Late Imperial Jurai

Jurai was the language of the humans of Aiu, who went on to found the interstellar Ma'ur Imperium. The Ma'ur spread the human species across the galaxy and incorporated many other species into their civilization. Humans remained the dominant species, however, retaining a disproportionate share of the economy and levers to power. Non-humans had a harder time getting into schools and were less likely to learn Jurai to any advanced level. This led to a two tiered society in which the educated elite spoke Jurai while the the underclass generally spoke a creole of the various languages historically spoken by their species. Generally the low level managers, responsible for giving direct orders to the working class were drawn from the small pool of the educated poor. These Ma'ur were bilingual and could mediate instructions down to the rank-and-file workers.
After the Fall, Jurai largely disappeared. However, scholars studying the ancient Ma'ur commonly develop the ability to read the language. One world, Arketor(location:0c903db5-43ef-410f-be39-cb9e14f4703c), somehow retained Jurai as the dominant language, and now the @[Aggosian Empire speaks a daughter language of Jurai, Aggosian.

Phonology

Jurai had a standard five vowel inventory: i, e, u, o, a
Jurai had the following consonant inventory:

p		t		k	'
b		d		g
	th	s	x		h
	dh	z	j
m		n		ng
		r
		l
w			y	(w)

Geminate consonants are meaningful but geminate vowels are not. Stress is not phonemic.

Morphology

Inflectional Morphology

Cases: Jurai has eleven cases marked on noun phrases by postpositional clitics. The cases are ergative, absolutive, dative, inessive, allative, ablative, genetive, instrumental, comitative, benefactive, and causative. They are marked by the following clitics:

• Absolutive.singular: [zeromorph]
• Absolutive.plural: ri
• Ergative.plural: (u)t (the "u" phoneme is epenthesized when the NP ends in consonant that cannot form a cluster with "t")
• Ergative.plural: ot
• Dative.singular: er
• Dative.plural: or
• Inessive.singular: ingan
• Inessive.plural: ingangan
• Allative.singular: ton
• Allative.singular: onoton
• Ablative.singular: ranon
• Ablative.singular: inranon
• Genetive.singular: onti
• Genetive.plural: onanti
• Instrumental.singular: kit
• Instrumental.plural:okit
• Comitative.singular: hansi
• Comitative.plural: hansini
• Benefactive.singular: tisor
• Benefactive.plural: tiyasor
• Causative.singular: gora
• Causative.plural:ogora

TAM Markers: Tense, aspect, and mood are marked by a prefix on the auxiliary verb.

• Present.activeparticiple: do-
• Present.passiveparticiple: re-
• Past.activeparticiple: da-
• Past.passiveparticiple: ra-
• Future.activevparticiple: dio-
• Future.passiveparticiple: rio-
• Present.tense: [zeromorph]
• Past.tense: a-
• Future.tense: yo-

Direct Object inflection on Auxiliary Verb: A direct object morpheme is suffixed onto the auxiliary verb. In the case of a ditransitive verb, the auxiliary verb is only inflected for one of the direct objects.

• 1.sg: -o-
• 1.pl: -on-
• 2.sg: -i-
• 2.pl: -id
• 3.sg: -a-
• 3.pl: -ang-

Subject Agreement on Auxiliary Verb: Subjects are marked by a suffix on the auxiliary verb. This marker comes after the direct object morpheme.

• 1.sg: -(e)s
• 1.pl: -(e)sa
• 2.sg: -yo
• 2.pl: -yora
• 3.sg: -(e)n
• 3.pl: -(e)nari

Derivational Morphology

Negation/inversion: ha- (always prefixed to the root before any other affixes are added) Person.who: -ku (suffixed to a verb to form a noun) Place: -da (suffixed onto some words to mean "place of" e.g. anda "place of An"

Syntax

The unmarked argument/verb order is SOV; however the use of case marking allows free word order. The word before the verb is generally considered the topic.
An auxiliary verb always precedes the verb. This auxiliary verb both shows the TAM marker and is inflected to agree with the direct object and subject.

Dictionary

17 Words.