Classical Taot language

Classical Taot (Classical Taot: lawa [ˈlawa]) was the language originally spoken by the Classical Taot people in the central valleys, cols and mountainsides of the Koolpallal. It is the direct ancestor of all modern Neo-Taot languages.

Writing System
Classical Taot has been written down using a variety of systems during the ages, all of them based on the Koolpallalian hieroglyphs, a set of hieroglyphs first developed by an unknown culture of the central Koolpallal and then further expanded by the various peoples inhabiting the region.

The most prominent system is by far the Taot abjad, consisting of twelve characters used to represent the consonants and long vowels of the language. It is the ancestor of a wide variety of different writing systems throughout Noco.

Phonology
* [m], [n̪] and [ŋ] are all allophones of /n/ before the respective stops.

Any given word can only contain one single long vowel, every other vowel will always be short.

Phonotactics

 * Syllables in Classical Taot have the maximal structure of (C)V(C).
 * Any consonant may start a syllable, but only /t/, /k/, /s/, /t͡s/, /n/, /l/, /ɾ/, /j/ and /w/ can end it.
 * /t͡s/ can only appear before /p/, /k/, /n/, /l/ /j/ and /w/.

Stress
A long vowel or a diphthong is always stressed; if there is none, the penultimate syllable will carry the stress. If there are both a long vowel and a diphthong, the long vowel is stressed. If there are two or more diphthongs, the last one is stressed.

Grammar
Classical Taot has a mostly isolating grammar, lacking any kind of inflection. Compound words are rather uncommon.

Syntax
The word order is strictly SVO, no variations are ever allowed.
 * Nouns and pronouns are followed by adjectives, then determiners, then numerals and then postpositions.
 * Adverbs precede verbs or stand between two of them in periphrases.
 * Relative pronouns are placed after relative clauses if they are nominal or adjectival, but before if they are adverbial.

Morphology
Classical Taot employs zero derivation extensively in order to turn nouns into verbs, verbs into nouns or participles, adjectives into adverbs, etc.

e.g.
 * yot: eye, to see, sight, seen
 * nakhot: loom, to weave, woven
 * aastas: vulva, vagina, birth, to give birth, born, to be born

Nouns
Nouns do not decline for case or number and lack any kind of grammatical gender. Case is instead expressed by means of various postpositions, the most common ones being noa ('to': allative, dative, benefactive), ool ('(because) of/from': genitive, causative, ablative) and sak ('in': locative, inessive). Number is generally not indicated at all, though the plural may occasionally be expressed with the particle za ('many, much, very, more').

Adjectives
Adjectives always follow nouns and are all invariable. There are three comparison degrees: comparative, superlative and excessive. The comparative is expressed with the particle za, the superlative, by reduplicating the adjective, and the excessive, by reduplicating it and adding the particle za, for example:


 * han 'big'
 * han za 'bigger'
 * han han '(the) biggest'
 * han han za 'too big'

Verbs
Verbs do not conjugate, instead, several particles and pronouns are used to express tense, aspect, mood, person and number.

Voice
Classical Taot has three main voices: active, passive and causative.

The active and the passive voice are indistinguishable in form, i.e. rala can mean both “to kill” and “to be killed”. The difference lies in the fact that the passive voice always has an agent complement, marked by the postposition lon, e.g.


 * Pho rala atweet (“I kill the bird”).
 * Atweet rala pho lon (“the bird is killed by me”).

If one wishes not to include the agent (“the bird was killed”, it is unknown who did it), one may use the third person pronoun, e.g.


 * Atweet rala anna lon (“the bird is killed (by him/her/it/them/this/that/these/those)”).

The causative voice is expressed with the auxiliary verb okzay (lit. “hand, to do, to make”), e.g.


 * Pho yot allaal (“I see the mountains”).
 * ''Pho okzay yot allaal ne noa (“I show you the mountains”).

In a few cases, the auxiliary verb has been entirely incorporated to the verb as the prefix oz- or os-, e.g.


 * erree 'to lie'<*irrii
 * osree 'to lay'<*ukVssaj irrii


 * zookna 'to know'<*assu-ukVna
 * ozna 'to teach'<*ukVssaj ukVna


 * pewpo 'to walk, to go'<*piw-pu
 * ozpew 'to lead'<*ukVssaj piw