Hagt

Hagt (Hagt: ) is a Hagt-Laa language of the Taot language family spoken in the city of Kint and the areas around it from the 11th century onwards. It serves as the lingua franca of a vast area in West Noco, known as the Kint area of influence.

Hagt has become the language of culture and high literature within this region and has had an extensive influence on all the languages spoken within this area.

Consonants

 * {| class="wikitable" style=text-align:center

! colspan=2 | ! Bilabial ! Dental ! Alveolar ! Palatal ! Velar ! Glottal ! colspan=2 | Nasal ! rowspan=3 | Plosive ! voiceless ! voiced ! aspirated ! rowspan=2 | Fricative ! voiceless ! voiced ! colspan=2 | Lateral ! colspan=2 | Tap ! colspan=2 | Trill
 * + Consonant phones of Hagt
 * m
 * n
 * n
 * p
 * t̪ ⟨t⟩
 * c ⟨k⟩
 * k
 * k
 * b
 * d̪ ⟨d⟩
 * g
 * g
 * g
 * pʰ ⟨ph⟩
 * t̪ʰ ⟨th⟩
 * kʰ ⟨kh⟩
 * kʰ ⟨kh⟩
 * kʰ ⟨kh⟩
 * s
 * h
 * h
 * h
 * h
 * h
 * z
 * z
 * l
 * l
 * l
 * ɾ ⟨r⟩
 * ɾ ⟨r⟩
 * ɾ ⟨r⟩
 * r ⟨rr⟩
 * }
 * r ⟨rr⟩
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * }

The parentheses indicate allophones.


 * /c, pʰ, tʰ, kʰ/ are considered marginal phonemes.
 * /c/ is an expressive variant of /k/, used to create diminutives.
 * Aspirated stops are only used in learned borrowings and are usually pronounced as a series of a voiceless stop plus /h/ by lower class people. Hypercorrection may lead some to pronounce words that originally contained the sequence /Th/ as [Tʰ].
 * Voiced stops and fricatives are devoiced at the end of a word or before another voiceless consonant.
 * Voiceless consonants other than /h/ are voiced before another voiced consonant.
 * /m, n, l/ are [m̥, n̥, l̥] word finally after a stop or fricative.
 * /n/ becomes [m, n̪, ŋ] before the respective stops.

Vowels

 * {| class="wikitable" style=text-align:center

! rowspan="2"| ! colspan="2"| Front ! colspan="2"| Central ! colspan="2"| Back ! short ! long ! short ! long ! short ! long ! Close ! Mid ! Open
 * + Vowel phonemes of Hagt
 * i || iː ⟨ī⟩ || || || u || uː ⟨ū⟩
 * || || ə ⟨e⟩ || || ||
 * || || a || aː ⟨ā⟩ || ||
 * }

/ə/ never appears in stressed position.

Phonotactics
Hagt's syllable structure is very complex. The maximum syllable structure is (s/z)(S){[(S)(L)]/N/h}V(R)(N)(C)(C)(C/N/l).

Writing system
Hagt is written using the Hagt script. The Hagt alphabet consists of 13 letters. It is written without spaces using boustrophedon.

Grammar
Hagt is a highly agglutinative language compared to Classical Taot. Nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verbs are inflected for a wide diversity of grammatical properties.

Gender
Hagt nouns belong to either the animate or the inanimate grammatical gender. As there is no noun agreement, the gender of a noun is only relevant as the number of cases a noun may take.

Number
The plural is indicated by appending the suffix -s to the last component of a phrase without any further change except for words ending in -t or -h, in which the -t disappears and the -h becomes -k when the suffix is added, for example:


 * at ('mortar') → as ('mortars')
 * kāh ('egg') → kāks ('eggs')

Some words retain an otherwise archaic dual number formed by attaching the suffix -īht (which is identical in form to the numeral īht 'two') to an unpredictable form of the noun stem, which always remains attached to the noun and does not move to the last component of the phrase, for example:


 * gigk ('year') → ggekīht ('biennium')
 * ump ('foot') → engpīht ('two feet')
 * lut ('wheel') → eltīht ('two wheels')

Declension
Nouns inflect for five (animate) or nine (inanimate) cases. Cases suffixes are attached to whatever element (noun, adjective, determiner, etc.) comes last in the noun phrase, except for the dual marker, which is always added to the noun. For example, 'the big house' is higd anek, not *higdek an, and 'in the two big houses' is gdegīht anek.

The singular (e) is omitted when the word ends in a vowel. For example, dā ('frog') becomes dāl ('of the frog').

The genitive and dative cases are also used for the ablative or partitive and allative cases, respectively.

When there is an inanimate subject and animate direct object, the object marked with the inanimate case:


 * Nnerzī higm Hūlgemp. — The stone hits Hūlg.

Adjectives
Adjectives always come after the noun. They inflect for three comparison degrees: comparative, superlative and excessive.

The comparative is formed by adding -s to the end of the adjective, which comes before any other suffix, for example:


 * mū 'bad' → mūs 'worse'
 * inseng 'to the good ones' → insseng 'to the better ones'

The superlative is be formed by attaching the last consonant of the word to the start, however, there are some irregularities, for exampleː


 * in 'good' → nin 'best'
 * iplek 'full' → kiplek 'fullest'
 * līs 'smart; intelligent' → slīs 'smartest; most intelligent'


 * mū 'bad' → emgehmū 'worst'
 * alhek 'bitter' → elgalhek 'bitterest'

The excessive is formed by adding the comparative suffix -s to the superlative, for example:


 * nins — too good
 * emgehmūs — too bad
 * kipleks — too full
 * slīss — too intelligent

Verbs
Verbs in Hagt conjugate for the subject and direct object in person (first, second and third), number (singular, dual and plural), tense–aspect (present, past, aorist, future and prospective), mood (realis, irrealis, potential, optative and obligative) and, in the participle forms, voice (active and passive).