Caoimhín's Content

Hi everyone, for the first time on this website, I am going to go through a language that I have constructed, a conlang. I often make languages just for fun, but this one was prompted. Today, I am going to go through my submission for the 23rd Speedlang Challenge, a language I am calling Ħáŕŕå. This is pronounced /ˈħæɻ.ɻɑ/ roughly. I will be using the international phonetic alphabet to write down the sounds, but I won’t be describing it here. I will almost certainly end up making a description of it in the future, but until then you can take a look at the Wikipedia page, which is pretty good.

So of course this is a challenge. and that means that there are constraints. These constraints were provided by the host on Reddit, here they are all together:

Phonology constraints:

• > use two points of articulation you don’t use very often – (free choice! anything out of your comfort zone – willing to consider any secondary articulation that patterns as a POA as a separate POA if it makes sense)
• > alternative! use some vowel feature you don’t use often (phonation, backness, protrusion, etc etc)
• > have at least three phonemes which exhibit some kind of gradation (e.g. this means they merge with other phonemes in certain morphological settings, or create new phones in some morphophonological environment)
• > have a closed set of roots which break phonotactic tendencies (e.g. from direct loans from another language or lost substrate etc.) – provide examples of how they differ from regular roots

Morphosyntactic Constraints:

• > display some kind of split morphosyntactic alignment (e.g. active-stative, DOM, etc.)
• > have radically different marking for subclauses (up to you whether it’s inversion of marking, if this is the split ergativity, or some word order inversions, or something of the like)
• > have a number of verbal classifiers, and have various lexeme have a different meaning entirely depending on verbal classifier (what exactly “classifier” means here is up to you) – show at least 3 examples
• > have a class of roots which can change word class through zero derivation (with at least 3 examples)
• > come up with a label: whether describing an unusual combination of functions for a morpheme, or a specific case which doesn’t have an assigned name, or a phenomenon that requires ad hoc terminology – what this feature is and where it appears is up to you
• > have some kind of possessive classifier system (e.g. alienability, edibility)
• > bonus! have them marked differently, in terms of agreement, location of morphemes, or otherwise
• > have some morphological category marked on a closed set of words by suppletion. (bonus points if the morpheme in question wouldn’t otherwise be adjacent to the root)

Sentence/Phrase level constraints

• > as per usual, 5 sentences from 5moyd or Conlangers Syntax Test Cases (or make your own as you wish of a similar complexity)
• > finally, write some description of the sea! (leaving this broad, so either “it’s big and wet” or a poem or a scientific definition or whatever! surprise me!) – if your people don’t live by the sea tell me about how they might describe it if they saw it (big lake? like the sky but wet? liquid substance with stuff in it?)
• > as a bonus; show me a sea or water related conceptual metaphor

I’ll address them as I go. These constraints were given out on the 13th really, supposedly the 14th of February. I definitely saw them on the 13th, so I recorded the attached video on the 27th, aimed to post it on the 28th, and her we are hopefully on the 1st of March. which gave me two weeks to create a language that follows these constraints. I believe I was successful.

So, starting with the phonological constraints, here is the phonology that I’m using for this language. The IPA notation is given, and after a bracket the orthography if it is different:

	labial	alveolar	retroflex	velar	uvular	pharyngeal	glottal
stop	p	t		k	q	ʡ (c	ʔ (‘
voiced stop	b	d		ɡ
approx/fricative	v	ð	ɻ ~ ʐ (ŕ	ɣ (ŗ	ʁ (ř	ʕ (j
fricative		s	ʂ (ś	x	χ (x̌	ħ	h
nasal	m	n	ɳ (ń	ŋ
lateral		l	ɭ (ĺ	ʟ ~ ɰ (ļ

And the phonological constraints mostly revolved around going outside of your comfort zone. This first constraint is essentially picking two points of articulation that you don’t normally use and using. Quite frankly, there is only one point of articulation that I don’t regularly use and that is the pharyngeal or epiglottal region. The pharyngeal and epiglottal regions are two different regions of the throat, but they don’t usually contrast. You’re not usually going to have a pharyngeal stop and an epiglottal stop, or a pharyngeal fricative and an epiglottal fricative, contrasting with each other in the same language. You might have a pharyngeal fricative and an epiglottal stop, and that may work for how some of the sounds in this language get realized. I’ve gone with just a few things here in the pharyngeal dorsal region, a stop, a voiced fricative/approximant and a voiceless fricative.

Further back, the glottal region, of course, with the glottal fricative and the glottal stop, those get used all of the time. Ahead of the pharyngeal is the uvular, and I do use the uvular region quite regularly. The velar region features almost universally, and of course I use it as well. That rounds out the dorsal points of articulation at the back of the mouth and throat.

Moving ahead to the coronal region, the retroflex region is one I don’t use as much on its own. Normally, if I have retroflex phonemes, especially this many in a language, I’m going to have a lamino-palatal contrast in the coronal region. So usually if I have retroflex, I’ll have palatal and I’ll split alveolar into lamino-dental and true alveolar, something like that. I’ll usually have a more Australian, Dravidian or Indic style phonology, with loads of coronals. Here, I’ve stuck with just a couple of retroflex and a few alveolar sounds in the coronal region.

The last region, the labial, is also almost universal as well. Technically, the stops are bilabial and the fricatives are labio-dental, but I see no need to split them up. There’s no direct contrast, just like back at the pharyngeal/epiglottal region.

So really it’s just the pharyngeals and epiglottals that I’m using to pass the first constraint, the smattering of retroflexes may not count. However, the bonus to that first constraint is using some vowel feature you don’t use often. Here are my vowels:

	front	central	back
palatalizing high	ʲi (ıi		ʲu (ıu
high	i		u
palatalizing mid	ʲe (ıe	ʲə (ıė
mid	e	ə (ė ë	o
palatalizing low	ʲæ (ıa	ʲɚ (ıę
low	æ (a	ɚ (ę ê	ɑ (å ä
low rhotic			ɑ˞ (ą â

Like the consonants, I use a lot of vowel things quite a lot, especially nasalization. I’m quite a fan of nasalization generally, but I have decided to include palatalizing or iotizing vowels here. So these would be sort of the remnants of a sound change. These are vowels that will cause a palatalizing effect on surrounding consonants, and I do mean surrounding consonants, whereas the non-palatalizing versions don’t. I intend for palatalizing vowels to effect onsets and codas, practically the whole syllable. I decided to leave a little gap, so there’s no palatalising “o”, or mid back vowel, just so there’s a gap, it’s always nice to have a gap in the phonology.

I’ve also got a couple of rhotic vowels. Now, I have used rhotic vowels in previous conlangs, I tried to use one for rhotic harmony, which was a little bit weird, but I’m just throwing in some rhoticity here as its own phonemic little thing. Some of these vowels have phonemic rhoticity associated with them. I’ve got a rhotic back vowel, I’ve got a rhotic schwa, and then I’ve got a rhotic palatalizing schwa. One vowel that’s rhotic and palatalizing, it’s the only one that does both of the things. I did want to just add those in as a couple of vowel features to play around with that are a little bit different and to help with the constraints.

Back in the consonants, you might notice here that I’ve got quite a lot of laterals and I’ve got a few things going on in the fricative row as well. I am going out of my comfort zone and pronouncing the pharyngeal and epiglottal phones is certainly going to be hard for me. Contrasting multiple dorsal fricatives is also tricky, I don’t think I’ve ever contrasted four like this. Maybe I have, I have certainly contrasted three, but it is tricky to get them all to sound different. There are some other things going on with the phonology that I may mention as I go.

Moving ahead with the constraints, it mentions having three phonemes which exhibit some kind of gradation. I’ll get to that when I get more to the morphology, but under the right conditions nearly every consonant can be gradated, or lenited word internally. It is a morphological setting or morphophonological environment, so I’ll leave it for morphology.

A closed set of roots that break phonotactic tendencies is a good transition from individual phones to roots and words.

The phonotactics of the roots in this language are really pretty simple. Generally it’s CVCVC, so they usually have an onset, they’re usually disyllabic, they usually have a coda and there is no vowel hiatus, there’s always something in between the vowels. I bury the lede a little bit in the video, but my phonotactic breakers are usually monosyllabic rather than disyllabic. Some words in the group are disyllabic, but will still usually behave the same as those that actually break phonotactics.

I will use a very short sentence as an example, it’s one of the zephyrus test sentences. I always use the zephyrus test sentences when I’m doing a speedlang, this is sentence number 84:

Sea water is salty
sea-/gen water salt-adj-pred-3i
plúð/es-ıa mėńâd nísıė-dıę-tox̌-∅
plúnesıa mėńâd nísıėdıętox̌
ˈplu.ne.ʃæ məˈɳɑ˞d ˈni.ʃə.dʒɚ.toχ

The first line is English, of course, followed by the gloss, which I will break down a little. Then we have the glossed Ħáŕŕå and how it would be written, plúnesıa mėńâd nísıėdıętox̌ in this case. The last line is the IPA, showing how it would be pronounced.

In here is an example of a couple of the roots. One of the roots is plúðes for sea. We’ve got another one here, mėńâd for water. The d following the rhoticized back vowel there would get retroflexed a little, there is some connection between the rhoticization and retroflexion in this language, but it’s not super, super strong.

Then we’ve got another one here, nísıė for salt, it’s lacking a coda at the end, but that’s still not too bad. The general rule for syllable structure in this language is that roots will be disyllabic. They’ll usually have an onset, they’ll usually have a coda, but those rules can be broken without breaking the rules of phonotactics.

Part of the reason is that there is a gradation. In this sentence we have sea in the genitive. It’s the sea’s water that is salty. So instead of being plúðes it becomes plúnes, and that plúne, that becomes /plu.ne.ʃæ/ because of the palatalizing front low vowel. Hence, the gloss is sea-/gen and the slash in plúð/es-ıa telling you that some change happens in the root word.

Really, the sound here is a subphonemic. Phonemically, it would be sort of a /sja/. It would be an s, a voiceless alveolar sibilant, followed by some sort of palatalizing glide. We can see the same thing happening with nísıėdıę , it’s ni.ʃə.dʒɚ and it’s the palatalizing schwa, turning the sibilant into a palatal or post alveolar sibilant. Also there is the rhoticizing and palatalizing schwa in there as well, turning the voiced alveolar stop, or d, into a post alveolar affricate dʒ, and I think I will keep those as affricates. The postalveolar forms are allophones, so they happen automatically and don’t really need to be written in a broad transcription, but I’m writing them because they effect how the language sounds and I think that that is too important a part of its character to risk forgetting.

You can see that the adjective here is rendered predicatively, the -pred part of the gloss. The adjective becomes a verb, and the third person inanimate argument, that’s what my 3i marking is, it’s null, it doesn’t surface. You can just say sea’s water salties, and there you go. It is marked as predicative, so we know that it’s a verb, so that’s not getting zero derived.

And that’s what we’re coming back to here, morphosyntactic constraints. The morphosyntax of this language needs to display of a split alignment, and I will get to that. It also needs radically different marking for subclauses, and of course, that means having subclauses, meaning relativization and similar stuff. For that, I needed some complex sentences, which I did get to. Having a number of verbal classifiers was fine, we’ll get to that very soon.

I decided to merge the constraint to have a class of roots which change word class through zero derivation and the constraint that a class of roots breaks phonotactics. The phonotactic breakers are my zero derivers, and we get to them in the coming examples from my spreadsheet.

Starting with the morphosyntactic alignment, it is split, and the split is pretty simple.

A normal active verb, here to eat, you’ve got the first singular eat and it just conjugates just like this:

I eat
(1-S) 1-eat
(esıa-t) s-ódıuŗ
(esıat) sódıuŗ

The final ” r-cedilla” there is actually a velar voiced fricative. The first person subject marked pronoun here, esıat, would be dropped, it would always be dropped. There’d be almost no need to add in esıat, unless you were saying, “it is I who has eaten” or something like that.

Then if you want to transivitise that, you do need to make the verb transitive.

I eat these
(1-S)(3i.pl-prox) 1-eat/trns-3i.pl
(esıa-t)(qaıėm) s-ód/ıuŗ-ıu
(esıat)(qaıėm) sóðıuŗıu

In this instance, “I eat these”, is “I eat these inanimate objects”, because it is an inanimate thing and if it was singular, it wouldn’t be marked. So having a transitive marking there just lets you know that the verb is in fact transitive and it is gradation again. So we have another gradation here, the d turning into a ð, the same way we had ð turning into n in pluðes becoming plunes earlier.

The proximal demonstrative is qaıėm, and the two vowels we see are in separate syllables separated by the little glide, represented by the dotless i. The palatalizing glide surfaces as a functional consonant when it’s needed for these phonotactic kind of things, but it doesn’t really exist otherwise.

Both of the pronouns, esıat and qaıėm, can be happily dropped, as we have our, holophrastic verb here, sóðıuŗıu, marked for both arguments, sort of. This sóðıuŗıu is enough to say “I eat these”.

That’s in the transitive, now we’ll go down to something a little bit different, which is showing the split. Just here we’ve got I fall, volitional, marked with the subject kind of pronoun in the subjecty kind of way:

I fall (volitional
(1-S) 1-fall
(esıa-t) s-békıat
(esıat) sbékıat

The root for fall is békıat, with the stress at the start. That is what those accents mean, they indicate stress, which is phonemic in disyllabic content words, possibly a few other cases. I fall is sbékıat with that s at the start indicating the 1st person. It probably would be a voiced sibilant here, pronounced as an English z, because of voicing assimilation, rather than devoicing the following stop from b to p. This voicing change isn’t indicated in the orthography, although some others are. The pronoun again, even though it’s dropped, if it did surface, it would be marked with that subject suffix, the t at the end. Down here, the avolitional fall, which would be the more common for these kinds of verbs we have:

I fall (avolitonal
(1) fall-1
(esıa) békıat-ıa
(esıa) békıatıa

Here again the t would become another post alveolar, but the k remains just a palatalized velar, slightly fronted maybe. And the pronoun, esıa, it’s just esıa, it’s not esıat. So it is kind of the absolutive, because it is used for the subjects or at least the subjects of certain kinds of intransitive verbs and it’s the object of transitive verbs.

Whereas the t in esıat, it’s sort of a nominative because it is also used as the subject of certain verbs, but it’s only used as the subject of intransitive verbs when they are particularly active, volitional in this case.

I’ve got a couple of other examples of a reasonably holophrastic verb with some lenition going on as well.

I sent them(in.pl) to them(3rd.s)
1-send/trns-3i.pl-pst-3a.s
s-xıún/ėt-ıu-qę-ıeh
sxıúlėtıuqęıeh

So we can see in this verb, it also marks the dative. This could be an answer to a question like “What did you do with the neighbour’s rocks?”, as the marking specifies many inanimate objects getting sent, and a singular animate recipient. I wanted to mark the dative as well, actually marking it morphologically on the verb.

The the velar voiceless fricative x would be fronted a little by the palatalizing vowel, but that’s not indicated orthographically and it’s not as extreme as the alveolar sibilant becoming a postalveolar sibilant. The x almost becomes a palatal non-sibilant fricative, but not quite as far as the h in English “huge” does for some speakers. We can see the n being lenited there. This verb root xıúnėt becomes xıúlėt because of the lenition, indicating that it’s transitive.

It’s happening in the past there, which is indicated with qę with that rhotic schwa. It has to be a schwa because it’s rhotic, marked with the ogonek. You don’t get any rhotic front mid or mid close vowels, but then here it is ıeh because the e is completely unmarked, it must be a front mid vowel. It would be marked as a schwa if it was the non-rhotic palatalising schwa, with an overdot.

And a h at the end, a word final glottal fricative. That’s not a problem in this language. I’m not great at pronouncing it, but for the native speakers of this language, a word final glottal fricative would be absolutely fine.

Here we have one of the changes using a verbal prefix to change the meaning of a verb:

I throw them(in.pl) to them(3rd.s)
by.grasp-1-send/trns-3i.pl-pst-3a.s
hėt-s-xıún/ėt-ıu-qę-ıeh
hėtsxıúlėtıuqęıeh

So you can send something to somebody in various different ways, but if you send something to them by your grasp with this prefix hėt, this version of the word is to throw it to them, to send it to them by grasp, and that continues.

I kick them(in.pl) to them(3rd.s)
by.kick-1-send/trns-3i.pl-pst-3a.s
‘av-s-xıún/ėt-ıu-qę-ıeh
‘avsxıúlėtıuqęıeh

We’ve got kicking to somebody, to send something to them by foot. The initial apostrophe is the glottal stop, similar to the ‘okina in Hawai’ian. Both of those were apostrophes as well, of course.

Then we’ve got for to prepare food here:

I cook it
by.fire-1-prep.food/trns-3i
řål-s-mę’/út-∅
řålsmęhút

This is a root that usually pops up with some sort of a verbal prefix. So there is to prepare food by fire, to cook it, and then to peel, to butcher:

I peel/butcher it
by.cut-1-prep.food/trns-3i
sni’-s-mę’/út-∅
sni’smęhút

We can see the third person inanimate singular coming up as a null morpheme there, so we don’t really see it in the verb at all, but the verb is transivitised, so we know it has some other argument.

I mince it/chop it up
by.cut-1-prep.food/trns/itr-3i
sni’-s-mę’/ú/’ut-∅
sni’smęhú’ut

To mince it up or to chop it up. It is almost the same as peel or butcher, but it is in the iterative aspect, marked with internal reduplication.

It’s only cooking food if the verbal prefix uses by fire or by some other appropriate means, otherwise it’s just preparing food.

So here we’ve got another one, you’re piercing something, you’re by cut piercing something, so you’re stabbing it or knifing it.

I stab/knife it
by.cut-1-pierce/trns-3i
sni’-s-op/ët-∅
sni’sobët

So we can see it’s got the same cutting verbal prefix, but a different root here serves to carry the different meaning.

And then down here to do similar by a point.

I pierce/needle it
by.point-1-pierce/trns-3i
pit-s-op/ët-∅
pitsobët

So these are verbs that change, not drastically, but they do go from I cook it to I mince it or chop it up based on the prefix, I think that’s a pretty big change just by changing the prefix of the verb, it is still the same lexical verb.

We can see there it is pierced as well:

it is pierced
psv-by.point-pierce-3i
de-pit-opët-∅
depitopët

This shows the verb taking that verbal prefix inside the passivizing prefix, just helps to show that it is in fact one word. I could probably add on a third animate agent here, but this probably could be turned into some sort of word all on its own, “a thing which is pierced”.

I’ve gone with the future here as well:

I will start walking
by.foot-1-go-inc-fut
toŗ-s-éńo-vıul-ś
toxséńovıuĺś

So this is to go by foot, I will start walking. The future is marked by -fut and the start by -inc- for the inchoative aspect. We can see that this is considered an active intransitive verb, it’s taking the active type of subject marking.

And we’ve got another one here with eat:

I can eat
1-eat-abl
s-ódıuŗ-ŗek
sódıuŗŗek

Here with eat, I’ve added in the abilitative mood with -abl. We can see that that makes a geminate velar fricative there. The abilitative can be added on any verb to indicate that it is something you can do, rather than are doing.

Here we can see I am able to eat as its own sentence:

I (am) able to eat
eat-/inf 1-can
ódıuŗ-/ıin s-úŋıek
odıúŗıin súŋıek

You have the abilitative verb here, the verb for to able to, and the infinitive of the verb to eat. The infinitive suffix causes a stress shift, I forget it in the video, but you can see here with the shift in where the accent is.

So we there is one verb saying I can eat and then these two verbs saying I am able to eat. This is useful for moving around arguments and changing structure. It just gives you a little bit of more flexibility.

Speaking of, we’ve got a couple of other ones here:

I go to eat / I come to eat
eat-purp and-1-go/trns-3i / eat-purp ven-1-go/trns-3i
ódıuŗ-ħåm vus-s-úŋ/ıek-∅ / ódıuŗ-ħåm soq-s-úŋ/ıek-∅
ódıuxħåm vussúļıek / ódıuxħåm soqsúļıek

So this a pair of other prefixes, I don’t really consider this a classifying verbal prefix like the grabbing and kicking, I think it’s more like the passive. It’s the andative and the venitive, the and- and ven-, andative for away and venitive for towards, but they are very broad and vague. This is I go to eat and I come to eat, with the “to” in English here being a kind of purposive rather than an infinitive. This language is verb final, so it’s eat-purposive andative-go. So ódıuxħåm is the purposive clause form of eat. This can be used to answer a why, question, such as why did you come, in order to eat. I come and I go use the same root verb here, they are differentiated only by that verbal prefix there right at the start.

To look at some of these zero derivation verbs and some of the weird ones, this word here, tıėg is an old word, what I’m calling an old word.

I become small
1-small-inc
s-tıėg-vıul
stıëgvıul

We’re using it here as a verb, I become small. This is the inchoative so it’s become small, and it’s sort of happening right now. Generally, verbs that are otherwise unmarked are sort of a present perfective, but not necessarily habitual or perfect. As sych, they’re often a conative or a gnomic. Once they are marked, usually with a future or a past, or an imperfective, then you’ve got a better idea of what tense is going on.

As small is an old word, it marks the future and various irrealis moods by suppletion.

I will become small
1-small.irr-inc
s-ŗun-vıul
sxúnvıul

Normally future and the irrealis moods are affixes that pop up further from the verb root, so this is another serving of the constraints of the challenge. We can see here I will become small has a different root ŗun compared to tıėg for the I become small in the present, otherwise it is pretty much identical. We can see the same prefix and the same suffix.

We can see here that when the initial velar rhotic, the inital velar voiced fricative ŗ here comes adjacent to this voiceless fricative s, it devoices and that is indicated orthographically. This is one of the instances of coalescence. There is a sort of a coalescence between the iotizing vowels and the alveolar consonants in that they become palatal-alveolar or post-alveolar consonants when they come into contact with those particular vowels, but there are a few other things. Fricatives will devoice around certain other fricatives, you will also have the devoicing sometimes of laterals when they come near fricatives, even though I haven’t popped that up here.

A few more classifying prefixes:

I conceive/imagine it
by.mind-1-create/trns-3i
hıę-s-já’/in-∅
hıęsħáhin

So we’ve got these different kinds of creation that are using the same verb root to create, whether it’s by mind or by fire:

I fire/blast it
by.fire-1-create/trns-3i
řål-s-já’/in-∅
řålsħáhin

I’m thinking this would be something like kilning, cooking a ceramic maybe. Weaving something:

I weave it
by.long-1-create/trns-3i
ĺåŋ-s-já’/in-∅
ĺåŋsħáhin

You’re creating something by means of something long, and this by long, here, it’s really by long and flexible, I don’t have the full definition of the verbal prefix there, but it implies more like a long rope, a long reed, not a long stick or a big long tree branch, something more flexible. Something that could ostensibly be woven.

you just conceive/imagined them?
by.mind-2-create/trns-3i.pl-just=int
hıę-o-já’/in-ıu-ś=pıa
hıęŕojáhinıuśpıa

Here we’ve got the interrogative clitic =pıa. It’s really a sentence final clitic, but it’s almost always going to go on the verb because the verbs are final in this language. We’ve also got lenition of the glottal stop to the glottal fricative, you can see that going on there in the verb to create.

You can also see that the pharyngeal approximant or the epiglottal approximant or the epiglottal voiced fricative, so whatever you want to call it, the j, that there remains voiced. Whereas when it comes into contact with that first person s prefix in the previous example, it devoices to the fricative instead.

This is also adding in that “just” tense. I’ve got a sort of a proximal past tense as well as a proximal future “soon” tense.

The following shows a little bit more about some of the possession, the inalienable or alienable possession, and the zero derivation across different word classes and also the, the inflection by suppletion:

I (am) native
1-home
s-idel
sidél

This word home, idel, because it is an old word, it can be a noun, it can be a verb or it can be an adjective.

So this is a plant of the home, home’s plant:

native plant
home-/gen plant
id/el-ıa ıicóm
iðélıa ıicóm

This is one way that it can behave as an adjective, though you do need to put it into the genitive for this sense. So from idel it becomes iðel, and it also takes a genitive suffix, forming iðélıa, so we’ve got iðélıa ıicóm. That c is supposed to be the pharyngeal stop, and the initial palatalizing vowel there, you don’t really get much of a palatal approximant leading onto that vowel, you just kind of get a slightly longer vowel. The behavior of these vowels gets a little bit strange.

To say that I am native, you can put it as a verb, sidél, I am native, I am home:

I (am) native
1-home
s-idel
sidél

It’s not saying that the thing is a home, it’s not strictly translating it as home in English, I am getting a little bit fluffy with the translation.

To say that this is my home:

my home(land)
1.gen home
ðıa idel
ðıa idél

This is the normal genitive pronoun ðıa.

I will be native/naturalize
1-home.irr
s-pıęń
spıęń

This is that word again, because it is a phonotactic breaking old word, it is conjugating into the irrealis by suppletion. This is I will be native, I will be in the future native, or I will naturalize. It should probably take a future inchotative to be naturalize, rather than will be native. It takes the root pıęń, and that is a normal retroflex nasal there, it’s not only retroflex because of the rhotic quality of the vowel in front of it.

So that is a little bit on the phonotactic breaking, I’ve also got little bit more up here on the possession. The special genitive is used for where you’re from, your homeland, it’s not necessarily your house or where you’re living right now.

Here we’ve got my plant, which is an alienably possessed noun:

my plant
1.poss plant
eðą ıicóm
éðą ıicóm

It takes the possessive pronoun eðą, not the genitive pronoun. The genitive says more that there’s some sort of relationship rather than a possessive relationship necessarily.

We’ve also got a verbal inalienable possession here:

my parent
1-parent-trns-3a
s-ħet-ħ-ıe
sħetħıe

They are a parent to me, essentially. Parent is also an old word, so it reduplicates there to be plural and takes the specific to be the parents:

the parents
parent/pl-spec
ħet/et-ŕå
ħetétŕå

We can see there that word ħet can operate as a verb conjugated with no predicative marker, no verbalizer, and it can work as a noun, no nominalizer, no deverbalizer, whatever you want.

Here we have somebody’s plant:

someone’s plant
some.3a/-human-poss plant
uńń/ıe-ąb-ą ıicóm
uĺĺıeyąbą ıicóm

This shows that human possessive pronoun, or proform, in front of it instead. That is how you show that an alienably possessable thing is possessed indefinitely, a special prefix is used if you want to show an inalienably possessed noun, here we go:

my arm
1-arm
s-řókıė
sx̌ókıė

Here is my arm, and of course it is voiced uvular. Really, it’s a voiced uvular approximant, it’s not a voiced uvular trill or fricative, really, not in my pronunciation anyway.

We can see there that it is just taking that s prefix, just like the verbal prefix to say that that is my arm.

Whereas this is an arm:

an arm
dis-arm
go-řókıė
gořókıė

It’s a disembodied or disconnected arm, with a dispossessed prefix. That takes go, so we can see it staying as the voiced uvular version there.

We’ve got the small animal here:

the small animal
tıėg dâx̌apŕå

We’ve got small acting as an attributive adjective, no problem.

We’ve got the animal is small, and we’ve conjugated our verb small there as a verb:

the animal is small
dâxapŕå tıëgıe

Then the small one:

the small (one)
tıëgŕå

Or just the small, you don’t need to say one, it can act as a substantive. it can stand as something that is small as if it was a noun.

Going to a longer example, the animal which ate was small:

the animal, which ate, was small
eat-3a-pst-prt animal-def small-3a-pst
ódıuŗ-ıe-qę-x̌lė dâx̌ap-ŕå tıėg-ıe-qę
ódıuŗıeqęx̌lė dâx̌apŕå tıėgıéqę

So we can see there that it is a past participle, the -pst-prt part of the gloss, modifying animal. It’s not just the animal that was eating, it’s the eating animal, sort of. This verb has been nominalized basically to modify animal as an attributive participle. That’s what I’m calling it, an attributive participle, I’m pretty sure that does exist, that’s not my strange label.

That’s my attributed participle modifying the definite animal, and that animal was small, it’s not exactly copular because I’ve conjugated the adjective itself.

If we come to a slightly different phrasing, the animal that ate was small:

the animal that ate was small
animal-def 3a-rel eat-3a-pst small-3a-pst
dâx̌ap-ŕå ŋåļ ódıuŗ-ıe-qę tıėg-ıe-qę
dâx̌apŕå ŋåļ ódıuŗıeqę tıėgıéqę

So here we’ve got the two verbs, eat and be small, pretty much just one after another, but there is that relativizer there in front of it, 3a-rel, the 3rd person animate relativiser. The animal that ate was small. That little relativizer in there, that relativizer is a normal relativizer, so it shows that it is a third animate argument and that it serves the, not just the same function or role, but specifically the absolutive, and specifically that suffixial position on the verb. Verbs that are in subclauses like this, they can’t really be finite, and part of that is that they can’t take the agentive marker at all, even if they should, even if otherwise they would take the agentive marker, they can’t.

Here’s more, the animal that I saw was small:

the animal that I saw was small
animal-def 3a-rel 1-S see/trns-3a-pst small-3a-pst
dâx̌ap-ŕå ŋåļ esıa-t hed/äv-ıe-qę tıėg-ıe-qę
dâx̌apŕå ŋåļ ésıat heðävıeqę tıėgıéqę

And you can see the I, the 1-S, is in there, but the animal is still serving the same role, it was seen and it was small, but the I, the agent in there, we pop back up as a subject pronoun, one of the few cases when we would. However, that subject pronoun is not the coordinating argument, it is that 3a, that third animate argument, that’s what’s getting coordinated by this relativiser here. We know that because it is the sort of direct relativizer, there’s a different relativizer if you want to coordinate arguments that are different, if you want it to be something else.

Here we go, we’ve got the third animate “something”:

something eat(s)
some.3a-S 3a-eat
uńńıe-t N-ódıuŗ
uńńıet módıuŗ

Something eats, nothing in particular, just a thing.

So that’s some of the different types of possessive, it’s mostly just alienable versus inalienable, but I do also have that verbal relationship indicator as well.

With regards the special label, I’ll get to the label in just a second once I look at some of the longer sentences.

Regarding having a morphological category marked on a closed set, that is my suppletion of the irrealis, and I think I look at that a little bit more later as well.

For the class of roots, I hope I’ve covered that now as my shorter old word phonotactic breakers, we’ll see some of this more clausal stuff once we get into the sentences.

Speaking of sentences, translating five sentences is one of the constraints and I’ve already showed one, I’m going to show a few more below, along with some stuff about the sea.

The sentences need to come from some list or set, I use the zephyrus conlang syntax test sentences, and I do have 5 of them, but this is just my favorite sentence to translate:

the small animal eats it’s plants here
small-S animal-S-spec 3a.poss plant/pl loc.prox/-ob 3a-eat/trns-3i.pl
tıëg-t dâxap-t-ŕå ıelė ıicóm-C ðén/ıėm-j N-ód/ıuŗ-ıu
tıëgdė dâxaptŕå ıelė ıicómmo ðélıėmjė móðıuŋŗıu
ˈtʲəɡ.də ˈdɑ˞.χæp.tɻɑ ˈje.lə jiˈʡom.mo ˈðe.lʲəm.ʕə ˈmo.ðʲuŋ.ɣʲu
ˈtʃəɡd ˈdɑ˞.χap.ʈɻɑ ˈejᵊ iˑˈʡom.mo ˈðej.mˁə ˈmo.ʒʊŋ.ɣʲu

This shows the animate possession cisclausally and it shows the normally verb final structure. This is the small animal eats its plants here, or, small animal the its plants here eats, according to the syntax.

So we can see that there’s a couple of things here. This capital C in the gloss is gemination, marking the plural of plant. It’s gemination of the final consonant or it’s reduplication of the final syllable, it varies a little bit.

We can see there’s a lenition in there of the locative proximal, because it’s in the oblique, the /-ob or -/ob in the gloss, this shows that the location is not a verbal argument, it’s not a dative argument, it’s just background.

We can see some capital N’s as well, they’re assimilating nasals. It actually assimilates to the back rounded vowel o to make a labial m in one place, and then we can see this, this velar voiced fricative, creating that velar nasal.

You may also see that I have the sounds in the IPA written out twice. This is the slightly more broad, slightly more phonemic only transcription first, followed by a closer transcription of how it might sound.

So we can see we’ve got our palatalizer in there in the first line, but the appropriate post-alveolar allophony in the second. We’ve got this whole bit je.lə in the first line, that would be reduced greatly to ejᵊ in running speech. The j’s there are palatal approximants, like the English y sound, because that’s what they mean in the IPA. The IPA symbol ʕ represents the pharyngeal voiced fricative, and I’m writing that as j in this languages orthography, but they are very different.

We can see that the palatal onset glide disappears in the transcription that shows how it probably would actually be said. We can see the same thing there with the changing of the syllabification, that palatalized lateral in ðe.lʲəm.ʕə essentially just becoming a diphthong, in ðej.mˁə.

The m there as well, this labial nasal becoming pharyngealized, becoming a pharyngealized labial nasal, taking on that pharyngeal approximant. I intend for stuff like that to happen in this language, that kind of strange allophony and assimilation.

Down here, this is the first of the Zephyrus sentences, number 210:

We went back to the place where we saw the roses.
we place-the rel there we saw the roses to-back.went
(1.pl-S) place-spec 3i-drel loc.dist/-ob 1-S see/trns-3i.pl-pst con/flower/pl-spec and-1.pl-go/trns-3i-rep-pst
(esıa-t) ðéną-ŕå ıuļļoś ðen/o-j esıa-t hed/åv-ıu-qę ŕapp/iŋ/ŋ-ŕå vus-ħ-eń/o-∅-ęgu-qę
(ésıat) ðénąŕå ıuļļoś ðeloj esıat heðävıuqę ŕabbíŋŋŕå vusħéĺowęguqę
ˈe.ʃæt ˈðe.nɑ˞.ʁɑ ˈʲuʟ.ʟoʂ ˈðe.loʕ ˈe.ʃæt heˈðɑ.vʲu.qɚ ɻæbˈbiŋ.ŋʁɑ vuˈsħe.ɭo.wɚ.ɡu.qɚ

We went back to the place where we saw the roses, things are getting a little long. We can see here, this is a different kind of relativizer, 3i-drel, 3i for third person inanimate, but -drel instead of -rel because of the argument being relativized. This shows it’s not tracking the same argument exactly here.

The place is the important argument of the outer, or matrix clause. The place we went back to is the place that we saw the roses at, but it’s the roses that were seen there. In the inner clause, it’s the roses that are the important argument. The location becomes an oblique, it’s not dative marked, similar to how the location is an oblique in previous examples.

So it’s the place where we saw the roses, but the seeing targets the roses, the roses are the argument that is being absolutive marked on the verb there, so that needs to be the different kind of relativizer because it’s not the same third person inanimate that is in the matrix clause, as is in this subclause or relativized clause.

That’s the kind of tricky thing with the syntax there. You can see that flowers there in the gloss, I said flowers instead of roses, I didn’t want to translate a specific word for roses just yet, I’ll start with flowers, I’ll figure out roses later. More importantly, it is after the verb. So we can see there this verb, which is a normal verb, it’s not a copula, we can see that it is in SVO order with the subject, the verb and the object, whereas the matrix clause is in SOV order and it is SOV order for matrix clauses, generally speaking in this language, but for the subordinate clauses, we get SVO, or, if things are being relativized smoothly, we just get VO because we don’t need all of the arguments.

So here we go, a couple of water things coming up here with sentence 173:

We could see ourselves in the water.
(1.pl-S) 1.pl.reflx water/-ob=in 1.pl-see/trns-1.pl-pst-abl
(sıaħę-t) ęjo vėl/úś-j=jem ħ-ħed/äv-ę-qę-ŗek
(sıaħęt) ęjo vėıúśjėjem ħėħeðävęqęŗek
ˈʃæ.ħɚt ɚˈʕo vəˈʲu.ʂˁə.ʕem ħə.ħeˈðɑ˞.vɚ.qɚ.ɣek

I’ve got my nice reflexive pronoun in there, why not have a reflexive pronoun? The animate arguments are the only ones getting marked on the verb here, and again, the first plural subject would probably get dropped. This is the plural version of the first person pronoun, sıaħęt.

So we can see the reflexive there, the reflexive and the dropped first person plural, because both first person plurals are marked on the verb, so if we didn’t have that in the reflexive, it would just be the reciprocal, we saw each other in the water. The water is not marked on the verb, it’s marked as oblique because it’s just giving background. We saw ourselves is enough, “in the water” just adds on to the rest of the sentence.

I only gave one version in the IPA because I don’t want to do it for every single one of them, I’ve done it for a couple of them.

Onto sentence number 50:

The child waited at the door for her father.
child-fem-S-spec 3a-parent-3a-nom-male-trg door-/ob-spec=at 3a-wait/dur-3a-pst
ŗıu’-gıa-t-ŕå N-ħet-ıe-‘ıaŕ-oq-c ĺåx/át-j-ŕå=hėp N-ıėcéŋ/eŋ-ıe-qę
ŗıu’gıátŕå ŋjetıe’ıáŕoqėc ĺåŗátjėŕåhėp nıėcéļeŋıeqę
ɣʲuʔˈɡʲæ.ʈɻɑ ŋʕe.tʃeˈʔʲæ.ɻo.qəʡ ɭɑˈɣæ.tʕə.ɻɑ.həp ɲəˈʡe.ʟe.ŋʲe.qɚ
ɣʲuˈɠʲæ.ʈɻɑ ŋˁe.tʃeˈʔʲæ.ɻo.qəʡ ɭɑˈɣæ.tˁɻɑ.həp ɲəˈʡe.ɰe.ŋʲe.qɚ

This one is a little bit longer, it’s the child and the one who is a parent to her, I’ve marked them with female and male because the lexical roots don’t track gender, there is an animate/inanimate distinction, but that’s all the noun classes in this language. The -trg marks the Target. Here, the girl is waiting on her father. This is the differential object marking of this language. It is sort of a partative, it’s like the Finnish partative, but it’s not exactly like the Finnish partative. It just shows sort of an unaffected object, an indirect object, but it could be an indirect object without the need of a direct object. It’s not always the recipient, it is a recipient sometimes, if it is dative marked on the verb. In this case it’s just a limit, it’s a target. The girl was waiting on her father, but her father hasn’t come yet.

The door is just in the locative there, so that is, that’s that sentence. You can see that I’ve done it twice here. You can see the nasal prefix voicing or making voiced the pharyngeal fricative, with N-ħet becoming ŋjet, and with the velar nasal being the only dorsal nasal, that’s what the capital N nasal becomes.

I have transcribed the sounds twice here again, and you can see that in the more sort of a colloquial, the way it would actually be spoken, that turns that velar nasal into a pharyngealized velar nasal, not just a sequence. In the same line you can see that that doesn’t happen with the pharyngeal or epiglottal stop, written as c. Even though the schwa vowel could be deleted if it was the fricative or the approximant, because it’s the stop it’s gonna stay and it’s gonna stick around.

We can also see there the velar lateral becoming more of a velar lateral, or a velar approximant rather than a velar lateral. That happens especially when those things are unstressed. That’s one of the things I decided for this language I wanted it to do.

Here’s the sentence we already went through, the sentence from back at the start, number 84:

Sea water is salty
sea-/gen water salt-adj-pred-3i
plúð/es-ıa mėńâd nísıė-dıę-tox̌-∅
plúnesıa mėńâd nísıėdıętox̌
ˈplu.ne.ʃæ məˈɳɑ˞d ˈni.ʃə.dʒɚ.toχ

I won’t go through it again, we’ll move right ahead to sentence 81:

A box of growing plants stood in the window
box-trg-/gen grow/cont-3i.pl-prt plant/pl window-/obl-spec=at stand/dur-3i.pl-past
hąb/úl-c-ıa gŕíkęm-/mė-ıu-x̌lė ıicóm/mo qıêdd/a-j-ŕå=hęp ıe’ón/on-ıu-qę
hąvúlcıa gŕíkęmmėıux̌lė ıicómmo qıêððajŕåhęp ıe’ónonıuqę
hɑ˞ˈvul.ʡʲæ ˈɡɻiˈkɚm.mə.ju.χlə jiˈʡom.mo ˈqʲɚð.ðæ.ʕɻɑ.hɚp jeˈʔo.no.ɲu.qɚ

So there we’ve got the grow-prt, so this is growing as a participle, an attributive participle, growing plants. For the box of plants, I decided to put a partitive-genitive, it’s a boxes amount of plants that are in a box, that’s my way of structuring these sort of container relationships in this language. We can see that it stands there, and it stands there for a while, we’ve got that in the durative, -dur. The third person plural is marked, and it’s in the past, we can see all of that there as well.

Now, this next one is a long one, so I will break it down into sections, but here it is all as one, in Ħáŕŕå:

Plúðes kıut oktå mėĺâdvicıa nísıėdıę mėńâd. Kisóħoju ‘ıáyęŕucıa pėbıún, kisóħoju oktå mėmúŗcıa nísıėdıę mėńâd, ıuļáļhėp kıut jémęgıa blogıářucoŋ, kaj Kásbiıa Plúðeśśå.

I did want to point out quickly that I’ve got some alternate romanizations here:

Pluðes kıut oktå mĺądvicıa nisıėdıę mńąd. Kisoħoju ‘ıaęucıa pėbıun, kisoħoju oktå mmuŗcıa nisıėdıę mńąd, ıuļaļhėp kıut jemęgıa blogıařucoŋ, kaj Kasbiıa Pluðeśśå.

Pluzeys kyut oktaa meĺaŕdvicya nisyedyeŕ meńaŕd. Kisoħoju ‘yaeŕucya pebyun, kisoħoju oktaa memuģcya nisyedyeŕ meńaŕd, yuwawhep kyut jeymeŕgya blogyarucoŋ, kaj Kasbiya Pluzeyśśaa.

I like the first romanization as it’s honest. It shows that there are iotasizing or palatalizing vowels rather than sequences of approximants, it shows other things like stress.

The top alternative one drops out the vowels that would be dropped out if it was in casual speech.

We can see the difference between these too lines here:

ˈplu.ðes kʲut ˈok.tɑ məˈɭɑ˞d.vi.ʡʲæ ˈɲi.ʃə.dʒɚ məˈɳɑ˞d | kiˈso.ħo.ʕu ˈʔʲæ.jɚ.ɻu.ʡʲæ pəˈbʲun | kiˈso.ħo.ʕu ˈok.tɑ məˈmuɣ.ʡʲæ ˈni.ʃə.dʒɚ məˈɳɑ˞d | juˈʟæʟ.həp kʲut ˈʕe.mɚ.ɡʲæ bloˈɡʲæ.ʁu.ʡoŋ | kæʕ ˈkæs.bi.jæ ˈplu.ðeʂ.ʂɑ

ˈplu.ðes kʲut ˈok.ta ˈmɭɑ˞ɖ.vi.ʡʲæ ˈɲi.ʃə.ʒɚ mᵊˈɳɑ˞ɖ | kiˈsoˁʰo.ʕu ˈʔʲæʲɚ.ɻu.ʡʲa pəˈbʲun | kiˈsoˁʰo.ʕu ˈok.tɑ mᵊˈmuɣ.ʡʲa ˈni.ʃə.ʒɚ mᵊˈɳɑ˞ɖ | ʲuˈʟæʟ.həp kʲut ˈʕe.mɚ.ɡʲa bloˈɡʲæ.ʁu.ʡoŋ | kæʕ ˈkæz.biʲa ˈplu.ðeʂ.ʂɑ

Comparing these two lines, we can see that the schwa vowel drops out to form an allowable initial cluster. That would be something that would happen in regular speech. We can see that in other places the schwa practically drops out because it’s almost an allowable cluster, but it is still there in a much briefer form.

This leads to a sort of a mnard kind of thing, not a mėńâd. We can also see the retroflexion of the D in the more casual pronunciation. We can see some of those things are indicated in these different orthographies. I like to come up with different orthographies, but they don’t matter too much.

This little translation here, which is full of copulas, is the Wikipedia simple English entry to Sea. This is what a sea is, something describing a sea, this is what a sea is.

A sea is a large body of salt water.
plúðes kıut oktå mėĺâdvicıa nísıėdıę mėńâd .
plúðes k-ıut-∅ oktå mėń/âd-vi-c-ıa nísıė-dıę mėńâd .
sea 3i-cop-3i big water-area-trg-/gen salt-adj water .
ˈplu.ðes kʲut ˈok.tɑ məˈɭɑ˞d.vi.ʡʲæ ˈɲi.ʃə.dʒɚ məˈɳɑ˞d |

These copular clauses, even though these are matrix clauses, they are SVO. The copula isn’t really a verb, you can see here that it’s just one syllable. The copula acts a little bit differently to the other verbs. the copula verb, an actual copula can stand SVO.

We can also see here the body of salt water, a water area, a water body, I’m not just calling it a body, it’s a water body of salty water.

Salt standing as an adjective, not verbalized, but it’s still marked as being an adjective because salt can otherwise just be a noun.

It may be part of an ocean,
kisóħoju ‘ıáyęŕucıa pėbıún,
k-iso/ħ-∅-/oju ‘ıáļ/u-c-ıa pėbıún ,
3i-cop.irr-3i-/hyp piece-trg-/gen ocean,
kiˈso.ħo.ʕu ˈʔʲæ.jɚ.ɻu.ʡʲæ pəˈbʲun |

We’ve got our irrealis copula there, and we can see that because the copula is also an old word. My root for the copula is ıut, but iso is my irrealis or isoħ, with that ħ added on there. It gets a little bit weird, some of my old words, some of the phonotactics solutions are odd, they are the phonotactics breakers, so things get a little bit strange with them.

We can see here with it may be part of an ocean, we have a piece of, same as a box of, it’s that partative genitive. Ocean then is pėbıún.

it may be a large saltwater lake
kisóħoju oktå mėmúŗcıa nísıėdıę mėńâd ,
k-iso/ħ-∅-/oju oktå mėv/úŗ-c-ıa nísıė-dıę mėńâd ,
3i-cop.irr-3i-/hyp big lake-trg-/gen salt-adj water ,
kiˈso.ħo.ʕu ˈok.tɑ məˈmuɣ.ʡʲæ ˈni.ʃə.dʒɚ məˈɳɑ˞d |

So these are the two different things that a sea could be. It could be part of an ocean, or it could be a large saltwater lake on its own.

There we’ve got our copula again. Here the copula is essentially initial in the sentence. The “it” is, strung way back, with the verb referencing the explicit “sea” in the first sentence. The pronoun is dropped out, you wouldn’t need it, the information is conjugated on the copula.

So, functionally, the copular clauses have almost become VO, similar to the relativized clauses and subclauses.

This is the hypothetical as well, it could be, it’s the irrealis hypothetical. It could be a lake of salty water. Again, we’ve got a piece of an ocean, a lake of salty water, a lake’s worth, a piece’s worth, a box’s worth, it’s that kind of a construction that the partative genitive is trying to get across there, or the target genitive, as I’m calling it.

which lacks a natural outlet,
ıuļáļhėp kıut jémęgıa blogıářucoŋ,
ıuļaļ=hėp k-ıut-∅ jém/ęg-ıa blogıářu=coŋ ,
3i-rel=at 3i-cop-3i nature-/gen out.hole=neg,
juˈʟæʟ.həp kʲut ˈʕe.mɚ.ɡʲæ bloˈɡʲæ.ʁu.ʡoŋ |

Again, this is a relativized thing, so it’s at that it is no outhole, no natural outlet, at least. There I used a different root for natural, this is natural as in normal, not native, so this isn’t an old word, that is a full word.

We can see sentence final clitic there, rendering this as a negative, with a negative sentence final clitic, similar to the sentence final interrogative.

like the Caspian Sea,
kaj Kásbiıa plúðeśśå .
k-ac/-∅-∅ Kásp/i-ıa plúðes-ŕå .
be.like.irr-3i-/sub Casp-/gen sea-spec
kæʕ ˈkæs.bi.jæ ˈplu.ðeʂ.ʂɑ

I’ve just gone Kasbiıa for Caspian, from Caspi, and I’ve done another gradation here to show that it is in the genitive.

This is a subjunctive or subordinate clause, and this is marked, null marked because you don’t need to mark it, it is only marked by suppletion on these irregular verbs. This be.like verb here is another old irregular verb. Normal verbs would be overtly marked for the subjunctive in a slightly different way.

We can see there the Sea of Caspian and “the” or -spec goes at the end, and that’s that.

We have another copular clause here:

They(.s) have no drive
3rd.a=at 3a-cop-3i oar/pl=neg
nıeh=hėp n-ıut-∅ élęð/ðė=coŋ
nıehhėp nıut élęððėcoŋ
nʲeh.həp nʲut ˈe.lɚð.ðə.ʕoŋ
ˈɲe.hə̥p̚ ɲutʃ ˈe.lɚð.ðə.ʕoŋ

This means that they have no drive, but this is rendered as they have no oars. This is a metaphor related to the ocean, they have no oars, they have no drive. I’m thinking of using oars as just kind of a thing for motivation. To give oars to someone could be to give them a reason or give them a drive to do something. This isn’t quite a conceptual metaphor, maybe it could be extended into “psychology is boating” rather than just “motivation is oars”.

I do have a more conceptual metaphor, which relates the ocean and the depths of the ocean and rain coming from above with time, so time goes down.

Let’s put it behind us
(1.pl-S) 3i-spec 1.pl.rflx-/ob=under 1.pl-put/trns-3i-1.pl-opt
sıaħę-t ıuŕå ęj/o-j=ıuq ħ-je’/-∅-sıa-im
(sıáħęt) ıúŕå ęŕójıuq ėħħehsıayim
ˈju.ɻɑ ɚˈɻo.ʕʲuq əħˈħeh.ʃæ.jim
ˈʲu.ɻa ˈɻːo.ʕʲuq ˈħħe.ʰʃæʲim

You don’t put something behind you in the past, you put something underneath you in the past. So let’s put it behind us, becomes we’ll put it underneath ourselves.

That put is another small word, it’s a really, really short stem, it’s got some strange things going on when you finally conjugate it out. There we go, three words, really in the end, because you normally drop that first person, and that is let’s put it behind us or let’s put it underneath us.

Similarly, with that conceptual metaphor, you know, you’d have the future being above being above you rather than before you. The future is above us. I also think I’m going to make the horizon part of the future, I think that makes sense if we are doing watery ocean things.

Now, there is one other thing, and I believe it is in my sentence regarding the roses, because I don’t want to miss out on anything.

We went back to the place where we saw the roses.
we place-the rel there we saw the roses to-back.went
(1.pl-S) place-spec 3i-drel loc.dist/-ob 1-S see/trns-3i.pl-pst con/flower/pl-spec and-1.pl-go/trns-3i-rep-pst
(esıa-t) ðéną-ŕå ıuļļoś ðen/o-j esıa-t hed/åv-ıu-qę ŕapp/iŋ/ŋ-ŕå vus-ħ-eń/o-∅-ęgu-qę
(ésıat) ðénąŕå ıuļļoś ðeloj esıat heðävıuqę ŕabbíŋŋŕå vusħéĺowęguqę
ˈe.ʃæt ˈðe.nɑ˞.ʁɑ ˈʲuʟ.ʟoʂ ˈðe.loʕ ˈe.ʃæt heˈðɑ.vʲu.qɚ ɻæbˈbiŋ.ŋʁɑ vuˈsħe.ɭo.wɚ.ɡu.qɚ

At the beginning of flowers in the gloss we have con/. These roses are a direct argument in this sub clause, they are the thing that is seen, so they shouldn’t be gradated for the oblique, as we’ve seen in other instances, but they are gradated. They are gradated because they are not the direct argument of the matrix clause. So this is pernicious oblique or oblique by suppression, this is when the direct argument of a subordinate clause or relativized clause is marked as an oblique argument, even though it’s not, because it’s sort of a giving way to the actual main argument of the matrix clause.

We still only have one sort of direct marked argument here, the place, the place where we saw the roses. The roses are treated morphophonologically like an oblique, even though in their own clause, we saw the roses, or even, where we saw the roses, they would be direct.

That is my invented piece of terminology, that’s the one that I’m completely making up.

I think that covers it. Those are my five sentences. My stuff about the sea. I gave you my sea conceptual metaphor. My label is what I just covered, that oblique by suppression, marking something as oblique, even though it’s not oblique in the clause that it’s actually standing in because that clause is relativized.

We’ve got my irrealis on my short words, my different kinds of possession, the different types of morphosyntactic alignment and the changes in the subclauses, now that we’ve looked at the longer sentences, we’ve looked at those and a couple of my short roots that do some strange things.

That is my language Ħáŕŕå. It was fun, so thank you to the host. u/fruitharpy, I believe is the person who ran or hosted this 23rd Speedlang Challenge. I really enjoyed it.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article, very different from the other ones on this website so far. If you did, make sure to like it, and make sure to subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel because I am going to be going through other languages that I’ve created and other speedlangs. I tried to do the 22nd Speedlang Challenge but I ran out of time, maybe you’re the same.

Hopefully in a month or two I am going to talk about the 22nd Speedlang challenge and my attempt for it and how I failed, maybe you can restart your 22nd for that as well, but I hope you enjoyed this one on the 23rd.

My name’s Caoimhín, I’ll hopefully be posting content like this again here in the near future, and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.