Esterish - Anixias's First Logical Conlang!

[Anixias]

Hello, everyone! I'm Anixias and I literally JUST registered! I thinking Conlanging is awesome and sometimes it feels like I'm the only one who actually thinks so, and takes it seriously!

Anyway, one of the MANY languages in my game, which I haven't named yet, is called Esterish and is found most prominently in Esteria and the Western Continent Faloei.

Esterish has a writing system that looks Indic in nature; that is, every letter has a bar over it, which helps distinguish when a word ends and a new word begins.

The period is just like a Japanese period: 。

I will eventually open up Inkscape and create the alphabet font and use that but for now, I will use roman letters (what you are currently reading).

I suck at remember some IPA symbols but Esterish is more or less pronounced just like Japanese vowels and English consonants.

A 'G' is ALWAYS hard (as in "Guy", not "Rage").
There is no 'C', 'X' or 'Q'.

Kj is how the English 'ch' is spelled ("Cheese", for example).

I haven't used any diacritics but I was teasing the idea of making this a tonal language but I probably won't.

Between two vowels, consonants are always voiced, regardless of how it is written. Therefore, sumiesi -> sumiezi

Anyway, on to the pronouns!

Pronoun Table

Pronouns use the Ergative/Absolutive case system, while nouns use the Nominative/Accusative case system. Genitive case is formed by adding -(e)n.



There are 2 Categories of Gender: Animate and Inanimate.
There are 3 subgenders of Animate: Masculine, Feminine, and Neutral. Masculine means there is at least one male included, so plural masculine = at least one male and maybe other males or some females or whatever. Feminine means there are no males included. Neutral means that, for the most part, you don't know the gender of those included. If you are a male, then always use masculine form with 1st person pronouns. If you are a female, you should use masculine form for Plural 1st person, but only if you don't know the genders of those included with you. For dual form, just use feminine form if you don't know the other person's gender. For example, if you are not a heterosexual, homosexual, or asexual female (bisexual, pansexual, etc.), and you are talking about your "Future Lover", then you should use the feminine form. If you know that you are only attracted to men and you are a female, use the masculine form instead, implying that it WILL be a male.

There are 2 subgenders of Inanimate: Natural and Artificial. Natural refers to anything natural or found in nature, not your NO ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS juice. Artificial refers to anything that is Human-Made: A desk, a table, a sofa, a lamp, a cheeseburger, etc.

You probably wonder what "Ex." and "In." mean on 1st Person Dual and Plural. "Ex." = Exclusive (It does not include "You"); "In." = Inclusive (It includes "You").

Both Adjectives and Verbs add suffixes to match the gender of what they describe.

Here are those suffixes:
Masculine: -(z/j)o <- The Z is used after an i or e; The J is used after an a, o, or u
Feminine: -(l)i
Neutral: -(kj)eu
Natural: -(s)a
Artificial: -(r)(i)e <- The i is only used if the verb is Transitive

There are three verb types: -ore, -ire, and -ere.
-ore verbs are always physical actions (such as walk, cry, say, jump, dance, need, etc.) <- The "need" example means a physical need, like "He needs treatement."
-ire verbs are always mental actions (such as think, believe, expect, wonder, need, want, etc.) <- The "need" example means a mental or emotional need, like "I need a girlfriend!"
-ere verbs are a mixture of physical and mental actions.

Here are the Present Tense forms in a chart:



Let's make really short example sentences. The sentence order is OVS.

Sumere - to walk

Since sumere is an Intransitive Verb, the subject will be in the Absolutive Case.

Sumezo zeo. - I walk.

The -zo in "Sumezo" is the Masculine suffix. It is added AFTER the full conjugation of the verb.

Sumiesi ti. - You (a girl) walks.


Let's put these sentences in gloss format. I will skip the Native Script and IPA section of the gloss (for now).

Sumezo zeo.
walk-p.1s.m I-abs.1s.m
I walk.

1 (First Person) s (Singular) p (Present Tense)
abs = Absolutive Case
m = Masculine

Genitive form: Add -(e)n <- the vowel is only added after a consonant
Example: Lo = I; Lon = My

Exceptions: words ending in L change the L to LZ.

Example: Vol = He; Volzen = His

There are 3 verbs meaning "to be":
-tore = physically
-poire = mentally/emotionally
-vere = location

The 1st Person Singular form of tore is "toi", so I will create a glossed example now.
Brekjom = Friend

Noun Case Chart:


Example: Table is an artifical-gender word. It's BASE is "mot" and its final is "r". So, how do we form the nominative singular word for "Table"?
BASE + ending + final

mot + ie + r = motier

What about dual?

Since the difference between Singular and Dual is always +m, you can add -em instead if it has a final.

mot + ie + r + em = motierem = Two tables

Plural: motiers (You use -(e)s just like Dual is -(e)m, but you don't use the (e) on -(e)s unless the final is T, K, or P)

The Masculine 1st Person Singular Accusative noun ending is -oro. Noun endings can be followed by a consonant. In the word "Brekjom", the "o" is conjugated.

Meon brekjorom toizo lo.
his-abs.3s.m.pos friend-acc.s.m am-p.1s.m I-erg.1s.m
I am his friend.

abs = Absolutive Case
3 = Third Person
s = Singular
m = Masculine
pos = Possessive (Genitive Case)
acc = Accusative Case
p = Present Tense
1 = First Person
erg = Ergative Case

As you can see, there is A LOT of information encoded into each word. Here is the same sentence but with the meaning reversed:

Zeon brekjorom tazo vol.
my-abs.1s.m.pos friend-acc.s.m is-p.3s.m he-erg.3s.m
He is my friend.

Ta = Tore conjugated to 3rd Person Singular

Words completely change based on who's doing what, when, and the gender of the whos and whats.

Well, that's it for this post. Let me know what you think! I will post more later. I will link my website with the lexicon on it tomorrow, maybe.

[Frislander]

Now, first things first, can you do a phonology chart for us so we can understand your phoneme inventory?

Secondly, split-ergativity is great! it's so boring to see just plain, pristine erg-abs systems that even minor variations feel like a breath of fresh air.

Thirdly, You don't seem to have much in the way of temporal marking on the verb: perhaps you might like to get to know the wonderful concept of Grammatical Aspect: It'd be nice to see more aspect-driven, as opposed to tense-driven, conlangs.

Fourthly, you're gender system seems perhaps a little redundant and artificial; why do you need a neutral gender when you can fit all of the non-human nouns into natural and artificial anyway? Also, I would hope that your gender system isn't rigid: that is, a semantically "artificial" noun might appear in the natural gender for instance. This is all part of the "grammatical gender does not equal natural gender thing".

Fifthly, I like the gender system extending all the way through the pronominal system. True, you don't see that sort of thing that often outside of Africa, but it's nice to see it.

[Anixias]

Hi, thanks for reading!

1) Sure thing, I'll edit the post tonight (in around 12 hours, 8:00pm Central time).

2) Glad I'm not the only one who thinks so!

3) I haven't done entirely much in the way of research, but I tried my best to understand most options available on zompist's Language Construction Kit. I may revise the language later, after doing more research!

4) Well, "neutral" could be better indicated as "unknown". It is only used with Animate nouns or pronouns the you don't know the gender of, like, say, a person wearing a costume. I really just added the Natural and Artifical genders to spice things up but I could see how they're kind of redundant. I just think it's cool that the gender of "Table" is completely separate from the gender of "Rock".

5) I enjoyed making it!

[shanoxilt]

Could you demonstrate some syllogisms or an example of its syntax? I would really like to see a logical language handle non-classical logics.

[Mike Yams]

So as a side-note, does anyone know whether a split-ergative system like this one, with nom-acc nouns and erg-abs pronouns, is attested in any natlang?

Of course, whether or not it's attested isn't all that important, conlanging-wise.

[Frislander]

So as a side-note, does anyone know whether a split-ergative system like this one, with nom-acc nouns and erg-abs pronouns, is attested in any natlang?

Of course, whether or not it's attested isn't all that important, conlanging-wise.

Well no, but the opposite is attested across pretty much the whole of Australia.

[Vijay]

IIRC, some creoles have an ergative-absolutive system for pronouns and otherwise don't have case-marking.

[cromulant]

So as a side-note, does anyone know whether a split-ergative system like this one, with nom-acc nouns and erg-abs pronouns, is attested in any natlang?

Of course, whether or not it's attested isn't all that important, conlanging-wise.

I looked into this question a while ago. There is an Iranian language that does this (with some complications, I think). I can't remember the name, but it begins with a Y. I will look through my stuff and see if I can find the reference.

[Vijay]

You wouldn't be thinking of Yazghulami or Yaghnobi, would you? Apparently, Yazghulami has tripartite marking, and Yaghnobi is just straight-up nominative-accusative. The only other Iranian language I can think of whose name begins with a Y is Yidgha, which apparently "has not been given serious study by linguists."

[cromulant]

You wouldn't be thinking of Yazghulami or Yaghnobi, would you? Apparently, Yazghulami has tripartite marking, and Yaghnobi is just straight-up nominative-accusative. The only other Iranian language I can think of whose name begins with a Y is Yidgha, which apparently "has not been given serious study by linguists."

I think it was Yazgulami. The only reference I can find to the ergative pronouns is this tantalizing but truncated excerpt. I'm pretty sure there was better, more accessible info about it at some point in the past--which, to talk about in Yazgulami, of course, you would use ergative marking on pronouns only.

[Mike Yams]

Hmm that's interesting, because as pronouns tend to be higher up than nouns on, or be at the top of, animacy/saliency/empathy hierarchies, one'd expect them to have more "active" marking, rather than the reverse.