Please help me. I am here to ask for help, and learn, not be belittled and ridiculed as stupid. I understand everything in this post might be exactly as I say it due the fact I am still learning. But this is not the first time I've tried. If you can't or don't wish to help, please simply mention so or do not comment.
This post looks long, but trust me, it needs to be. If you try responding without reading the whole thing, you might either get confused or angry for some reason.
OVERALL: I need help linguistically categorizing my conlang. All others before have failed, and there is debate about how to go about it. This includes professional linguists and those who are taking linguistic courses in college as a major for study.
CON-HISTORY: Etihus is a conlang used in my conworld Meer'Et, Etihus was a language specifically created for the various natives to use, spoken, written, and signed. It was designed to be universal, hard to evolve, and understood by all the caste-races and all the nations. So this means in Meer'Et, there is only one form of major communication based in Etihus. Some changes have occurred over its history, but the world technologically and socially developed quickly before entering a long period of static, like the dark ages.
ACTUAL HISTORY: I created Etihus before I knew some details about linguistics. My goal was to create a language a priori for my fantasy. I didn't know very much about other languages, but I knew enough that I hated English for being a pathetic method of human communication. So I built my conlang in ways to try and help fix some of these issues while borrowing some ideas from a very old conlang of mine.
So far, it had been very easy to explain and describe to people without linguistic background. I started studying linguistics early this year so that I could find languages similar to mine so that I could better explain it. It was too hard to do alone but I found conlanging, as a term and community for the first time. So I studied conlanging and looked at what others had made and I was amazed at how many people were making their conlangs so close to English. In fact, I began to think that Klingon, Quenya, and Dothraki were all heavily based on English.
Then I learned that I knew more about basic linguistics than I thought through my middle-high school education in English. I learned English as a language. It wasn't that these conlangs were strongly based in English, mine was just that alien! I had accidentally created a conlang alien from language itself instead of just my native natlang.
It became increasing difficult to find terminology to apply to my conlang. To those who know and study linguistics, it is an incredible battle that leaves everyone befuddled or astonished. After a few months of study, I finally found the first one: oligosynthetic. Since then I came across more but that hasn't made it easier.
So, how hard can this be? Well, nobody can even figure out what morphosyntactic alignment it uses. Most people believe that MSA doesn't even apply to Etihus.
[[ My view on current linguistics: As a side-note, through conlanging and the time I put into trying to explain my conlang, I have come to seriously question linguistics as it is currently taught. I realize that language as a study is not just an observable science, it's an art. Language is something we build, construct, morph, mold, assemble, and disassemble. It has more in common with culinary arts and technology than it does history or math. But all linguistic study has a biased focus on natlangs. That said, I believe that current linguistics is inadequately and incorrectly describing the actual usage of [human] language.
If linguistics really has a handle on how human communication actually works, then new languages and conlangs that fit outside the spectrum of its function should be impossible. ]]
FEATURES OF ETIHUS:
• Type of writing system: Semaphonetic* (see below)
• Writing direction: top to bottom in vertical lines left-to-right
• There is no use of consonants or vowels as a basis for the language
• "Pro-dropping" of verbs
• Oligosynthetic language – 60 root-morphemes
• More than 6 million possible words under 4 syllables
• Less than 10 grammar rules
• No nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, case, gender, etc. are distinguished
• The numeric system is not a base (base 10, base 12, etc.) and revolves around completely different principles
• Several words can be created that have no analogous meaning in English
• Easier and faster to learn, write, read, and understand than English
• No Passive Voice
• Grammatically the subject is always the agent
• Syntactic ambiguity is impossible
FUNCTIONALITY OF ETIHUS
Now for the hardest part and the latest attempt. I think the best way to start is to simply say that Etihus technically has no letters. That, I hope, helps clear up a lot of misunderstandings. Instead, it uses semaphonemes, a term I invented to help explain this conlang.
A semaphoneme is a unit of semantics that is collectively a sememe, phoneme, and grapheme. The conlang aUI by Dr. John W. Weilgart utilizes semaphonemes. A letter, free morpheme, and a grapheme all-in-one. This is what Etihus is built on, "letter-words".
Etihus does have an "alphabet" but it is not a true alphabet by linguistic definition. Instead the conlang organizes each of the 40 semaphonemes in an order from greatest to least, plus about 20 more affixes not part of the "alphabet".
The second part to Etihus is that it arranges information in an exact and linear fashion from the most important core followed by supporting descriptions. Morphology and syntax share the same rules in this regard. The concept of nouns, verbs, adjectives/adverbs, pronouns, all of that is thrown out. Words in Etihus do not have their part of speech attached. Any complications or ambiguity created by them are gone. By technicality, every word in Etihus is broken down into simply raw concepts.
Words are created by merging semaphonemes (So there is no CVC, CCV, etc. format, consonants and vowels aren't "used" and the speakers of the conlang would not know what a consonant or vowel was). Instead, there is complete freedom between the semaphonemes. Each semaphoneme can function as any part of speech in any part of a word. The main principle is that a semaphoneme following one will describe it, and the one following that will describe those two, etcetera ad infinitum.
I'll give an example using English only, just to explain the functionality:
If you write: house-big in Etihus, you are describing a house that is big since the concept of "big" follows "house". In Etihus grammar, you have only stated the existence of a single object (not an object and an adjective), a big house. But if you reversed it to big-house, now you are using "house" to describe the concept of "big". You have basically stated "big as a house". Now you have still only mentioned a single raw concept in Etihus, and you can use "big-house" as your subject and agent.
If you really wanted to attach linguistic terms, basically every word in Etihus is usually a "noun", but entire concepts, even arguments, can be completed using only a single word or word-phrase. Etihus does use the S-V-O layout in the event it needs to, but there is not always a verb or an object present, and what in English or most languages use the V and O can be completed in 'only' the S with Etihus.
The first word in every sentence is always the subject and agent. It is then followed by that which describes it. Action/performances by the S in this regard is married into the same category as adjectives and adverbs as descriptives. If you want to describe an action (verb) that the subject/agent is performing.
This was a list of sentences I was asked to translate. They do use very raw concepts (Etihus by its nature is a very exacting language, but these suffice for the notion being described)
"Why is zkhli-kye uncommon?"
-- "Zkhli-kye" is uncommon [in speech] because it can sound closely related to "zkhli kye", which means something different.
"Zkhli-kye" is spoken as if it were nearly one word, which describes the window's breakage as a passive sentence. But separating them without the hyphen, now you are describing the window is performing the act of breaking as an active sentence. Now it is possible to speak this separation in the form of a pause between words. It is acceptable in writing (because the space between the words is clear) but uncommon in speech as you can see.
"Sec" (meaning the/this/that) as a word is an exception of the directionality of descriptives and helps create specificity. By attaching another word to it, sec allows a changed shift in the flow of description. So by using "Sec-kye zkhli" you are describing the window's breakage.
"Why does zkhli-kye sound too much like zkhli kye, but cuffari-tikhm not too much like cuffari tikhm?"
-- The word tik means "down". So cuffari tik would be: "dog down" or "going down", essentially falling. Adding "hm" as a suffix turns tik into an active verb, describing the direction of down as a directional verb, "going down", essentially falling.
Cuffari tikhm as an active sentence with an active verb suffices, the dog is performing the action of moving in a downward direction.
Cuffari-tikhm as a passive sentence with an active verb inherently means the same thing, the dog is performing the act of moving downward upon itself... though it does open the door to specifying "the dog's fall" in a more complex sentence.
With added information, the two would split and the specifics would have to be worded differently. If we are talking about the dog being pushed and now falling or to describe the dog's fall, cuffari-tikhm would be the preference. As opposed to the dog ducking for cover after being shot at, cuffari tikhm would become the preference.
