 34th century, due to political reasons, some dwarven states have adopted written standards for the vernacular daughter languages. Their prestige is however somewhat hampered. Only in the more overtly nationalistic Dwarven Empire, the vernacular is considered to be on the same level as the literary Emat language. The question for the earliest forms of Emat is however more contentious. Dwarven history starts with the great convent and the standardisation of Emat writing. Before that many, at parts opposing orthographies were used. Following the translation, many early texts were rewritten in the new standard. Thus one can infer the last two centuries, before the standardisation of Emat easily. Older texts date around till the 6th century before standardisation. The oldest text, assumed to be written in Emat and allegedly to predate the Damat are the Thirty Rituals. They are written in a very archaic form of Emat. According to Noritë the rituals were originally written in another unknown language and translated into Emat shortly after the Damat.Classical and Common Emat
The language is mostly refered to by two names, Classical and Common Emat. The difference is small, but important. Classical Emat denotes the language as it was actually spoken by native speakers during the golden age of dwarves. It is essentially the source from which many more languages spawned over centuries. On the same time is the term Classical Emat used to denote the oldest stage of the language as there are no remnant of it from before the Damat. There are no attested languages related to Classical Emat and it would be considered an isolate, a strange bottleneck created by the near extinction of the dwarven species. A hypothetical stage of Proto-Emat can only be reconstructed, but is not attested and can only be based on internal reconstruction of Classical Emat. Common Emat or Common Dwarvish is another stage of the language. Classical Emat is defined as literary, but especially spoken language by native speakers. Common Emat does not have native speakers. It is both spoken and written by speakers of different languages. Among dwarves the transition between Common Emat and Post-Emat is fluid. The term Post-Emat refers to the stage during which Emat evolved into its daughter languages: Eyme, Muldžes, iDoore and many others. These are refered to as Post-Emat. The differences are fluid as this kind of Common Emat resembles the transitional varieties and is cross-influenced by its own daughter languages, which are in return influenced by the classical standard. However Emat is not only used by dwarves, but also to a large part by Humans. It can be subsumed that dwarves taught humans the arts of civilisation, at least civilisation as they saw it. Humans, called Talëmi "Wanderers" were nomads, who were taught agriculture, trade and especially the written word by dwarves. Emat became the main literary language for many human realms too. This Emat, albeit different from the dwarvish variants, is also called Common Emat. A very peculiar development is that many humans adopted Emat to such a degree that it began replacing their own languages. In this Common Emat also spawned daughter-varieties which were very much creoles with human languages. To make things even more complicated. Emat in all its variations (yet not its daughter-languages) is called Takas Emat "Classical/Prestigeous Language", without further specifying what stage of the language is meant.Phonology
Front | Central | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
High | i i: (i, ii) | o u: (o, oo) | |
Mid | ə (ë) | ||
Low | ɛ e: (e, ee) | a a: (a, aa) |
Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Velar | Uvular | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Plain stops | p (p) | t̪ (t) | t (d) | k (k) | q (q) |
Affricised stops | pʰ (ph) | t̪͡s (z) | t͡ʃ (zh) | kʰ (kh) | qʰ (qh) |
Nasal | m | n̪ (n) | ɲ (ny) | ||
Fricatives | f (f) | s (s) | ʃ (sh) | ||
Laterals | ɬ (l) | ||||
Trills | r (r) | ||||
Approximants | j (j) | ɰ (y) |
Morphology
Emat is a synthetic language. The morphological structure is heavily mixed and employs suffixes, prefixes, infixes and in some regards transfixes. It is therefore best to describe its morphology as somewhat templatic. In this structure we assign 12 positions to possible morphological components of one morphonological word. This 12-position structure is on the same our definition of a word in Emat. Our first measure is to contradict this however, as the very first position can be filled by a proclitic, of either a preposition, a modal or a pronoun. Our morphological word therefore has strictly 11 position plus 1.Position | Type | Function |
---|---|---|
1 | Proclitic | Preposition and possessive clitic |
2 | Prefix | Temporal or conditional marker |
3 | Prefix | Aspectual marker |
4 | Radical | First Root |
5 | Infix | Aspectual marker |
6 | Infix | Instrumental or causative marker |
7 | Radical | Second Root |
8 | Infix | Person, number and focus marker |
9 | Radical | Third Root |
10 | Suffix | Person, number and focus marker |
11 | Suffix | Inchoative, iterative and desiderative markers |
12 | Suffix | Case marker |
Nominal Morphology
Despite the problem described so far, concerning classification of nouns and verbs, this section is for the sake of convention called "nominal morphology". It deals with number, case, aswell as prepositions and pronouns.Case
There are four cases in Emat. Two syntactic cases and two adjunctive cases. There are the Zero-Case (Absolutive or Nominative), the Focus Case (Directive, Accusative, Ergative...), the Locative and the Sociative.Focus and Non-Focus
The most important syntactical distinction in Emat is the verbal focus. The chooses two main arguments, one marked zero and the other marked by the focus case. The interpretation of these depends on the verbal focus itself. This Focus Case should not be treated identical to a pragmatic focus, yet there is some overlap, aswell as to topic marking. Take for example the accusative-focus of the verb komat "to see" and the noun etak "house". If the verb is accusative-focus, the focus marks the direct object of the verb. Thus etakin komat "to see a house". If the verb is in the dative-focus, the Focus Case marks the indirect object, take the verb manak "to give" and the noun lenëk "friend", thus mi'Lenëkin manekti "I give it to my friend". The interpretation of the Focus Case, but also the Zero-Case differs depending on the verb.Dictionary
Name
Takas Emat
Spoken by
Dwarves and other species
Spoken in
Throughout Illangar
Official language in
Dwarven states
Daulerim Empire (co-official with Daulerim)
Other human realms
Number of Speakers
Native: few
Second language: several million
Language Family
Ematic (Dwarvish)
Writing System
Emat Syllabary
Takas Emat
Spoken by
Dwarves and other species
Spoken in
Throughout Illangar
Official language in
Dwarven states
Daulerim Empire (co-official with Daulerim)
Other human realms
Number of Speakers
Native: few
Second language: several million
Language Family
Ematic (Dwarvish)
Writing System
Emat Syllabary
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