The Bearlandic Language

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

Phonology
Consonants

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m  n     ŋ
p  t     k  kʷ
b  d
f  s     x~ɣ     h
v  z
ʋ     j
   r
   l

/kʷ ʋ x~ɣ/ are romanised <q w g>, all other consonants are romanised as in IPA.

The velar fricative is voiced in onsets and voiceless in codas.

Vowels

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a  e  i  o  y  u  œ
ɑ  ɛ  ɪ  ɔ  ʏ
   ə

The vowels in the first row are romanised as <a e i o u ú ʉ>. Those in the second row are indicated by doubling the following consonant (/u/ and /œ/ don't change their qualities before doubled consonants). /ə/ is not distinguished from /e/ in the orthography.

[Arzena]

So...any more material in addition to the phoneme inventory?

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

So...any more material in addition to the phoneme inventory?

There is. I had hoped to be able to post some more information yesterday, but unfortunately I had bad internet so I couldn't.

Some things about phonology I had forgotten to include in my previous post
There are two diphthongs, /aʊ̯/ and /ɛɪ̯/, which are written <au y>.

A macron is used to indicate a vowel's "shortness" when there is no consonant to double.

Verbal morphology
Verbs distinguish six different forms, which are listed below together with their affixes.

Present: no affix
Past: suffix -ti
Perfect: circumfix gi-t
Messed-up infinitive: suffix -ē, voicing an eventual preceding fricative
Present participle: suffix -nē
Past participle: circumfix gi-t and suffix -nē

When a verb already ends in -t, the extra t in the past and the perfect forms are left out.

Verbs that end in -Vr in which V is an unstressed vowel drop that vowel in the infinitive-ish form, and the present participle of those verbs ends -renē.

Verbs that begin with an unstressed prefix like bi- don't add gi- in the perfect and the past participle. Separable verbs insert -gi- between the separable particle and the verb root.

These are the full conjugations of the verbs lop "to walk", sgit "to shoot", byterr "to improve", bihúf "to need" and ausdwyn "to leave"

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Present               lop       sgit      byterr       bihúf     dwyn aus or ausdwyn
Past                  lopti     sgiti     byterrti     bihúfti   dwynti aus
Perfect               gilopt    gisgit    gibyterrt    bihúft    ausgidwynt
Messed-up infinitive  lopē      sgitē     bytrē        bihúvē    ausdwynē
Present participle    lopnē     sgitnē    bytrenē      bihúfnē   ausdwynnē
Past participle       giloptnē  gisgitnē  gibyterrtnē  bihúftnē  ausgidwyntnē

I'll explain the exact use of these forms later.

[Herra Ratatoskr]

Ah, so it is Germanic. Name made me think so, but I wasn't sure. Is it a hodge-podge of Germanic features, or a full on diachronic language? If so, what branch does it belong to (it looks West Germanic, as of now)?

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

Ah, so it is Germanic. Name made me think so, but I wasn't sure. Is it a hodge-podge of Germanic features, or a full on diachronic language? If so, what branch does it belong to (it looks West Germanic, as of now)?

It's actually not real Germanic, but simply based heavily on Dutch. That said, I do have diachronics, but from a proto-language I made up afterwards, which is different from Proto-Germanic.

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

Nominal morphology
Nouns can be divided into three classes. The first class contains most nouns and has plurals ending in -s. The second class consists of nouns that already end in -s and has plurals ending in -en. The third class consists of a relatively small group of nouns with plurals ending in -er. Nouns that already end in -er don't change at all and are considered a subset of class three.

Some examples of plural formation:

durr "door" durrs "doors"
haus "house" hausen "houses"
kynt "child" kynter "children"
jaggter "hunter" jaggter "hunters"

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

Adjectival morphology
Comparatives have the ending -err and superlatives end in -iss. These endings become -terr and -tiss respectively when the adjective ends in a vowel.

Some examples:

aut "old" auterr "older" autiss "oldest"
bly "happy" blyterr "happier" blytiss "happiest"

There are three irregular adjectives:

gut "good" byterr "better" bisst "best"
fill "much, many" mirr "more" filless "most"
ferr "far" ferrtē "further" firrst "furthest"

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

Syntax
The basic word order is SVO.

Dē jaggter zi a konin.
DEF hunter see INDEF rabbit.
The hunter sees a rabbit.

When there is more than one verb in the sentence (i.e. if there is an auxiliary verb), there are two possible constructions: one with SVVO and one with SVOV. Only the latter of these two constructions uses an infinitive.

Ig will kop a bʉk.
1SG want buy INDEF book.
Ig will a bʉk kopē.
1SG want INDEF book buy-MESSED.UP.INF
I want to buy a book.

[Salmoneus]

Congratulations. That's probably the shortest description of syntax that I've seen in a decade...

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

Congratulations. That's probably the shortest description of syntax that I've seen in a decade...

That's a special skill of mine.

Anyway, I'll continue with explaining the syntax.

Subordinate clauses
Subordinate clauses can have both SVO and SOV word order, with an infinitive being used in the latter but the former.

Hi wet dass dē ku sgryf gyn breffer.
3SG.MASC know that DEF cow write no letter-PL
Hi wet dass dē ku gyn breffer sgryvē.
3SG.MASC know that DEF cow no letter-PL write-MESSED.UP.INF
He knows that the cow doesn't write letters.

Noun phrases
The word order in noun phrases is: determiner/possessive pronoun - quantifier - adjective(s) - noun - prepositional phrase/relative clause.

dē klyn blau fiss
DEF smal blue fish
The small blue fish

dē mann wē et a fiss
DEF man who eat a fish
The man who eats a fish

miess to aut klyn rot hausen inn dē tarrp
1SG.POSS two old small red house-PL in DEF village
my two old small red houses in the village

[Salmoneus]

All these 'x or y' can happen - where's the explanation of when x happens and when y happens? In particular WHEN are there two verbs in a sentence? and WHY would they use SVOV rather than SVVO or vice versa?

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

All these 'x or y' can happen - where's the explanation of when x happens and when y happens?

X and Y are more or less interchangeable.

In particular WHEN are there two verbs in a sentence?

When there is an auxiliary verb.

and WHY would they use SVOV rather than SVVO or vice versa?

There are no rules for that. The use of those varies by place, time and person.

[Dewrad]

All these 'x or y' can happen - where's the explanation of when x happens and when y happens?

X and Y are more or less interchangeable.

You'd be surprised how rare this is in natlangs. If there's an option between two forms which seemingly have the "same" meaning, there's almost always some kind of distinction between the two. It could be metalinguistic, or based on register, or have differing shades of emphasis. This is something to think about.

In particular WHEN are there two verbs in a sentence?

When there is an auxiliary verb.

What, precisely, do you mean by auxiliary verbs? Do you mean like modal verbs? Are these the only times that two verbs can occur in a sentence? Do verbs ever occur as the predicate of a lexical verb, for example?

and WHY would they use SVOV rather than SVVO or vice versa?

There are no rules for that. The use of those varies by place, time and person.

You've given the variables right there. How does the use vary under those conditions?

(Overall, as very first efforts at a conlang go, this isn't dreadful. Is it like a private diary-language, out of interest?)

[din]

. Is it like a private diary-language, out of interest?)

If so, he might as well write his entries in Dutch, because I can read it without difficulty ;-)

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

All these 'x or y' can happen - where's the explanation of when x happens and when y happens?

X and Y are more or less interchangeable.

You'd be surprised how rare this is in natlangs. If there's an option between two forms which seemingly have the "same" meaning, there's almost always some kind of distinction between the two. It could be metalinguistic, or based on register, or have differing shades of emphasis. This is something to think about.

I surely will think about that.

In particular WHEN are there two verbs in a sentence?

When there is an auxiliary verb.

What, precisely, do you mean by auxiliary verbs? Do you mean like modal verbs? Are these the only times that two verbs can occur in a sentence? Do verbs ever occur as the predicate of a lexical verb, for example?

Yes, I mean modal verbs, and also the auxiliary verbs used to form some of the tenses and the passive voice.

and WHY would they use SVOV rather than SVVO or vice versa?

There are no rules for that. The use of those varies by place, time and person.

You've given the variables right there. How does the use vary under those conditions?

I am not sure whether I understand your question.

Is it like a private diary-language, out of interest?

No, it's spoken on a conworld.

[Dewrad]

In particular WHEN are there two verbs in a sentence?

When there is an auxiliary verb.

What, precisely, do you mean by auxiliary verbs? Do you mean like modal verbs? Are these the only times that two verbs can occur in a sentence? Do verbs ever occur as the predicate of a lexical verb, for example?

Yes, I mean modal verbs, and also the auxiliary verbs used to form some of the tenses and the passive voice.

So, what about senteces like "Marcus stopped shouting at the slave"? Does your language not have two verbs in a sentence there? "To stop" is not a modal nor an auxiliary.

and WHY would they use SVOV rather than SVVO or vice versa?

There are no rules for that. The use of those varies by place, time and person.

You've given the variables right there. How does the use vary under those conditions?

I am not sure whether I understand your question.

I'm not sure how to phrase it in a clearer manner. You have said that rules for when to use SVOV rather than SVVO order varies by place, time and person. How? For example, is SVOV used in dialect A, but SVVO used in dialect B? Or are they in the completely implausible situation of being in completely free variation for everyone?

Something to think about: if you're going to shamelessly rip off a language for your conlang (to the degree of essentially calquing it), it might be an rather good idea to have an in-depth grammatical knowledge of said language. Note: this is not the same as simply being able to speak it.

[Herra Ratatoskr]

I think what Dewrad is getting at is that, almost universally, different word orders will have different meanings, even if it's just to sound a bit different. There should be a typical "unmarked" order though. Generally, this rearrangement is for emphasis or for grammatical purposes, but not always. Let me give you an example from my language, West Saxon. It's still in rebuild, so the forms aren't final, but the order is. The default word order is very much like English. To say "The man is eating the fish," you would say "De man is aneting den visc." (I think the word-to-word correspondence should pretty transparent). This, under your terminology, would be SVVO. However, there are several times in which it would look SVOV (other sentences could even have SVOVO, or SVOVOV!). First of all, any pronominal objects (when enclitic) appear between the finite verb and the rest of the verbs. Therefore, if I wanted to replace "visc" with "im" (meaning "it"), the sentence would be "De man is im aneiting" (The man is eating it). Alternatively, if I want to emphasize that man is eating the fish (rather than, say, just looking at it), I would move the lexical verb ("aneting") to the end of the clause, giving "De man is den visc aneting". In relative clauses, the lexical verb must go to the end, so the noun phrase "The man who is eating the fish" would become "De man, de is den visc aneting,". In all of these cases, there is a reason why the word order is the way it is, either rhetorical or grammatical. Hope that helps!


BTW, if you'r curious about what a SVOVOV clause would be in West Saxon, the noun phrase "The man who wants to have given me the fish" would be rendered as "De man, de will me han den visc ijeve,". "me" goes right after the finite verb as an enclitic indirect object, while the lexical verb is moved to the end, past the nominal direct object, as is required in relative clauses.

[din]

Or are they in the completely implausible situation of being in completely free variation for everyone?

I wouldn't call it 'implausible'. Rare, sure. In Dutch subordinate clauses, word order generally changes to SOV(VV...). In the present perfect, normally the auxiliary verb precedes the past participle (ik heb het gedaan - I did it). In a subordinate clause, we can say either 'ik weet niet wat hij gedaan heeft' or 'ik weet niet wat hij heeft gedaan' (I don't know what he did). There is zero difference in meaning. One might be an older form (pp + aux is what German uses), and the other may be a newer innovation (aux + pp is more common in my dialect, but in Flemish dialects it's often the other way around).

These forms coexist quite happily, as far as I'm aware.

As for his conlang, one of the options under discussion is similar to modern Dutch. The other is similar to English. The language could just be in a transitional state, where one form is becoming more popular, and the other one is falling out of use.

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

In particular WHEN are there two verbs in a sentence?

When there is an auxiliary verb.

What, precisely, do you mean by auxiliary verbs? Do you mean like modal verbs? Are these the only times that two verbs can occur in a sentence? Do verbs ever occur as the predicate of a lexical verb, for example?

Yes, I mean modal verbs, and also the auxiliary verbs used to form some of the tenses and the passive voice.

So, what about senteces like "Marcus stopped shouting at the slave"? Does your language not have two verbs in a sentence there? "To stop" is not a modal nor an auxiliary.

That would be "Marcus stoppti oss sgriffē oss dē slaff", so it would have two verbs in a sentence.

and WHY would they use SVOV rather than SVVO or vice versa?

There are no rules for that. The use of those varies by place, time and person.

You've given the variables right there. How does the use vary under those conditions?

I am not sure whether I understand your question.

I'm not sure how to phrase it in a clearer manner. You have said that rules for when to use SVOV rather than SVVO order varies by place, time and person. How? For example, is SVOV used in dialect A, but SVVO used in dialect B? Or are they in the completely implausible situation of being in completely free variation for everyone?

Like you suggested, dialect A would use (almost) exclusively SVOV, dialect B would prefer SVVO, in dialect C they'd both be used, etc. Those two forms coexist quite happily.

[Lyra]

What I don't understand is what is the relationship between these two verbs? Gerunds? participles? Infinitive? Is the second verb part of a subordinate clause?

~Lyra