Pazmat

[Chagen]

Pazmat

Pazmat is the name for the language, and daughter of all the Paz languages, spoken in the country of Pazmat on the planet of Techaria. It is the most spoken language on the planet—out of the 5.5 billion people on Techaria, Pazmat is known as a native language to 200 Million people. However, due to its status as a “Lingua Franca” in Techaria, it is actually spoken as a L2 by MORE people than it is as a L1—1.1 billion Techarians know it as a L2.

Why does it have such few native speakers compared to second-language learners? The reason is that the country of Pazmat is massive. The Pazmat this thread goes over is only spoken in an area roughly the size of Western Europe (by comparison, the whole country of Pazmat is roughly the size of Africa, North America, and South America combined—it is the largest country in Techaria by far).

Many of the speakers of Pazmat live away from this area. In a situation somewhat like the Chinese language of today, over 1 billion people will state that they speak a dialect of Pazmat, despite the fact that their “dialects” are actually Mutually Unintelligible languages. Linguists in Techaria therefore group the languages as belonging to the Paz family.

The Paz language in this section is the original Paz language and the parent of the 700+ Paz Languages today.

Phonology/Orthography:
This thread goes over not just the modern Pazmat, but also Old Pazmat, as it is necessary to understand several orthographic quirks in Modern Pazmat.

Old Pazmat had this as a phoneme inventory:

Stops:
/p pʰ b bʰ t ʰ d dʰ k kʰ g gʰ q qʰ/

Fricatives:
/f v s z h/

Nasals:
/m m̥ n n̥ ŋ/

Misc.:
/l j ɻ ɹ w/

Vowels:
/a i e o u/ (there is a length distinction in the vowels)

Old Pazmat went through some changes as time went on to Modern Pazmat. They are not very great in number (and most are very simple, but here they are:

-All aspirated plosives fricativsized, greatly increasing the fricative inventory.
-The retroflex approximant disappeared, however, it rather merged into the consonants before it, making them retroflex. Thus, the phonemes /ʈ ɖ ʂ ʐ/ entered Pazmat’s phoneme inventory.
-/j/ palatalized a large amount of consonants:

/sj/ became /ɕ/
/zj/ became /ʑ/
/hj/ became /ç/ (though that later merged with /x/ and /h/, leaving just the phoneme /x/)
/kj/ and /gj/ became /tɕ dʑ/, respectively.

--4 of the five long vowels went through a period of diphthongizing in this period:

/i:/ to /aɪ/
/e:/ /eI/
/o:/ to /oɪ/
/u:/ to / aʊ/

The only vowel not affected was /a:/. Rather, it did not change, but the phoneme /a/ fronted to /æ/.

-/ɸ β/ merged with /f v/, but the orthography didn’t change. Thus, the phonemes /f v/ are arbitrarily written as <ph bh> and <f v>

- /n/ at the end of syllables is lost, turning the preceding vowel nasal (exactly as French). Long vowels “resisted” this, however.


Therefore, the new inventory ended up to this:

Stops:
/p b t d ʈ ɖ k g q/
<p b t d tt dd c g q>

Fricatives:
/f v θ ð s z ʂ ʐ ɕ ʑ x ɣ χ/
<f v th dh s z sz zs sj zj h/x* qh>
*written <h> at onset, <x> at coda

Affricates:
/ tɕ dʑ/
<cj gj>

Misc:
/l j w ɹ/*
<l y w r>
*: All of these can be voiceless, indicated with a <h> after the letter

Nasals:
/m m̥ n n̥ ŋ/
<m mh n nh ng>
*: the Velar Nasal can be initial, but it’s rare.

Vowels:

Normal:
/a i e o u/
<a I e o u>

Long:
/a: aɪ e ɪ oɪ aʊ/
<aa ii ee oo uu>
*: You may also use a macron to indicate length

Nasal:
/ ã ĩ ẽ õ ũ/
<an in en on un>
*: You may also use umlauts or tildes to indicate this. [mõ] may be written as <mon>, <mö>, or <mõ>, all three are correct.

*: /l ɹ m n/ are also syllabic consonants.

Phonotactics:

The phonotactics of Pazmat are somewhat SAE.

The basic form is (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C).

The allowed onset clusters are:

Stop + Fricative, as long as they have the same voicing

Stop + Approx.

Fricative+ Nasal

Fricative + Stop (same voice)

Fricative + Approx.

Fricative + Stop + Approx. (The fricative MUST be one of / s z ʂ ʐ ɕ ʑ/)

You may notice that nearly everyone of these lowers in friction throughout the cluster, such as Stop + Fricative, which starts with high friction but lowers.

Coda clusters are the reverse: they INCREASE in friction as time goes on. In fact, every possible Pazmat coda cluster can found out by “reversing” an onset cluster. Such as Stop + Fricative, which is allowed in the onset, but Fricative + Stop, which is allowed in the coda.

In addition, Nasal + Stop is also allowed in the coda.

Allophony:

[I don’t have that much allophony yet]

/t d/ are retroflex after /ʂ ʐ/.

The phonemes /f/ and /v/ are [ɸ β] respectively before and after front vowels and /p b/.

Uvular phonemes lower:

/i/ to [ɪ]
/o/ to [ʌ]
/ɹ/ to [ʀ]

/x/ is /ç/ before/after front vowels.

/w/ rounds front vowels after it.

Stress:

Stress in Pazmat is regular. It is also not phonemic.

Stress affects the pronunciation of some short vowels (not long vowels, nasal vowels, or syllabic consonants, however), but this is merely allophonic.

On a single-syllable word, the stress obviously falls on the only syllable.

On a dual-syllable word, the stress is one the last syllable.

On a word with three or more syllables, the stress falls on the second-to-last syllable.

Long vowels “steal” stress. That is, a syllable with a long vowel is always stressed, even if that syllable wouldn’t usually be.

When unstressed:
/i/ is [ɪ]
/e/ is [ɛ]

-----------------

Some minor facts about Pazmat:

Pazmat possess these word classes: Noun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb, Preposition

Pazmat has 5 different verb classes: Human, Magical, Technological, Intangible/Concepts, and Mundane. The classes
only affect declension in a minor way.

Pazmat has these 6 cases: Nominative, Accusative, Ergative, Absolutive, Genitive, and Locative. The Ergative and Absolutive are, however, very unusual, enough so that they could arguably be defined as entirely different cases.

Pazmat distinguishes 5 tenses.

Verbs in Pazmat are marked for the person of the subject, the definiteness of the object, as well as Tense/Aspect/Mood.

There are no overt markings for voice. There is, however, Passive voice in the language.

-----------------

……..Well, that’s over.
You may notice that all my sound changes are from attested sources: Greek (lowering of aspirated stops to fricatives), Japanese (/j/ palatalizing the consonants after it), and long vowels being diphthongized (English’s Great vowel shift). I was being rather conservative with them.

After this I’ll go over verbs.

[Ngohe]

Pazmat has 5 different verb classes: Human, Magical, Technological, Intangible/Concepts, and Mundane. The classes
only affect declension in a minor way.

How does this work? Do they have different forms of conjunction, or what?

[Ngohe]

and daughter of all the Paz languages,

Not the mother language, or?

[Chagen]

AUGH

Freudian slip there, sorry.

[Chagen]

How does this work? Do they have different forms of conjunction, or what?

Yes. An example is that the Locative ending for Human is "-īdh" while the Locative ending for Magical is "-necj".

[Ngohe]

How does this work? Do they have different forms of conjunction, or what?

Yes. An example is that the Locative ending for Human is "-īdh" while the Locative ending for Magical is "-necj".

Locative endings on verbs? Should it perhaps be "noun classes", since you talk about "declensions"??

[Chagen]

Uh.....I'm talking about declensions and noun classes. I've BEEN talking about them. I never talked about verb classes.

[cromulant]

Uh.....I'm talking about declensions and noun classes. I've BEEN talking about them. I never talked about verb classes.

Actually, that's not true, is it? Reread what you wrote.

I was wondering how the hell those verb classes would work as well.

[Chagen]

Okay, shit, I meant "noun classes", jesus, I fucked up a single word, jesus.

I assumed you guys would be intelligent enough to realize I meant "noun classes" from my use of the word "declension" but I guess I fucking over-estimated your logical reasoning skills.

[cromulant]

Old Pazmat had this as a phoneme inventory:

Stops:
/p pʰ b bʰ t ʰ d dʰ k kʰ g gʰ q qʰ/

A typo, no doubt.

You may notice that nearly everyone of these lowers in friction throughout the cluster, such as Stop + Fricative, which starts with high friction but lowers.

I think what you're getting at here is sonority, not "friction." Friction is not a relevant concept here.

On a dual-syllable word, the stress is one the last syllable.

On a word with three or more syllables, the stress falls on the second-to-last syllable.

I don't buy it.

Long vowels “steal” stress. That is, a syllable with a long vowel is always stressed, even if that syllable wouldn’t usually be.

What if there is more than one long vowel?

Pazmat has these 6 cases: Nominative, Accusative, Ergative, Absolutive, Genitive, and Locative.

What's the morphosyntactic alignment?

The Ergative and Absolutive are, however, very unusual, enough so that they could arguably be defined as entirely different cases.

What do you mean? You already counted them among the six cases, so it goes without saying they are "entirely different cases."

Pazmat distinguishes 5 tenses.

And they are?

[cromulant]

Okay, shit, I meant "noun classes", jesus, I fucked up a single word, jesus.

I assumed you guys would be intelligent enough to realize I meant "noun classes" from my use of the word "declension" but I guess I fucking over-estimated your logical reasoning skills.

We are not mind readers. "Verb classes" are exactly the kind of thing conlangers do experiment with. And I have no way of knowing whether you actually know what the word "declension" means. Or, since you used "verb" instead of "noun," why it isn't equally plausible that you'd swap "declension" for "conjugation."

(deleted)

[Chagen]

We are not mind readers. "Verb classes" are exactly the kind of thing conlangers do experiment with. And I have no way of knowing whether you actually know what the word "declension" means. Or, since you used "verb" instead of "noun," why it isn't equally plausible that you'd swap "declension" for "conjugation."

(deleted)

You assumed that I know what "phonotactics" meant but not what "declension" meant?

Jesus, I even self-taught myself Latin for a little bit, how the hell could I not know what declension meant?

I don't buy it.

When I pronounced the words of Pazmat to judge how they sounded, those stress rules just came naturally to me.

Also, it's stress, for god's sake, there's more important things to worry about.

What if there is more than one long vowel?

All syllables including a long vowel are stressed.

What's the morphosyntactic alignment?

Nom-Acc in main clauses, Erg-Absol in subordinate/relative clauses.

What do you mean? You already counted them among the six cases, so it goes without saying they are "entirely different cases."

First, when I meant "entirely different cases" I meant that it could be argued that they are not an Ergative and Absolutive, but something else entirely.

Anyway, those two are involved in a lot of strange things--Absolutive marks subjects of ergative verbs, Ergative marks subjects of passive verbs....

And they are?

From the CBB:

Pzzmat marks five different tenses:

Present: Mati "I speak

Modern Past: Matzji "I spoke (no earlier than a week from now)"
Modern Future: Matīxi "I will speak (nonlater than a week from now)"

Ancient Past: Matgjō* "I spoke (earlier than a week from now)"
Ancient Future: Matori "I will speak (later than a week from now)"

*: The "-i" suffix for 1.SG is absorbed into the diphthong suffix of [oI].

[cromulant]

We are not mind readers. "Verb classes" are exactly the kind of thing conlangers do experiment with. And I have no way of knowing whether you actually know what the word "declension" means. Or, since you used "verb" instead of "noun," why it isn't equally plausible that you'd swap "declension" for "conjugation."

(deleted)

You assumed that I know what "phonotactics" meant but not what "declension" meant?

Jesus, I even self-taught myself Latin for a little bit, how the hell could I not know what declension meant?

You didn't use "phonotactics" in a nonsensical way, so I didn't think about it.

I didn't say I assumed you didn't know what declension was. I said I had no way of knowing whether you did or not. Frankly, there is a strong enough whiff of noobishness in your posts that I didn't think I could take this for granted. It might astonish you to learn that I was unaware you'd studied Latin, so your knowledge of declension was not as obvious to me as you seem to think it should have been, but those of us who are not at the center of the universe are sometimes unaware of the thoughts of those who are.

Anyway, I half-suspected you meant "noun class." The real issue here is your fierce insistence to Ngohe that you were talking about noun classes all along, which is what I was correcting.

Also, it's stress, for god's sake, there's more important things to worry about.

Then why did you include it in your post.

[Chagen]

Then why did you include it in your post.

Because stress, as minor as it is, is still important to a naturalistic conlang.

[cromulant]

Also, it's stress, for god's sake, there's more important things to worry about.

Then why did you include it in your post.

Because stress, as minor as it is, is still important to a naturalistic conlang.

k

[Chagen]

If you're going to be a useless fuck, go be an asshole somewhere else.

If you've got no critisism of the lang itself, then GFTO.

[TaylorS]

Oh no, the teenage PITA from CBB is infesting Zompist BB! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!

(I'm joking!)

[Chagen]

I hate the fuck out of this forum, but screw it, I might as well post this here too:

Since no one responded, I guess I'll go straight into verbs:

A verb in Pazmat has only one principal part: It's stem, plus the infinitive ending, which for all verbs is "-ya". Such as:


Matya: to speak (where the language itself gets its ethnonym)
Oya: to do
Thiya: to see
Seya: to have
Dicja*: to be free to do (best translated as "can")
Conya: to think (about something)
Woya: to think (assumptions)
Gegja*: to believe
Plnscja*: to patrol

*: Palatalization still factors into this, so any stem ending in /k/, /s/, /g/, or /z/ will palatalize.

Verbs follow a rather normal conjugation pattern, with one interesting factor: the definitess of the object is fused with the subject marker. An example:

"Yedos setha"
[Sword-ACC have-3.SGF.DEF]
"She has the sword."

"Yedos sequu"
[Sword-ACC have-3SGF.INDEF]
"She has a sword".

If a verb is intransitive or the object doesn’t apply into the sentence in any way, it is used in the Definite.
Pronouns are always definite.

The endings:

Definite:

1.SG: -i
2.SG: -ye
3.SGM: -o
3.SGF: -cjid
1.PL: -ivo
2.PL: -phevo
3.PL: -gux

Indefinite:
1.SG: -u
2.SG: -uu
3.SGM: -tro
3.SGF: -quu
3.SGNeu: -fir
1.PL: -uvo
2.PL: mln
3.PL: redh

So, to conjugate "Gegja" (to believe):

Gegi: I believe
Gegfe: you believe
Gego: he believes
Gegtha: she believes
Gegjid*: It beleives
Gegivo: We beleive
Gegphevo: You all believe
Gegux**: They believe
*: palatalization, as usuall

**: the two /g/s assimilate to one

----------

TAM:

Pazmat posseses Tense, Apect and Mood marking. However, for now, as I am somewhat short on time, I'll describe Tense only for now:

Pazmat distinguishes five tenses:

Pzzmat marks five different tenses, and an example would explain them better than a painstaking paragraph:

Present: Mati "I speak"

Modern Past: Matzji "I spoke (no earlier than a week from now)"
Modern Future: Matīxi "I will speak (nonlater than a week from now)"

Ancient Past: Matgjō* "I spoke (earlier than a week from now)"
Ancient Future: Matori "I will speak (later than a week from now)"

*: The "-i" suffix for 1.SG is absorbed into the diphthong suffix of [oI].

This however, is somewhat relative. The modern past, for example, could be used for an event that happened a year ago. What matters is whether or not the the even is relative to today. It's almost like mood-marking, in that the use of Ancient or Modern depends on how the speaker deems the event spoken.
A random fact: In the past, Pazmat's inamous military government (the Gjecdii regime) used the Ancient Past in its propgaganda to describe events it deemed immoral or wrong, in order to emphasize how they believed that the people shouldn't believe such "lies".

.....Anyway, the tense suffixes go after the stem but before the person marker. They are:

Present: 0
Modern Past: -zj-
Modern Future: -iixi-
Ancient Past: -gjoo-
Ancient Future: -or-

However, these frequently "collapse" into each other. That is, the person markers and the tense markers will fuse together. An example with Modern Past and "thiya" (to see):

Verb: Thiya (to see)

I saw: Thizji (Thi+zj+i)
You saw: Thizje (Thi+zj+fe)
He saw: Thizjo (Thi+zj+o)
She saw: Thizja (Thi+zj+tha)
It saw: Thizjid (Thi+zj+cjid)

We saw: Thizjivo (Thi+zj+ivo)
You all saw: Thizjevo (Thi+zj+phevo)
They saw: Thizjux (Thi+zj+gux)

These are somewhat logical. As you can see, the Pazmat person markers still generally are dstinctive enough to lose their onsets completely and still be legible. In ancient past, the "-oo" part often is lost:

"Thigji" (I saw)
Usually, the beginning consonants are lost while the vowels and coda are retained.

-------

Sorry, this is a mess, but I wanted to get this out before school started.

Hm....there's still ~16~ minutes left.

[Acid Badger]

I hate the fuck out of this forum, but screw it, I might as well post this here too

This surely is the right way to get friendly feedback.

[cromulant]

Why would anyone even considering commenting on your language at this point? You have paper thin skin, can't handle criticism, are ridiculously hostile and resort to name-calling at the drop of a hat.

I actually did make susbtantive comments on your language. You just couldn't stand it. I made some rather inoccuous comments, and you called me a "useless fuck" and an "asshole."


Engaging Chagen is not worth it. I advise all ZBBers to ignore him until he goes away.

[Chagen]

You didn't make any good critisism, you ragged on ONE typo and focused mainly on that. Then you just ragged on the stress.

[finlay]

You didn't make any good critisism, you ragged on ONE typo and focused mainly on that. Then you just ragged on the stress.

No, he's right: you're being a dick. You instantly reacted hostilely and you assumed that other people could read your mind. Half of your posts don't even make sense. And then you have the cheek to insult the entire board and expect feedback? No, you can't have that. Fuck off.

[Pole, the]

Okay, Chagen, crap. Shit, you really need, fuck, to read your posts, Jesus, before you send them, perkele.

---

But seriously, that's nothing personal. Everyone makes mistakes. You miswrote several things, so we weren't able to understand them properly. If you were paying more attention, there wouldn't be any discussion.

All you can do now is to let this flame quiet down and be more careful in future.

EOT

[Chagen]

Well, when I first came here, I was ready to be all serious and nice, but then Darkgamma recogmized me and I ended getting into deep shit due to our old grudge,

Combine that with this forum's hostility to newbies, an eventually I just "snapped" and tried to be so violently hostile and trollish to get banned.

Except I didn't, and the high from being a cunt has just died down.

[Drydic]

I really have no idea why I'm replying seriously to this, but here goes:
______________________________________________________________________________

Care to describe your cases further? How they're used, and also why you picked the names for them? From what you've said so far I'm a bit confused as to their actual uses, by their names they don't seem to correspond to their usual usages (I'm talking mostly about the absolutive as subject of 'ergative' verbs and ergative as subject of passive verbs here primarily, though if there's 'oddities' in the Nom/Acc usages feel free to discuss those as well), but without examples it's impossible to say anything for sure, of course.

Also, if you have both Nom/Acc and Erg/Abs alignments in different parts of the language, how is that handled in the verbal system? For example, is the verb give in the masked man gave the man a dog conjugated any differently in who was that masked man who gave the man a dog?