Makija, p.1

[Universeal12]

After a long and strenuous strain with the creation of conlangs, I have decided to go the minimalist route and create a minimalistic conlang. There. That’s my intro.

Here’s what I have so far- (I just really want to know if I’m missing anything huge I should put in here, or if I’m making any mistakes in the grammar itself.)

A COMPLETE GRAMMAR OF MAKIJA by Marcus Blair

Hello there!


I see you’ve stumbled upon my little hobby!

Now, let me get this out there right off the bat- Makija was not entirely meant to be an auxlang, but can very well be taken as one. For example, for minimalist purposes I tried to strip down the phonology to only the bare necessities- those phonemes which ended only the most common phonemes out there. I, personally, consider it more of an artlang- to me, I was going for more of a Toki Pona on steroids deal. (As you will see throughout this Grammar, though, there are points where Makija gets more complex than Toki Pona- Makija actually HAS morphology.) Toki Pona has a word for ‘book.’ I can make that more ambiguous- how about a ‘text group?’ (Juku kakupo, for those who couldn’t wait for a taste of the language.)

I’ll throw in the obligatory backstory. Why am I doing this? Why am I making a language? Like, sheesh, I know I’m a nerd, but this is new territory. Well, I’m doing this because I thought it would be easy. I’ve tried to do it before- believe me, my first two attempts were a load of crap- so I thought, well, a simple, minimalistic conlang couldn’t be that bad. Grammar rules are complex. Making them simple shouldn’t be that hard. Oh well.

And here I am now.

I honestly do hope you enjoy this, seeing as though it took quite a lot of work.

Hu wi ha wo pakaboji! (I thank you!)

-Marcus Blair

Part One- Phonology and Phonetics


1.1-Phoneme Inventory

The phoneme inventory for Makija is-

/m k j p w b h/
/i e u o a/

Short. Simple. Sweet. Can’t go wrong with the most common phonemes, eh?

1.2- Syllable Structure

Even though I’m doing this now, it seems like it’s out of place. Shouldn’t phonotactics be here? It makes more sense to me that way. But I realized that some phonotactic rules wouldn’t make sense without syllable structure having been identified.

The syllable structure for Makija is (C)(C)V. That’s right, no coda. Syllables like ‘wek’ and ‘pab’ are out. Those would be ‘we-k(c)v’ and ‘pa-(c)v.’ There’s no coda because...well, I thought there shouldn’t be a coda. I’m the conlanger here, okay?

Okay, on to phonotactics.

1.3- Phonotactics

Ah, the miscellaneous rules of phonotactics!

J or W can never be the first consonant in a syllable when /b, p or k/ follows. Pronouncing words like ‘jbakajpu’ would be a handful, and would intimidate a lot of new learners, I’d think. (Imagine someone from Britain, Canada, America, or any predominantly English speaking country looking at that and pronouncing it like an English word…!)
All the voiced stops (p, k) are aspirated. All the time.

Boom, that’s it.

Part Two- Morphology

This is quite simple.

Makija only conjugates verbs based on tense, not gender. And it only conjugates the past and future tense.

It conjugates like this: to denote past tense, add ‘I’ in front of the verb. (‘I bu’- I was.) To denote future tense, add ‘u’ in front of the verb. (‘U kawwabe’- I will get/receive/will be under control of/manage/oversee.) There. Short, sweet, simple. Done.

Next topic!

Part Three- Syntax

3.1- Basic Word Order

Makija’s basic word order is SOV. When asking questions, go into SVO word order, with the interrogative pronoun at the very beginning of the phrase.

An example sentence- ‘I will find you.’ Translated, that is, ‘Hu wi ha wo u wokemi.’ Literally translated, that means, ‘I you will find.’

3.2- Word Placement

Here are some guidelines for creating a sentence-

(Article) Adjective Subject Preposition Object Indirect Object (Article) Preposition Verb Adverb

So, a sentence like ‘Milo liked to sleep on his masters bed’, would be ‘Milo on his masters bed liked to sleep.’ A sentence like ‘The Earth spins and stops’ would be ‘The Earth spins
and stops,’ because between clauses you but ‘and’ or ‘but’.

3.3- Forming Questions

3.3.1- Forming Polar Questions

A Polar Question is a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question, like, ‘Do you like the cake?’ Or ‘Have you seen this man?’ To form these questions in Makija, invert your word order to VOS, and add ‘Kiwa’ to the end of the sentence, and remove the ‘do’, ‘have, or ‘is’ from the beginning if the sentence. A literal translation would be ‘You like the cake (kiwa)?’ for example, ‘Do you want to eat?’ would be ‘Wami mu kekamu wo kiwa?’ In this phrase the ‘kiwa’ is like ‘hi’, ‘ha’ and ‘hu’ in the case that it doesn’t really have meaning, it just denotes something.

3.3.2- Forming Constituent Questions

A constituent question is a ‘what, who, when, why, how, which’ question. You form this by inverting to VOS, again, but adding one of the interrogative pronouns to the beginning of the sentence. Here are those translations-

What- po
Who- pi
When- pa
Why- pu
How- pe
Which- pea (like pe-ah)

So, a constitutent question would be like this- ‘Who saw you, John?’ A translation of that would be ‘Pu i jeko wo, John?’

3.3.3- Forming A Relative Clause

Relative clauses in Makija are more of a….no. An example of a relative clause in English is ‘The man, who punches cacti for fun, is colorblind.’ Now, our example sentence here is ‘The circle, that is not complete, is round.’ The way Makija treats relative clauses is that it doesn’t- you would take the clause and form a whole new sentence with it. So that example sentence would be ‘The circle is round. It is not complete.’ Translated, that is ‘O wobu kopowa wobu eha. Bu wekamo i bjepaki eha.’

[mèþru]

What, no coronals? /p k h/ are voiceless, it's /b m j w/ that are voiced.

And it only conjugates the past and future tense.

The lack of a past or future prefix is still a tense, just an unmarked one. So you have a third tense, "present".

Here are some guidelines for creating a sentence-

(Article) Adjective Subject Preposition Object Indirect Object (Article) Preposition Verb Adverb

So, a sentence like ‘Milo liked to sleep on his masters bed’, would be ‘Milo on his masters bed liked to sleep.’ A sentence like ‘The Earth spins and stops’ would be ‘The Earth spins
and stops,’ because between clauses you but ‘and’ or ‘but’.

Doesn't explain much. What articles? Are you saying certain nouns succeed an article while others precede one? Are there any differences between the two preposition placements?

[Soap]

The phonology isn't far off from that of Hawaiian or Tahitian, but those languages have significant allophones .... even [t]~[k], for example.

One note, though: one reason why bilabial consonants are common is that they're less variable... there isn't much you can do with a /p/ without making it something else, but with, say, /t/, you can have dental vs alveolar, apical vs laminal, etc... so /t/ is actually more common than /p/, and possibly more than /k/, when its many forms are taken as one.

[Travis B.]

The phonology isn't far off from that of Hawaiian or Tahitian, but those languages have significant allophones .... even [t]~[k], for example.

One note, though: one reason why bilabial consonants are common is that they're less variable... there isn't much you can do with a /p/ without making it something else, but with, say, /t/, you can have dental vs alveolar, apical vs laminal, etc... so /t/ is actually more common than /p/, and possibly more than /k/, when its many forms are taken as one.

The main sound changes that can happen to /p/ are to one of /pʰ b f ɸ h/, and /p pʰ/ are the most likely voiceless stops to be missing due to their tendency to turn into one of /f ɸ h/.

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

Makija’s basic word order is SOV. When asking questions, go into SVO word order, with the interrogative pronoun at the very beginning of the phrase.

A Polar Question is a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question, like, ‘Do you like the cake?’ Or ‘Have you seen this man?’ To form these questions in Makija, invert your word order to VOS

You're contradicting yourself here. Are questions SVO or VOS?

and remove the ‘do’, ‘have, or ‘is’ from the beginning if the sentence.

Does this have anything to do with Makija? It sounds like you're describing how to turn an English question into a Makija one rather than how to turn a declarative sentence in Makija into a question.

In this phrase the ‘kiwa’ is like ‘hi’, ‘ha’ and ‘hu’ in the case that it doesn’t really have meaning, it just denotes something.

What are "hi", "ha" and "hu"? What do they denote? I see some of those words in some of your sample sentences, but you don't seem to have described them anywhere.


Lastly, a more general remark: use glosses. While your "literal translations" may be enough for you to understand your sample sentences, they don't make much sense to rest of us if you don't tell us what every word's function is.

Sorry if I'm sounding too critical, I just want to help and encourage you to keep learning.

[Universeal12]

Oh yes- since the grammar is not entirely finished, the last thing I needed to put in there was ‘ha,’ ‘hi,’ and ‘hu.’ They denote cases.

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

Which cases?

[Universeal12]

Which cases?

Nominative, accusative and genetive.