Introduction

Ravna is the native langauge of Ravino people, a tribe in Woodsland. It is also used as a lingua franca among neighbour tribes.

Phonology

Phonemes

Consonants

Ravna consists of 22 standard consonants.

• /t/, /d/, and /c/ are aspirated [tʰ], [dʰ], [cʰ] in Ravin dialect, but unaspirated elsewhere
• /x/ can be realized as [χ] in some dialects
• [ç] is realization of /h/ at coda, which can be realized as [ʂ] in some rare dialects or by non-native speakers
• /s/ and /z/ is realized as [ʂ] and [ʐ] in Ravin dialect, but not others
• Some dialects don't have phoneme /ʔ/
• In modern Ravna dialect that Ravin people speak, /l/ and /r/ are merged to [ɺ]
• /r/ can be either approximant [ɹ], tap [ɾ], or trill [r] in other dialects

Vowels

Ravna consists of 9 vowels.

• /ə/ occurs as unstressed /e/
• /ɨ/ occurs as unstressed /i/, which disappears when possible
• /a/ and /o/ have umlauts /ɛ/ and /u/ respectively.
• In verb conjugation ending, /e/ is realized as [ɛ] instead of [ə]. Similarly, /i/ is realized as [i] instead of [ɨ]

Umlaut

Umlauts are the vowels that are modified when forming inflected forms. These vowels are the stressed vowels of the main root, which is usually the last root.

Stress

Ravna is a stress-accent language with clear pitch accent patterns.

If the word has 3 syllables or less:

• The primary stress is on the first syllable.
• The low pitch is on the first syllable and the high pitch is on the last syllable. All other syllables have low pitches.

If the word has more than 3 syllables:

• The primary stress is on the first syllable.
• The secondary stress is on the third syllable.
• The high pitches are on the stresses, and low pitches are on other syllable.

These rules don't apply for prefixes—prefixes are never stressed. For prefixed words, stress rules apply starting from the main stem. The pitches are also reversed for these words

Another exception in compound:

• Compound with colliding vowels have the syllable with colliding vowels as primary stress, and the first syllable being secondary stress if there are more than two syllables.
• Compound with more than four syllables has the first syllable of the first root as primary stress and the first syllable of the second root as secondary stress.

Phonotactics

Syllable structure

The common syllable structure in Ravna is CV(C).

The final consonants cannot be glottal.

Other constraints

The vowel /ɨ/ can only occur where the syllable constraint forbid it to disappears. For example, Ravna is actually Ravina, but since i is unstressed, it disappears.

Final consonants are devoiced, unless there is no voiceless equivalent for the consonant. Ravna is pronounced [ˈraːfna] but Ravino is /raˈviːno/.

Glottal stop /ʔ/ also disappears when a compound/suffixed word forms with two same vowels colliding, or when a consonant is followed by a vowel.

Example:

ravi (root) /ˈraːvɨ/ + ino /ʔino/ (human, person, people) → Ravino /raˈviːno/

(not *Ravi'ino /ˈraːvɨʔino/)

Romanization

For the sake of convenience, Latin script is used to transcribe Ravna, as its orthography is not convenience for displaying on computer. It uses as few diacritics as possible for the convenience of typing, with the exception of umlaut vowels.

Notes: it is strongly preferred to use diacritics for handwritten transcription.

Writing system

Morphology

Nominal

Ravna nouns have two genders: animate and inanimate. Animate nouns usually end in vowels, while inanimate nouns often end in consonants. Proper names are obviously exceptions. Genders of the nouns also inflects on articles, numbers, verbs, and adjectives related to the noun.

There are four cases:

• nominative: used for topic and subject of the sentence.
• accusative: used for direct object of the sentence
• dative: used for indirect objects of the sentence, as well as anything after a preposition
• genitive: signifying possession.

The inflections distinguish between singular (0 or 1), paucal (2 to 10), and plural (more or unknown). In paucal and plural nouns, the first vowel is umlauted if possible.

Some demonstratives has nominal morphology.

Animate noun

Example word: ravi (root)

Inanimate nouns

Example word: nec (rock)

Pronoun

Pronouns have similar conjugations to nouns, but with slightly more irregular morphology. It also doesn't distinguish between paucal and plural (but the distinction still shows on verbs and adjectives it inflects)

Singular

ze: singular genderless third-person pronoun used to avoid inconvenience of "he/she" as well as the ambiguity of singular "they".

Plural

Note:

Prefix se- denotes humility and cho- denotes respect, so when referring to friends or younger family members or children, using se- is more common. On the other hand, only chieftains and oldest member of a tribe can use cho- to refer to self (i.e. choté), but they're rarely together to use it.

Prefix bo- is almost only used for inanimate pronouns and nouns, but can also be used for someone one really despises, like an enemy.

Adjectival

Adjectives conjugate similar to singular animate nouns and paucal inanimate nouns.

Example word: la (big, great)

Articles have adjectival morphology:

Some demonstratives also have adjectival morphology.

Verbal

Verbs conjugation are based on tense, subject, and time in day.

There are three verb tenses: past, present, and future. Aspects and mood are separately shown on adverbs, which can often be omitted. Verbs conjugate the same for present tense throughout the day.

In the following subsection, conjugations are grouped by the pronouns:

• te and mi each has its own conjugation
• vo: vo, yo and singular animate nouns
• yat: yat and singular inanimate nouns
• mite: seté, mite and chomí
• chovö: chovö and plural animate nouns
• boyät: boyät and plural inanimate nouns

When conjugate for singular subject, the first non-prefix vowel is umlauted if possible.

Infinitive

Infinitive verbs in Ravna have 3 possible endings:

• -yan: the "default" ending—as most verbs end in -yan, a new verb would also end in this.
• -vet: much fewer verbs has this ending, but all verbs having this ending are regular.
• -nis: only auxiliary verbs end in this, which are irregular, but it share some patterns with the other two endings. Time of the day also doesn't factor in how they are conjugated.

Morning

Morning is the time from sunrise to noon. A verb describing action starting in the morning is conjugated like below.

Example 1: fiyan (to live)

Example 2: karvet (to shine)

Example 3: ponis (to be able, can)

Afternoon

Example 1: fiyan (to live)

Example 2: karvet (to shine)

Night

Example 1: fiyan (to live)

Example 2: karvet (to shine)

Demonstratives

Demonstratives for person and thing have nominal morphology. So are those for place and time, but they only have dative declension. Demonstratives for manner and reason have adjectival morphology.

Derivational Morphology

Nominalizers

Adjectivizers

Verbalizers

Name

Syntax

Word order

Sentences

Sentences in Ravna are best not analyzed in terms of subjects and objects, but topic and comment. The sentence order is topic-comment-verb, which might appears as SOV or OSV if one uses subject-object model. When the comment includes both a subject and object, however, the subjects mostly comes first.

Modifiers

Modifiers (adjectives, adverbs) follow the words they modify.

Adverbials

While the rule for modifiers extends to spatial adverbial phrases, it should be noted that destination and origin are before a verb. Some examples for this rule:

Naturally, this applies for non-place destinations and sources as well. However, these words don't have to be directly before a verb

Instrumental adverbials behave just like normal adverbs:

Temporal adverbials and other adverbials, however, either follow verbs:

Exceptions

In a literary setting, especially in poetry, one can, and often breaks the rule of word order to either shift emphasis or for rhyming.

Cases

As we have learnt in Nominal morphology, there are 4 cases:

• nominative: used for topic and subject of the sentence.
• accusative: used for direct object of the sentence
• dative: used for indirect objects of the sentence, as well as anything after a preposition
• genitive: signifying possession.

Tenses

Noun phrases

Negative

Questions

Subordinate clauses

Examples