Parukon

Parukon Pạ̄rukon/Tīrekūbin
Pronounced:	[pɑː.ru.kon] or [tiː.ɾe.kuː.βin]
Species:	Human
Spoken:	Parkia
Total speakers:	Around 20k
Writing system:	Latin/Arbūi
Genealogy:	??? Parukon
Typology
Morphological type:	Analytic with fusional particles
Morphosyntactic alignment:	Ergative
Basic word order:	VSO by default, but relatively free
Credits
Creator:	Koyeniru
Created:	June-July 2025

Parukon (autoglossonym: Pạ̄rukon [pɑː.ru.kon]) is a language isolate, spoken by the majority of habitants on the island of Parkia. In the Parkian religion, it is believed that language was originally a divine invention, brought by Tīredạ for the humans to use. They are the superior god believed to be the origin of humans themselves, which, like all of the other gods, is represented by a constellation in the nightsky. This belief is the origin of the second endonym of the language, which is Tīrekūbin (roughly translates to "the language of Tīredạ").

Grammatically speaking, Parukon is an analytic language, that makes use of a bunch of verb stacking and particles, which is the only part of speech which is not analytic, but rather fusional, as a lot of particle merging occurs. It might also be analyzed as an oligoanalytic language, because of the extremely small size of its dictionnary, which contains around 250-300 words, 1/5 of them being grammatical particles.

This article will focus on the classical dialect of the language, but it still will mention particular quirks of other dialects

Phonology

Consonants

Table

Consonants
	Bilabial		Alveolar		"Palatal"		Velar
Nasal		m		n
Plosive	p	b	t	d			k	g
Fricative		β	s	z	ʂ~ç		x
Other				ɾ		j

Notes:

• /β/ can be pronounced [β], [w], [v], or [ʋ], depending on the speaker.
• /x/ has a tendency to be dropped in some words, creating either a long vowel or a hiatus, fixed by an epenthetic glottal stop. (ex. kahạ̄ [ka.ʔɑː])
• /ʂ/ is not a "true" retroflex fricative, but rather an advanced palatal fricative [ç̟]. It is also a quite rare phoneme, occuring in around 2% of words

Orthography

• /ʂ/ is either written ⟨ƶ⟩ or ⟨ꞩ⟩ (neither of them is preferred, but this article will use ⟨ƶ⟩), or sometimes even ⟨s⟩, making it indissociable from /s/
• /h/ is either written ⟨x⟩ and ⟨h⟩, though the latter is much preferred
• /ɾ/ is written ⟨r⟩
• /j/ is either written ⟨j⟩ or ⟨y⟩, though the latter is much preferred

Vowels

Vowels
	Front		Central		Back
High	/i/			[ʉ][a]		/u/
Near-high	[ɪ̟][a]					[ʊ̠][a]
High-mid	/e/					/o/
Mid			[ə][a]
Low-mid	[ɛ]					[ɔ]
Low	/a/				/ɑ~ɒ/

Notes:

a. ^1 2 3 4  Those vowels are present in multiple dialects, as allophones of other vowels when unstressed (see §Short vowel allophony for more info)

Orthography

• /ɑ/ is written ⟨ạ⟩
• Long vowels are written with a macron (⟨ā⟩, ⟨ē⟩ etc.)

Allophony

Short vowel allophony

In most dialects, short vowels have allophones, either in free variation or depending on the environment:

• /i/ is pronounced:
  • [ɪ̟] in unstressed syllables.
  • [i] everywhere else.
• /u/ is pronounced:
  • [u] in isolation.
  • [ʊ̠] in unstressed syllables.
  • [ʉ] everywhere else.
• /e/ is pronounced:
  • [ɛ] before velars.
  • [ə] in unstressed syllables.
  • [e] everywhere else.
• /o/ is pronounced:
  • [ɔ] before velars.
  • [ə] in unstressed syllables.
  • [o] everywhere else.
• /a/ is either pronounced [a] or somewhere in the vicinity of [æ], both allophones being in free variation.
• /ɑ/ is either pronounced [ɑ] or [ɒ], both allophones being in free variation.
  

However, in the classical dialect, which roughly corresponds to the dialect spoken by people in the north-west of the island, vowel reduction does not happen, leaving only 9 vowels, being [a~æ], [ɑ~ɒ], [e], [ɛ], [i], [o], [ɔ], [u] and [ʉ].

Long vowel allophony

Except for /a/ and /ɑ/, all long vowels are realized normally, even though they have a tendency to slightly shorten when unstressed, especially in the eastern dialects.

Stress

Due to the very short length of the words, stress is sentence-based and not word-based, which means that stress fall on a specific syllable of a sentence, not on a specific syllable of a word.

The rules to determine which syllable will recieve the stress is based on a mora system:

• 1 mora: Open syllable with a short vowel — V/CV
• 2 morae: Open syllable with a long vowel or Closed syllable with a short vowel — L/CL/CVN/VN
• 3 morae: Closed syllable with a long vowel — LN/CLN

Morphology

See also Parukon morphology for more information

Lexicon

As stated in the introduction, Parukon is a quite analytic language, though particles are very fusional. It makes use of few derivational particles but the main way of creating words is by compounding. The compounding always occur in this particular order: base noun, then modifier. This system of compounding is the only part of the language (apart from the particles) to not be analytic, instead being agglutinative.

• ri — food + ka — sea, ocean → rika — seafood
  • u — animal + rika — seafood → urika — fish (dead)
  • se — plant + rika — seafood → serika — algae

Nouns

Nouns are not inflected for anything, their role is marked with particles instead, similar to the ones of Japanese. Number isn't explicitely marked by particles either, but numbers and quantifiers might be used if indicating the number is really necessary. The four most important particles are kū, si, ō and ạ̄n:

• kū is an optional syntax particle used to mark the subject or the patient (an equivalent of the absolutive). It belongs to the group of the standalone particles.
• si is a mandatory syntax particle used to mark the agent (an equivalent of the ergative). It belongs to the group of the standalone particles.
• ō is a mandatory syntax particle used to mark the indirect object of a sentence (an equivalent of the dative). It belongs to the group of the inflected particles
• ạ̄n is a relational particle used to mark possession, with a syntax similar to compounding (an equivalent of the genitive). It belongs to the group of the standalone particles.

Verbs

Just like nouns, verbs are not inflected either, relying on particles to add some meaning to the verb. There are 3 categories of verbal particles:

• Tense particles are used to add a temporal information to the verb. The 2 main ones are u (past tense) and ke (future tense)
• Aspectual particles are used to indicate how an action expands over time. The main one is sēi (imperfective aspect)
• Participation particles are used to indicate the involvment of the speaker in the action.