Axaʒe

Phonology
Axaʒe phonology is characterized by a massive consonant inventory and a paucity of vowels.

Vowels
In contrast to the massive consonant inventory, Axaʒe contrasts only two vowels: /ə a/. However, they have a wide variety of allophones based on the surrounding consonants.

There are no minimal pairs between /ə a/, but which one a morpheme has is not predictable.

Consonants
Axaʒe contrasts no fewer than 83 consonants. Much of this comes from the extreme set of stops, with 4 series at 8 places of articulation and numerous coärticulations.

Vowel allophony
The two phonemic vowels combine with features of surrounding consonants for a wealth of phonetic vowels.

/j/ and the alveolopalatals count as palatalized. /w/ counts as labialized, but the labials do not count.

Syllable structure
Syllables are strictly CV(C). The only coda consonants are approximants, voiceless fricatives, and tenuis stops.

Grammar
Axaʒe is a strongly head-final, head-marking language with particularly complex verb morphology.

Personal agreement
Axaʒe has a partially defective and high split polypersonal agreement system. It is accusative in the first person and animate third person, direct in the second person singular, tripartite in the second person plural, and ergative in the inanimate third person. There's also a restriction on the coöccurrence of second and third persons: in 2>3 and 3>2, only the second person is marked. Since the second person singular does not distinguish between A/O, this creates an ambiguity between 2SG>3 and 3>2SG, which is partially compensated for by the plural suffix -pa which marks plural on nouns and the plural of the S/O argument on verbs. This means the only real ambiguity is between 2SG>3SG and 3SG>2SG, which must be resolved by context.

Word classes
Axaʒe has somewhat flexible parts of speech, as any intransitive verb may be a noun meaning ‘the activity of X-ing’ or ‘that which is X-ed’, e.g. ‘to run’ → ‘the activity of running’ (a run) or ‘to sing’ → ‘that which is sung’ (a song). Additionally, any noun may predicate, meaning ‘to be X’.