Because it's been a long time since I've done anything conlangy but futz around in the fluency thread, I thought I'd post an excerpt from a Dravian novel. It's from O Nojaltrei, el zènt ("We, the People"), a novel written by Arsàn Clovèc in 1964. With not a little influence from Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, it satirises the ruling Communist state. The protagonist and narrator, Vendèsc, is arrested by the Securtat, the Dravian secret police, for his involvement in a serious "political crime". Vendèsc is totally ignorant of what he is supposed to have done, and at no point in the novel are the charges against him actually revealed.
The following excerpt is from a scene about halfway through Vendèsc's interrogation. The unnamed People's Commissar briefly talks about the contradictions of Party propaganda and reality, nudging Vendèsc towards his eventual "confession".
— Que coite-tu revera, camerat, qu'o jèu ne sai rèn com qu'è de defail d'entelairo çò qu'è adver e çò que n'è rèn? Jèu craid gauzènd que san vaiv ent na societat san nè'l crèmn nè l'envaja, perqué jè çò que'l Partait no daiç. Però ògn zurn jèu stentài ent na cetat jó que la fèmna ne pot rèn caminar de noaç san fèr stuprata, na cetat jó que lei zuvnei rodaglei rauva del pan per sfamar soje sòre. Jèu ne sai rèn si daiva creizro le mai òglei, u el Partait.
— Jèu ne sai rèn çò que voi vlaite de mai — jèu deiç. El comisare del zènt me vedaja. — Çò que vlaje-tu de mai, camerat — man corectài de ràpid.
— Çò que vògl o jèu e çò que vlaje o toi, lei doi carèsca d'importansa. Çò ne da que vlaja el Partait.
— E qué vlaja-el de mai, el Partait?
— El Partait vlaja que quèst afairo ne s'è zamài treçtat. En faç, negota ne s'è treçtat. Çò ne dava necoin crèmn, necoina defailtat. C'è ovletat.
— E, pòs, jèu ne ferài rèn castigat? — Jèu rogài. El comisare suridò de trèst.
— Camerat, el Partait n'ovlaita unca. Deis le còse que jal ha ovletat.
"Do you really think, comrade, that I don't know how difficult it is to understand what is real and what isn't? I willingly believe that we live in a society free from crime and want, because that is what the Party tells us. But every day I work in a city where a woman cannot walk at night without being raped, a city where youths from the country steal bread to feed their sisters. I don't know whether to believe my eyes or the Party."
"I don't know what you want from me sir," I said. The People's Commissar looked at me. "What you want from me, comrade," I quickly corrected myself.
"What I want and what you want, neither has any importance. There's only what the Party wants.
"And what does the Party want from me?"
"The Party wants this to have never happened. In fact, nothing has happened. There has been no crime, no difficulty. It is forgotten.
"Then, I won't be punished?" I asked. The Commissar smiled sadly.
"Comrade, the Party never forgets. Even those things which it has forgotten."
A glossed version with commentary to follow, but in the meanwhile, you can hear the extract spoken by me here. (My accent is terrible.)
O Nojaltrei, el zènt (text, commentary, sound sample!)
O Nojaltrei, el zènt (text, commentary, sound sample!)
Last edited by Dewrad on Tue Aug 20, 2013 4:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Salmoneus wrote:(NB Dewrad is behaving like an adult - a petty, sarcastic and uncharitable adult, admittedly, but none the less note the infinitely higher quality of flame)
Re: O Nojaltrei, el zènt
This is taking longer than I thought, so here's the first part of the gloss and commentary.
— Que coite-tu revera, camerat, qu'o jèu ne sai rèn com jè defail d'entelairo çò qu'è adver e çò que n'è rèn?
[kɪ ˈkɔitɪtu rɪˈverǝ, kǝmɪˈrat, kuˈjɛw nɪˈsai ˈrɛŋ ˈkom ˈkɛ dɪdɪˈfaiɫ dæŋtɪˈlairu ˈʃɔ ˈkɛ ǝdˈver ɪ ˈʃɔ kɪˈnɛ ˈrɛŋ]
"Do you really think, comrade, that I don't know how difficult it is to understand what is real and what isn't?
The passage opens with a polar question. Dravian has several strategies available for forming these; the Commissar picks probably the most common method used in colloquial speech. In slightly more formal Dravian, a polar question like this would involve simple inversion of subject and verb: toi coite 'you think' becomes coite-tu (observe that orthotonic and clitic pronouns have rather distinct allomorphs). However, spoken Dravian has an aversion to finite verbs in utterance-initial position (with the exception of a small class of verbs involving change of state), so a semantically empty que (identical to the normal complementiser) fills the slot instead.
What's that o before the pronoun jèu 'I'? Well, stressed and unstressed pronouns in Dravian are essentially just positional variants of each other. Dravian isn't pro-drop per se, and one can't just replace an unstressed pronoun with a stressed one for extra illocutionary force. Unlike in, say, French, stressed pronouns don't function as disjunctive pronouns. So, to add emphasis to a pronoun, one places the unstressed particle o (from Latin hŏc, as it happens) in front of the stressed variant. Really, a better translation of this phrase would be "...that I, of all people, don't know how...". This particle isn't limited to use in front of subject pronouns. It can be used before direct and indirect object pronouns as well (unusually for a Romance language, Dravian rigorously distinguishes between the two.) Observe:
O toi me fotisti.
It's you that fucked me over.
O man fotisti-tu.
It's me that you fucked over.
Going by the above sentences, you might think that pronouns with o always migrate to the beginning of the clause. You're wrong. In fact:
Jèu me calèsc d'o tai.
It's you that I worry about.
(Note the IO pronoun used after a preposition there. The tonic DO pronoun is tan.)
So, it's some kind of V2 shit going on there? Wrong again. So why not either *Toi o man fotisti or *Toi fotisti o man? Because of another couple of constraints on Dravian constituent order. First, Dravian doesn't allow two adjacent tonic pronouns, which rules out the first option. Second, proniminal objects must precede the verb, regardless of whether they are clitics or fully stressed. So, why not replace stressed toi with unstressed tu? A sentence like *Tu o man fotisti is equally ungrammatical, because atonic pronouns cannot occur utterance-initially. So our only solution left is to express the subject with an atonic subject enclitic -tu. Simple.
Jèu craid gauzènd que san vaiv ent na societat san nè'l crèmn nè l'envaja, perqué quèl jè çò que'l Partait no daiç.
[ˈjɛw ˈkraid gǝuˈdzɛŋ kɪˈsaŋ ˈvaiv æŋnǝsuʃjɪˈtat ˈsaŋ ˈnɛɫ ˈkrɛm ˈnɛ læŋˈvajǝ, pɪrˈke ˈkɛɫ ˈjɛ ˈʃɔ kɪɫpǝrˈtait nuˈdaiʃ.]
I willingly believe that we live in a society free from crime and want, because that is what the Party tells us.
A lot of this is pretty unexceptional for a Romance language. You've got the negative conjunctions nè ... nè ... expressing a concept like English's 'neither ... nor ...', and a "neuter" pronoun çò with a complementiser expressing 'that which', like French ce que or Spanish lo que. A couple of things that are of interest, though:
The preposition en 'in' has the form ent before a determiner, which is particularly evident in contractions with the definite article: en + la (feminine singular) becomes entela, and en + lei (masculine plural) becomes entegl. Before other determiners, however, this is mainly just an orthographic convention as before a consonant both en and ent are both pronounced [æŋ]. Before a vowel, the two are distinct: ent o contat 'in a county' is [æŋt u kuŋˈtat], while en autobus 'by bus' is [ɪn ǝutuˈbus]. The distinction, however, is so marginal that in most colloquial speech en is preferred almost everywhere and ent is just an odd allomorph used in combination with the definite article.
I mention above that Dravian isn't pro-drop. I'm kind of lying. Pro-drop isn't a single either-or parameter, it's more of a continuum. In the text above, we have a verb flagrantly reposing there without an overt subject: vaiv 'lives'. In common with a number of other Romance languages, Dravian impersonals are expressed as reflexives, so we've got a reflexive DO pronoun in front of it there: san vaiv 'one lives'. In constructions like this, overt subjects do not occur.
Però ògn zurn jèu stentài ent na cetat jó que la fèmna ne pot rèn caminar de noaç san fèr stuprata,
[pɪˈrɔ ˈɔɲ ˈdzurn ˈjɛw stæŋˈtai æŋnǝʃɪˈtat ˈjokɪ lǝˈfɛmnǝ nɪˈpot ˈrɛŋ kǝmiˈnar dɪˈnwaʃ ˈsaŋ ˈfɛr stupˈratǝ]
But every day I work in a city where a woman cannot walk at night without being raped,
Dravian has two auxiliaries that it can form the passive with: jèstro 'to be' and fèr 'to become', which comes from the Latin verb fīō. Passives formed with jèstro are straightforward: the same construction is found in all the other Romance languages. These indicate a state, a result, and in Dravian such passives are inherently perfective in meaning. Passives formed with fèr, however, indicate an incipient or ongoing state: the distinction here is not dissimilar to English's passives with be and those formed with get: 'I am paid' vs. 'I get paid'. A similar distinction is made in Italian with passives in essere vs. those with venire, but the only other Romance varieties to use a cognate of fèr in this way are some Padanian varieties.
na cetat jó que lei zòvnei rodaglei rauva del pan per sfamar soje sòre.
[nǝʃɪˈtat ˈjokɪ liˈdzɔvni ruˈdaʎʎi ˈrauvǝ dɪɫˈpaŋ pɪr sfǝˈmar ˈsɔje ˈsɔre.]
a city where youths from the country steal bread to feed their sisters.
As above, we've got a clause introduced by jó que 'where'. Interrogatives in Dravian cannot be used as subordinators on their own, rather they need to be accompanied by the relativiser que.
Personally, I think 'youths from the country' is just a better translation than 'young peasants'. The Dravian rodagl 'peasant' doesn't have the same negative connotations as the English word, it simply means 'worker from the countryside'.
Jèu ne sai rèn si daiva creizro le mai òglei, u el Partait.
[ˈjɛw nɪˈsai ˈrɛŋ siˈdaivǝ ˈkrizru lɪmǝˈjɔʎʎi uɫpǝrˈtait]
I don't know whether to believe my eyes or the Party."
Like in Italian, Catalan and Padanian varieties, the possessive determiners are accompanied by an article. In Italian, only nouns referring to family members don't take articulated possessives, but in Dravian the category of such nouns is slightly wider: any personal relationship (so mèi veçàn 'my neighbour', in contrast to Italian il mio vicino), and nouns preceded by a preposition (de maja vaita 'of my life' vs It. della mia vita).
Note that daiva 'must' is in the subjunctive mood. Unlike in, say, French or Italian, all indirect questions (of which this is a species) are to be found in the subjunctive.
— Que coite-tu revera, camerat, qu'o jèu ne sai rèn com jè defail d'entelairo çò qu'è adver e çò que n'è rèn?
[kɪ ˈkɔitɪtu rɪˈverǝ, kǝmɪˈrat, kuˈjɛw nɪˈsai ˈrɛŋ ˈkom ˈkɛ dɪdɪˈfaiɫ dæŋtɪˈlairu ˈʃɔ ˈkɛ ǝdˈver ɪ ˈʃɔ kɪˈnɛ ˈrɛŋ]
Code: Select all
que coit -e =tu revera camerat que=o jèu ne sai rèn com jè de
INT think-2SG=2SG truly comrade REL=VOC 1SG NEG know.1SG how be.3SG of
defail de=entelai -ro çò que=jè adver e çò que ne =jè rèn
difficult of=understand-INF DEM REL=be.3SG true and DEM REL NEG=be.3SG NEGThe passage opens with a polar question. Dravian has several strategies available for forming these; the Commissar picks probably the most common method used in colloquial speech. In slightly more formal Dravian, a polar question like this would involve simple inversion of subject and verb: toi coite 'you think' becomes coite-tu (observe that orthotonic and clitic pronouns have rather distinct allomorphs). However, spoken Dravian has an aversion to finite verbs in utterance-initial position (with the exception of a small class of verbs involving change of state), so a semantically empty que (identical to the normal complementiser) fills the slot instead.
What's that o before the pronoun jèu 'I'? Well, stressed and unstressed pronouns in Dravian are essentially just positional variants of each other. Dravian isn't pro-drop per se, and one can't just replace an unstressed pronoun with a stressed one for extra illocutionary force. Unlike in, say, French, stressed pronouns don't function as disjunctive pronouns. So, to add emphasis to a pronoun, one places the unstressed particle o (from Latin hŏc, as it happens) in front of the stressed variant. Really, a better translation of this phrase would be "...that I, of all people, don't know how...". This particle isn't limited to use in front of subject pronouns. It can be used before direct and indirect object pronouns as well (unusually for a Romance language, Dravian rigorously distinguishes between the two.) Observe:
O toi me fotisti.
It's you that fucked me over.
O man fotisti-tu.
It's me that you fucked over.
Going by the above sentences, you might think that pronouns with o always migrate to the beginning of the clause. You're wrong. In fact:
Jèu me calèsc d'o tai.
It's you that I worry about.
(Note the IO pronoun used after a preposition there. The tonic DO pronoun is tan.)
So, it's some kind of V2 shit going on there? Wrong again. So why not either *Toi o man fotisti or *Toi fotisti o man? Because of another couple of constraints on Dravian constituent order. First, Dravian doesn't allow two adjacent tonic pronouns, which rules out the first option. Second, proniminal objects must precede the verb, regardless of whether they are clitics or fully stressed. So, why not replace stressed toi with unstressed tu? A sentence like *Tu o man fotisti is equally ungrammatical, because atonic pronouns cannot occur utterance-initially. So our only solution left is to express the subject with an atonic subject enclitic -tu. Simple.
Jèu craid gauzènd que san vaiv ent na societat san nè'l crèmn nè l'envaja, perqué quèl jè çò que'l Partait no daiç.
[ˈjɛw ˈkraid gǝuˈdzɛŋ kɪˈsaŋ ˈvaiv æŋnǝsuʃjɪˈtat ˈsaŋ ˈnɛɫ ˈkrɛm ˈnɛ læŋˈvajǝ, pɪrˈke ˈkɛɫ ˈjɛ ˈʃɔ kɪɫpǝrˈtait nuˈdaiʃ.]
Code: Select all
jèu craid -Ø gauzènd que san vaiv-Ø ent na societat san
1SG believe-1SG willingly REL REF.ACC live-3 in a.F society without
nè =el crèmn nè la =envaja perqué quèl jè çò que=el
nor=the crime nor the.F=need because that be.3SG DEM REL=the
partait no daiç
party 1PL say.3SGA lot of this is pretty unexceptional for a Romance language. You've got the negative conjunctions nè ... nè ... expressing a concept like English's 'neither ... nor ...', and a "neuter" pronoun çò with a complementiser expressing 'that which', like French ce que or Spanish lo que. A couple of things that are of interest, though:
The preposition en 'in' has the form ent before a determiner, which is particularly evident in contractions with the definite article: en + la (feminine singular) becomes entela, and en + lei (masculine plural) becomes entegl. Before other determiners, however, this is mainly just an orthographic convention as before a consonant both en and ent are both pronounced [æŋ]. Before a vowel, the two are distinct: ent o contat 'in a county' is [æŋt u kuŋˈtat], while en autobus 'by bus' is [ɪn ǝutuˈbus]. The distinction, however, is so marginal that in most colloquial speech en is preferred almost everywhere and ent is just an odd allomorph used in combination with the definite article.
I mention above that Dravian isn't pro-drop. I'm kind of lying. Pro-drop isn't a single either-or parameter, it's more of a continuum. In the text above, we have a verb flagrantly reposing there without an overt subject: vaiv 'lives'. In common with a number of other Romance languages, Dravian impersonals are expressed as reflexives, so we've got a reflexive DO pronoun in front of it there: san vaiv 'one lives'. In constructions like this, overt subjects do not occur.
Però ògn zurn jèu stentài ent na cetat jó que la fèmna ne pot rèn caminar de noaç san fèr stuprata,
[pɪˈrɔ ˈɔɲ ˈdzurn ˈjɛw stæŋˈtai æŋnǝʃɪˈtat ˈjokɪ lǝˈfɛmnǝ nɪˈpot ˈrɛŋ kǝmiˈnar dɪˈnwaʃ ˈsaŋ ˈfɛr stupˈratǝ]
Code: Select all
però ògn zurn jèu stent-ài ent na cetat jó que la fèmna ne
but every day 1SG work -1SG in a.F city where REL the.F woman NEG
pot rèn camin-ar de noaç san fèr stupr-at -a
be_able.3 NEG walk -INF of night without become.INF rape -PPT-FDravian has two auxiliaries that it can form the passive with: jèstro 'to be' and fèr 'to become', which comes from the Latin verb fīō. Passives formed with jèstro are straightforward: the same construction is found in all the other Romance languages. These indicate a state, a result, and in Dravian such passives are inherently perfective in meaning. Passives formed with fèr, however, indicate an incipient or ongoing state: the distinction here is not dissimilar to English's passives with be and those formed with get: 'I am paid' vs. 'I get paid'. A similar distinction is made in Italian with passives in essere vs. those with venire, but the only other Romance varieties to use a cognate of fèr in this way are some Padanian varieties.
na cetat jó que lei zòvnei rodaglei rauva del pan per sfamar soje sòre.
[nǝʃɪˈtat ˈjokɪ liˈdzɔvni ruˈdaʎʎi ˈrauvǝ dɪɫˈpaŋ pɪr sfǝˈmar ˈsɔje ˈsɔre.]
Code: Select all
na cetat jó que lei zòvn -ei rodagl -ei rauv -a del pan per
a.F city where REL the.PL young-PL peasant-PL steal-3 of.the bread for
sfam-ar soj -e sòr -e
feed-INF 3.POSS-FPL sister-PLAs above, we've got a clause introduced by jó que 'where'. Interrogatives in Dravian cannot be used as subordinators on their own, rather they need to be accompanied by the relativiser que.
Personally, I think 'youths from the country' is just a better translation than 'young peasants'. The Dravian rodagl 'peasant' doesn't have the same negative connotations as the English word, it simply means 'worker from the countryside'.
Jèu ne sai rèn si daiva creizro le mai òglei, u el Partait.
[ˈjɛw nɪˈsai ˈrɛŋ siˈdaivǝ ˈkrizru lɪmǝˈjɔʎʎi uɫpǝrˈtait]
Code: Select all
jèu ne sai rèn si daiv-a creid -ro le mai -Ø
1SG NEG know.1SG NEG if must-SUBJ.1SG believe-INF the.FPL 1SG.POSS-PL
ògl-ei u el partait
eye-PL or the partyLike in Italian, Catalan and Padanian varieties, the possessive determiners are accompanied by an article. In Italian, only nouns referring to family members don't take articulated possessives, but in Dravian the category of such nouns is slightly wider: any personal relationship (so mèi veçàn 'my neighbour', in contrast to Italian il mio vicino), and nouns preceded by a preposition (de maja vaita 'of my life' vs It. della mia vita).
Note that daiva 'must' is in the subjunctive mood. Unlike in, say, French or Italian, all indirect questions (of which this is a species) are to be found in the subjunctive.
Salmoneus wrote:(NB Dewrad is behaving like an adult - a petty, sarcastic and uncharitable adult, admittedly, but none the less note the infinitely higher quality of flame)