Oroshan language

Oroshan language
Kikŋaʔvəvi, kikŋaʔvəvi kəğači
Pronunciation	[kigŋaʔvəˈvi]
Native to	Oroshia
Ethnicity	Oroshan people
Native speakers	ca. 2,300,000 (2018)
Language family	Gujino-Bintani Gujin Coast Gujin Oroshan language
Early form	Proto-Gujino-Bintani
Writing system	Sabarian
Official status
Official language in	Oroshia
Language codes
ISO 639-1	or
ISO 639-2	oro
ISO 639-3	oro
Map of regions where a majority (dark blue) and a minority (light blue) are native speakers of Oroshan.

Oroshan (kikŋaʔvəvi, pronounced: [kigŋaʔvəˈvi]) is a Gujino-Bintani language spoken in the extreme northeast of Surucia, mostly contained in Oroshia, where nearly 2 million speakers reside. It is a Gujin language, genetically, within the wider Gujino-Bintani family. Specifically, it is a Coast Gujin language, along with the Yvlipkan language, who diverged from their common ancestor an estimated 1,500 years ago. It is still relatively close to languages such as Yvlipkan, and more distant to other Gujin languages, and even Bintan languages, as part of the wider family. It is considerably more conservative than its closest relative, Yvlipkan, which has innovated greatly phonologically and grammatically.

It is accepted that speakers of Gujino-Bintan languages migrated to their present location from the west, though there is some scant evidence that they instead moved in a northwards direction. Originally a nomadic culture of reindeer herders, the original Gujino-Bintan speakers have not left any written evidence of their language behind. Instead, it has been reconstructed with help from extant languages, many of which are threatened by extinction. The Oroshan language first began to be written under Jogin colonial rule, and the Jogin language exerted its influence on the Oroshan language, mainly through loanwords. Under colonial rule, the use of Oroshan was discouraged, and its use banned in schools, up until the early 1900s.

Oroshan is the primary official language in Oroshia, alongside Jogin, where it serves as a lingua franca, especially among the minority Namchogi population, whose language saw even greater stigma than the Oroshan language itself. Oroshan is also spoken to the west of Oroshia, and by a diaspora population of around 200,000.

Phonology

The phonology of Oroshan is very conservative compared to its sister language, Yvlipkan. Some dialects of Oroshan have made phonological developments not shown here, particularly the western dialects, which have had considerable superstrate influence from Jogin and Namchogi.

Consonants

Oroshan consonant phonemes

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	m	n		ŋ
Plosive	p	t		k	q	ʔ
Fricative	v	s		ɣ
Affricate		ts	tʃ
Lateral fricative		ɬ
Lateral affricate		tɬ
Approximant			j

The glottal stop does not behave like a regular plosive consonant in Oroshan. It does not follow phonotactic rules, and appears in clusters that would not normally be allowed, were it treated as a normal plosive. Instead, glottalization is though of as a 'quality' of a syllable, wherein the coda consonant (or coda consonant cluster) is glottalized, or not. Glottalization carries important grammatical meaning, and through reconstruction, it was determined that glottalization is the remnant of a glottal affix in an earlier stage of the Proto-Gujino-Bintani language. The Bintani languages still exhibit a productive glottal affix.

There are voiced allophones of the plosive series, which occur before a nasal or /j/ in the onset of the following syllable, such as in qitjak /qitjak/, "house", realized as [qedjak] or [qeɟak]. /v/ and /ɣ/ are frequently devoiced when glottalized in the syllable coda, if not followed by a vowel, as in ŋaʔv /ŋaʔv/, "chiefs", realized as [ŋaʔf]. Western dialects have developed a marginal voiced plosive series under the influence of Namchogi.

Vowels

Oroshan is reputed to follow a 5-vowel system, a pattern which is quite common cross-linguistically. However, Oroshan contains no /e/ phoneme, instead having merged it with /ə/, which arose earlier from unstressed /a/. Vowel length is not contrastive, but stressed syllables have considerably longer vowel duration than unstressed syllables.

Oroshan vowel phonemes

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid		ə	ɔ
Open			a

/i/ and /u/ are lowered to /e/ and /o/, respectively, surrounding the uvular plosive /q/. This is also quite common cross-linguistically, but is only allophonic, and /e/ and /o/, while phonologically separate from their higher counterparts, do not constitute separate phonemes. In some eastern dialects, however, /q/ is beginning to merge with /k/ for some younger speakers (assumed to be born after 1980). For these speakers, the contrast is now phonemic after /k/. For example, in standard Oroshan, spoken in Sochvel, qit [qet] "to build", and kit [kit] "you (absolutive)" are phonemically /qit/ and /kit/ respectively. In younger, eastern speech, they are qit [ket] "to build", and kit [kit] "you (absolutive)", which phonemically are analyzed as /ket/ and /kit/, implying that they have become separate phonemes for these speakers.

Phonotactics

The maximum syllable structure in Oroshan is CVjNC, where C is any consonant, V any vowel, and N a nasal /m/, /n/, or /ŋ/. As stated above, glottalization is suprasegmental, and is not considered part of syllable structure, but rather a 'quality' of the syllable wherein the coda consonant or consonant cluster is glottalized. Affricates are considered to have a single consonant value, and are not considered to be clusters of a homorganic plosive and fricative pair. An example of maximum syllable structure is ğajnts /ɣajnts/, "its (inanimate)", with a final consonant cluster of j-n-ts. This syllable can be glottalized, in ğaʔjnts /ɣaʔjnts/, "its (inanimate plural)", normally realized as [ɣajnts'], but which may also be realized as [ɣa.ʔints] in two phonetic syllables, but is considered to be one phonemic syllable. The stress therefore remains on the first phonetic syllable in this realization, in [ˈɣa.ʔints], not *[ɣaˈʔints] as would be expected if it were treated as a phonemically disyllabic word. /ɣaʔjnts/ may also be realized [ɣaʔɲcç] or [ɣaɲc'] through progressive assimilation of /nts/ with /j/. The palatal realizations are not considered independent phonemes, rather, allophones of alveolars arising in a palatal environment.

Stress

Stress in Oroshan is regular and predictable. Primary stress will invariably fall on the final syllable of polysyllabic words, unless the final syllable consists only of /ə/, when it will fall on the penultimate syllable. Secondary stress is more variable, and will generally fall on the second or third syllable in a word. Stressed syllables tend to be, on average, twice as long (in vowel length) as unstressed syllables. The strong stress pattern falling on the final syllable gives Oroshan a 'rhythmic' sound, as first described by Keian scholars in the 16th century. Stress has no grammatical bearing in Oroshan, unlike glottalization.

Morphology

Oroshan is a moderately synthetic language, with a predominantly agglutinative typological structure. Verbs conjugate for tense, and nouns inflect for number and case. It has a productive process of derivational morphology wherein the function of a word changes through the addition of affixes. Exhibiting predominantly head-final ergative-absolutive alignment, nouns may be converted into verbs, verbs into nouns, and both into adverbs freely. Nouns are frequently compounded together to create new meanings, and nouns may be compounded with verbs to give new meanings, though this is less common, and it is linguistically not considered incorporation.

Nouns

Nouns in Oroshan belong to one of two grammatical genders, animate or inanimate. These categories generally follow whether the noun in question is alive or not, and so can generally be easy to predict. However, this is not always the case. Nouns like vəł "river" are animate, presumably because they 'move', though they are abiotic. All abstract nouns formed with the abstract nominalization suffix -či are inherently inanimate, and all agent nouns derived using the agent nominalization suffix -ka are inherently animate.

Oroshan	Gloss	Translation
isku	see	to see (v.)
iskuči (i.)	see-NMLZ.ABSTR	vision (i.e. the act of seeing)
iskuka (a.)	see-NMLZ.AGN	watcher (i.e. someone who watches)

Nouns decline for four cases, ergative, absolutive, oblique, and genitive. Which declension pattern a noun takes can be known from its gender. Nouns also decline in two numbers, singular and plural. The plural of nouns is marked by the glottalization of the coda.

	Singular		Plural
	jak ("fire", animate)	vək ("land", inanimate)	jak ("fire", animate)	vək ("land", inanimate)
Absolutive	jak	vək	jaʔk	vəʔk
Ergative	jakək	vəkəŋ	jakəʔk	vəkəʔŋ
Oblique	jakəł	vəkən	jakəʔł	vəkəʔn
Dative	jakəs	vəkənts	jakəʔs	vəkəʔnts

Compounding of nouns is frequent, and is used in forming new senses. The Oroshan word for "legislature", sisavŋaʔvqitjak, is composed of the words sisavŋaʔv, "government", and qitjak, "house", giving it the literal meaning of "government house". The word sisavŋaʔv, "government", for its part, is a verb-noun compound, made up of the verb sisav, "to be fair, equal", and ŋaʔv, "ruler (pl.)", giving the literal meaning of "fair rulers". Qitjak is another verb-noun compound, from qit, "to build", and jak, "fire", approximating the meaning of "where a fire is built".

sisav	ŋa<ʔ>v	qit	jak
fair	ruler<PL>	build	fire
government		house
legislature

Verbs

Verbs in Oroshan inflect only for a non-past tense (uninflected), and a past tense (glottalized). Other elements of tense, aspect, and mood are expressed through the use of adverbs, which immediately precede a verb, and are also uninflected. Verbs inflect for the agent of the clause, taking suffixes for both the absolutive and ergative agents, derived from the set of personal pronouns. Plural verb clitics also carry the glottalization characteristic of plural number in Oroshan, as well as the verbal past tense. Verbs carry the typological category of adjectives observed in many other languages. In Oroshan, characteristics are described through a verb with a meaning such as "to be red", which inflects as a normal verb would. Words of other lexical categories can be verbalized through the verbalization suffix -no.

Tense inflection in Oroshan

	to be small	to gather, pick	to speak
Non-past	ajp	iqat	kəğa
Past	aʔjp	iqaʔt	kəʔğa

The agent suffixed inflection of verbs is shown below. The agent suffix encodes information about person, number, and case.

Agent inflection in Oroshan

kəvkəv "to be sick"
	Absolutive				Ergative
	Singular		Plural		Singular		Plural
1SG	kəvkəvən	I am sick.	kəvkəvəʔn	We are sick.	kəvkəvənk	I (erg.) am sick.	kəvkəvəʔnk	We (erg.) are sick.
2SG	kəvkəvət	You are sick.	kəvkəvəʔt	You (pl.) are sick.	kəvkəvtək	You (erg.) are sick.	kəvkəvtəʔk	You (pl. erg.) are sick.
3SG.ANIM	kəvkəvənt	He/she/they (sing.) are sick.	kəvkəvəʔts	They (pl.) are sick.	kəvkəvnək	He/she/they (sing. erg.) are sick.	kəvkəvnəʔk	They (pl. erg.) are sick.
3SG.INAN	kəvkəvəč	It is sick.	kəvkəvəʔč	They (inan. pl.) are sick.	kəvkəvčəŋ	It (erg.) is sick.	kəvkəvčəʔŋ	They (inan. pl. erg.) are sick.

There are also 5 copula verbs, which behave differently than other verbs in the sense that the syntactical subject and object of the copulas agree in case with each other, forming a predicate. The affirmative copula is used for possession, in a metaphorical construction using the bare oblique case, implying an indirect object. For example, kik ninł ahant translates to "I have a reindeer" but literally means "it is a reindeer to me".

Oroshan verb	Copula type	Example	Translation
aha	affirmative	Vəł ahant.	It is a river.
ŋit	negative	Vəł ŋitənt.	It is not a river.
səjn	locative	Vəł səjnənt.	There is a river.
tata	interrogative	Vəł tatant?	Is it a river?
tisəjn	locative interrogative	Vəł tisəjnənt?	Where is a river?

Adverbs and adpositions

Adverbs are the most varied lexical class in Oroshan grammar. They are often a single morpheme, though they can be formed from other lexical categories through the use of the adverbialization suffix -vi. Adverbs modify verbs, directly preceding them in word order, adding information such as tense, aspect, mood, and voice, and more general adverbial information such as method, degree, and negation. Interestingly, adverbs can modify a verb that has since been moved to a different lexical category through the use of derivational morphology. For instance, the verb kəğa, "to speak", can be modified with the adverb kisvi, "badly" (itself from the verb kis, "to be bad"), giving kisvi kəğa, "to speak badly". When the verb is nominalized, the adverb can remain, technically modifying the internal verb. kisvi kəğači is "bad speech", or more literally, "the act of speaking badly". There is no limit to how many adverbs can stack in front of a verb, modifying it.

Selection of adverbs modifying ğał "to eat"
Oroshan	Translation
łoč ğał	will eat
ŋił ğał	to not eat
sič ğał	to begin to eat
kəvkəvəvi ğał	to eat in a poorly manner
nivnav ğał	to barely eat
qaʔłvəŋočəčivi ğał	to eat like a Namchogi person

Adpositions are also uninflected, though they force nouns (which immediately follow the adposition) into the oblique case. Nouns in the oblique case without an adposition are treated as an indirect object. An example of a common adposition is jusi, which translates to "over, on" and is used quite frequently when talking "about" something. The preposition jusi is used in this case, to speak "on" something.

Jusi ğajn kəğan.
jusi	ğaj	-n	kəğa	-n
on	3SG.INAN	-OBL	speak	-1SG.ABS
I speak on (about) it.

Pronouns

Pronouns in Oroshan are found for two numbers, singular and plural, and two genders, animate and inanimate, though gender is only distinguished in the third person. Below is a table of lone pronoun forms in Oroshan. Notice the glottalization in the plural. Contrary to many Gujino-Bintani languages, Oroshan does not distinguish clusivity in the first person plural.

	Absolutive	Ergative	Oblique	Genitive
1SG	nin	nink	ninł	nins
2SG	kit	kitək	kitł	kits
3SG.ANIM	not	notək	notł	nots
3SG.INAN	ğaj	ğajŋ	ğajn	ğajnts
1PL	niʔn	niʔnk	niʔnł	niʔns
2PL	kiʔt	kitəʔk	kiʔtł	kiʔts
3SG.ANIM	noʔt	notəʔk	noʔtł	noʔts
3SG.INAN	ğaʔj	ğaʔjŋ	ğaʔjn	ğaʔjnts

Syntax

Oroshan is a head-final language, with the verb taking the final spot in the sentence, almost invariably. Therefore, the main word order is SOV, though the subject is frequently expressed as a suffix on the verb. Interrogation and negation are expressed through adverbs or a copula verb, and do not cause a change in word order. Adpositions and adverbs directly precede the noun or verb they modify, demonstrating sub-sentence level head-finality. A relatively simple ditransitive sentence with the subject expressed through the verb suffix and, optionally, alone, is shown below.

(Notək) sikaʔv ninł kiʔtsninək.
(not	-k)	sika<ʔ>v	nin	-ł	ki<ʔ>tsni	-nək
(3SG.ANIM	-ERG)	berry<PL>	1SG	-OBL	throw<PST>	-3SG.ANIM.ERG
He/she/they threw me berries.

Orthography

Oroshan is written in the Sabarian script, an alphabetic writing system, which in Oroshan has a straightforward one-to-one symbol-to-phoneme correlation, save for the digraphs ⟨ts⟩ and ⟨tł⟩, which represent the affricates /ts/ and /tɬ/, respectively. This script began to be adopted in the early 1900s, because the Jogin script did not have adequate characters to represent some Oroshan phonemes.

Oroshan Sabarian	IPA
Aa	/a/
Čč	/tʃ/
Əə	/ə/
Ğğ	/ɣ/
Ii	/i/
Jj	/j/
Kk	/k/
Łł	/ɬ/
Mm	/m/
Nn	/n/
Ŋŋ	/ŋ/
Oo	/ɔ/
Pp	/p/
Qq	/q/
Ss	/s/
Tt	/t/
Uu	/u/
Vv	/v/
ʔ	/ʔ/

Jogin script

Under Jogin, rule, a Jogin script was used. Because of the differences in phonology between Jogin and Oroshan, some Jogin characters were used in radically different ways than in Jogin itself. The Jogin script consists of base phonemes, in consonants and vowels, which are then combined into syllable blocks.

Consonants

Jogin	ㄱ	ㄲ	ㄴ	ㄸ	ㄹ	ㅁ	ㅂ	ㅃ	ㅅ	ㅇ	ㅈ	ㅉ	ㅊ	ㅋ	ㅌ	ㅎ
Oroshan Sabarian	ğ	k	n	t	ł	m	v	p	s	ŋ	č	j	ts	q	tł	ʔ
Jogin Sabaricization	g	kk	n	tt	r	m	b	pp	s	ng, '	j	jj	ch	k	t	h

Vowels

Jogin	ㅏ	ㅓ	ㅗ	ㅜ	ㅣ
Oroshan Sabarian	a	ə	o	u	i
Jogin Sabaricization	a	eo	o	u	i

Text Sample

	The Mountain in Labour: A translation of Aesop's fable.
Oroshan text	Ğin ołokəč Ğin kisvi vaŋaʔŋč ə ołoʔkəč. Qaʔł iʔskuʔts ə łopəčəči łoč viʔtanəʔk, ŋə qapəł nivnav iʔskunəʔk. Ğink qapəł ołoʔkčəŋ. Ŋił tiłvi kəğat jusi niłčin!
IPA broad transcription	/ɣin ɔɬɔkətʃ/ /ɣin kisvi vaŋaʔŋtʃ ə ɔɬɔʔkətʃ qaʔɬ iʔskuʔts ə ɬɔpətʃətʃi ɬɔtʃ viʔtanəʔk ŋə qapəɬ nivnav iʔskunəʔk ɣink qapəɬ ɔɬɔʔktʃəŋ ŋiɬ tiɬvi kəɣat jusi niɬtʃin/
Translation	The Mountain Gives Birth A mountain was groaning badly and giving birth. People watched and next anticipated the event, but they barely saw a mouse. The mountain gave birth to a mouse. Do not talk tall about nothing!

Gloss

ğin	ołok	-č
mountain	birth	-3SG.INAN.ABS

ğin	kis	-vi	vaŋa<ʔ>ŋ	-č	ə	oło<ʔ>k	-č
mountain	bad	-ADV	groan<PST>	-3SG.INAN.ABS	CONJ	birth<PST>	-3SG.INAN.ABS

qa<ʔ>ł	i<ʔ>sku	-<ʔ>ts	ə	łopəč	-či	łoč	vi<ʔ>ta	-nə<ʔ>k
person<PL>	look<PST>	-3SG.ANIM.ABS<PL>	CONJ	happen	-NMLZ	next	expect<PST>	-3SG.ANIM.ERG<PL>

ŋə	qapəł	nivnav	i<ʔ>sku	-nə<ʔ>k
CONJ.NEG	mouse	barely	see<PST>	-3SG.ANIM.ERG<PL>

ğin	-k	qapəł	oło<ʔ>k	-čəŋ
mountain	-ERG	mouse	birth<PST>	-3SG.INAN.ERG

ŋił	tił	-vi	kəğa	-t	jusi	niłči	-n
NEG	tall	-ADV	talk	-2SG.ABS	over	nothing	-OBL.INAN