Update on Eastern

As I mentioned a while back, Eastern is a sister-language to Watakass=ED.=
=20
Eastern has undergone drastic phonetic changes, as well as changes to
the basic grammar.  I'm still working out some of them, but here's a
summary of Eastern

Phonology
Consonants
p    t    k
b    d    g
m    n
f    s
v    z
(pf) ts
(bv) dz
w    r  y
With voiceless allophones for /w/, /r/, and /j/.

Vowels (oral)
i     u   i       u
 e    o    e`     o`
  E @ O     e (@) o
      A           a
e` and o` are e^ and o^ when stressed
Also, two diphthongs, /ej/ and /ow/, written <ey> and <ow>

Vowels (nasal)
  e~  o~  in/e`n un/o`n
     =20
      A~  en/on/an/(@n)
n or m after a vowel and before a non-glide consonant indicate
nasalization.
All vowels after the stress are pronounced /@/ or /A~/, hence the
bracketed (@) and (@n), since, altho those are valid symbols, they can
be represented by any vowel postvocalically

Syllable constraint:
(fric)(C)(r, f, v, w, y)V(r)(C)(fric)
In consonant clusters, there is a rule of progressive voicing, with the
exception of nasals, so that akdya =3D [Aktj_0A], but aknya =3D [AknjA].=20
There are several restrictions on consonant clusters, such as *nr and
*mr.  /pf/ and /bv/ were placed in parentheses because, altho they are
homorganic clusters, they pattern the same as other cons-f/v
combinations, such as /kf/, while /ts/ and /dz/ are definitely treated
as single consonants, they can fit anywhere that (C) can fit, so that
/stsfa/ is a theoretically possible syllable.

Grammar:
Eastern is verb-second.  It has lost most of the aspects of Old W.,
preserving only the inchoative and habitual (altho inchoative tends
towards single occurance in modern Eastern).  The old aspects have been
taken over by auxillaries.  The tenses have also been lost, replaced by
auxillaries, re^ (perfect), m@pe^z (future), fre' (past), rifo'wk
(inceptive), rivo'wd (cessative), and ra'm (preparative), in the order
time-perfection/preparative-cessative/inceptive.  Preparative is roughly
equivalent to english "be going to".  Only the first auxillary takes
inflections.  Non-finite verbs tend to be found at the end of the
sentence, however, with the single exception that the inflected verb
must be second, word order is pretty free.  The verb inflects for person
by singular/plural, and also by animate/inanimate in the third person,
and inclusive/exclusive in the first.  However, 2nd person singular and
2nd person plural are homophonous in the habitual aspect.  There are
four sets of similar endings, depending on whether the verb ends in -r
with final stress, -rV with non-final stress, a vowel, or a consonant.=20
This same division occurs in nominal inflections, which inflect for
number and case.  The cases are nominative, genetive, dative,
accusative, and benefactive for sure.  In addition, I'm debating whether
to keep ablative, allative, instrumental, perlative, and exlocative (the
genetive shares the function of locative, a result of homophony).=20
Incidentally, words ending in a nasal vowel are conjugated with
vowel-stems.  In most cases, the plural forms of the nominal inflections
are identical to their singular counterpart with -na added before them
(descended from the old dual suffix -na), but there are exceptions,
especially with -r stem nouns, due to certain sound changes.

The old antipassive suffix, su- has become a transitive marker.  I don't
know about the fate of other prefixes yet, but I think I'll keep the
"if", "contrafactual" and "hypothetical" prefixes.

Here's a provisional example:
D' r@ko^s fre'tsik pi tsibze^fkaf pif dziwo'knabab vre^
[dr@'kos 'frE.ts@k p@ tsib'ze.fk@f p@f dzi'wOk.n@.b@b 'vre]
D'    r@ko^s fre'-tsik  pi    tsibze^f-kaf pif     dziow'k-nabab vre^
the.2 man    past-3SAIn the.7 forest-GenS  the.7Pl ash-PerlPl    walk
The man walked thru the ashes of the forest.
(S =3D Singular, A =3D Animate, In =3D Inchoative, # =3D Gender #, Pl =3D=
 Plural)

--=20
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