Introduction

About this Grammar

This and the following pages are a description of the conlang, Skerre. Being a linguist, I have chosen to write this document in the style of descriptive grammars of natural languages. As such, the description is a bit technical at times, though I have tried to keep it from getting too technical. For technical terms, readers are encouraged to look up terms at SIL's Glossary of Linguistic Terms and/or published dictionaries like David Crystal's A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (Blackwell, 1995) and R.L. Trask's Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics (Routledge, 1993). For a less technical introduction to Skerre, please see the phrasebook.

This description follows the organization commonly found in grammars of natural languages; namely, it first discusses some general facts about the language that place it in the world. It then begins its discussion of the language's structure with a description of the phonetics and phonology. It then moves onto the morphosyntax, gradually describing larger and larger units. The grammar itself concludes with a section on select lexical topics (with an anthropological bent). Curious readers are encouraged to read the texts, Swadesh List, phrasebook, and the Behind the Scenes pages for further information on Skerre.

About the Skerre language

General Information

Skerre (pronounced as [ske4e] or sometimes anglicized to [skEr\]1) is the native language of some 4,000 individuals who comprise the Skerre ethnic group (click here for more on the ethnic group and its ways of life). The language is called Sires-we, our speech or simply Sires by its speakers.

On the origin of the term "Skerre"

The term Skerre comes from the Skarnathi explorers who first encountered them. It is believed that an explorer asked a member of the Skerre which tribe they were and they got an answer that sounded something like [ske4e]. This word was probably the local demonym (since names for residents of geographical areas start with the prefix s- in Skerre), but it was not the answer the explorer sought — that would have probably been closer to tanko, the present Skerre word for all Skerre-speaking people. However, the term Skerre was what was reported back to the Skarnarthi officials and the name has stuck. The spelling with the double {r} is vestige of the fact that the Skarnathi language, at that point, had a distinction between an approximant r and a trilled r, and the Skarnathi explorers wrote two r's to ensure that their fellow countrymen would use the trilled pronunciation, which sounded most like the sound they had heard.

Sociolingustic Information

Among the tanko, the Skerre language is used in the full range of day-to-day activities, and is actively being learned by children. Some Skerre are multilingual — mostly those people engaged with trade with nearby groups — but these all seem to be speakers who learned other languages as teenagers or adults. Few children are raised bilingual. It is not known how many second language learners there might be, but it seems likely that there are very few.

Dialectal Differences

Skerre has several regional dialects. The dialectal differences are all minor and seem to involve just phonic and lexical differences; that is, all dialects seem to have the same morphosyntax.

The eastern dialect is noted for its use of retroflex-s [s`] for the alveolar-s found in the other dialects. However, this dialect does have the palatal coalescence rule as in the other dialects.

The southern dialect has a lateral flap [l\] for the rhotic [4] found in the other dialects. This is likely an archaic feature. It is also found in the speech of band leaders and shamans of all dialects, when these individuals are acting in their official capacity.

The northern dialect is notable for its higher percentage of lexical differences; that is, the northern dialect has more instances of words not found in the other dialects.

The language described in the following pages is that of the Skakos-hiyos band. Their dialect, geographically central, has none of these exceptional qualities above, and seems to be readily understood by all dialects.

There are also small differences in the phonetics of the speech of males and females. Females tend to centralized their vowels more than males. Both genders also slightly exaggerate their pitch range in the salient direction (males: down, females: up).

Linguistic Relationships

The language is believed to be, genetically, an isolate, having no known linguistic relatives. However, little is known about western languages other than Skarnathi and Northlander, so it is possible that relatives of Skerre may be found in the languages further to the south.

Skerre seems to have only a small number of loan words and, structurally, it is not similar to any of the known nearby languages, so it seems unlikely that Skerre was involved in any language contact situation in its recent or more distant past.

Typological Information

Skerre has a small phonological inventory, which is notable for the absence of pure labial segments, though there are labio-velars. Stress is usually on the initial syllable, unless there is a long vowel.

Morphologically, the language is mildly agglutinating. Though there are both prefixes and suffixes, the former are slightly more common in Skerre. There is some non-concatentative morphology, but it is not a pervasive feature of the morphological system.

In terms of lexical categories, there seems to be a reasonably clear split between verbs and nouns (morphologically and syntactically). The property concepts ("adjectives") are mostly verbs. Nouns and verbs are the only classes of words that are affix-engendering, though several more can be distinguished on syntactic grounds.

Skerre is firmly a head-initial language. Both arguments and modifiers (of all lexical categories) follow their heads.

In its realization of arguments, Skerre is largely dependent-marking, though there are some head-marking aspects on verbs and in possession. In the nominal system, Skerre exhibits split-ergativity: the pronouns operate on an accusative basis, while full NPs operate on an ergative basis.

Complementation is largely done by a special lexical class of words, complementizers, rather than by nominalized forms of verbs.

1 These are transcriptions in an ASCII version of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) called CXS. To see the correspondences with the actual IPA, click here. Back to Text


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