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: | ???
|
| Typology | |
| Morphological type: | Analytic |
| 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 language, brought by Tīredạ, 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 extremely analytic language, that makes use of a bunch of verb stacking. 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.
Phonology
The phonological inventory of Parukon is relatively small, being composed of 16 consonants and 6 vowels, all with a short-long distinction.
Consonants
| labial | coronal | dorsal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| nasal | m | n | |
| plosive | p, b | t, d | k, g |
| fricative | β~w | s, z, ʂ | x |
| other | ɾ | j |
- [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].
Vowels
| front | back | |
|---|---|---|
| open | i, iː | u, uː |
| mid | e, eː | o, oː |
| close | a, aː | ɑ, ɑː |
Short vowel allophony
In most dialects, short vowels have allophones, either in free variation or depending on the environment:
- /i/ is often pronounced:
- [ɪ] in unstressed syllables.
- [i] everywhere else.
- /u/ is pronounced:
- [u] in isolation.
- [ʊ] 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.
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.
