Caoimhín's Content

Sè Yblááfkaky ( /se˩ ɨˈblɑːf˥ˌka.kɨ/ ) is the language which I created for the 24th Speed Lang challenge, but I don’t think I ever submitted it. This is a language that I created for the challenge, I completed the challenge, I wrote all of the things that needed to be written, and then just never got around to submitting it, so here it is. I created it, so I might as well show it off a little bit.

It is a Speedlang, so it was created with various constraints in mind. In phonology, the constraints were:

• Have no diphthongs, but allow adjacent vowels

I decided to include a little example right up front. the first line is the English, the second is an interlinear gloss (showing what the parts mean). The third line is the underlying native form, with the next two being different ways to write it. Lastly, there is a phonemic and then phonetic IPA transcription:

I am heading out / I am casting-off

out-gen-rev-1-tie/imp

coo-oo-ii-e-oohfùù/

cyöyëwhfòò

cıoıeʌhfòò

tsɨˌɔ.ɨˌɛxˈfɔː˩

tʃɔ˧.ɨ˨.ɛx˨ˈfɔː˩

So you can see three or four vowels in a row, looking at the bottom two rows. This means multiple sets of two vowels in adjacent syllables that are still treated as individual vowels, not diphthongs. The phonemic shows the sounds that actually matter in the language. Phonetically, there are usually some changes you can see, in this case with the tone spreading and vowel dropping. Generally, the default tone is a mid tone, but a low tone somewhere in the same phonological word can drag that mid tone down, so you kind of get a falling contour across the whole word. The same happens with high tones.

• Voicing must be contrastive, but only at one place of articulation.

We’ll get to that in just a second.

• Have a stress system, but have the stress syllable be different more than merely in prominence.

Differing merely in prominence is kind of what happen English, however there is also vowel reduction in unstressed syllables, which is something I did in this language as well. More importantly there’s also tone. The stressed syllable has tone, and only the stressed syllable surfaces with tone. It’s a little bit different to the very famous tonal systems that people see in Asia, but it is still a tone system.

• Don’t include /w j/.

I’ve interpreted these slashes to be phonemic, and phonemically, there is no labiovelar or palatal (j) approximant. Phonetically, there is no labiovelar or palatal approximant. You can see in the written example above that I’m using the graphemes, the actual charachters “w” and “j”, that are usually used for these approximants but I’m not using them as approximants. I am using them as different kinds of unstressed vowel.

What we’re going to do is move forward to the phonology, here are the consonants. Between slashes are the IPA sounds if different to the orthography:

	labial	coronal	dorsal
stop	b	t d	k
affricate		c j / t͡s d͡z /
fricative	f		h / h~x /
sibilant		s z
nasal	m	n	ŋ
liquid		r / ɾ /	l

As you can see, the only place that voicing contrasts is the coronal place of articulation. There’s a difference in voicing for the coronal stops, coronal affricates and coronal sibilants, but there’s no voicing contrast anywhere else. The labial stop is always voiced, or there is no contrast phonemically, though sometimes it probably gets pronounced devoiced. Sometimes the dorsal stop, a velar consonant in this case, might get pronounced as voiced, but phonemically there’s no contrast, there’s no /g/ or /p/. I’ve labeled the last column dorsal, “l” isn’t really dorsal, but I wanted to split it up from the coronal liquid, here being the “r” or the rhotic. You can see that there is quite a bit of allophony with the dorsal fricative. Really, there would be uvular realizations as well, anything in between glottal to velar and even palatal or postpalatal, a /ç/ kind of noise.

Those are the consonants, here are the vowels. On the left, we’ve got the actual IPA notation for the vowels, then we’ve got how they are represented graphemically if different and with their tones:

	front	central	back
close	i (í ì	ɨ (y ((ı	u (ú ù
mid-close	e (é è		o (ó ò
mid	ɛ (ë ê ě	ə (w ((ʌ	ɔ (ö ô ǒ
low			a (á à

We’ve got a couple of graphemes for the unstressed central vowels and they are always unstressed, the central vowels can only come up when they’re unstressed. They’re really the result of a merger between the various vowels in unstressed syllables. You can see that the non-central vowels can be long and possess high, mid, or low tones in stressed syllables only. The length contrast and the tone contrast only surfaces in stressed syllables. In secondarily stressed syllables, you get the collapse of the mid-close, and mid vowels into just mid. In unstressed syllables, you get the collapse of basically all of the vowels, becoming either the central high vowel or the central mid vowel. Generally, “i”, “e” and “u” become “y”, while the other mid and mid-close vowels become “w”, but there is some irregularity. The low vowel just disappears sometimes, if that is phonotactically allowable.

There were also the morphosyntactic constraints.

• Have a dual form for verbs.

I’ve used that as a special form of the verb root, a change happens to the verb root, when there is a dual subject. We’ll see that when we take a look at the verbs.

• Have a normal-ish set of TAM(E) distinctions, and then exactly one weird outlier.

So TAM(E) is tense, aspect, mood and evidentiality. You can add in other things like mirativity and volitionality, but TAM, tense, aspect and mood, they’re the main ones. There’s usually some TAM contrasts in almost every language, even if they’re not synthetic, even if they’re not agglutinative or fusional, they might come up as individual words or particles but there’s almost always those distinctions. A normal set of TAM would distinguish things like past, present and future in the tense, things like perfect and imperfect, perfectivity in the aspect, and things like irrealis for the mood. Having a weird outlier, well, that’s what we’ll get to in a second.

• Nouns must have at least three cases, two of the cases must be called static and dynamic.

We’ll see that when we get to the noun cases.

• Use inversion on nouns or verbs or both to indicate something.

So what the creator of this challenge meant by inversion was swap the vowels, change the tone contour, swap the manner or place of articulation of some consonants, or some similar thing. I went with fully swapping consonants, I went with metathesis for most of the verb roots and some of the noun roots as well.

• Somewhere include deliberate ambiguity.

I may have done that, maybe there is some ambiguity in here.

Firstly, dual verbs and inversion, because they go together. Here is the simple first singular, so we can see the morpheme for first person.

I eat

1st.s 1-eat

séé is-klôôm 

séé ysklôôm

I’ve left it minimally marked because it is just first person, and we can see that the “i” vowel gets reduced to the central “y” vowel because it’s unstressed. The stressed syllable is where the tone is here, and this is a mid vowel, it’s /ɔː˧˥/, a long mid vowel with a rising tone, that’s what the circumflex here is for.

That is the normal intransitive, I’ve got a special version of the pronoun to mark transitive clauses because the third person is unmarked:

I eat it

1st.s 3-1trns-eat

séé ∅-e-klôôm 

séé yklôôm

That’s pretty common with agglutinative languages, very often the third person object will be unmarked, and that is the object here, even though it’s coming ahead of the subject. It does look a little bit strange, but we can see that there’s only a subtle difference, there’s only one consonant of a difference between the two sentences and that does relate to the transitivity.

Here we’ve got the dual version:

we two eat

1st.du 1-eat/du

ëëze is-/lkôôm

ëëzy ylskôôm

ëëz’ylskôôm

You can see here, the root of eat “klôôm” becomes “lkôôm”, the “l” and the “k” swap places, there is metathesis. That metathesis is what gives us this different form of the verb and that’s the dual. You can see that the dual pronoun can actually fuse onto the start of the verb, but really, you can drop these pronouns. You don’t need them because they’re already tracked by the verb, whether it’s the marking which doesn’t differentiate duality, and the verb then, which does differentiate duality.

You can see that here for the transitive version as well, it still fuses together:

we two eat it

1st.du 3-1trns-eat/du

ëëze ∅-e-/lkôôm

ëëzy ylkôôm

ëëz’ylkôôm

Still just a very subtle differences between the two.

Then there is a distributed form as well:

we two both/each eat

1st.du dis-1-eat/du

ëëze d(a)-is-/lkôôm

ëëzy dylskôôm

“We two eat” would usually mean the two of us are eating at the same time, eating the same thing, but with a distributed marker stuck on to the front it clarifies that it is not necessarily at the same time, or not necessarily together. The prefix also separates out the pronoun from the verb, they don’t smush together as easily with this consonant in the way, because it’s not two of the same vowel coming next to each other. It’s also a small difference, but it does show that the plurality is distributed, and the same here with the transitive version:

we two both/each eat it (separately)

1st.du dis-1-eat/du

ëëze d(a)-e-/lkôôm

ëëzy dylkôôm

That’s a little bit about the verbs, and here’s a little bit more. We’ve got normal TAM, and I’ve decided to go with kind of a non-future/future, though not exactly.

I will eat

1st.s fut-1-eat

séé sis-klôôm 

séé sysklôôm

A simple prefix compared to:

I ate

1st.s comp-1-tel-eat

séé moo-iis-T-klôôm 

séé möyskkôôm

We’ve got a future marker for “I will eat” and a completive marker for “I have finished eating”, and it’s got a telic marker as well because you’ve done it, you’ve completed eating. It’s the completive and the telic, really, that are telling you that you’ve finished something. You can stop doing something that’s atelic as well, but it wouldn’t necessarily be finished, you just stopped doing it.

We can see here the irrealis, a nice normal mood:

Maybe I ate

1st.s comp-1-tel-eat/irr

séé moo-iis-T-klôôm/

séé möyskkôôf

The irrealis is what’s turning this into a maybe.

Here we’ve got the future completive telic:

I will have eaten

1st.s fut-comp-1-tel-eat

séé sV-moo-iis-T-klôôm 

séé symöyskkôôm

This is just to show that the completive and the telic can be used for a past and they can be used for a past in the future, for this “I will have eaten”. in the prefix for the future, the “V” just means vowel, so it’s just copying over the closest vowel that it can.

Here is my weird outlier, the delirious or deliriant mood or tense:

I don’t know if I actually ate or not

1st.s comp-1-tel-eat/del

séé moo-iis-T-klôô/m 

séé möyskkom

I guess it’s a mood because it’s “I don’t know if I actually ate or not”. This could be used in a lot of different cases. Originally, my idea for this was that it would be used in the case of certain rituals, or if you’re under the influence of certain things. Maybe you hallucinated that you ate and you didn’t actually eat.

Here’s my simple transitive future, “I will eat it”:

I will eat it

1st.s fut-3-1trns-eat

séé s-∅-e-klôôm 

séé syklôôm

The “it” is implied because it surfaces as a null morpheme. You can see there there’s still a difference, even if the verb forms are very close, there is still a difference so no ambiguity yet.

Onto the nouns, three cases, one called dynamic, one called static and more inversion, there’s inversion in the nouns as well. Here we’ve got the stative first person singular:

I am green

1st.stat.s 1-green

zii is-buum

zii ysbuum

Looking back at the other sentences, the first person is not marked for anything, but those ones are actually in the dynamic case, they are used with verbs that could be transitive. This verb can’t really be transitive, if you try to transitivize “be green”, then it usually ends up being “make green”, it becomes a causative, and we that here.

you made me green

2nd.s 1st.dat.s 1-2.trns-cause-green

nöö sézë eeT-du-L-buum

nöö sézy ëtwlbuum

So we’ve got our stative for “I am green” and here for a transitive version, the causative, it’s “you made me green”, and because I am an object here, an object that’s getting changed, I get put in the dative and the second person is still in the dynamic. So we’ve got a stative or a static, a dynamic and a dative case, and the dative case is also used for recipients and stuff like that.

Here for “You cut me”:

you cut me

2nd.s 1st.dat.s 1-2.trns-cut

nöö sézë eeT-du-tììsk

nöö sézy ëtwtììsk

Again, I am being cut, I’m being changed by the cutting. in the pfixes we’ve got our second transitive, showing that it’s transitive, and we’ve got the root for cut. I’ll get to the change from T and “d” to “t” in just a short while.

Here’s the stative again, “I am cut”:

I am cut 

1st.stat.s 1-cut/stat

zii is-tììsk/isk

zii ystììskysk

This stative form means you are in a state of having been cut, so it’s almost like a resultative, but a full verb rather than a nominalization.

Here “I am made green”:

I am made green

1st.dat.s 1-cause-green/inv

sézë is-l-buum/

zii iisbwm

The “/inv” is a marker for grammatical inversion, essentially a dative raising effect, and it changes what vowel is getting stressed. Normally it would be the root vowel that would get stressed, but because of the inversion, the stress is shifted onto a different vowel. That allows the first person prefix to actually surface as “iis” a long “i” noise, rather than just surfacing as “ys” instead with that short central vowel. That’s a different type of inversion, not the metathesis for dual forms, but a different kind of inversion that I’ve added on to the verbs in order to deal with this particular valence change.

Here’s all three cases, all three cases being used in a ditransitive verb.

you give it to me

2nd.s 3rd.stat.s 1st.dat.s Sdir-3-2.trns-gen-give

nöö lóó sézë draa-∅-du-bôm-zêêmf

nöö lóó sézy dradubwmzêêmf

The verb “to give” is the usual ditransitive verb that I go for. The giver, “you give”, that’s in the normal dynamic case, which I kind of leave unmarked, as it’s kind of the default case. The “it” being given isn’t changed, its position changes, but it isn’t changing so it’s in the stative, and then the first person dative is the recipient, the normal usage of the dative case. The first prefix marks that the recipient is a speech-act participant (first or second person). We can see that the third object is unmarked, then the second transitive is marked, followed by “general give”. The “gen” marks a general object, something is being given, we’ll get back to that a little bit later.

Moving to another example, “it is given to me”:

it is given to me

3rd.stat.s 1st.dat.s 1-3-gen-give/stat

lóó sézë eeT-∅-bôm-zêêmf/

lóó sézy ëfwmzêêmfëmf

This has the third person stative and a first person dative recipient, nice and normal. Even though the third person here is technically a subject, it is still null marked, even though it would be the subject of the clause. This is being given as a stative verb, it is given, but that’s just showing that the subject is in the stative in this particular case because it needs to. This doesn’t need to be marked for a lot of the other verbs that would take that stative. The stative marker surfaces as end reduplication of the verb, but the main verb nucleus is still the one being stressed and possessing the tone.

For another example, “I am given it”

I am given it

1st.dat.s 3rd.stat.s 3-1.trns-gen-give/inv

nöö lóó sézë ∅-e-bôm-zêêmf/

nöö lóó sézy ybômzymf

Here again, the first person is in the dative, it is the recipient even though it is now also the subject. As such, it has the inversion stress shift because of the way that the object is relegated. Some of these, the inversion, the stative, they’re kind of taking over for the normal transitivity marker, making it almost redundant. The transitivity marker is normally used when there is a third null subject or for some reason the subject or object isn’t surfacing in the clause. The inversion is again marked by a change in where the stress goes. This means the “êê” vowel is getting reduced in inversion form of the word, but in the stative form of the word, that vowel isn’t getting reduced, it’s the other one.

There are a few more constraints:

• Have a diminutive register.

I’ll get to that pretty close to the end.

• Translate 5 “just used 5 minutes of your day”, or other appropriate, sentences

I’ve got those five sentences translated and will show them towards the end.

• Have a weird color/texture term

We’ll get to that in just a minute as well.

• Include two sets of words that exhibit sound symbolism

I’ll explain sound symbolism when I’m showing off the sets of words.

Furthermore, there were a couple of more optional challenges. Firstly, include an Easter egg from a book or a movie, which I have done. Secondly, “use the attached picture of asemic writing as a basis for your writing system”, which I haven’t done. I don’t make writing systems very often, I usually stick to just Latin or variations of other real world writing systems so I didn’t create my own asemic writing system for this. I haven’t attached the inspiring picture, but you can find it on Reddit.

Here is a sentence, this is one of the 5 appropriate sentences.

Light travels faster than sound

stv-shine-nom sound/dat up-3rd-4th-fast-go.gen

ëë-aatííh-uu i/tuu/túúŋ  aaŋ-aL-∅-fêês-bôm

ëtííhy itytúúŋ ŋabwsbôm

etííhı itıtúúŋ ŋabʌsböm

ˌɛˈtiː˥.hɨ ˌi.tɨˈtuːŋ˥ ˌŋa.bəsˈbɔm˥

ɛ˦ˈciːç˦˥ i˦.cɨˈtuːŋ˥ ŋɐ˦.bs̩ˈbɔm˥

Firstly, you can see that “light” is a nominalization of the stative shine, so it’s that which shines, which is light. Light would have originally been a verb, you know, to illuminate, in this language, and it’s only when it’s nominalized that it gets to serve as an actual noun. Sound, however, does act as a normal noun it’s just put into the dative case, which gives us a little fun reduplication inside the nominal root. For faster, to show that it’s faster,we start with fast which is a verb in this language. However, it’s not be fast, but go fast, and it’s a general thing that goes. That gives us that same particle or affix, it’s now being used as a root verb. It’s a root verb here because it’s remaining stressed. The L is a little bit weird, just like the previously seen T I’ll get to it in just second. We can see that the initial long “aa”, it’s not stressed, it’s not secondarily stressed, so it just completely deletes. That’s allowed, you can start a word with the velar nasal “ŋ” in this language, so it just goes away. We can see the unstressed vowels getting reduced in every word as well, and this one’s retained.

We can also see here how the “aa” vowel in “aatííh” is completely deleted, and the “ë” retains some amount of stress. The deletion of the “a” vowel, the low vowel, it comes after the stress assignment for primarily or secondarily stressed. That can lead to some weird things like two secondarily stressed vowels appearing next to each other, or secondarily stressed vowels appearing in immediately post or pre-tonic syllables, before or after the main stress. We can see similar reductions in the vowels in “itytúúŋ”, so the secondarily stressed “i” stays “i”. It only would get reduced if it was in an unstressed syllable. For example, the long “uu”, because it’s unstressed, it just gets turned to “u”,and because it’s not secondarily stressed, it gets turned to “y” instead. Some of these vowels are palatalizing, allophonically. We can see in “ŋabwsbôm” the schwa “w” is still there, but it could just turn the adjacent “s” into a syllabic consonant. The schwa is still there phonemically, but it could just turn into a syllabic consonant phonetically. We can see the high tone kind of stretching across the vowels by comparing the phonetic and phonemic transcriptions. You can also see the final vowel getting dropped, which would cause the two nouns to almost blend together as a result. The palatalization turns the “t” into a palatal stop “/c/” and the “h” into a palatal fricative “ç”, so there’s a fair bit of allophony, but I don’t go into it in too much detail.

Onto the diminutive register. A diminutive register can be used for a lot of things. It’s often used when speaking to children, basically baby talk, and sometimes with domestic animals, I’m sure we’ve all seen people using baby talk to speak with their pets. Diminutive registers usually simplify various consonants. For this example, we’re taking that same sentence that we just looked at. Firstly, the stops are sibilized. That doesn’t mean turning into actual sibilants, the sibilization can cause affricates instead. So the “t” becomes a “c” or “/ts/” instead. Secondly, clusters are broken up. Clusters are often broken up in baby speech, so we’ve got the insertion of an “a” between consonants to break up clusters. Then, the vowels are raised, this is also very common in baby speech. We’ve got the “a”s going up to “o”s, we’ve got the “o” going up to “ó”, and this is another common change that happens in baby speak. Then high tones are place on stress. In this example the tones are already high, but in other words, the tones would be raised higher on stressed syllables or the stressed syllables that might not have a low tone, they’d be raised up. The tones are then given a melody, which basically means that the tones alternate from high to mid to high to mid. The unstressed or secondarily stressed syllables are getting this kind of tone to give it a sort of a rhythm. Then there’s lenition, stops outside of stressed syllables are lenited to fricatives or affricates. All this changes the above sentence:

ëtííhy itytúúŋ ŋabwsbôm >>> ecííhy ícycúúŋ ŋöfýsöbóm

We can see the lenition happening with the “b” there turning into an “f”. There would also be occasional vowel fronting, but that hasn’t popped up here. In other sentences, some back vowels would front, particularly “u” becoming “i”, those kinds of things. This is to do with prominence and also kind of making things sound cute. High front vowels are often seen as smaller or cuter and that’s kind of what happens when people end up talking to babies and to animals. Really the diminutive register would have special words as well. So, for example, if we come back to a nice, simple word like cut. It’s in previous sentence examples as “tììsk”. It would probably come out as “tiis” or “tiisak”, but it could be replaced by a completely different word like “owie”. The way people say owie or boo-boo instead of injury, those are the kind of lexical changes that one would expect in a diminutive register.

Next, an Easter egg. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler was the previous book that I had read just before doing this challenge several months ago now. “to sleep the big sleep” is really a euphemism for death, so I decided to include that. The normal root for sleep it just means sleep when it’s in the normal version:

I will sleep

1st fut-1-sleep

séé s-is-skíí 

séé syskíí

The augmentative, or the bigger version of to sleep is to die:#

I will die

1st aug-fut-1-sleep

séé uT-s-is-skíí 

séé ucyskíí

I also added a diminutive punctive, one brief event described as a whole, for to blink as well:

I will blink

1st dim-fut-1-punc-sleep

séé fi-s-is-H-skíí 

séé fisyhkíí

We can see how these different prefixes on the verb are able to change the root verb into these different meanings. They’d be pretty much lexicalized, so you wouldn’t say “big sleep” to mean I sleep a lot or I slept a big sleep, it would be lexicalized as to mean die, and you’d need to use some sort of adverb or adjective to say “a big sleep” without meaning to die.

Then I’ve also decided to add in I’m casting off as a sort of an idiom for I’m leaving. This is the example we had right at the start, and I’m sure it makes a lot more sense now:

I am heading out / I am casting-off

out-gen-rev-1-tie/imp

coo-oo-ii-e-oohfùù/

cyöyëwhfòò

cıoıeʌhfòò

tsɨˌɔ.ɨˌɛxˈfɔː˩

tʃɔ˧.ɨ˦.ɛx˦ˈfɔː˨

Essentially, you’re basically de-tying off or away from yourself. It’s there in the imperfect, the “/imp” there. This causes see some vowel changes. I believe that it’s the quality of the vowel that swaps around, but it’s hard to tell because it’s getting reduced, almost, almost disappearing, when everything gets spelled out.

Here is the base of the name of the language:

we speak it

3rd-1st.trns-pl/speak/stat-nom

∅-e-bláá/blaak/aak-uu

yblááfkaky

ıblááfkakı

ɨˈblɑːf˥ˌka.kɨ

ɨ˦ˈblɑːf˥ˌka˦kᵊ

Really, “we speak it” is the name of the language. So we can see that there as “yblááfkaky” and that final “y” vowel does reduce a lot at the end, it practically disappears, it almost disappears. It wouldn’t disappear in careful speech, but it would disappear in running speech. We can see the plural, for many people, being marked on the verb and stative for it being an ongoing thing. Due to this there’s initial and final reduplication on this verb, which gives us a pretty polysyllabic looking underlying form, but a lot of those vowels get reduced and some of them disappear to produce the final version.

Moving forward to sound symbolism. Sound symbolism does pop up in English, a lot of the words to do with light, like glint, glimmer, gleam, they have that “gl” noise. There’s also some other sets of words in English where certain sounds seem to go with certain concepts. I’ve gone with just a little bit of sound symbolism here.

Words to do with eating: velar-l-vowel-m

gulp               ŋlùm

be.tasty         hlam

“””delicious””” hláflam

eat                 klôôm

drink              óóklaam

These words have some sort of velar, with an “l” and an “m” and mean something to do with eating and swallowing. Most of the adjectives are verbs in this language, including “be tasty” and “be delicious”. I think “hláflam” is a nice word for delicious, it sounds nice, while “hlám” is just to be tasty. There’s a kind of special reduplication going on there to make it delicious instead of just tasty. You can see “klôôm” here again, which we’ve run into before. Most of the ones that are disyllabic, the vowels would be reduced in different ways. Something like “óóklaam” would become “óóklm” or something pretty close to it.

words to do with flying/flapping: f-(vowel)-f-vowel-s

glide              offuus

flap                fëfös

fly                  fóófs

swoop, dive   feefíís

flick off, shake off foofês

Same here with flying, fluttering, buzzing, I’ve got the fricatives and the sibilants here. I hope you can see the kind of rough pattern here in these few examples. It’s almost like a templatic or a root and pattern language, almost like the triconsonantal roots of a Semitic language, but these aren’t productive. You’re not coining new words just by adding vowels to here and adding the vowels to here don’t do things like changing tense and aspect. It just so happens that all of these words end up with these same kinds of collections of sounds due to sound symbolism and a lot of it would be to do with analogy. Some of these words in an older form of the language probably didn’t have these consonants in a row, but by analogy with other words with similar meanings, they would have ended up with those same consonants.

For the color/texture terms, I decided to do some interesting polysemy, or what I think is interesting polysemy anyway. So to be green, the color, also means metaphorically to be fresh, but it roughly means to be crunchy as well, so it’s a texture term as well as being an appearance term and the same happens for the other colors. The colors in general are matched up with these textural things. Very often they’re things that are texturally related.

be.green, fresh     buum ≈crunchy

be.deep.red, raw  krooŋ ≈meaty

be.bright.red, ripe cêêk ≈tangy

be.smoky, ephemeral káármëë ≈airy, light

be.light.orange     orcíí ≈fragrant

be.light.brown paper ríín  ≈rough (paper, cloth)

be.mid.brown bark rùùh ≈rough (bark, scales)

So we’ve got light brown, like paper, related to rough paper or rough cloth, but a darker brown is related to things like bark and scales, so there are different kinds of roughness. One of them, “be smoky or ephemeral”, it’s kind of a be gray, but a specific shade of grey. It being “káármëë” that’s a reference to a character, Carmen, in the Big Sleep. Similar. Similar for “orcíí”, it’s a reference to orchids, which are mentioned in the Big Sleep as well. There a couple of references in there, but primarily they are color terms.

the tree is green

def tree/stat 3-l.an-green

mú snöö/ ∅-lííh-buum

mú snö lyfúúm

We can see here “the tree is green”, the tree in the stative case, as you can see, which kind of surfaces as a disfix in this particular case.

the green tree

def rel=3-l.an-green tree 

mú nee=∅-lííh-buum snöö

mú nëlyfúúm snöö

For “the green tree”, this is the adjective being used attributively rather than predicatively, but it’s a verb, so the predicative form is kind of the normal form. To use it attributively, it actually needs to be turned into basically a relative clause, so this would almost be “the which is green tree”, with this sort of embedded relative clause inside the noun phrase that it’s modifying. You can also see here, the non-stative form of tree or “snöö” is there instead of the stative “snö”, with that difference in vowel length.

the plant is green/fresh

def plant/stat 3rd-l.an-green

mú ěěktii/ ∅-lííh-buum

mú ěěkty lyfúúm

Here we’ve got “the plant is green or fresh”, it’s ambiguous. We’ve got the plant in the stative and it being green, could be green, could be fresh. It’s ambiguous here, but that can be changed if we say that it’s plant matter, rather than a plant.

the fresh/crunchy plant.matter

def rel=3-leafy-green plant

mú nee=∅-tòòl-buum ěěktii

mú nëtwlbùùm ěěkty

With this leafy modifier, this shows that it’s not the full thing that we’re talking about, we’re really talking about a part of the thing or things that have a certain shape. It’s not really plant, it’s plant matter, and that’s what would suggest fresh. Again, it could be fresh, but also crunchy. Fresh, crunchy plant matter. Very similarly, these verbal prefixes are used to kind of derive or modify the meaning of the verb. Even relativized in this way, it’s still “the it is leafy . . .” or “the it is green leafy plant”, which would mean really “the which is crunchy plant”.

We’re going to use a particular verb as an example for much of the verbal morphology, the verb “to lie” or “shǒǒk”. It’s a little tricky to pronounce because this “sh”, it’s not “ʃ”, it is “s”+”h”. It’s an “s” followed by a “h”, or followed by a velar fricative, depending on how you pronounce it, I think that dialectically there would be some variation here.

gnomic                  shǒǒk

imperfect/continuous ooshààk / wshààk

irrealis                    shǒǒŋ

optative                 shaak

deluded                  shòk

The basic form of the verb root is essentially the gnomic, it’s pretty much tenseless, but it’s often used in reference to the present tense or ongoing or habitual things. We’ve got the imperfect or the continuous, which is non-habitual ongoing, it is the continuous ongoing. We’ve got the irrealis, the optative and the deluded or the delusional, which is the “I may have or I may have not, I can’t remember, I can’t tell because of whatever was going on at the time” tense/mood. We can see that the deluded changes the quality of the vowel and the length of the vowel. There’s a change in vowel quality there for the optative as well. There’s a change in final consonant for irrealis and this is sort of a reduplication with a change for the imperfect.

These tense/moods happen in singular, dual and plural forms.

	gnomic	imperfect/continuous	irrealis	optative	deluded
singular	shǒǒk	ooshààk	shǒǒŋ	shaak	shòk
dual	ahsǒǒk	oohsààk	ahsǒǒŋ	ahsaak	ahsòk
plural	shööhǒǒk	ooshoohààk	shööhǒǒŋ	shaahāāk	shohòk

The plural uses initial reduplication and the dual uses metathesis. However, “hsǒǒk”, that’s not an allowable initial cluster, so it has to be “ahsǒǒk”. You can see similar things happening here with the prothetic vowel being thrown onto the front of that cluster.

gnomic	singular	dual	plural
3rd	shǒǒk	ahsǒǒk	shööhǒǒk
1st	isshǒǒk	isahsǒǒk	isshööhǒǒk
2nd	noshǒǒk	nohsǒǒk	noshööhǒǒk
4th	ashǒǒk	aahsǒǒk	ashööhǒǒk

This is the subject conjugation. The subject morphemes are prefixes and here they’re being shown in their sort of surface forms, this is the underlying form:

gnomic	singular	dual	plural
3rd	shǒǒk	ahsǒǒk	shwhǒǒk
1st	ysshǒǒk	ishsǒǒk	isshwhǒǒk
2nd	nwshǒǒk	nwhsǒǒk	nöshwhǒǒk
4th	ashǒǒk	ahsǒǒk	ashwhǒǒk

So you can see those changes, where the vowels are reduced and stuff. These are all subjects, third, first, second and fourth person subjects. Fourth person subject is the logophoric subject, so it’s used for differentiating between two third persons what would be interpreted as the same person otherwise.

3rd>4th	direct(dyn-sub)	static(static-sub)	inverse(dative promotion)
singular	alshǒǒk	alshǒǒköök	ààlshöök
dual	aŋsǒǒk	aŋsǒǒköök	ààŋsöök
plural	alshööhǒǒk	alshööhǒǒköök	alshǒǒhöök

Here’s third acting on fourth, so we’ve got that example of a third person subject and a fourth person object. Here it is in multiple voices, firstly the direct, which has a dynamic subject. Then there’s the static, which has a static subject, and the inverse, which is date of promotion. These are basically voice altering operations, some of them are changes in the prominence, what vowel is prominent. We’ve got end reduplication in the static, so we’ve got, in the plural and the static, initial reduplication and final reduplication. Of course, that word ends up a lot smaller after vowel reduction.

aspect
T	chǒǒk	telic
H	ahhǒǒk	punctive
N	zahǒǒk	durative
L	alshǒǒk	causative

Just above here, these aspect markers are prefixes as well, but the prefixes don’t actually surface they look. You can see the L surfacing here as it looks, but the N changes the voicing, the H seems to add a h here and it changes the S to a H. The T here, it turns the “s” into a “ts”. It adds a t to it, it makes it an affricate. These aspect markers, they hardly ever actually surface, you can see the L surfacing here is actually l, but they hardly ever surface like that, they normally cause changes to the initial consonant of the root. Some of you might be able to tell where I got my inspiration from there.

So here’s a bit more of the transitive paradigm:

	direct(dyn-sub)	static(static-sub)	inverse(dative promotion)
1st trns > 3	elshǒǒk	elshǒǒköök	èèlshöök
2nd trns > 3	dulshǒǒk	dulshǒǒköök	dùùlshöök
3rd>1st	eelchǒǒk	eelchǒǒköök	èèlchöök
3rd>2nd	zahǒǒk	zahǒǒköök	zààhöök
3rd area	ohhǒǒk	ohhǒǒköök	òòhhöök
3rd generic	oolshǒǒk	oolshǒǒköök	òòlshöök
1st trns > 2nd	nöelshǒǒk	nöelshǒǒköök	nöèèlshöök
1 > area	hoelshǒǒk	hoelshǒǒköök	höèèlshöök
2nd trns > 1st	eetulshǒǒk	eetulshǒǒköök	eetùùlshöök

You can see here we’ve got area and generic as well, different types of third person. We’ve got our first transitive acting on the third, the second transitive acting on the third, so that changes the form of the subject prefix because they’re transitive subjects, not intransitive subjects. We can see third acting on first, third acting on second. We’ve got first transitive acting on second, first on area, second transitive on first. There’s a lot of different possible combinations and they interact in some different ways. We can see two vowels coming together in these examples as well, meeting that constraint.

The future, is a nice simple prefix, we can see here underlying and how they would be spelled out:

future
1st	sisshǒǒk	sysshǒǒk
2nd	sonoshǒǒk	sönwshǒǒk

Same with the transitive forms here:

1st trns > 2nd	nöselshǒǒk	nösylshǒǒk
2nd trns > 1st	eecdulshǒǒk	ëcdwlshǒǒk

There’s also a usitative, which is a lot like a habitual, because the basic version of the verb is a gnomic which could be an ongoing or regular event, the usitative emphasizes that it is something that happens, stops, happens again. It’s a regular or usual event, but it’s not going on all of the time in the background:

usitative
1st	jisshǒǒk	jysshǒǒk
2nd	jenoshǒǒk	jënwshǒǒk

We’ve got that in the transitive there as well:

1st trns > 2nd	nöjelshǒǒk	nöjylshǒǒk
2nd trns > 1st	eejjëdulshǒǒk	yjjëdwlshǒǒk

Same with the stative forms of the verb, so these are, as you saw in one of the previous examples, often used similarly to resultatives:

stative
1st	ëëisshǒǒk
2nd	ëënoshǒǒk

1st trns > 2nd	ëënöelshǒǒk
2nd trns > 1st	ëëeetulshǒǒk

The completive and the future completive, the completive and the future completive are separate agglutinative prefixes, but I do like showing how they interact, so of course you can have the completive pairing up with other things as well, but the future competitive just shows that kind of past in the future that I mentioned earlier:

 

completive
1st	mooisshǒǒk
2nd	moonoshǒǒk

1st trns > 2nd	moonöelshǒǒk
2nd trns > 1st	mooeetulshǒǒk

future completive
1st	moosisshǒǒk
2nd	moosonoshǒǒk

1st trns > 2nd	moonöselshǒǒk
2nd trns > 1st	mooeecdulshǒǒk

The perlative is usually a noun case where it means “next to” or “along” or “adjacent to”, I’ve put it on the verb instead. So it’s more like the verb is happening along or across something.

perlative
1st	rëisshǒǒk
2nd	rënoshǒǒk

1st trns > 2nd	rënöelshǒǒk
2nd trns > 1st	rëeetulshǒǒk

Same with the future completive perlative, we can stack up the prefixes here and get the verb even longer.

future completive perlative
1st	rëmoosisshǒǒk	rymösysshǒǒk
2nd	rëmoosonoshǒǒk	rëmwsönwshǒǒk

1st trns > 2nd	rëmoonöselshǒǒk	rëmwnösylshǒǒk
2nd trns > 1st	rëmooeecdulshǒǒk	rëmwëcdwlshǒǒk

Here we are with a couple of nouns. So this is the word for mist:

mist	báást
dual	báác
plural	fáást
collective	báánast

The dual form is actually metathesis, it looks like it’s not metathesis, but it is metathesis. For the plural, we’ve got initial lenition, in the collective we’ve got reduplication with this “n” infix as well. Then we’ve got an augmentative, a diminutive and a locative form.

aug	aabáást
dim	baast
location	baastóód

So the locative form here, it’s a location, it’s the misty place, it’s not “at the mist”. It’s not really a locative case, it’s a locational derivation, they’re just a little bit different.

	singular	dual	plural	collective
dynamic	báást	báác	fáást	báánast
static	báássa	báás	fáássa	báánassa
dative	báásaast	báácaac	fáásaast	báánaanast
locative	bááscaa	báásaa	fááscaa	báánascaa

We’ve got examples there of the dynamic, static, dative and locative for singular, dual, plural and collective. So you can see how some of these words do get a little bit long. If you are giving something to the mists, then you’d have this báánaanast, but some of these would be deleted as well, so it’s probably more like “báánanst” with this s turning into a syllabic. I’d have to see how it’ll actually come through in the spell out.

We’ve also got possessive prefixes:

possessive	heart: stáá
1st	sestáá	systáá
pl	sostáá	swstáá
2nd	nostáá	nwstáá
pl	rostáá	rwstáá
3rd	lastáá	lastáá
pl	rastáá	rastáá
4th	cistáá	cystáá
generic	uustáá	wstáá
seperate	maastáá	mastáá

The possessive prefixes are fusing onto the noun because this is a possessed noun, a heart. We’ve got generic and separate, so generic means somebody’s heart. Third could also mean somebody’s heart, but usually that is somebody you know. Generic, this is any heart, any heart at all will do rather than the heart I was talking about. Separate, this does mean a heart on its own. So with these kinds of languages that have obligatorily possessed nouns, you can’t just say heart, it has to be my heart, your heart, their heart, the other person’s heart, a heart, or this heart that isn’t in a chest cavity anymore, it doesn’t belong to anyone in any way that matters.

Here we’ve got a couple of other, these are not prefixes, these are particles, some of them would be proclitics:

the mist	mú báást
a heart	ööŋ mastáá
The Mists	Lôô Báánast
Misty	Sè Báást

This is the definite article and the indefinite article, I decided to use different words for those examples. There as proper articles, there is a proper article that normally designates inanimate things, in this case, it’s a proper article with the plural as well. Then the final proper article is used animately for people’s names or for the name of the language, so we’ve got “sè báást” similarly to how we have say “sè yblááfkaky”. That’s the proper article, so it’s very similar to the proper article in Polynesian languages, pops up in Maori, the proper article, so I’ve decided to use that here as well.

Now we’ve got to where the generic would be. I don’t have the generic prefix/classifier/verb here, but a few others instead.

you gave it(round) to me

1st.dat.s Sdir-3-2.trns-round-give

sézë draa-∅-du-reel-zêêmf

sézy dradurylzêêmf

So these are verbal classifiers, they classify the type of object that the verb is acting on. So here we’ve got “you give it (a round thing) to me” and you’ve got that verbal round prefix. Then “you gave it (a pack) to me” so that uses the pack verbal prefix instead.

you gave it(pack) to me

1st.dat.s Sdir-3-2.trns-pack-give

sézë draa-∅-du-hááj-zêêmf

sézy draduhajjêêmf

So that is the difference, the “reel” turning into just “ryl” and the “hááj” turning into just “hajj-“, and geminating, it becomes a long version just because of morpheme collision here. So these are verbal classifiers. Then we’ve got this geographic classifier:

it(geographic) is here

3rd.stat.s prox 3-geo.ex

lóó ki ∅-dúúŋ

lóó ki dúúŋ /  lóóky’dúúŋ

This “geo.ex”, it means geographic existence. This is the “is”, this is basically the copula, but it’s a special copula that’s used for geological features or geographic features or locational things, and there’s similar copulas for round things, for packs. There’s also special motion verbs, like go, specifically for these shapes. I’m sure you can tell what language I was taking inspiration from with these classifying verbs and with my aspectual sort of prefixes that normally disappear.

That brings us to the sentences. This is the first sentence I translate into any language:

the small animal eats it’s plants here

def rel=stv-3rd-an-small animal.gen/dim-dyn indef 3rd-pl/plant/stat here bound-3rd-usi-4th-tel-leafy-eat

mú nee=ëë-∅-liih-bííl toohsi-∅ ööŋ la-h/ěěkti/i/ oojooki ööz-aL-j(ë)-∅-T-tool-klôôm

mú nyëlyfííl toohsy ööŋ lahěěkty wjooky özdëttwllôôm
mú nıelıfííl toohsı ööŋ lahěěktı ʌjookı ozdettʌllôôm

mu˥ nɨˌɛ.lɨˈfiːl˥ ˈtoːx˧.sɨ ɔːŋ˧ lɐˈhɛːk˩.tɨ əˈdzoː.˧kɨ ɔzˌdɛt.təl.lɔːm˥
mu˦ ɲɛʎ˦ˈfiːl˦˥ ˈtoːxʃ˥ ɔːŋ˧˨ l̩˧ˈhɛːk̚˨˩.cᵊ dzoː˨˧.kᵊ ɔzˌdɛ˦t.tl̩˦.lɔːm˦˥

So we can see “small” is actually a verb, it’s being relativized. So it’s “the which is small animal”. The animal is a little animal, so we’re putting it in the diminutive as well while we’re here. This is a possessor and it’s in the dynamic, so there’s a fair few things going on here, but a lot of them are realized as null. Then we’ve got our plant, so it’s the small animal, it’s plants, here, it eats. Bound, it just means that the area involved is bounded, it’s not a huge area, it’s a specific area that’s being talked about, a bounded area. It’s in the usative because it’s “it eats” it does it regularly, I usually put that in the usative or the habitual. It’s telic because it eats its plants and then it finishes, it doesn’t keep eating the plants or eat a little bit and leave and come back. It eats the plants, it leaves comes back, it eats more plants. Leafy, just to classify that we’re eating plants here, it’s a plant eating kind of thing. We’ve got the underlying form, and you can see all of these slashes for things like alternations of consonants or duplication additions of vowels. We’ve got our T here, which ends up forming a geminate in this case. Then we’ve got the surface form with the vowels deleted. I’ve got an alternate orthography that just shows the vowels in a slightly different way. Then we’ve got our phonemic spell out, so we’ve got our long vowels and we’ve got our tones and where those tones line up. In the phonetic, you can see that some of the vowels disappear, palatalizing the consonants that were around them, so we’re losing two whole syllables in one word. It’s not really “ny-e-ly-fííl”, it’s “ñell-fííl”, they blend together in that way. Similarly, it’s not “toh-sy”, it’s “tohʃ” because of things like deletion and the change of the syllable, so that’s a little bit of a weird one. Then it continues on in a similar way. We’ve got the formation of syllabic consonants, we’ve got the change in the type of tone because it can’t actually be low low, it falls across the word length, it can’t just start low. Similarly for high, it can’t actually be high, it has to be almost high. Phonetically, there is multiple levels of tone, phonemically, there’s high, mid and low. As you can see, there’s only high, mid and low marked anywhere at the phonemic level, but we have these risings, these not quite as highs, these fallings, those are phonetic, the result of sandhi effects really changing the pronunciation.

Moving on, this sentence we’ve already taken a look at:

204: Light travels faster than sound
stv-shine-nom sound/dat up-3rd-4th-atel-fast-go.gen
ëë-aatííh-uu i/tuu/túúŋ aaŋ-aL-∅-∅-fêês-bôm
ëtííhy itytúúŋ ŋabwsbôm
etííhı itıtúúŋ ŋabʌsböm
ˌɛˈtiː˥.hɨ ˌi.tɨˈtuːŋ˥ ˌŋa.bəsˈbɔm˥
ɛ˦.ˈciːç˦˥ i.cɨˈtuːŋ˥ ŋɐ.bs̩ˈbɔm˥

That’s the first of the Zephyrus test sentences. Here’s the second:

127: Do you like summer or winter better?
(2nd.pl.dyn) summer/st winter/st int-between up-dis-3rd-2nd.trns-like/pl
(norö) cakjwtéél/y böŋŋwtèèl/y jee-mooh aaŋ-d(a)-∅-du-iidrúú/druu/z
(norö) cakjwtéényl böŋŋwtèènyl jwmooh aŋdduydrúúryz
cakjʌtéénıl böŋŋʌtèènıl jʌmooh aŋdduıdrúúrız
ˌtsak.dzəˈteː˥.nɨl bɔŋ.ŋəˈteː˩.nɨl dzəˈmoːx˧ aŋdˌdu.ɨˈdɾuː˥.ɾɨz
tsɐk˦.dzᵊˈceː˦˥.ɲʎ̩˦ bɔŋ˦.ŋᵊ˧ˈceː˨˩.ɲʎ̩˨ dzᵊˈmoːx˧ ɐŋd˧ˌɟʊ˦.ɨˈdɾuː˦˥.ɾɨʒ˦

I’m showing here that the pronoun could be dropped. The summer and winter are being used in collective forms here. So it’s “do you like summers or winters”, not specifically this summer or that summer or this winter or that winter, it’s in general the season and between them, which do you like. It’s distributed because it is between them, it’s an “or”, it’s not “do you like winter and/or summer”, it’s pick one. The verb “to like” is distributed and it is plural. I’m just assuming it’s plural, “do you . . .”, it could be plural, we don’t really know in English. I’m just going to say it’s “do ye like summer or winter better”. So we can see various slashes here for metathesis, and we’ve got our infixes here as well. We’ve got various long vowels, some of which get reduced, and there the double-a in the “aaŋ” prefix for up, which is also used for over and better in this case. That vowel dropped in one of our previous examples but it can’t drop here, it needs to stay, because “ŋddu-” is not an allowable initial syllable, you can’t have “ŋddu” as your first syllable of the word, you need to have an extra vowel in there.

cakjʌtéénıl böŋŋʌtèènıl jʌmooh aŋdduıdrúúrız

You can see my alternate spelling here with the pronoun dropped out, it doesn’t look too much longer than the English version, and you know some of these syllables would be dropped as well. That’s just one way I like to check if I am, you know, creating a language that’s reasonably efficient, you’ve got the same amount of information in the same amount of bits. Even if this language might need to be spoken a little bit quicker, it’s got fewer phonemes than English, so you can speak it a little bit quicker and you can allow for that little bit of allophony.

75: Between the two lofty mountains lay a fertile valley.

def rel=stv-3rd-geo-be.tall/du mountain/du-loc between indef rel=stv-aug-3rd-geo-be.green water-comp-area-3rd-dur-geo-cut/stat-nom/stat curs-stv-3rd-4th-geo-lie/stat

mú nee=ëë-∅-dúúŋ-jolk/ jóólk/-Hvv mooh ööŋ nee=ëë-uT-∅-dúúŋ-buum luu-moo-ho-∅-N-dúúŋ-tììsk/ììsk-uu/ ees-ëë-aL-∅-dúúŋ/úúŋ

mú nyëdyŋzokla jóókhw mooh ööŋ nëyutymúúm lymöwduŋdyskììska ëswalyŋúúŋ
mú nıedıŋzokla jóókhʌ mooh ööŋ neıutımúúm lımoʌduŋdıskììska esʌalıŋúúŋ

mu˥ nɨˌɛ.dɨŋˈzok˥.la ˈdzoːk˥.hə moːx˧ ɔːŋ˧ ˌnɛ.ɨˌu.cɨˈmuːm˥ lɨˌmɔ.əˌduŋ.dɨsˈkiːs˩.ka ˌɛ.səˌa.lɨˈŋuːŋ˥
mu˦ ɲɛ˦.ɟɨŋ˦ˈzo˥.kl̩˦ ˈdzoːkʰ˥. moːx˦˧ | ɔːŋ˧ ˌnɛ˧.ɨ˦ˌu˦.cɨ˦ˈmuːm˥ l̩˦ˌmɔ˧.ᵊˌɟʊŋ˨.ɟɨʃ˨ˈkiːʃk˩ ˌɛ.s̩.ɐʎ˦ˈŋuːŋ˥

Here again, it’s “the lofty mountains”, so we need to relativize that tall, that geographic tall, be tall in a geographic way. Everything’s in dual, so I don’t even need to say “to “two” everything’s in the dual. It’s shown by the suffixes that we’re talking about something dual. So “between two lofty mountains lay a fertile valley”, the fertile valley isn’t like a stick. It passes through the mountains so we’ve got a sort of a cursorial here showing that it’s happening across an area, along an area, not necessarily along the side of something like you would have in something like the perlative, although I’m pretty sure the perlative and the cursorial are pretty much the same in this language, I’ll have to double check that. So you can see the collapse of certain vowels, palatalizing the consonants that are around them by disappearing when they can. We can see some changes on the tone, how the tone sandhi is applying to these words, not just high tone, but rising over the course of the word. We’ve got a couple of syllabic consonants in there as well. So that’s another one of the Zephyrus test sentences, it does wind up looking a little bit long, that’s probably because of all of those duals that are in there.

33: This mist will probably clear away.
def mist prob out-fut-3rd-tel-go.liq/irr
mú báást húú coo-s-∅-T-cníí/
mú báást húú cöswcclíí
mú báást húú cosʌcclíí
mu˥ baːst˥ hu˥ ˌtsɔ.sət.tsliː˥
mu˥ bɑːst˥ çu˥ ˌtsɔ˦.s̩t˦.tsliː˥

Here, the mist will probably clear away. Probably is just a preverbal particle, it’s its own word, it’s an independent word, it’s not part of the conjugation. There’s a lot in the conjugation of these words, you know, I’ve included a lot of things, it’s quite synthetic. A lot of things do stick together here, so I’ve decided to have some analytic constructions as well, I think that’s fair.

156: Here under this tree they gave their guests a splendid feast.

here, def tree-loc prox down/loc, 3rd.pl.dyn 3-guest/pl-dat indef rel=3-be.tasty meal/stat Ndi-3-4-tel-pl/give/inv

oojooki, mú snöö-Hvv ki bu/ood, lálaa ra-/éék/eek/ii ööŋ nee=∅-hlam klôômwm/u ŋee-aL-T-/zêêmf/

üjookï, mú snööhw ki buud, lál réékyki ööŋ nyhlam klôômwmö ŋëdêêzymf
ʌjookı, mú snööhʌ ki buud, lál réékıki ööŋ nıhlam klôômʌmo ŋedêêzımf

əˈdzoː˥.kɨ | mu˥ ˈsnɔː˧.hə ki˧ buːd˧ | lal˥ reː˥.kɨˌki ɔːŋ˧ nɨhˈlam˧ ˈklɔː˥.məˌmɔ ˌŋɛˈdɛː˥.zɨmf
ᵊˈdzoː˦˥.kᵊ | mu˥ ˈsnɔː˦˧h ki˧ buːd˧ | lal˥ reː˥.kᵊˌkɪ ɔːŋ˧ nɨçˈlam˧ ˈklɔː˥.m̩ˌmɔ ˌŋɛˈdɛː˥.ʒɨmf

This is the fifth of the sentences. Here, under this tree, they gave their guests a splendid feast. So I’ve proposed the “here”, I think that’s something that this language could do, even though it might want it to be a little bit closer to the verb. Again, it’s “the treed location” and “down-locative”, so it’s under, it’s not “at the down”, this locational suffix does, it’s a little bit more lexical than just a locative case. We’ve got our third plural dynamic because they gave their guests a speech, the guests are the dative, they’re the ones being given something. Whereas the tasty meal is in the stative, it’s being given, it isn’t actually changing, and this is in the distributive as well. The “Ndir” prefix tells us that this is a ditransitive verb with a non-Speech-Act-Participant as the recipient/dative argument.

You can see I went through a couple of different ways that I could write this language, there’s a few different ways to spell what I’m trying to get across here. You can see that the difference in the vowels isn’t shown in some of the syllables. For example, writing “e” not “ë”, but because it’s only secondarily stressed,it would be pronounced “ë” anyway, because there was another “a” in there, it’s the unstressed one, it dropped out. That’s why we have secondarily stressed next to primarily stressed, the intervening unstressed vowel is gone, it’s dropped out completely. The L and the T have combined together there to create “d”. They’ve affected sort of each other rather than affecting the verb, and of course, with the inverse there’s a shift in stressed vowel with the plural you’ve got reduplication. It all comes out a little bit strange.

What I will do is just very quickly look at how the little prefixes change the consonants that they come up against. You can compare these “result” charts with the original consonants back at the top.

+L	labial	alveolar	velar
stop	(l)b	(l)t l	ll
affricate		(l)c d
fricative	b		ŋ
sibilant		(l)s j
nasal	m	l	ŋ
liquid		l	ll

I write these things in almost a little bit of a shorthand, so it can be a little bit hard to tell, but you can see that the labial, an “l” might not pop up at all, it might just be left ambiguous, it might be left for context. Whereas when an F will change into a B when it comes up against this L, the L will usually disappear. Sometimes it becomes a geminate, you get two Ls. Most of the nasal consonants don’t change, but N becomes a L. No drastic changes for the coronals, except for “this “z”becoming an affricate “j”.

+H	labial	alveolar	velar
stop	f	c j	h
affricate		s z
fricative	h		h
sibilant		h s
nasal	f	d	k
liquid		t	h

Coming down to the H’s, you can see that a lot of things just turn into H when they abut this capital H, like the S turning into a H, the Z turning into an S. It’s very similar to lenition, really, it’s basically lenition, except when it’s fortition, the R turning into a D, going from a tap to a stop, or a different kind of occlusive, that’s technically fortition, so it’s not super simple.

+T	labial	alveolar	velar
stop	f	tt t	kk
affricate		cc jj
fricative	b		k
sibilant		c j
nasal	b	d	ŋ
liquid		dr	dr

Here, the T, we’ve got a lot of gemination, but gemination isn’t exactly what it’s for, you can see it devoices the labial, which means it has to turn into the fricative, whereas it fortifies the fricative, which means it has to become voiced, it actually voices it, but that’s just a quirk of the system. You can see some interesting clusters forming there with the rhotic and the lateral and also the difference between them collapses, so that’s another source of potential ambiguity.

+N	labial	alveolar	velar
stop	mb	d n	ŋk
affricate		j z
fricative	b		ŋh
sibilant		z n
nasal	mm	nn	ŋŋ
liquid		d	ŋ

The nasal then, it adds a nasal, it causes voicing, it causes gemination, nothing disappears and there’s usually some sort of nasal in the result.

So that is it. I just thought it’d be nice to show off a little bit of the detail in those aspectual prefixes, those little changes, because they are, I think they’re one of the more obvious parts of the inspiration, these little prefixes that disappear, that cause consonant changes, that don’t usually pop up on their own. That and the classifying verbs, I think between the two of those, what language I was mostly using as my inspiration or what language family, it becomes pretty obvious, but maybe you can guess it in the comments.

I hope that you enjoyed this piece and if you created a language for the 24th Speedlang Challenge and you didn’t get get a chance to submit it, post about it anyway! There should be a Reddit comment linking to this video, you can post it there, you can post it in the comments of this piece or you can head to the attached video on the Caoimhín’s Other Content youtube channel and comment there. If you enjoyed this piece then please do like it, if you like this kind of content, then please subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel. I’ve done a lot of language posts in the past couple of videos on that channel, so I might do a little bit of world building in the next video. Or I might just do another language, I’ll see how I feel, but either way you’ll find out if you subscribe to this website and or my YouTube channel and get notified on when that next piece comes out. Thank you very much for watching, and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.