Nawi (probably to be renamed later): Burke's lang

[Burke]

Hi everybody,

I've been a lurker on here with odd spurts of activity every so often. Not a very active member, but I like the reading. I'd post more often, but I've been in the midst of school, so that chomps my time away. I tend to stay more around one of the facebook communities, and my name here and there sort of match up.

At any rate, since I'm on medical leave, I'm hoping to do some work on my main conlang project that I might try working into the Kool Map game.

Nawi is my primary project (of two). The name comes from the fact that in an earlier version the /w/ before an /i/ would become [v], and it gave me a way to pay homage to an annoying fairy in Ocarina of Time, but I didn't want to have the same name as some movie, so for now the <w> is realized as a [w]. Pretty ho-hum, but the name has a story at least.

Originally, Nawi was supposed to pull from a lot of inspirations. The sound drew vaguely from Polynesian languages with hints from Bantu, while the vowel system was a slight nod to some in North America, and the stress falls from that school too. But it has sort of devolved into a strange mess now. I don't think it looks all that interesting or natural, but I like the feel of it so I've been keeping with it. It has enough to keep me engaged when I do work on it. I'll go through the phonology first.

Phonemes - Vowels



The only significant changes are that <e> will raise to /e/ after /j/ and other palatal consonants and /o/ will become after /w/ and consonants that have that coarticulation.

Consonants



I think there is a bit more fun going on in the consonants. I think prenasalized voiced consonants are interesting and they seem underused to me, and I like having the weird hitch to transform the dental one into [l]. I've had a long affection to the velar nasal as well, and I think I originally justified it on being in some Polynesian languages. A small mistake I'm seeing in my picture is that I prefer to write it with <g> rather than <ng> since the letter space is open.

Syllable structure

Nawi is pure (C)V, but CV is by far the dominant sequence. Bare consonants are usually word initial.

Stress Pattern

Nawi has a trochaic stress system such that CV1CV2CV3CV4 would have V1 and V3 stressed. Since there are some preclitics and prefixes, and a fair deal of compounding lexically, stress can move in reaction to them very frequently.

Phonetic Gaps

Various sounds sequences are not found in Nawi, and others collapse into each other:

/fi/ is not found in the final syllable ever (mainly because I don't like the sound.
Syllables starting with /v/ are never word initial (I had some odd history behind it like that it came from a /w/ sequence or the ones that were word initial picked up a prethetic vowel like sC -> esC in a lot of Romance)
/k/ and /c/ collapse into the post-alveolar affricate before /i/
similar for /s/ and /x/ (these previous two can lead to some odd spellings in phonetic varieties of writing)
/ji/ is not attested

================================
GRAMMAR
================================

I'll give a quick overview of the grammar, and then the first note on a specific in it that I find interesting.

Nawi is largely an analytic language, that follows SVO patterns, Possessor->possessed relations, modifier->modified patterns, and is very strongly head final. A main theme I've focused on in the grammar is opposing two ends of a binary as often as I can. So, Nawi has a past v non-past distinction, contrasts alienable and inalienable possession, etc. I find placing a binary to contrast over as an interesting constraint, and it produces some funkiness I'd otherwise avoid. I've debated putting Ba-structures in the conlang, but I've struggled with this because the grammar already feel very Sinitic to me, but I don't think I've ever seen a conlang with something like Ba-structures; however, I've been working resultant and potential complements and the ilk in a little bit with some odd twists.

First Grammatical Lick - Nominal Possession

Nawi contrasts alienable and inalienable possession. Alienable possession is used to show a tie or possessive state that can be easily removed, attribution for creation, that the link is potentially temporary, ties that are voluntary, among other things. Meanwhile Inalienable possession is used to show more permanent ties, such as ownership of body parts and family members, a person’s place of origin or birth, attribution of a work for someone or something, or other things where the relationship is more involuntary. Both work with verbal/adjectival modification, but I'll elaborate that later one.

Alienable possession is marked with a preclitic called se- at the beginning of the Noun Phrase. Se- is realized as [s-] directly before vowels and [se] otherwise. As expected, this can shift stress in a word.

Examples:

sachi ramo
APOS=house door
The house’s door

seYona jino
APOS=John message/Gospel
The Gospel according to John

Here, the Gospel according to John is alienable since he is the Author.

Inalienable possession is marked with what I'll call an intrafix or intraclitic wo- or u- since I'm lazy; this will also shift stress on the following word.

Examples:

wawa umeme
baby IPOS=mother
The baby’s mother

heke ukawi
horse IPOS=tooth
a horse tooth

Yobe ukiba
Job IPOS=book
The Book of Job

Here the Book of Job is inalienable since it is about Job rather than written by him. The tooth is assumed in the horse's mouth still

Stacking these guys up!

It wouldn't be any fun tonight if I didn't show an extended example of this making a bit of a mess, so this final example is a longer NP where multiple possessive markers are used EDIT: The following example has been edited for a better example

seseYona umeme heke naba
APOS-APOS Yona IPOS--mom horse food
The food of the horse of John's Mother

If we frame this we see something like this

seseYona umeme heke naba

===========================================

I hope to be back pretty soon to bring another installment, but since it's Holy Week, I might not be here much till next week.

[Burke]

Romanization

I wanted to do a post on Romanization today over lunch. I might get to a bit of grammar, but I want to focus on Latinizing this lang right now. I'm going to divulge a bit of personal thinking and preference, so it isn't a simple graph-phoneme mapping

Common v.s. Lexicon Romanizations

For Nawi, I use two schemes of the Roman alphabet. In each domain, the driving factor is convenience. Lexicon Romanization maps graphemes directly to phonemes. The reason for this is that I use a quasi-semitic root system for word derivation in conjunction with some other methods, so having a direct phonemic mapping is good for keeping track of things in the lexicon. The Common style is more reflective of the phones that surface, so there are departures from a strictly phonemic system for my ease in reading. I like giving myself the wiggle room of using <l> for /d/ before the low vowels, because I wouldn't want to have to remember a rule like <d> is [l] before /a/. I like the convenience and aesthetic appeal. All this said, the Latin Alphabet is not the prefrered mode of writing for Nawi.

Lexicon Romanization

This largely is just using IPA appropriately and filling gaps judiciously with ASCII. Nawi doesn't have a huge inventory, so forcing diacritics or odd digraphs is futile. Basically, everything maps as noted in the tables above, with the exception of <g> for the velar nasal (Typo in pic 2). The only digraphs are thus <kw> and <hw>. i had thought about using <q> instead of <kw>, but that would leave an odd digraph still at <hw> and make it a bit of a thumb. I'm game for suggestions for reducing <hw> to a single graph, but I like this current system since it is both natural and unambiguous. I guess <x> is open, but it isn't as natural to me.

Common Romanization

This is where we'll see more departures. They do make sense in light of the sound changes that do occur, at least in my eyes. Again, the big reason here is ease and aesthetic. I don't spite good phonemic systems, but it didn't seem like a good fit here. It could fit, but it isn't nice.

Starting from the system mentioned for the Lexicon, the following never change:

<i, e, a>
<p, t, kw, b, j, m, n, r, y, w, f, v, z hw>

Of the vowels, only <o> will change after rounding consonants. So we have <u, ku, hu> where one might expect <wo, kwo, hwo>
Several consonants do change too.

/ki/ and /ci/ collapse and are both <chi>. /ce/ becomes <che> for consistency.
/da/ and /de/ reduce to /lV/, so the <d> becomes <l>
The velar nasal can debuccalize to the glottal stop before /a, o/. Earlier, before i allowed contiguous vowels, I simply dropped the <g>, but now that they can occur, I use <'> in it's place. I considered <°>, but it seemed obnoxious to require hitting the alt keys.
/si/ and /hi/ collapse and both are written as <shi> to match the stop series in a pretty stratiforward manner. I considered <x>, but then I would have wanted to put <q> for the stops, and it seemed too contrived for my liking.

This covers the Romanization schemes. What follows in this thread in the examples will be the Common Style, and I'll fix post one very soon. I think it is untidy, the table has a typo that I shouldn't bear, and I should have covered the few allowable vowel clusters

Think I'll stick with calling it Nawi though.

[Burke]

NB: Edits have been made to this post since I originally made it. I've tried to bold the changes and strikeout old info.

I want to dive a little into the Personal Pronouns and copular system in Nawi today. The pronouns in and of themselves will be pretty bland, but they way they interact and drive sentences should be a little interesting I hope. Along with the introduction of the copulae, I will introduce verbal negation and the past tense. One of the ends of some of the copulae and these verbal particles is the formation of contractions. Since Nawi is primarily analytic, it was tempting for me to leave the particles and verbs as independent, but contractions add a deep feel of reality to a language in my opinion. They occur naturally, they allow you to give a variety of sound to your speaking (think even of the difference between cannot and can't), and they allow for weird things to happen in certain niches of the language, which is pretty fun.

Before I go into any of that, I think I ought to explain an odd element to Nawi. The language distinguishes between verbs and nouns pretty clearly, but adjectives are a bit of funny business. The vast majority of adjectives are technically nouns, though a few will be verbs, but that is much more rare. This drives one of the main divisions of the copulae, and it also affects, as I'll show later, adjectival phrases and the like

Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns off the bat are pretty bland in Nawi. They reflect the fact that there is no number or gender distinctions, so there are only three, and it is largely a closed class
Personal Pronouns in Nawi are simple, but maybe a little striking in their reductionism. There exists essentially only a me vs not-me distinction. They do not differ for gender, number, case, or other categories. However, their usage is a little constrained compared to English. Where I can say 3rd persons to refer to animate and inaminate actors in English, Nawi does not allow for this with Ya, which must be at least animate, but is preferred to be human in some areas. For inanimates and sometimes non-humans, demonstrative pronouns are often used where personal pronouns are in English; however, poetic or literary usages sometimes break from this pattern

O -- I, me, we us : Glossed as 1st
Se -- you (English is concise) EDIT: after debating it I'm removing this pronoun
Ya -- You, He, she, it, they, them : Glossed as Xth

Since this has just been introduced, I think it is worthwhile to discuss possession for these items as well. Pronouns can be placed directly in front of a noun to show possession, such as Ya meme for his mom or your mom. However, this creates a little lopsidedness since there is not alienable-inalienable distinction here, and neither of those markers occur with the personal pronouns. It is more left to understanding that these relationships may be either kind and that context would inform what kind it ought to be if we were to refer to these people by name.

Copulae

Nawi has a small collection of Copulae, and they fit under the scheme of verbs in general. There are three copulae: ne, we, and ti. Ne is the nominal copula, we is adjectival, and ti is locative.

Ne - The Nominal Copula

Ne is used essentially to show NP1 == NP2 or NP1 is an element of NP2. So this fits phrases like "he is Thomas" and "Maria is a hardworking nurse." It cannot be used for sentences like "George is sick" or "Lucca is hungry", which would either use another copula or a verb. example:

Mari ne meme
Mari NCOP mother
Mary is a mother

Ya ne wawa
Xth NCOP baby
He's a baby

However, there is one hitch in this scheme. The first and second person pronouns do not require Ne in order to form a sentence, and it is considered very odd to include it with them. So, this leads to constructions like this:

O bebe
1st father
I am a father

Ya Shiwa
Xth woman
You're a woman

We -- The Adjectival Copula

We is used to show that NP1 has the attribute of NP2. This fits for sentences like "I'm big". This works out as thus since we also means "to have", so this same word is used to mean "You have a horse". Unlike Ne this copula may never be dropped, and dropping it would completely change the meaning. Examples:

Yona we mera
John has bigness
John is big

Ya we heke
Xth have horse
She has a horse

Ti - The Locative Copula

Ti is used to show various locations, and it can sort of be translated as "at."

Ana ti O
Ana is at my place (Ana is at me)

O ti yama
I'm at the mountain (Implies not on top of it)

Negation and Past Tense

I've decided to include the negative and past markers as well. Both of them occur immediately before the verb. Nothing all that jazzy, but they form various contractions, so I think this is where things get fun. The negative particle is ma and the past-tense particle is i. They do not affect the stress of verbs that follow, but if something is both past and negative, the two form a negative past particle me.

Furthermore, these will form further contractions with we in the following paradigm.

we -- Present affirmative
yo -- Past affirmative
mo -- Present negative
moi -- Past negative

Further adding to these particles, given the zero copula for ne in the first and second person, these particles and their contraction act as the ne copula where it is zero for first and second persons. For many speakers, this frequently extends even to third person subjects, though those amongst the educated and the elite consider this to be wrong and something only the poor would do.

I'm also very tempted to make contractions based off of Pronouns + i as a sequence. I was thinking of something more that a simple Oi, maybe more along the lines of Wa (feels too French for me or this conlang) and something else, but I don't feel so commited on these, but I like this as an odd avenue into pronouns marking tense in daughter languages. The contractions in general are a backdoor way of getting some fusional elements into Nawi.

[Burke]

Okay, so I took 20 days off, I want to reboot this with a little look into "prepositions" and adjectives in NPs. The application of the two in an NP is unremarkably very similar to each other, but this section at least allows for a bit more depth to be seen in Nawi.

Preposition Like Structures

Prepostional structures are formed by means of relational nouns (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_noun), which in Nawi are a closed set of nouns. early on I had debated making them related to the body parts, but decided against that due to confusion it would introduce with the alienable/inalienable distinction. The nouns that can be used are:

• NAWI -- Spatial -- Temporal -- English

• te -- in, on, at, between, into -- during -- middle

• no -- above -- before -- top

• se -- below, under -- after -- bottom

• ye -- in front of, against -- [none] -- front

• a -- behind -- [none] -- back

• go -- next to, near, around, close to -- closely before or after -- proximity

• be -- far from, away from -- [none] -- distance

These nouns are then possessed inalienably with -u to indicate the prepositional meaning.

aci u te -- In/at the house
Shiwa u go -- Near the woman

However, this is different for the personal pronouns, who simply have the relational noun follow it

O ye -- in front of me
Ya be -- Far from him

This is then applied to nouns by alienable prefixing the relational phrase to the noun in question

seO be aci we mera -- The house far from me is big

This covers basically everything for prepositional like structures. Of course using ti with these as the object is quite common to say where a thing is.

Adjectives in an NP

Adjectives are largely nouns, though some are from verbs, but this section focuses on nominal versions. We've already introduced mera which means bigness or as an adjective big. Simple, single adjectives only require to be put before the noun they modify.

mera yama -- a big mountain

However, if there are more than one adjective applied to a noun, then we follow a scheme of se- Adjectives Target.

sesoma mera yama a big red mountain

All this said, semera yama would be perfectly grammatical and acceptable, but in common speech this is avoided because it is simply understood.

Conclusion

Hope this was pleasant to read. It covers a bit more of Nawi, but I still haven't cracked into it much yet. I still would like to put a bit of culture behind this.

Next topics: Verbal aspect, basic conjunctions, intro to switch reference.

[Burke]

I've decided to do a smaller update today, and instead of focusing on a certain grammatical topic I'm shifting pace and focusing instead on a syntactic process and describing what it does for various words. That process is one of my favorites in linguistics in general and it is Reduplication reduplication.

The reason I like reduplication is that it can manifest in so many different ways: full, partial, infixing, with consonant gradataions, AABB styles as in 高兴 → 高高兴兴 in Mandarin. It can pop up in a ton of ways and is really fun. I also like how it seems very foreign mainly because it is uncommon in European languages generally. The recent development in English of NOUN-y McNOUN-face as a humorous diminutive is as a result something I like a lot.

Nawi only makes use of full reduplication and some interrupted reduplications, namely something along the lines of A-not-A and A-one-A, etc. A word is never truncated in this way in Nawi. However, what the reduplication means varies from lexical to grammatical depending on what kind of word it is (noun vs verb) and its usage in a given context (gerundives vs adjectival nouns, for example). This post is an introductory outline of some of the most commonly seen reduplication patterns.

Verbs

Immediate verb echoing, A-A, indicates the continuous aspect in Nawi. Eat becomes eating. Watch becomes watching Pretty simple. However, the copular verbs mentioned earlier cannot undergo this process.

O nabe -- I eat
O nabenabe -- I am eating
O me nabenabe -- I wasn't eating

Nawi also has an A-not-A structure for verbs, however it is largely restricted to use in dependent clauses. A-not-A means in Nawi whether of not A, as thus there is no negation allowed before this structure. In this specific context, for the time being, Nawi does not descriminate aspect, but I may change this later on.

O nabemanabe -- Whether or not I am eating...
Yona regomerego -- Whether or not John writes...

There's a bit more here, such as A-one-A and A-and-A structures, but I'll cover those in a later more verb dedicated post.

Nouns

Reduplication in nominal nouns (not acting as adjectives) blurs the line between lexical and grammatical a little bit. In general, they indicate sort of collectives. For proper nouns, like Thomas, Boss, etc this forms an associative plural

Yeso yeso -- Jesus & co. OR Jesus and the apostles

However, for most other nouns, it forms a new lexical entry based on a collection of the nouns that may or may not be uniform.

uni -- an island
uni uni -- an archipelago
wene -- a hermit
wene wene -- a hermitage, lavra

This scheme of producing new meanings of collections in this way is very productive, and is in vibrant use in Nawi.

Adjectives

Adjectives like the ones we covered earlier, which are truly nouns, can reduplicate as well. The most general use of this is an intensification of the property.

semeramera yama -- a gigantic mountain
sesomasoma heke -- a scarlet/crimson horse (a little imagination I guess, my vocab is lacking and need developing desperately)

Some adjectives make it more endearing or diminuitive, like "pretty" or "cute" and so on.

Conclusion

So this covers a few topics in Nawi while brushing into one of my favorite linguistic patterns in general. Since I've toyed with and decided against Ba structures in Nawi, I think the next things I want to discuss is how disposal of definite objects is done in Nawi. I still plan on relying on the syntax heavily, but switch reference needs to come first so I can explain verb serialization, conjunctions, and such. However, my next few posts should probably be vocab~culture dedicated since I want to develop that end a bit as well. I've already got some root structures for vocab set, so now I have to make patterns for them and then proceed to toss a wrench into that for good measure.

Hope you enjoyed reading.

[clawgrip]

I like seeing extensive use of reduplication in conlangs. Looks good.

[Burke]

Today's update is mainly going to focus on lexical patterns and hit some cultural notes. I want to look at two root patterns, and hammer some vocab out. I hope to eventually edit the first post to have a link to a lexicon, a more formal grammar/language description, and a listing of particles or lexical affixes, but that's for later.

Small Cultural Intro: Nawi is the primary language of the Teve ethnic group in a yet to be described region, maybe earth or not. The Teve have been successful in promoting their culture for a long time through song, poetry, and dramatic story telling. They have also had some more recent military successes, and seem to be on the swing up. As thus, their language has been spreading and is seeing more use amongst minority groups. They've recently begun to produce tools with basic metals.

The majority religion was formerly tied to the ethnicity very strongly, but that is beginning to loosen, though many dislike that. It is traditionally polytheistic, but as the Teve have expanded the pantheon has been shrinking and certain deities are becoming more prominent as others fade to sort of ghosts. There is one main temple with smaller auxilaries through the countryside, though many small shrines exist on lakesides since still waters are places of common divinty. These small shrines have various pictures and stories etched into them in such a way that they are visible only after water is poured over them.

The first root I'll focus on is the N - B root, which has to mainly do with eating and food, mainly cause I like eating

Root Source: Various African languages, many of which have words like nyama or the like for food, meat, or eating
Cultural Notes: Eating amongst these groups, like most, is a celebrated past time for friends, families and strangers to sit, relax and bond.

There are a couple major patterns for filling the roots to get meanings, and a few rare ones. N - B follows one of the more common ones.

{NB}: I don't know why I have these people eating so much horse...

Nabe -- Verb -- to eat -- O nabenabe heke -- I eat horse | basically the base verb
Nebe -- Noun -- a guest, host, stranger -- Ya ne O nebe -- he's my guest | person\thing associated with that verb
Nobe -- Verb -- to visit -- O i nobe Mari I visited Mary | how to go about verb 1
Naba -- Noun -- Bread/a meal -- seMari naba -- Mary's bread | noun assoc V1
Noba -- Noun -- hospitality -- xxx -- xxx | Noun assoc V2, normally easy to use as a ADJNoun
enaba -- Noun -- pre-feast blessing / grace -- xxx -- xxx | Noun done before V1
anaba -- Noun -- farewells -- xxx -- xxx | noun done after V1
nabanaba -- Noun -- Festival | redup of v1 noun to show an extended eating
neba -- noun -- Tastiness -- seneba heke -- tasty horse | ADJNoun related to V1 noun
nabi -- noun -- plate, platter -- xxx -- xxx | thing used with v1
nibe -- Verb -- to serve -- O nibe se -- i will serve you | used only for charitable service, not the kind slaves would do
nobo -- verb -- to welcome
anobo -- verb -- to send a person off
enobo -- verb -- to anticipate someone

In using a root system like this lexically, I'm not so comfortable. If anyone has any critiques or pointers, please say them. I think part of the reason I'm not so hot on this yet is that languages that leverage this like Semitic and Yokuts also tie it deeply into their morphology, which I don't want to do really. I was thinking of justifying this by a pre-existing set of affixes that caused ablauts or got absorbed, but I don't want to do a prelang for this. one goal is to derive daughter langs from this, and using apocope will help me feel a bit better about this i think since it will geive a bit more naturalism in my eyes.

[Burke]

I like seeing extensive use of reduplication in conlangs. Looks good.

Thanks! It's a fun feature. Thanks for poking in too! Sorry for my slow response, on a wacky schedule and didn't see your post when I was writing my last one becuase I pecked away at it for a couple hours.

=============

One small thing. I went through a couple posts forcing in a change I wanted to effect. Namely, I've coallesced the personal pronouns so that there is now only two, O and Ya. O is me. Ya is not me.

This is partially inspired by Damin and roots back to a conlang I designed ages ago that was based on ADHD, Narcissism, kleptomania, and many other maladies. It also fits into my paradigm of using binaries in Nawi pretty nicely, so it stays, especially after some encouragement from some friends!

==============

Today I wanted to do a quick thing on basic polar questions or yes-no questions since it is easy and will be fast.

Polar Questions

Nawi indicates questions of this type much like English and other Western European languages, via inversion. Though I haven't hashed out auxiliary verbs much yet, we've seen two preverbal arguments that are quasi-auxilary verbs: ma for negation and i for the past tense. In this way it is already clear that Nawi has a sentence or typically that is like this:

SUBJECT + AUXIALARY + VERB + OBJECT / PREDICATE

However, when asking a yes-no question in Nawi, this order is altered so that the auxialary is first

AUX + SUBJ + VERB + PRED ?

Now, when we don't have a strong auxialary, like words for can or want, the word ma is used instead. If the question is past tense, sometimes the contraction is moved, other times it is broke and i remains right before the verb. This largely depends on the speaker's region of origin. We see the following as an example:

Me Ya nabe heke == Ma Ya inabe heke == Did you eat the horse (sorry for the trope)

Despite ma being used, it does not indicate that the speaker anticipates a positive or negative response, which will be detailed later.

So, this was quick and easy, but now you can ask people if they eat horses. I need to elaborate food items

[Sumelic]

Hello! This looks interesting so far. I like the multiple copulae. I was wondering, for purposes of assigning stress in Nawi, do the trochaic feet start on the left or right side of the word? For example, I understand meme is [ˈmɛmɛ], but would umeme be [wuˈmɛmɛ] or [ˈwumɛmɛ]?

[Burke]

Hello! This looks interesting so far. I like the multiple copulae.

Thanks a bunch. The multiple copulae was one of the few things I've done purely for fun in Nawi so far rather than trying to work with the idea of binaries.

I was wondering, for purposes of assigning stress in Nawi, do the trochaic feet start on the left or right side of the word? For example, I understand meme is [ˈmɛmɛ], but would umeme be [wuˈmɛmɛ] or [ˈwumɛmɛ]?

The trochaic feet start all the way on the left. So as you noted meme is indeed [ˈmɛmɛ], however, certain elements before words will shift this, one of them being the possessive markers, both u- and se-. So umeme is ['umɛ'mɛ] or however I would mark the heavier syllable on on the third one too. Think either you or I have a small typo too, since what is ['umɛ'mɛ] phonetically is /ˈwomɛ'mɛ/ because the labialization makes /o/ -> /u/ allophonically.

This does bring up one thing I should address later potentially. I haven't had any VV sequences arise in a word you; the closest was ma + i for negative past, but that forms a contraction so the VV sequence is squashed. I'll have to see first if I want any such sequences (not in favor right now), and then how does the timing work, as in would a fictional word samao keep stress on sa only, shift it to mao only, or do this as stress on sa and o. I'll give it a test, but I think no VV sequences will occur, or they will be separable by a glottal stop as in i + [Verb beginning with a vowel].

[Burke]

Hoping to kick myself in the pants a bit here and reboot. I've been slagging because I needed to get school stuff in line, but hope to keep moving! Today is a quick and easy update, and at least one person will be happy.

Janko Trigger: We got numbers

The numbers in Nawi follow a decimal system with a vestigial radix 5 system under it. So 1-5 are unique, 6-9 build on that, and 10 is new. I'm not going to enumerate past 1000 for now because I want room for daughter derivation.

ZERO -- ba
ONE -- une (notice the relation to island and hermit)
TWO -- kuse (related to dividing)
THREE -- dega (related to family)
FOUR -- asi
FIVE -- bani
SIX -- bani-une
SEVEN -- bani-kuse
EIGHT -- bani-de
NINE -- banasi OR univa
TEN -- iva
HUNDRED -- mora (related to multiple)

Simply, for higher numbers we have the multiply and move system. Bani iva asi == 54 (EDIT, misread my own v for a greek letter and nunified the word...)

Often to count objects, we have the seNUMBER Noun constrction, i.e. seBanasi uni == Nine islands. This means they are acting like adjectives simply. Often, the se can be omitted. Some regions also have been noted as using a different word for six. They will use noja or noje, which is or is related to the word for "new" respectively.

Okay, so small update, but hopefully it's enough to get me on a small role again.

[Burke]

Okay, let's keep moving! I've got a bit of a pump on, so let's type!

Today I'm going to describe the way content questions in Nawi work along with the basics of relative clauses, though the two topics are essentially unrelated.

Relativazation and How most of This is Really Nominalizing Phrases

Relative clauses follow a methodology based on using se to modify things, much like we did with adjectives. Strictly speaking, the relative clauses don't exist, but rather different nominalizing is used instead. This leads to multiple strategies being used depending on the grammatical nature of the "relativizing". This again follow the head-final tendency of Nawi. The following portions outline the different strategies.

Adjectival Copula
The general strategy for when we might want an adjectival copula in the RC is to simply modify with the adjective directly. So instead of saying "the house that is big" Nawi instead uses simply "the big house".

semera achi == the big house == the house that is big

Nominal Copula
Similarly, if the RC would be linking two nouns, the Nawi solution is a simple appositive. Appositives simply follow the noun (which is one of the few times in Nawi this occurs). So instead of "John, who is a guest" we see simply "John, a guest."

Yona, nebe = John, a guest == John who is a guest

Subject of Intransitive or Passive Verbs
Intransitive and passivized verbs (which will be covered later) are often the element of RCs in English. To approach this, Nawi treats the verb as an adjective and modifies with se. So instead of seeing "the tree that fell" we get something along the lines of "the fallen tree".

shi pakwe moti == the fallen tree = the tree that fell NB: shi is the contracted form of se + i which follows from the rules on se coming before a vowel sound.

Transitive Objects
This largely follows in the order of the Intransitive. So "The woman who I saw" becomes roughly "my saw the woman"

seO i gahe shiwa == The woman who I saw

Transitive Subject
This strategy works regardless of the prescence of direct objects in the embedded clause; the only difference is including the d.o. after the verb. RCs like "the woman who saw me" often become structurally "she saw me the woman"

seYa i gahe O shiwa == the woman who saw me

However, this is often a bit of a mouthful to say and can be confusing at times because se doesn't have the best framing at times. Alternate strategies include hedging before the main content and referring back to it with as an antecedent, resulting something like "A woman saw me, and she's sitting there eating tacos." Some regions use an interrupting "that" before the head noun to reassure the focus, though this is seen by other speakers as odd. More on this later

Interrogatives and Asking Questions That Demand More Than a "Yes"

Let's ask for info! content questions revolve around "whos" and "whats". So first let's cover some of the basic question words, all of which come from a root in hwate meaning to ask:

hwata -- what, who, which
fara -- where
fere -- when
uti -- how many/much
uto -- what kind
ohwate -- why
ahwete -- how

Yes, all these are inspired by the word "what" because I wanted some Englishness in here.

Nominal substitution questions
Nawi doesn't alter the order of elements for questions. So sentences like "who is she" are strictly "she is who"

Ya hwata == who is she?
Ana umeme ni hwata == who is Ana's mother?

Meme ti fara == Where's mother?

Adjectival substitution
Similarly, for asking the quality of a thing, we just shove them in where the adjective normally goes

Ya i gahe (suto/suti) heke == You saw (what kind of/how many) horses?

How's and Why's
These ones act differently since they act on the whole sentence.

ohwate Ya i nabe heke == Why did you eat a horse? (Finally addressing this assault against reason)
ahwete Ya i gahe O == How did you see me?

And that's everything for today! I still need to cover indirect objects and passivizing verbs, so I might try to lump those two together into the next update.
Hope you enjoyed!

[Dama Diwan]

well, what I find nice is that it resembles a natural language in every aspect. Some of its phonotactics are found in the Cretan and other dialects of Greek.
Another thing I have to observe, consider using postpositions instead of prepositions, because your syntax is often head-last, in which postpositions/suffixes fit better.

[Burke]

well, what I find nice is that it resembles a natural language in every aspect. Some of its phonotactics are found in the Cretan and other dialects of Greek.
Another thing I have to observe, consider using postpositions instead of prepositions, because your syntax is often head-last, in which postpositions/suffixes fit better.

I'm having trouble understanding how you came to the part about Greek in particular. Care to explain? The prosody is completely different, and the strict (c)v syllables are a far far cry from anything Greek. Is it the way velars are treated or something like that? Sorry, I'm really lost on what you mean.

As for postpositions v prepositions, the closest is already postpositions, but that kind of role is covered by what is technically a noun. Prepositions do not exist in Nawi.

I plan on a small lexical reboot of this lang pretty soon.

[Burke]

I've noticed that I've hit a fair deal of trouble in word derivation for Nawi. Now, I'm not going to scrap the project since I like it a fair deal, but I've revised two things, one a little bit, another a fair deal. I still plan to treat Nawi as a proto-language.

The first thing that was slightly modified was the phonology.

The vowels are the same : /i, o, ε, a/
/ε/ continues to raise to [e] after palatal consonants.
/o/ does not consistently raise to after labialized consonants, but for the u- interfix it still seems to pretty well, though some regions do realize it as [wo]

The consonants are drastically changed. These are the possible consonant now:

/p, t, c, k, kʷ, ʔ/
/ᵐb, ⁿd, ⁿɟ/
/m, n, ŋ/
/f, s, x, xʷ/
/r, j, w/

I'm keeping a simple romanization system for these as:

/p, t, c, k, kw, '/
/b, d, j/
/m, n, g/
/f, s, x, xw/
/r, y, w/

When <'> is at the begining of a word it will become <°> or whenever it needs capitalizing. Digraphs only caps the first letter.

Of note, the glottal stop is a full phoneme rather than an allophone of the velar nasal. I took out the voiiced fircatives because they felt weird and weren't used really. Since I'm defining Nawi as a protolanguage, I'm not really going to define any hard and fast synchronics, by the prenasalised alveolar stop and /n/ have a propensity to become [l] in certain situations, and palatalization can for the palatal stop to affricatize.

The syllable structure has be reevaluated as (C)VV, with a max of two vowels in a row. Word initial vowels differ from words staring with a glottal stop since elision cannot occur over the glottal stop.

Finally, I'm completely scrapping the word derivation from a root-stem pattern like I had. It was way to restrictive and cut into my creativity. Oddly, the way I've started crafting new words seems notably uncreative. I've designed a second order markov chain to place a phoneme based on the previous two; I'm unsure of how this will affect sound occurences. However, I like the results its producing. The words simply sound more natural to me. I'm not going to let the Markov chain be my be all end all though. I'm still going to use derivational affixes which will result in new words, liberal compounding (such as the new kwege'a for moth as kwe (night) + ge'a (butterfly)), and reduplication to form new words, and certain patterns will be different in various daughter languages.

Finally, one last thing I want to do is more storytelling here. I want something on the order of 5-12 sentences on each update of a small story or guide of a cultural thing. Since it's summer, I've turned to a small summer diversion, at least for New England.

Ege Aya --- Digging Clams

Se'eji jara, sexa mo'e ikwe ege aya. Se ti osee miwano mo'e ti seme 'i fe'a no nimo, seyeseye to u i'ite, 'omo'omo ya kwiwai gaomo. Aya bo itoete ti'a, domo xwage saowa no ege saya uide to. Mati, mana ege saya uano to wa! Aya di pi'e amana no tibe wa! Ti'a 'omo ya doafa biwia no na poge aya uye, na oba ya. Biwia no na xece ya. Ya i ege aya wa!

Every Summer, many people relax by digging clams. People who live by he shore will wade in shallows water, looking for depressions in the ground and feeling about with their feet. After a clam is found, you should slowly dig the ground near the clam. However, do not dig the ground above the clam! The clam will surely break from that! Then reach under the clam and grab it. Pull it gently. You dug a clam!

Vocab
ege - to dig up something
aya - clams, mussels, other bivalves
'eji - every, each
jara - summer
xa - many, multitude
mo'e - person, people (does not mean a people like it can in English)
ikwe - to relax, to have fun
osee - shore, salt
miwano - to live or dwell, reside
fe'a - a little bit
'i - water
eme - low, shallow
dawa - high, deep
nimo - to wade in water
seye - to search
to - ground, dirt
i'ite - depressions, divots
'omo - to use, with (instrumental)
kwiwai - foot
gaomo - to feel around
bo - a passive marker
toete - to find
ti'a - ~ then, after ~
xwage - to begin
saowa - slowness
ide - proximity, next to as post-p
ano - top, on, above
mana - for negative commands (ma + na)
mati - however
doafa - hand
biwia - gentleness, kindness
poge - to reach
di - other passive marker
pi'e - this
amana - certitude, certain
tibe - fratcure break
oba - to grasp, grab


Hope you enjoyed my attempt to reboot here!

[mèþru]

The glottal stop as a letter actually has Unicode upper and lower cases: Ɂ and ɂ respectively. The IPA sound - /ʔ/ - is yet another value.

[Burke]

The glottal stop as a letter actually has Unicode upper and lower cases: Ɂ and ɂ respectively. The IPA sound - /ʔ/ - is yet another value.

I did not know that, but I don't think I should be too surprised. Are there any languages that use these in daily orthography?
I'm going to stick with the <'> and <°> though. <'> is visually similar to the 'okina for Hawaiian glottal stops which had some influence in this conlang, and <°> was used for the glottal stop historically in some North American languages, one of which inspired the vowel system at least in part. Aside from that, I like how it looks aesthetically.

I'm going to elaborate a new topic as well today, and, as per the course of Nawi, it comes in two parts. So far, except for the example text, everything has been active voice; today we focus on the passive voice.

The Passive Voice in Nawi

Nawi distinguishes between two forms of the passive voice: agentless passives and agentful passives. Agentless simply means that no secondary actor is identified as causing the verb to happen as in "the bird was hit." Agentful passives have another non-subject actor noted as in "I was pleased by the song." Agentless passives are noted with the word ne coming after the subject noun and before the verb: NOUN + ne + VERB. This ne is the same as the nominal copula, historically. The agentful passive is marked with the word bi after the subject but before the agent and verb : SUBJ + bi + AGENT + VERB. As would be expected, Agentless passives require a subject but do not allow auxialiary causes to be defined, while agentful require both to be noted.

Examples:

Aya ne i obe -- The clam was grabbed
O bi sexa mo'e i seye -- I was found by many people

N.B. : I have to alter the above story for this. I really do just grok through things until I like the feel of it, so I go back and edit things retroactively requently. I hope this isn't a huge bother for people; it's just how I work. I've been slowly building a google doc of the grammar and vocab too. I'll link them in here soon. However, ne and bi as passive markers are now canon for me. The old ones, whatever. I'll try to post another short story thing over lunch.

[mèþru]

• Languages of Canada
  • Chipewyan — both Ɂ and ɂ.
  • Dogrib — both Ɂ and ɂ.
  • Kootenai — ʔ only.
  • Musqueam language — ʔ only.
  • Nootka — ʔ only.
  • Slavey — both Ɂ and ɂ.
  • Nitinaht — ʔ only.Thompson — ʔ only.
  • Lushootseed
  • Squamish language, where it is usually represented as ⟨7⟩.
• Romanization of Hebrew
  • Biblical — both Ɂ and ɂ. Diaeresis used in Modern Hebrew

I also work like that. I usually don't post things until I feel fairly confident with them though, which is why the only work I have posted is the stuff I do first when making a language: phonology.

[Burke]

• Languages of Canada
  • Chipewyan — both Ɂ and ɂ.
  • Dogrib — both Ɂ and ɂ.
  • Kootenai — ʔ only.
  • Musqueam language — ʔ only.
  • Nootka — ʔ only.
  • Slavey — both Ɂ and ɂ.
  • Nitinaht — ʔ only.Thompson — ʔ only.
  • Lushootseed
  • Squamish language, where it is usually represented as ⟨7⟩.
• Romanization of Hebrew
  • Biblical — both Ɂ and ɂ. Diaeresis used in Modern Hebrew

I also work like that. I usually don't post things until I feel fairly confident with them though, which is why the only work I have posted is the stuff I do first when making a language: phonology.

Interesting to see that getting good leverage. Maybe the books I have for Biblical Hebrew are old, but I've not seen it there before. I've seen things that look like psili and daseia for aleph and ayin respectively.

I guess I don't mind meandering about a lot publicly in this kind of work. I like how people will check in and make a comment or say how something looks weird, generally preferring to codify elsewhere.

Onto another short diversion over lunch.

Seti axwe opoo -- A raft in the stars
Seta'i kwe, O ti saxwe u oxai opoo u are tigo coebe. Sepi'e opoo we werai, mo sekwebe raaji, mati caxwe. Waga ro kweyakwo, na iabono we aeta. Mo wa! Ieba ti waga miwano-miwano ro axwe ti kweyakwo dase. Mati, ti sepi'e opoo O ti pi'ane fe'a no ikwe.

Some nights I like to drift in a raft. This raft is old and isn't brightly colored, however it works. The sea and the night sky are similar, both seemingly empty. They are not! Fish live in the sea just like the stars are fixed in the sky. But I will relax in this boat here for a little bit longer.

ta'i - some
opoo - raft, small boat
axwe - star
oxai - bottom, foot, below
are - inside, guts
tigo - to like
werai - elder, old, age
kwebe - luster, brightness
raaji - color
coebo - to drift, wander
caxwe - to function, be useful
waga - sea, ocean
yakwo -sky
ro - to be similar to, to be like
iabo - to appear
aeta - void, emptiness
Ieba - fish
dase - to stand, be still
pi'ane - here (compund of pi'e and ane, place)