aldsta

Aldsta is a constructed language (conlang) created for linguistic experimentation and world-building. It was designed to be analytically transparent while offering expressive morphology, enabling nuanced expression of tense, aspect, mood, and evidentiality within a compact grammar. The language is described in linguistic references and hobbyist communities as having a primarily agglutinative morphology with systematic suffixation.

Origins and classification: Aldsta was developed by linguist Lena Voss in 2014 for use in speculative fiction and as a testbed for morphological theories. It belongs to a hypothetical language family of its world, with several dialects described in texts.

Phonology and grammar: The phonemic inventory includes five vowels a, e, i, o, u and a set of consonants including stops, fricatives, nasals, and liquids. Stress is penultimate; syllable structure is C V or C V C. The syntax follows a base SOV order, with postpositions rather than prepositions. Nouns take fixed case markers for nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive, while possession is indicated by a clitic or affix. Verbs carry tense, aspect, mood, and evidentiality markers through suffixes. The language distinguishes finite and non-finite forms and uses serial verb constructions.

Writing system: Aldsta uses a Latin-based alphabet augmented with diacritics to mark vowel length and tone. Orthographic conventions aim for clarity in teaching materials and in-world inscriptions.

Scholarly status: Aldsta has a modest online community of learners and researchers, producing grammars, dictionaries, and example texts. It remains primarily a constructed language for study and storytelling.