Uscaniv's cousins Apālin & Merceliv

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vec
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Uscaniv's cousins Apālin & Merceliv

Post by vec »

Consonants

p, t, c [k], q
m, n, ŋ
s, h
l, r, ŕ [ʀ]

H-interaction
Apālin h, which derives from Proto-Rasuiriv *ś, near-consonantal *s (Cs and sC) and word-final *t does funky things to nearby consonants.

Stops and s become aspirated (ph, th, ch, qh, sh) or pre-aspirated (hp, ht, hc, hq, hs).
Nasals and l become long and slightly fricativised (mh, nh, ŋh, lh) or unvoiced (hm, hn, hŋ, lh)
hr and hŕ are unvoiced; rh becomes [s], ŕh becomes [χ]. (basically, hŕ and ŕh are identical, but there is a distinction between hr and rh).

Vowels

short: a, i, u [ɐ i u]
long: ā, ī, ū [ɒː iɛː uɔː]
diphthongs: ai, au, uy, iu, ui [ɐj ɐw uj ju wi]

Vowel interaction

two identical short vowels = long
two long vowels = unchanged
long vowel + short vowel = long vowel becomes short, h inserted after a, y inserted after i, w inserted after w
short vowel + long vowel = long vowel remains, insertions as above

Nouns

Five static cases:
nominative, accusative (only with -sa nouns), separative, dative, instrumental

Four doubly-declined cases:
possessive, material, similal, locative
There are no true adjectives, instead these noun forms are used.

Two declension patterns:
I. -sa, ha
II. -a, -u, -i

I.
nominative: hu-sa
accusative: hu-ni
separative: hu-s
dative: hu-ys
insrumental: < hu-u

possessive: -hs-a (declined like -a) [huhsa, huhsas, huhsais, huhsau]
material: -hq-a (declined like -a)
similal: -su-y (declined irregularly) [husuy, husais, husuwīs, husū]
locative -ht-i (declined like -i)

II.
nom./acc.: āpa / huntu / api
separative: āpa-s / huntu-s / api-s
dative: āpa-is / huntu-ys / apīs
instrumental: āpa-u / huntū / api-u

possessive: -ŋ-a (declined like -a) [āpaŋa, āpaŋas, āpaŋais, āpaŋau]
material: -q-a (declined like -a)
similal: -w-i (declined like -i)
locative -t-i (declined like -i)

There is no number. The particle ŕa can follow a plural noun optionally. (From the same ancestor as the Uscaniv plural morpheme -r-).

Pronouns
Personal pronouns have three stems, primary stem: mi- (1p), ta- (2p), ā- (3p), pa- (impersonal); weak stem: ni-, ŕa-, a-, wa-; and a strong stem: mi-, tas-, as-, u-. (tas- and as- become tah- and ah- before material -q- and locative -t-).
The primary stem is used in the nominative, separative and instrumental cases. The weak stem is used in the accusative and dative cases. The strong stem is used in doubly declined cases. The primary stem forms use the II pattern endings. The weak stem forms use -s for dative, vowel lengthening for accusative (from PR *-l#). The first person pronoun has a special stem for the possessive case ŋi- without any suffix. In other cases, the suffixes come from the II pattern.

mi, nī, mis, nis, miu
etc.

The demonstratives are icā (this), īta (that, the other), icinsa (such, this kind), ītinsa (that kind, the other kind) and acha (self).
Their stems are: ic, ca-, ih; īta, ta-, itas- (itah-); icin-, cin-, ichin-; ītin, tin, ītin- & ac-, c-, ah-. Acha is a I pattern word, wheras the others are II patern words.

The interrogatives are chinsa (who), cichinsa (who the hell), insa (what kind) and utha (where in the order, number what).

The indefinites are (someone, one, a), tuthi ([not] anyone), tunsa (some kind), tuwa (a few), auca (several, certain) and inī (all kinds).

The negatives are qū (no one), cuthi (no one) and cunsa (no kind).

The totals are ūsa (all, the whole), ūwa (all [pl.], every), pāpu (the entire) and tūūsa (every, each, each and every).

Verbs

Verbs have two tenses, past and present.

They have a multitude of moods:
realis, irrealis, optative (lacks past), intentive, necessative, obligative, potential, abilitative and imperative (lacks past).

REALIS
mi sīn-ā - I love
mi sīn-ī - I loved

IRREALIS
mi sīn-ū - I would love
mi sīn-uy - I would have loved

OPTATIVE
mi ca-sīn-u - I wish I loved

INTENTIVE
mi ca-sīn-a - I intend to love
mi ca-sīn-uni - I intended to love

NECESSATIVE
mi sīn-ŕi - I need to love / it must be that I love
mi sīn-ŕis - I needed to love / it must have been that I loved

OBLIGATIVE
mi sīn-ŕu - I am supposed to love
mi sīn-ŕus - I should have loved, I was supposed to love

POTENTIAL
mi sīn-ūm - I can love
mi sīn-īm - I could have loved

ABILITATIVE
mi sīn-mā - I am able to love, I have been allowed to love
mi sīn-mī - I was able to love, I had been allowed to love

IMPERATIVE
mi sīn-tha - let me love! me, love!

Syntax

the language is head first
basic word order is SVO
there are no adpositions as in Uscaniv
pro-dropping has the force of valency change in the verb, but in general, all pronouns are needed

[EDITED title]
Last edited by vec on Sat May 07, 2011 3:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Uscaniv's cousin Apālin

Post by Vardelm »

Cool stuff!
vecfaranti wrote:Nouns

Five static cases:
nominative, accusative (only with -sa nouns), separative, dative, instrumental

Four doubly-declined cases:
possessive, material, similal, locative
There are no true adjectives, instead these noun forms are used.
What do you mean by "doubly-declined"? Are these 4 cases somehow added onto the 5 static cases, such that you might have a dative-material, for instance? This would be similar to what I'm doing w/ my lang, although I use different cases.

I'm interested to see more about how the cases are used!




vecfaranti wrote:Verbs

Verbs have two tenses, past and present.

They have a multitude of moods:
realis, irrealis, optative (lacks past), intentive, necessative, obligative, potential, abilitative and imperative (lacks past).

REALIS
mi sīn-ā - I love
mi sīn-ī - I loved

IRREALIS
mi sīn-ū - I would love
mi sīn-uy - I would have loved
How do you express events in the future? I realize there doesn't need to be a morphological future, so I'm curious to see how it is dealt with.
Tibetan Dwarvish - My own ergative "dwarf-lang"

Quasi-Khuzdul - An expansion of J.R.R. Tolkien's Dwarvish language from The Lord of the Rings

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Re: Uscaniv's cousins Apālin & Merceliv

Post by vec »

Those four are declined twice. It's a form of case stacking. In Uscaniv, only the possessive is still considered a doubly declenied case (apana, apanas... etc from apa). The other forms have been reanalysed as adjectives. And you have it the other way around, the primary cases are applied to the secondary cases.

The future is expressed through the intentive mood most generally, or any of the others, depending on the context. The present really is a non-past tense.
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MERCELIV

Post by vec »

Merceliv

Merceliv is Uscaniv's twin fraternal sister. Nearly identical, but not quite. Think Swedish and Norwegian.

Phonology

p, t, c [k]
m, n
f, s, ś [ʃ], z [θ], h [x]
r, ŕ [ʀ]
v, l

The Uscaniv z [ts] has fricativised. Uscaniv's h [h] never glottalised and remains [x]. ś is not velarised. Proto-Rasuiriv *ŕ is retained in Merceliv. The treatment of the liquids r, ŕ and l is diachronically quite different. Certain clusters are simplified in Merceliv.

The vowels are a [ɑ], ai [ɛ], e [ə], i , u , au [ɔ]. Merceliv has two more monophthongs than Uscaniv does, ai and au, which are diphthongs in Uscaniv. *ui changed to u, *iu and *ia changed to i, *ua to au, *ie to e, eliminating all diphthongs. Adjacent vowels are pronounced with a hiatus in between them. Double identical vowels are not simplified but pronounced.

All the vowels are tenser and more "exaggerated" compared to Uscaniv's slightly centralised, lax vowels which probably explains why there was never any global syncopy in Merceliv as in Uscaniv. The lack of syncope means its words generally have more syllables. It also means some of Uscaniv's scarier consonant clusters don't occur.

Nouns

Declension is mostly identical. ŕs > ś changes did not occur and the vowel changes word before the declensional morphemes have a different process to them. In Merceliv, what Uscaniv calls -cva adjectives are still considered case forms in Merceliv. Merceliv developed an abessive case by suffixing -caŕ to the comitative case.

Adjectives

Merceliv adjectives do not conjugate, only decline. The verb tirp which in Uscaniv means 'to stand' has come to mean 'to be' in Merceliv.

Verbs

The verbal system is similarly robust as the Uscaniv one, but still has remnants of the Potetial mood in the present tense and has developed a special prohibitive mood.

Adverbs
Adverbs that conjugate in Uscaniv do so also in Merceliv, although in a slighly less elaborate manner.



Syntax
The word order is head-first, SOV, like in Uscaniv. Mercelians are a little more inventive with word order though; it is slightly freer.

Because I haven't figured out the entire verbal system yet, I don't know if the language is pro-drop or not.
vec

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