Pazmat mk.II (NP: Roadmap for future posts)

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Pazmat mk.II (NP: Roadmap for future posts)

Post by Chagen »

Pazmat and Proto-Pasuu

Pazmat is an Eastern Pasuu language, spoken by the Paz people (the name itself means simply "Speech of the Paz") spoken in the country of Pazzel on the contintent of Luqṣil (the name is a Pazmat word meaning "Massive Desert"), an arid desert roughly equivalent to Saudi Arabia on Earth. It's closest relatives are Sefir (though Sefir is a Western Pasuu language) and Qulshni. Thanks to the Paz' incredible military expertise, ingenuity, and some luck, Pazmat has become the de facto lingua franca of Thōselqat (another word from the language, meaning "Big Land"), and well over 3 billion of it's 7 billion people speak it in some shape, way, or form--despite only having about 500 million native speakers. Pazmat is the country on T-Selqat--much like the US on Earth, Pazzel pop culture spreads all throughout the planet, and much of the entertainment in the entire planet comes from there...and much like the US, it is also looked at with a mix of fear, envy, distrust, and suspicion from its worldwide neighbors.

Pazmat itself is a language half-fusional and half-agglutinative tendencies that marks verbs and nouns for a large variety of things. As thus it is best compared with old Indo-European languages such as Latin, Sanskrit, or Ancient Greek. However there are many differences--for one, Pazmat has an extensive system of morphological ablaut which is best compared with Proto-Indo-European itself. In nominals the ablaut system has mostly been brushed over (though understanding historical ablaut patterns is the key to understanding why each Pazmat noun takes the various affixes that it does), but in the verbs it is alive and kicking.

To understand Pazmat, however, requires understanding Proto-Pasuu, the language from which it descends.

/////////////

The Phonology of Proto-Pasuu:

Only by knowing what led to Proto-Pasuu can one understand how Pazmat functions. Many of the language's irregularities descend from Proto-Pasuu itself, and the signature ablaut system can be derived from accent shifting in the parent language. Proto-Pasuu had these phonemes:

/p t k q pʰ tʰ kʰ qʰ pʲ tʲ kʲ/
<p t k q ph th kh qh pj tj kj>

/ᵐb ⁿd ⁿg ᵐbʰ ⁿdʰ ⁿgʰ ᵐbʲ ⁿdʲ ⁿgʲ/
<mb nd ŋg mbh ndh ŋgh mbj ndj ŋgj>

/bʰ dʰ gʰ/
<bh dh gh>

/s z/
<s z>

/ɾ ɻ w/
<ɾ r w>

/a e i o u a: e: i: o: u:/
<a e i o u ā ē ī ō ū>

/ṛ ṃ ṇ ṛ: ṃ: ṇ:/
<ṛ ṃ ṇ ṛṛ ṃṃ ṇṇ>

An odd system to say the least. No nasals, yes nasalized stops. No /j/ but two rhotics. Regardless, these "problems" would soon be fixed in Pazmat.

The phonotatics of PP could be rather fearsome, with stop combinations colliding into all sorts of crazy shit like *ⁿdʰᵐbriq- "to bump into" (Modern Pazmat dmriq- "to meet[/i]. Stops had to agree in voicing but by no means had to agree in articulation--*kʲtwaz- "to tremble" (Modern Paz śtwaz-, same meaning but with the added meaning "break down in despair"). Not much allophony existed, but before a voicless consonant the prenasalized stops were often voiceless as well (*sⁿd > *sⁿt).

One important note is that vowel hiatus in both PP and Pazmat are strictly banned. In both languages an epenthetic /j/ was inserted, even before /i/.

One final thing to mention is stress. Proto-Pasuu (from now one the abbreviation "PP" shall be used) had a stress accent system. More will be said about this later, but for now remember that a stressed short vowel will be marked with an acute accent, and that a stressed long by a doubled vowel with an acute accent (thus <a> <á> <áá>). Finally, remember that a stressed short vowel was pronounced long (but still distinguished from normal long vowels that weren't stressed) and that a stressed long vowel was pronounced overlong.

The changes from Proto-Pasuu to Pazmat were not great in number:

First, all the aspirated stops lost their aspiration in various ways. The modal aspirates all lenited:

/ph bh th dh kh gh qh/ -> /f v θ ð x ɤ ɣ/:

*wurpʰar "wandering one" > wurfō "boy"
*bʰṛdʰ- "to put down" > vṛdh "same meaning"

However, the pre-nasalized aspirates did not lenite, and instead become voiced modal stops:

*kʰrít-i-ⁿgʰuqʰ "they are running" > hrautiguḥ
*bʰāⁿgʰ-ér "tablet (lit. "thing for reading")" > vēgū "book"

Finally, homorganic fricative+stop (or sT/zD clusters--as /s z/ were the only fricatives in PP the distinction is moot) clusters resulted in the stop losing aspiration and becoming either a modal stop (the modal aspirates) or a nasal (the pre-nasalized aspirates)--heteroganic clusters did not however:

*zdʰek "three" > zdek "three"
but
*zbʰṛp- "to sit down" > zvṛp- "to sleep (from hyperbole of the original meaning of "to rest [by sitting down]")

(Regardless heteroganic fricative + stop clusters still exist, these are generally considered to be VERY old loanwords that have been fully assimilated. Also /sŋ zŋ/ became /sn zn/)

The two velar fricatives merged into one /x/ while the uvular fricative ended up becoming a trill.

After this, the palatal stops EXCEPT for the labials palatized into fricatives and affricates. Clusters of them usually resulted in the second palatizing but the first becoming a modal stop:

/tj kj ndj ŋgj/ > /ʨ ɕ ʥ ʑ/

*kʲtars- "to dislodge, budge" > śtars- "to move"
*utʲ- "to trip over" > uc- "to fall"
*ⁿdʲuq-ar-o "the burn" > juqarā

Afterwards, if these new palatals happened to rest in front of the retroflex trill /ɻ/, they became retroflex, birthing a retroflex-affricate distinction. However, palatal + /ɻ/ clusters still exist, because before the rhotic tap, the palatals remained the same but the tap merged with the retroflex (it normally became /l/). Thus:

*ɾuq-kʲril "AUG-sand" > Luqṣil "Luqṣil"
*ⁿdʲreq- "to wonder about" > jheq- "to dream"
But:
*ⁿdʲɾeq- "to mix together" > jreq- "to combine"

Note that the combination k/g + [affricate] became k/g + [fricative]:

*ktʲris- "to lie down" > *kchis > kṣis- "to have sex"
*ⁿgʰⁿdʲaq-ar-o "the sand dune" > gjaqarō > gźaqarā

(This results in a few nouns being irregular; more on those later)

As for the labial nasals, /ᵐbʲ/ simply merged with /b/, but /pʲ/ had a much rockier path--after leniting to a bilabial fricative, still palatized, it lenited again into /j/. However, the new /j/, at the end of a word/syllable, hardended into /ş/. This can be seen in the plural of -ar stem nouns--combare the definite dative plural and definite locative plural of dumō "fire" and of bādhō "war":

*ⁿdʰuᵐb-ar-eppʲ-ēm > dumrīyyīm "to the fires"
*ⁿdʰuᵐb-ar-eppʲ-bʰa > dumrīṣṣva "in the fires"

*ᵐbʰódʰ-ar-eppʲ-ēm > bādhrīyyīm "to the wars"
*ᵐbʰódʰ-ar-eppʲ-bʰa > bādhrīṣṣva "in the wars/during the wars"

This also resulted in roots ending in -ṣ exhibiting irregularities. For instance the root guṣ- "to nourish" forms the imperfect goyuna, and the derived word guyyō "breast" in the plural has the stem guṣr-.

Next the remaining pre-nasalized stops became nasals:

*quⁿd- "to dangle" > qun- "to hang from (intras.)"
*ⁿdṛt-ṛᵐb "one who plays" > nartṛm "child"

And the rhotic tap became /l/ in all situations except after palatals, where it become /ɻ/ as said before.

*ⁿgʰɾoⁿgʲ- "to run away" > gloj "to escape"
*skɾerⁿdʲ-ēqʰ "study-ADJ" > sklerjīḥ "studious"

As for the vocal system, Pazmat perfectly preserved the short vowel sounds of PP. However, the long, and allophonic overlong vowels, were another story:

Long-vowel chain shift:

ā > ay > ē

ā(l,r) > au > ō

ē > ey > ī

ē(l,r) > eu > ū

ō > oy > ā

ṛ: > a/i/ur > a/i/ur

ṃ:> a/i/um > a/i/um

ṇ: >a/i/un > a/i/un
////

High-long lowering and vowel diphthongization:

ī > ē > au

ū > ō > oy

Overlong-vowel breaking (this comes after the previous changes, filling in the previous diphthongs):

áá > ay > ey

áá(l,r) > au >

éé > ēy > ay

éé(l, r) > ēu > eu

íí > iw > ū

úú > uy > uy

óó > oy > oy

OLong.S > LR > LR

The syllabic are a little tricky. Their long and overlong variants are <aC, āC>, except after palatals where they are <iC, īC> and retroflexes and labials, where they are <uC, ūC>:

tṛs-: tarsṛna "I pluck"
cṛs-: cirsṛna "I help" (cf. cṛsū "girl")
chṛs-: chursṛna: "I spoil, make unclean"
vṛdh-: vurdhṛna "I place down, I display"


With all of this done, Pazmat ended up with a phonology of:

/m n ŋ/
<m n ng>

/p b t d k g q/
<p b t d k g q>

/f v θ ð s z ɕ ʑ ʂ ʐ x~h ʁ/
<f v th dh s z ś ź ṣ ż x ḥ>

/tɕ dʑ tʂ dʐ/
<c j ch jh>

/ɻ l w j/
<r l w y>

/a e i o u a: e: i: o: u: ṛ ṃ ṇ/
<a e i o u ā ē ī ō ū ṛ ṃ ṇ>

/aj ey oy uy aw ew/
<ay ey oy uy aw ew>

Not much allophony exists like before. /t d/ are retroflex before and after a retroflex fricative and vowel hiatus is always broken up by /j/. Dipthongs in front of their final consonant element break down into vowel + geminate; that is, oy + ya creates <oyya> /oj:a/ while au + wa creates <awwa> /aw:a/. /ji j:i/ are often pronounced as palatal fricatives with slightly less friction than normal.

These changes resulted in a huge amount of alterations to the grammar of Pazmat (read: turned it into a gigantic clusterfuck). The agglutinative noun system, with merely two declensions, collapsed into a fusional one (though still with heavy agglutinative tendencies, some classes remaining almost completle agglutinative) with more than 6 declensions. The verbal system, based on a simple system of stress placement, gained ablaut as a marker of different verbal categories; witness:

*qʰrít-i-ⁿda: I am running/I run
*qí-qʰrit-ē: I habitually run
*qʰríít-uᵐbbʰ-ē: I enter a state of running

The root vowel remains /i/, nice and simple. Pazmat, on the other hand:


hrautina
qauhritī (now often with the meaning "I can run")
hrūtubbī (now usually meaning "I begin to run")

(Similar changes happened in the other Pasuu languages; Pazmat is an Eastern Pasuu language and possibly the most exemplary of the ablaut system, though Qulshni is close behind. In the west however, the system was either abandoned or simply didn't surface--Sefir being the most exemplary of this type, having gotten rid of the length distinction, crippling the system so badly it was forced to rebuild it from the ground up-- the Sefir cognate of hrūtubbi, xrisomme, for instance, has a future meaning of "I will run")

I'll save the clusterfuck that is the Pazmat verbal system for a later post, but for now I'll go over the basic idea. PP's verbal system is rather odd in that while it has a lot of categories, these categories cannot be "mixed" with each other. A good comparison is PIE--each category is less an inflection, and more a completely separate derivation. Pazmat continues this; for instance, there is a potential...but only in the present, even though two past tenses exist for the indicative, the perfect and pluperfect. Another mood, the desirative, has a present, perfect, AND pluperfect, but still no future. There is no "future suffix" one can add onto the "desirative" suffix to make a future desirative. The only option is to use the verb rayy- "to desire" in the future (indeed it's a defective verb with nothing but an irregular future) with an infinitive:

vagarana "I want to read"
vagaranīna "I wanted to read"
vagavyarayī "I had wanted to read"
But
vēgvūya rayyī "I will want to read" (lit. "I will desire reading")

The potential on the other hand must express a past and future with ko- "to know" (another irregular verb, albeit not defective):

vēvagī "I can read"
vēgvūya kāvyī "I could read" (lit. "I knew reading")
vēgvūya koyyī "I will be able to read" (lit. "I will know reading")

By using these periphrastic methods Pazmat was able to fill in the "gaps" that PP left behind (along with sometimes simply innovating a new tense, but this wasn't as common as simply using periphrasis).

It should also be noted that both Pazmat and PP are Split-ergative languages, though verbs are always Nominative-Accusative. An Ergative-Absolutive system is used in subordinate clauses (though not participial clauses), though due to the vagaries of sound change, the ergative often merges with the nominative in the plural definite. For instance, the future/subjunctive changes meaning depending on what system is used:

wurfarā subiyyutha "The boy will learn" (nom.acc)
wurfrāte subiyyutha "should the boy learn" (erg.absol)

To cap this off I'll provide a sentence in both PP (stress accent not marked) and Pazmat:

*ktazkʰubʰo ⁿdʰuᵐbaropʲa ⁿgʰūpʲbhībʰa bōdʰaro'ēm tʲṛserobʰa mātabʰpʲē
ktēzḥuvo dumrāya goyṣvūva bādhrāyīm cṛsūyova mētavyī
stick.INDEF-INSTR-PL fire-.DEF.ACC.SG feed-INFIN-LOC war-DEF.DAT.SG girl-DEF.LOC.SG talk-PERF-1S

Both translate to "While feeding the fire with sticks I talked about the war with the girl". Note that in Pazmat (though not PP) one could also use a participial phrase:

ktēzḥuvo dumrāya guyīḥ, bādhrāyīm cṛsūyova mētavyī

(Note that I am still working on the nominal and the verbal system--they are mostly finished, but there's still some holes to plug up and I'm working on that, so some of this may not be final. Nearly all of it is however)

In the next post I'll go over first three noun classes--Athematics, -ar stems, and -er stems. I'll also go over the accent in PP as it's the main reason these classes have become distinct in Pazmat.
Wow this post is looooooong
Last edited by Chagen on Tue Oct 18, 2016 9:11 pm, edited 20 times in total.
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

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Re: Pazmat mk.II (Now Playing: Diachronics)

Post by Nortaneous »

Why does palatalization pattern as a phonation type?
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nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
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Re: Pazmat mk.II (Now Playing: Diachronics)

Post by Chagen »

Nortaneous wrote:Why does palatalization pattern as a phonation type?
I'm...not sure what you're talking about.

If you're talking about how palatization and aspiration never co-occur on the same PP phoneme...I didn't think it to be that odd or unusual. Is that unusual?
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Nouns)

Post by Chagen »

Nouns In Proto-Pasuu and Pazmat; Athematics, -ar Stems, -er Stems

Let's move on to nouns. Nouns in PP fit into a "template of sorts". This was ROOT-SUFFIX-DEFINITENESS-CASE-(NUMBER). Originally, all the way to pre-PP, nouns were more analytic, with suffixed definiteness markers and postpositional case particles after the noun. As PP evolved these ended up being fused to the root. In many cases the definiteness marker also encoded number. The indefinite was a zero-morpheme; number was marked with the suffix *-bʰo (originally a collective marker) at the very end.

So, to provide a visual example: the word *ⁿdʲuqarobʰa "on the burn" can be split up like this:

Image
(Totally not inspired by Dewrad's splitup of Wenetic verbs in his Wenetic thread...also looks way worse...)

The root is what contains the basic semantic information. Sometimes it's a verbal root--in this case, *ⁿdʲuq- "to burn".

The suffix is added onto the root to make the word, which contains the meaning. Not every word has a suffix, but many do. For some words, the root's meaning is not transparent--the word can only make sense with the root AND the suffix. In this case, however, the word is a transparent derivation from a verb root, the -ar serving to make a noun "burn" from "to burn".

The definiteness marker marks the word as definite--"the burn", not "a burn". For nearly all words, the indefinite was simply a zero morpheme: "on a burn" was *ⁿdʲuqarbʰa. The definite marker also marks that the word is singular (the plural would be *ⁿdʲuqareppʲbʰa). The singular indefinite and definite are pretty easy to grasp--the plural indefinite often should be translated "some X'es" or simple "X'es". However, sometimes the plural definite is used if an completely general reference is preferred:

Pezōyeṣṣ meytāḥu mētayudh
human-DEF.PL.NOM language.DEF.PL-INSTR speak-IMPERF-3P
Humans speak with languages. (lit. "The humans speak with the languages")

The indefinite plural cannot be used here because it's implicitly assumed that ALL human speak with ALL languages. The indefinite plural usually specifies some out a whole.

The case suffix of course indicated the case of the noun--in this case, locative. With the definite marker, they form the ending, which indicates the function of the noun.

Pazmat and PP nouns are/were marked for 8 cases. There were two declensions in PP--which one a noun used depended on what suffix it was using.

Nominative: In main clauses, marks the subject of an action. It uses a zero-marker.

Accusative: Marks the object of a sentence in a main clause. Marked with *-pʲa (Pazmat -ya) or *-es (-es)

Dative: Marks the indirect object of an action. It also can be used to show interest in an action ("It looks nice to me"). It is also used to show movement INTO a thing (cf. English's usage of "to" as a dative marker and a lative preposition), thus it could also be called the Dative-Lative case. Marked with *-ēᵐb (-īm) in both declensions, but with definite nouns the marker was *-ēᵐba (this is the only case to do this). Due to syncope however the -a almost never survived into Pazmat except in one situation.

Locative: Marks a location. The meaning is pretty broad so it can be used for "inside, on top of, at" etc. It can also have a comitative function and with infinitives and participles it means "while X'ing". With events (such as wars, receptions, classes, etc.) this can mean "during". Finally, this is used with certain verbs indicating feelings or emotions, where the feeling or emotion is put with the locative. Marked with *-bʰa (-va) or *-ita (-ita)

Genitive: Marks a possessor. Possessors are placed before possessions. Not much else besides that. Marked with *-tṛ (-tṛ) or *-aⁿda (-ana).

Instrumental: Marks the means by which an action is done, and the displaced agent of a passive sentence. Also used to form the Instrumental Absolute, analogous to the Classical IE absolutes (Sanskrit's Locative Absolute, Latin's Ablative Absolute....). Marked with *-qʰu (-ḥu) or *-ṛqi (-ṛqi).

Ergative: The second-to-last case. This is used for the Pazmat's Split-ergativity--in subordinate clauses the subject and object according to an erg-absol system. Marked with *-s (-s) or *-is (-is).

Absolutive: It's...an absolutive. Not much else. Marked with *-te (-te) or *-e (-e, but due to stress marking it always shows up as -ī).


PP possessed a system of stress which was applied to a syllable. In almost all cases each word had exactly one syllable where it was stressed. Where the stress occurred, however, depended on the word. In some words, the stress was fixed in all variants of it; for instance, the -er stem class of nouns suffix -er to the root, which is then stressed. However, in others, the stress was mobile, and could move around depending on the word. In almost all cases, a regular system was evident, where the stress of mobile words would occur on the second-to-last syllable. Sometimes words evinced both--the -ar stem class, for instance, was normally mobile but was fixed in the definite singular nominative -ar-ó (normally we would expect -ár-o).

When Pazmat underwent a vowel shift, the result was a full-blown ablaut system. Shifting stress due to different affixes and the like being added resulted in the collapse of the agglutinative system in a more fusional system (though one nowhere near as fusional as, say, old European languages like Latin or Sanskrit). This process was sped up by unstressed word-final vowels following stressed syllables in words of more than three syllables being deleted. Finally, analogy helped to regularize some of the damage.

Because of this shifting accent, one can talk about Pazmat suffixes as having weak and strong forms, where the weak form is the "normal" form and the strong "bumps" the length up one. Thus, for instance, the accusative suffix -ya has the strong form -yē. For learners and speakers of the language, they simply must learn in which instances the suffix is weak or strong, but the reality is simple: the suffix is strong when it was stressed in PP, and weak when it was not.

This shifting of stress accents can most easily be seen in the athematic class. This class consists of nouns which are formed from case and definite suffixes being directly added to a stem (almost always verbal, but there are exceptions such as yed "sword"). Their stress is always mobile and falls on the second to last syllable. To demonstrate, let's take the noun zvit "wind", from the verbal root of exact same shape "to blow", and put it in the definite accusative singular:

*zvit-ó-pja > zvitāya "the wind (acc.sg)"

This is to be expected--stress falls on the -o- definite suffix, which is pronounced long and become <ā>. The rest of the word is unchanged. However, in the indefinite accusative singular, things are a little different:

*zvít-Ø-pja > zvautya "a wind (acc.sg)"

Stress has fallen on the second-to-last syllable--which happens to be the root, and it ablauts faithfully. Indeed, all athematics follow this rule:

yedāya/yīdya "sword"
hritāya/hrautya "run" (hrit- "to run")
huyāya/hoyya "building" (hu- "to stand")
verqāya/vūqya "student" (verq- "to learn")
wṃkāya/wamkya "cloud" (wṃk "to float")

You'll notice that I didn't use the nominative. That's because due to having no ending, it would give definite zvauto and indefinite zvaut. However, having a long vowel occurs nowhere else in the definite. This was fixed by analogy and the vowel was changed, despite the fact that this isn't the "correct" reflex: zvito.

In the plural indefinite the athematics suffix -vo like all nouns. In the plural definite the root is lengthened--since it's still stressed, the result is an overlong vowel. Due to the stress accent, this would result in a weak root in the indefinite plural, but analogy restored the strong root.


In any case, time for the athematic class. Here is the athematic word hrit "run" fully declined, with both the PP forms and the and Pazmat reflexes:

Image

It should be noticed that the athematics are very unusual in that the root itself ablauts. Most of the noun classes have specific ways to prevent this (Cf. PIE and how all of its daughters got rid of the ablauting athematics).


-ar stems: This is the first really major class. They are formed with *-ar on the root. The definite marker is *-o- (frequently showing up as -ā- in Pazmat in the singular and *-eppʲ (showing up as either -eṣṣ-, -eyy-, -īṣṣ-, or -īyy-) in the plural. One notable feature is that although they feature moveable stress, it CANNOT move up to the root. When calculating where the stress should fall, -ar stems words never put stress past the -ar suffix. This means no wacky ablauting nonsense like in the athematics. Of note is that in the nominative definite singular the stress is on the definite suffix *-o, and in the definite in general, the historical -ar contracts to merely -r. The ergative also has anamolous forms as its small size results in stress being thrown around awkwardly--analogy fixed the damage later. -ar stems are frequently found derived from verbal roots; if the suffix had any special meaning beyond "makes a noun", that's long been lost.

Now, let's conjugate the word wurfō "boy", once again with the PP forms and the Pazmat reflexes.

Image

Not too complicated.

-er stems: The final class I'll go over in this post, these are also found commonly formed from verbal roots. It shares definiteness markers with the -ar stems, and is formed by suffixing -er to the root. However, stress is ALWAYS fixed on the suffix, resulting in many of the reflexes coming out differently. This fixed stress results in it being one of the most regular classes.

Here's the -er stem cṛsū "girl" for your pleasure.

Image

As you can see, unlike the -ar stems, whose movable stress caused things to get all wacky, the -er stems have managed to remain mostly sane and indeed almost 100% agglutinative.


A final note, about adjectives; much like old IE languages, adjectives in PP and Pazmat agreed with the noun they were modifying. In Pazmat, there are two kinds of adjectives--the first is all I'll concern myself with here. In this class, the adjective agrees in class with the athematics, -ar stems, -er stems, -C stems, and -ēqh stems (I have not gone over those last two yet). The same endings are used as the nouns in question; note that adjectives do not ablaut like athematics even when agreeing with them.

Thus, from sens- "happy", we get:

sensrīyyīm wurfrīyyīm
"to the happy boys"

sensūyeyyīm cṛsūyeyyīm
"to the happy girls"

And, jumping a little ahead of ourselves here:

sensūstīm qrulūstīm
"to the happy dogs"

sensūḥīm mēcūḥīm
"to the happy lovers"

////////////

Next I will go over verb basics; how to form the present imperfect, the perfect, and future. Then we can make simple sentences!
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

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Re: Pazmat mk.II (Now Playing: Diachronics)

Post by Nortaneous »

Chagen wrote:If you're talking about how palatization and aspiration never co-occur on the same PP phoneme...I didn't think it to be that odd or unusual. Is that unusual?
yes
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Nouns)

Post by Chagen »

Verbs Basics: Ablaut and The Present Imperfect, Perfect, Perfective, and Future

With nouns, let's add verbs, so we can finally make simple sentences.

The PP and Pazmat verb are a much different beast than the noun. They do not fit into a "template" as easily, and while the shifting stress accent was very important in developing an ablaut system in the daughter, it behaves much more oddly. Stress is almost always fixed through out a conjugation, and indeed, given how it works, it's far more sensible to view the verb and its inflections as completely separate words...

Regardless, the PP and Pazmat verb are built off of a root--comparisons to Sanskrit and PIE are are a good idea here. A verbal root is always a single syllable. It always contains a short vowel. It may have no coda, or no onset, though most have both. To refer to all verbs with a particular root vowel, say [vowel]-root. Thus hrit- "to run" and kṣis- "to have sex" are both i-roots. Some examples:

*bʰaⁿgʰ- "to look at" > vag- "to read"
*ᵐbat- "to talk" > mat- "to speak" (whence "Pazmat")
*atʲr- "to quickly grab" > ach- "to steal"
*tʰi- "to see" > thi- (same meaning)
*ⁿgʰⁿda- "to grieve" > gna- (same meaning)
*ⁿdruqʰ- "to throw" > nruḥ- (same meaning)

Now, the root could take on a formant. This was a suffix appended to it to change the meaning. PP was averse to things like piling up verbs or adding prefixes to change the meaning. Rather it simply suffixed formants. In Pazmat, some formants have remained productive, while others are fossilized. Some verbs are formed with historical formants, with the original verb completely lost. For instance, there is a verb lampras- "to force something through, to awkwardly stumble through a situation", but there is no verb *lam- or *lamp-. In reality this derives from PP *ɾaᵐbpras-, which itself comes from *ɾamᵐb- "to compact together" and the formant *-pras-, which had a sort of lative meaning of "through".

On the other hand, the causative suffix -it is fully productive:

*utʲ- "to trip" > uc- "to fall over"
*utʲ-it- "to make something trip" > ucit- "to drop

*tʲṛs- "to help" > cṛs- "to help"
cirsit- "to employ (make someone help)"

**tʲṛs-it- is not attested anywhere in PP--the word for "to employ" was bʰrāzost- literally "to drag someone along", from bʰraz- "to drag" (whence Pazmat vraz- "to scrape") and the suffering formant *-ost; the Pazmat reflex vrēzost- means "to enslave!")

As you can see with bʰrāzost- and cirsit-, the formant sometimes caused the root itself to lengthen. In verbs with a formant, the root itself is "frozen"--it does not ablaut, but the formant does like it's an actual verb itself:

cirsautina "I employ"
cirsitarina "I want to employ"
cirsūtubbī "I begin to employ"

A few examples of formants--PP had a huge amount of them, well over 30 in some of the more liberal estimates. "-L" means to lengthen the root always; "-L?" means that the root sometimes lengthened, but not always, with little semantic motivation. Note that in the Pazmat reflexes it's common for formants to assimilate with the final consonant of the root if applicable:

*-tras, -L?: Acts like an augment to verbs, intensifying their meaning. Productive in Pazmat: bodh- "to hurt" > bāddhras- "to wound, maim"; mac- "to love" > mactras- "to intensely desire, be infautated with (+LOC)"; The noun būqṣtrasō "explosion", from PP *ᵐbʲērqkʲs-tras-ar from *ᵐbʲerqkʲs "to pop")

*-upʰs: Iterative/Habitual suffix. Not productive in Pazmat, but somewhat common in the inherited lexicon: klagufs- "to roll around" (cf. klēgō "wheel") , xwimufs- "to wave one's arms wildly, wildly shudder"

*-qarp, -L: Acts like a de-causative, used to make reflexive verbs. Not productive in Pazmat; mēcqarpizū "narcissism" (from mac- "to love"), sunnarp- "to prostitute onesself" (cf. sun- "to sell")

But let's move on to actually INFLECTING a verb, shall we?

Inflecting a verb in Pazmat is a relatively straightforward process. One picks the mood, tense, aspect, or combination of which, and alter the verb through ablaut, suffixing, and prefixing to whatever "form" that category takes. Frequently the root vowel must be added back in somewhere; when describing a form, the letters B (for basic or short), L (for long), and O (for overlong) are used--plug the root vowel in at the correct grade in those spots. Take care when it comes to ar-roots and er-roots; remember that they followed a slightly different path in their long variants, becoming -ō/au and -ū/eu, but they act like a-roots and e-roots when adding root vowels.

Then you add the personal inflections. Pazmat and PP have two sets of personal endings--the first is added after forms which are vocalic, and the second for when forms are consonantal. Both sets distinguish two numbers, singular and plural, and three persons, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Note that in the 1st plural there is an exclusive/inclusive distinction. Here they are:

Image

Now for actually conjugating a verb:

We start with the imperfect. This is one of the most basic categories, and usually can be translated as a present progressive "X is Y'ing" or such. It has a fixed present meaning. To form it, use the form L, -B; in other words, lengthen the root and and suffix the short grade vowel, then add the first set of person endings:

Image

Not too complicated.

The next thing to learn is the perfect. All you have to do is put the verb in the L, -Bvy-. The result is a past tense statement "X Y'ed", though depending on the context "X has Y'ed" might also be a good translation. Anyway, here's all the previous verbs used up there in the perfect:

Image

The perfective is a little different--it can never be used if the action has a relevance to the current situation and examines the action as simply one completed action that happened. Indeed it doesn't really have a tense either--it could refer to a constant action which is frequently done ("I work (every day) at the gas station") or one completed action that you just finished, and indeed this "X just Y'ed" or "I just finished X'ing" meaning is one of its most common uses. To form it, keep the root in the basic grade and simple suffix the 2nd set of person endings. All the previous verbs in this form:

Image

Moving on to the final category I shall go over today, we have the future. Well, technically it's a subjunctive. Pazmat just happened to co-opt it for a future meaning (cf. Latin and how 3rd and 4th conjugation verbs use old subjunctive forms for their future). Which meaning is intended depends on what nominal alignment is used--if the alignment is Nom-Acc, then the meaning is a future tense; if Erg-Absol, then the meaning is subjunctive and it doesn't necessarily have a future meaning. Regardless, the future is formed with B, -Lyy-, and remember that in verbs with u-root, oy + yy collapses to oyy-. Also remember that ar-root and er-root verbs put -ē- and -ī- in that L slot, NOT -ō- and -ū-; besides the odd ablaut they undergo in their roots, they still are just odd a-roots and e-roots. Finally, all syllabic-roots put -a[syllabic]- in that slot.

Image

What miracles! We're done with that. Now let's make some simple sentences.

The imperfect is nice to begin with. So, with the i-root kṣis- "to have sex", let's make the perfectly mature and absolutely-not-crude sentence "the boy is fucking the girl" totally not ripping off what Dewrad did in the Wenetic thread here. Besides putting our two nouns in the definite nominative singular and the definite accusative singular, we need to ablaut the root of the verb to the strong -au-, then add -i, and finish it off with the 3S person ending -tha: wurfarā cṛsūyoya kṣausitha.

With that, let's put a sentence in the perfective, and with a non-core case. The sentence "We piss on your ideals!" should suffice. The verb we need is ḥluj- "to urinate". "Ideal" is jhīqō--yes, it's from the verb jheq-. We wont bother with a pronoun because I haven't actually worked on the pronoun system yet since context would make it clear just whose ideals we're pissing on. The noun must be definite because the ideals are a specific set of them--the ones which belong to the the listener. The verb is simply kept in the short grade and the 1st-plural exclusive (since the listener would probably not be pissing on their own ideals) -antu is added: jhīqrīṣṣva ḥlujantu!

Now a perfect sentence, with a locative, AND a dative, plus we'll use a verb with a formant. We'll use the sentence "I bequeathed a sword to the girl in the house". With all the nouns in their cases, we need the verb ātoqs- "to bequeath". We lengthen the -o to -ā, and then suffix -ovy-, then add the 1S ending -ī: huyāva yedya cṛsūyoyīm ātāqsovyī.

And finally a future sentence. With righteous indignation a Paz preacher shall yell "Thou shalt fear righteousness, sinner!" (actually Pazzel's native religion of Qedhan isn't too hot on insufferable preaching but humor me). We need "righteousness", qedhan, which is actually a noun in a class we have not gone over but ignore that. It must be definite. We also need "sinner", which is swot, an athematic (cf. swātō, swātū, swāt, swātīḥ "bad, evil"). Anyway we also need the word for "to fear", which is kthre-. Then we keep that basic, add the lengthened root vowel -ī-, then -yy-, then the 2S ending -ot. Note that we must a lining -y- at the beginning to break up the inevitable hiatus: qedhanitīm kthreyīyyot, swot!

Note that "righteousness" is in the dative as kthre- really means "to direct fear at s.thing".

EDIT: Silly silly me. I added all that and yet didn't provide an example of a verb conjugated into all 4 categories we know thus far. Well I decided to fix that. Here is the verb madh- "to lead" conjugated in all the persons for the 4 categories. The perfect uses a "X has Y'd" translation.

Image

(If you're wondering why every table looks different from the last, I'm still wrapping my head around what you can do in Open Office's databases. Who knew you could just copy and paste a chart into paint, because I sure fucking didn't and wasted so much time printscreening and cropping for all the other charts...)

And...yeah, that's all I got for you now. Next post will probably go over negation and infinitives (as they're needed to do negation). Maybe irregular verbs too as Pazmat's method for negation is a Finnish-esque verb which is irregular.
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Negation and Infinitives)

Post by Chagen »

Negation and an Introduction to Infinitives

Now that we can use some basic verbal conjugation and nominal conjugation, it's best that we know how to negate a verb. However negation requires learning also about infinitives. Infintives in Pazmat are best described as gerunds—they indicate a nominalization of a verbal action. They are called “infinitives” because like the classical Indo-European infintive (seen in such languages as Latin, Ancient Greek, and Classical Sanskrit), it frequently is used in conjunction with other verbs. However, unlike the infinitives of those languages, the Pazmat infinitive is not a frozen verbal noun but a full-fledged one which may be inflected in any of Pazmat's cases.

Note that paragraphs in this color are digressions, usually about Proto-Pasuu and other Pasuu languages. They can be ignored. By the way Dewrad if you're reading this, sorry for ripping off what you did in the Wenetic thread at every conceivable turn. You just had so many cool ideas.

The infinitive is formed with the root lengthened and the suffix -vau (*bʰī). It behaves like an athematic which is inflected only in the singular indefinite. Because of this, the root is actually overlong in the nominative with a weak suffix, while in all the other cases it is long with a strong suffix except for the ergative. Taking the root vust- “to walk (*bʰust-, same meaning), we get:

Image

For now, all we care about is the accusative infinitive. I'll go into more detail about them in a later post.

The infinitive's various cases are used to form subordinate clauses—for instance, the locative infinitive means “While X'ing” – voystvūva koyī “while walking I think” or “When I walk, I think”

There is also a perfect infinitive and a future infinitive—their endings are -Bvyau and -Byyau respectively. The root remains invariably weak but the suffix basic grade vowels now become weak and strong—the nominative and accusative perfect infinitive would be vūstoyvyau and vūstuvyūya. As of now these two have limited use.

The *-bʰī suffix in Proto-Pasuu was actually a simple nominalizer, with Pazmat and other Eastern Pasuu languages innovating a use for it as an infinitive marker. It does not appear in the western Pasuu languages except for a small amount of nouns; their preferred method of an infinitive is usually the -ar suffix mentioned earlier.


Now, moving onto negation:

Meet the verbal root i-. It is used for negation (cf. Finnish and other Uralic languages). It is also irregular, because why not? Anyway, i- has the four categories gone over in the previous post, but they are formed slightly differently:

The imperfect shows up as yi- which takes the first set of endings; this may seem suppletive, but it's actually just consonantalization from *ii- > yi-: yina, yife, yitha, yiqqū, yizzir, yiyudh, yiguḥ

The perfect uses a long root, but only suffixes -vy: auvyī, auvyot, auvyū, auvyaśva, auvyantu, auvyawa, auvyaṣṣi

The imperfective has the stem y- and then second set of endings: yī, yot, yū, yaśva, yantu, yawa, yaṣṣi

The future uses a basic root and suffixes -yy: iyyī, iyyot...you get the picture.

Derivations are surprisingly common--ūyō “nothing, absence", iyit- “to annihilate, utterly destroy, genocide (“make into nothing”)”, “silence”...

Anyway, to turn a sentence negative, use the negative infinitive with i- in whatever form is needed:

huyāyīm voystuvyī
house-DEF.SG-DAT walk.PERF-1S
I walked to the house

huyāyīm voystvūya auvyī
house-DEF.SG-DAT walk-INFIN-ACC NEG.PERF-1S
I didn't walk to the house

yaydya vṛdharyyaṣṣi
sword.DEF.PL-ACC put.down-FUT-3PL
They will put their swords down

yaydya vardhvūya iyyaṣṣi
sword.DEF.PL-ACC put.down-INFIN-ACC NEG-FUT-3PL
They will not put their swords down

Pretty simple as one can see. Note that i- may serve as a simple negative copula (adjectives are always in the ar-stem form):

gwenūyoyīm sensō izzir
situation-DEF.SG-DAT happy NEG-1PL.EXCL
We are not happy with the current situation

Note that the translations uses "current"--this is because the imperfective was used. If the perfective were used (gwenūyoyīm sensō yantu) the translation is more "We are not happy with this situation (and we probably wont ever be)"; it's a pseudo-ser/estar distinction. More on that when I actually move to the copula

And that's that. Next I will go over the copula (the first suppletive verb in the language), a few more verbal forms, such as the desiderative.
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Negation and Infinitives)

Post by Chagen »

The Pluperfect , Desiderative, Potential, Stative-Inchohative, and Deontic

Get read for a blast of more verbal forms. This is gonna be a long haul.

Plurperfect: A counterpart to the perfect, and another past tense-aspect, this is used as one would expect—like a perfect, but before another action in the past. However, because the perfect often functions as a simple past tense (“I walked” instead of “I have walked”), the pluperfect sometimes just functions as a normal perfect. Which meaning is intended is often elucidated by the tense of the other verb in the sentence.

Regardless, the Pluperfect has an easy formation: B, -iru:

Image


Some examples:

zṛto sṛjirutha ufi gupkānovyī
baby.SG-DEF-NOM cry-PLUPERF-3S before calm.down-PERF-1S
The baby had been crying before I calmed it down

qūḥ asibjōva warvva acraya luḥḥuṣrāya upprasiruguḥ
men.DEF.PL-NOM hundred-INDEF-LOC year.INDEF-LOC-SG DEM-DEF.ACC.SG palace-DEF.ACC.SG build-PLUPER-3PL
The men have been building this palace for one hundred years


Desiderative: The first of Pazmat's many moods. It is of note that the mood and aspect systems of Pazmat, as mentioned before, are completely separate. Each form should be viewed as a completely separate derivation from the root, with very few exceptions. The desiderative indicates wants, and is lucky, because unlike most of the moods, it has not one, not two, but three different tenses: a present, a perfect, and a plurperfect. However, it has no future, but as mentioned in the first post, the defective verb rayy- “to be going to desire” is used with an infinitive (told you infinitives were important!).

The present is formed with B, -arB-. The perfect is formed with B, -arBnī-. The pluperfect is formed with B, -avyaray-.

These forms represent the old system I had been using before I completely rebuilt the language. The indicative perfect used to be represented with B, L-nī (or something similar, I can't remember). The indicative pluperfect, used what is now used for the perfect, L, Bvy-. This is why the desiderative pluperfect has -vy- like the perfect.

The -nī of the desiderative perfect was a particle *ⁿdē in PP which was added to the end of a sentence to indicate that an action had just been completed. Originally only the present and pluperfect (which could mean both “had wanted”, and “have wanted”) desideratives existed, but soon the particle fused onto the root ahead of the person ending (so PP *ᵐbataraⁿda ⁿdē > Ancient Pazmat *ᵐbataraⁿdaⁿdē > Old Pazmat mataranēna > Modern Pazmat mataranīna “I had wanted to talk”), and the pluperfect was restricted to a true pluperfect.


Here's the conjugations for all three forms and the periphrastic future form (huge chart incoming):

Image

A final note is that when the arguments of a desiderative are marked with the Ergative-Absolutive system, the meaning is “If only...”:

sipōyeṣṣ yujavyarayaṣṣi
warrior-DEF.PL-NOM win-PLUPERF.DESI-3P
The warriors had wanted to win

sipriṣṣte yujavyarayaṣṣi!
warrior-DEF.PL-ABSOL win-PLUPERF.DESI-3P
If only the warriors had won!

mammaudhvūya rayyot
shut.up-INFIN-ACC desire.FUT-2S
You will want to shut up

mammaudhvūte rayyot!
shut.up-INFIN-ABSOL desire.FUT-2S
If only you would shut up!

In Sefir (a western Pasuu Language and the second-largest one behind Pazmat, which is Eastern), the desiderative's cognates are in this optative sense only. In Qulshni (an eastern language, and the third-largest), the reflexes indicates wants like in Pazmat).

Woo!

Potential: This is a little unique of a case, as it has changed in meaning in from PP to Pazmat. The “potential” in Proto-Pasuu was actually a habitual--”I frequently do X”. For Pazmat, this meaning altered through “I frequently do X” > “I know how to do X (because I frequently do it) > “I can do X”. This explains why the Potential has only a present and nothing else (PP had naught but a present habitual)

In Sefir the habitual went through a different path: “I frequently do X” > “I will do X” into a future, whereas in Qulshni the meaning went from “I frequently do X” > “I like to X” Thus the PP habitual *gʰōgʰroⁿdʲē “I frequently mark with oils” gives Pazmat gāxrajī “I can paint”, Sefir gograñe “I will make a note of”, and Qulshni gughruni “I like to write”.

You may have guessed the way to form it, but for good measure the potential is formed by using a basic grade root and then prefixing a reduplicated syllable with a lengthened grade. The prefix is formed from the first consonant ONLY. Note that soon after the Eastern languages split off, they underwent something similar to Grassman's Law in PIE, where reduplicated aspirates deaspirated; compare how in the above aside, Pazmat and Qulshni have <gāx- gugh-> and not <xāx-, ghugh->, but Sefir has <gog-> (Bh > B being feature of Western Pazmat). Of course with the lenition of aspirates later, this means that a large amount of the consonants in Pazmat don't actually reduplicate to themselves. ALSO remember that since only the first consonant is taken, retroflexes redup as palatals. Vowel-initial roots reduplicate their vowel, and simply put an epenthetic <y>. Here's a handy chart:

Image

Oof...see that wacky shit with <b> and with <x>? How they appear to reduplicate to two different consonants? That's due to how they came to be. As said in the first post, /b/ in Pazmat comes from two sources: PP /ᵐbʲ/ and PP /ᵐbʰ/. Roots with /ᵐbʲ/ would reduplicate with that and leave a /b/. But the roots with /ᵐbʰ/ would reduplicate with /ᵐb/, which becomes /m/. As for <x>, that comes from both PP /kʰ/ and /gʰ/.

The result is that Pazmat features pairs of verbs which are the exact same in all forms and conjugations unless you're reduplicating. For instance, the root braq- has the meanings of “to lead” and “to enter”, while the root xuḥ- has the meanings “to let go” and “to rise up. In reality these come from four distinct PP roots: *ᵐbʲraq- “to push ahead”, *ᵐbʰraq- “to enter” and *kʰuqʰ- “to let go”, gʰuqʰ- “to ascend”. Each pair is ambiguous in almost all forms:

*ᵐbʲrāqaⁿda > brēqana “I am leading”
*ᵐbʰrāqaⁿda > brēqana “I am entering”

*kʰūqʰuⁿda > xoyḥuna “I am letting go”
*gʰūqʰuⁿda > xoyḥuna “I am rising up”

*ᵐbʲraqaraⁿda > braqarana “I want to lead”
*ᵐbʰraqaraⁿda > braqarana “I want to enter”

*kʰuqʰaruⁿda > xuḥaruna “I want to let go”
*gʰuqʰaruⁿda > xuḥaruna “I want to rise up”

But in the potential...:

*ᵐbʲāᵐbʲraqē > bēbraqī “I can lead”
*ᵐbāᵐbʰraqē > mēbraqī “I can enter”

kūkʰuqʰē > koyxuḥī “I can let go”
gūgʰuqʰē > goyxuḥī “I can rise up”



That these pairs of roots once began with different consonants is supported by Qulshni. Thus:

*ᵐbʲrāqaⁿda > Qsh. mraqada “I am taking charge”
*ᵐbʰrāqaⁿda > Qsh. braqada “I am starting”

*kʰūqʰuⁿda > Qsh. khuqhuda “I am getting rid of”
*gʰūqʰuⁿda > Qsh. ghuqhuda “I am jumping”


In order to distinguish the pairs, they are written with their reduplicant consonant in parentheses. Thus (b)braq-, (m)braq- and (k)xuḥ-, (g)xuḥ-.

WOO! All that for two phonemes and one inflection. That's done...well, not just yet. Here's the chart of potential inflections like always:

Image

NOW we're done with that.

...Except for the other tense, but that's not very long—as said in the first post of the thread, the potential uses a periphrastic method for the future and past with an infinitive and the irregular verb ko-”to know”. For the perfect, ko-'s perfect form kāvy- is used; the pluperfect uses the form kiru- while the future uses the form koyy-.

Stative: The meaning of the Stative (more correctly the Stative-Inchohative) in PP is elusive. The daughterlangs show that it was possibly used for states, passives, or beginning an action. Regardless, the overall idea appears to be “being in a state resulting from some action”. In Pazmat this meaning shifted to “beginning an action (since being a state resulting from an action by definition implies beginning it).

In Sefir the PP Stative is used as a Passive; in Qulshni it is nonexistent. Thus from PP *ⁿdʲwéépuᵐbbē “I am in a state relating to kicking” we get Pazmat jwaypubbī “I begin to kick” and Sefir ñwaifumma “I am kicked”. The sheer difference in the Pazmat and Sefir reflexes suggest that they might actually be two separate innovations from some PP form than an inherited construction.

The stative is formed with O, -ubb-. Yes, finally we have an overlong vowel. Here's a chart:

Image

Expressing this in the past or future is done with an infinitive and the verb (m)bant-, meaning “to begin”. It's a regular verb (bēntana, bēntavyi-, beyntubbī...).

Deontic: Finally we have reached the last form to be gone over today. In PP the deontic indicated what should be, and this usage remains in Pazmat. However, it is often co-opted for a simple imperative (there was an imperative in PP, but it's form, O, -uᵐbbʲ-, resulted in it merging with the stative, forcing Pazmat to co-opt the deontic for that.

Qulshni retains the old PP imperative; *bʰááⁿgʰuᵐbbʲot “read!” > Qsh. bhaghummu! “educate thyself!”

The deontic is formed with B, -Lm-. Yet more charts; since a first person imperative wouldn't make much sense, I'm going to use the second person here:

Image

/////////

Not going to go over the copula sorry. Also wow this post long as fuck
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Negation and Infinitives)

Post by Chagen »

-ar Stem Nouns, and Ablauting Suffix Nouns

The -ar stem noun class in Pazmat represents one of its most defining features—the gradation of the suffixes which attach to a noun, due to the historical shifting stress accent. Unfortunately, for whatever reason I found myself doing little else with this. Until now, that is.

Well what I did was simple—I have decided to simply extend the -ar stem class to a new class—the Ablauting Suffixes. These comprise not merely -ar stems, but a large amount of nouns formed from suffixes to the root. These suffixes then ablaut their final vowel in accordance with the stress accent seen in Proto-Pasuu. Fortunately, given the high amounts of regularity Pazmat ablaut exhibits, these nouns aren't too unwieldy to work with. For instance, let's look at the old chart for wurfar “boy” I made:

Image

From that one can gleam these patterns:

Indefinite Singular: Strong suffix and weak case marker in all cases except dative where suffix is weak and case is strong.

Indefinite Plural: Strong suffix in Nominative and Ergative; in all other cases, weak suffix and strong case marker.

Definite Singular: Weak suffix and case, strong definitness marker except in Nominative where the definitness marker is strong.

Definite Plural: Weak suffix and case with strong definitness marker except in Nominative and Ergative, which has strong suffix and weak definitness.

So, applying that: we have a verbal root draḥ- “to judge, decide on”, and the suffix L, -an which indicates a thing that embodies the roots semantics. Applied together we get drēḥan “judge”. If we wanted to say “a judge” and “the judge” in the accusative singular, we would get drēḥēnya and drēḥanāya. Note that VC suffixes whose nuclei are /a/ often, like -ar stems, undergo syncope in the definite—thus for drēḥanāya we often find drēḥnāya. This not invariably true however.

The suffixes which make ablauting suffix nouns are a varied lot, though they usually restrict themselves to CVC or VC. They also can contain long vowels, which merely means they are long when weak and overlong when strong.

For the record, here's a chart of various nouns formed from suffixes, in the definite and indefinite (singular only), in order to show off the ablauting suffixes:

Image

This should be relatively easy to grasp. The four suffixes used are:

L, -an: A suffix which is usually used to create a noun embodying the root in question:

draḥ- “to judge” > drēḥan “judge”
rerdh- “to roll” > rūdhan “circle”
nruḥ- “to throw” > nroyḥan “javelin, spear”

-odh: The suffix for the present passive participle:

mac- “to love” > macodh “being loved”

-īx: A suffix that usually indicates a place relating to an action:

uc- “to fall” > ucīx “cliff”
jṛj- “to bind” > jṛjīx “jail”
vraz- “to scrape” > vrazīx “place for soldiers to whet their swords”

L, -ṛm: one of the closet things Pazmat has to an agent suffix (I.e English -er in runner, player, etc.):

nṛt- “to play” > nartṛm “child” (“one who plays”)
grīnqṛm “guardsman” (cf. Qulshni ghridd- “to protect”)

Note that sometimes suffixes can obscure their sources. For instance many suffixes containing an aspirate would force an aspirate in the root to deaspirate; for instance, the word ngaśog “table” looks like a word formed from a root *ngaś- with the suffix -og. However said root does not exist (this didn't stop the Paz from backforming the verb ngaśit- “to place on a table”, though), and the word actually comes from the root gaś- “to hold up”, through:

*ⁿgʰakʲ-oⁿgʰ > ⁿgʰakʲoⁿgʰ > ⁿgakʲoⁿgʰ > ngaśog

/////////

Another short post, funny as I really was glad I had come up with this. I couldn't just leave Pazmat's ablauting suffixes in only the ar-stems, after all.
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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Ablauting Suffixes)

Post by Chagen »

The Numbers 1-10 in Pazmat and Proto-Pasuu

I have a post over PP's phonotactics in the works, but while going out on the 4th of July with my mom I decided to buckle down and work on the number system of PP, which of course transferred to Pazmat. As of now I will go only over the first ten numerals, the only ones I have worked on. This is gonna be a rather short post.

Numbers in PP and Pazmat are adjectives. They behave like athematics, taking the same endings regardless of what noun they agree with. Of note is that, as adjectives, they do not undergo the root ablaut that athematics normally do, and that they are normally declined in the indefinite regardless of what definiteness the noun they agree with is. However, they CAN be declined in the definite, but then they mean "[number] of the [noun]":

woḥ ngaśāg: "one table" (adjective is indefinite like normal)
woḥa ngaśogā: "one of the tables" (adjective is definite)

Another thing to note is that some of these numerals have the PP suffix -*ē, which forms an adjective meaning "like a [noun/verbal action]". Pazmat retains this suffix; compare wurfō "boy" (*wurpʰár) and wurfarī "boyish, puerile" (*wurpʰarē). These are part of a small class of words which directly suffix endings to an unchanging root, meaning they are sort of like athematics without the ablaut. Anyway, moving onto the numerals in PP, one interesting thing that can be noted is that they all are clearly derivations from other words or simple adjectives/nouns used as numerals, unlike, say, the IE languages where they are unanalyzable roots:

1: *woqʰ ("whole, complete")
2: *ᵐbrēpʲ (cf. ᵐbrepʲ- "to split into two"; only retained in Pazmat mrayyīx "cutting board", mrīyṛm "executioner", and mreṣqōpī "self-effacing, humble" (lit. "splitting oneself in two")
3: *zdʰek ("a couple and their child, a one-child family")
4: *bʰatʲ ("square"; cf. bʰātʲit- "put into a box" > Pazmat vēcit- "pack up, get ready", Qulshni bhachit- "get ready")
5: *ⁿdʲⁿdos-ē ("like the hand")
6: *ukʲp-ē ("like the face", since there are two eyes, two ears, a nose, and a mouth: 6 organs)
7: *ⁿgī ("night sky"--a constellation containing 7 stars was very important religiously to the Pasuu)
8: *bʰatʲ-raqʰ (lit. the word for "four" with an augmentive suffix)
9: *zdʰek-raqʰ (lit. the word for "three" with the same augmentive suffix)
10: *kṛkʲ-ē ("like the digits")

These would end up in Pazmat as woḥ mrīṣ zdek vac jnosī uśpī ngau bachaḥ zekkaḥ kṛśī

One of my favorite bits of this is the use of sound change to obscure that "eight" and "nine" are derived from "two" and "three"

For kicks, the numbers in the other three Pasuu languages I've done sound changes for:

Qulshni: wuqh brih dhik bhac ijdose ushpe gi bacraqh kṛshe
Sefir: vaq mrep zdax bat dñase ukfe ŋi batraq zdaxraq kirke
Jawąs: waq brēp zdik bat dusē ukfē jī baṭaq zdikraq cirkē

Subject to change. The basic idea behind each language is there, but I'm still working out all the changes.

////////

That's it. I should be done with the post on phonotactics soon so sit tight...
Last edited by Chagen on Sat Jul 05, 2014 12:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Numerals)

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The Phonotactics of Proto-Pasuu

I'm currently making a post on participles in Pazmat, but while out with my mom today this topic gripped me. It's bugged me that I have not yet made any type of detailed description of phonotactics right now; with some thought on it, I realized that the subject is nowhere near as complicated as I expected for either Proto-Pasuu or Pazmat. So, for now, here is Proto-Pasuu phonotactic structure:

To start, Proto-Pasuu's phonology once more:

/p t k q pʰ tʰ kʰ qʰ pʲ tʲ kʲ/
<p t k q ph th kh qh pj tj kj>

/ᵐb ⁿd ⁿg ᵐbʰ ⁿdʰ ⁿgʰ ᵐbʲ ⁿdʲ ⁿgʲ/
<mb nd ŋg mbh ndh ŋgh mbj ndj ŋgj>

/bʰ dʰ gʰ/
<bh dh gh>

/s z/
<s z>

/ɾ ɻ w/
<ɾ r w>

/a e i o u a: e: i: o: u:/
<a e i o u ā ē ī ō ū>

/ṛ ṃ ṇ ṛ: ṃ: ṇ:/
<ṛ ṃ ṇ ṛṛ ṃṃ ṇṇ>

The vowel system is of little interest to us. Much more important is the consonant system. It is quite bizarre, but also rather regular—the uvulars' paucity of distinctions (no prenasals or palatized variants, nor voiced) can be explained by the difficulty in producing such consonants.

PP's ancestor did have such things as *ⁿq *ⁿqʲ and so on, but these all became velars. This explains the larger-than-usual amount of velars in PP.

Little allophony can be reconstructed for PP. The modal prenasals /ᵐb ⁿd ⁿg/ often were pronounced voiceless /ᵐp ⁿt ⁿk/ in combinations with voiceless consonants. However, one very important thing to mention is that even in the time of PP, these modal prenasalized stops were already pronounced as modal nasals after another consonant. This is supported by reflexes in the daughterlangs—these reflexes universally contain nasals, even when the language, for instance, normally turns the modal prensals into voiced stops. For instance, the PP verbal root *sᵐbekʰ- “to brush” gives Pazmat smex-, Qulshni smikh, Sefir mak. and Jawąs mek. This is despite the fact that one would expect, for those last three, spikh, bak, and bek.

Other clues to this allophony can be seen in the way the modal prenasals act in clusters. As for clusters...

////////

Despite the sometimes fearsome clusters PP exhibits; such as the first post's ⁿdʰᵐbriq- “to bump into”, PP's syllable structure can be rather easily defined. At the absolutely most basic level, PP's syllables are (C)(C)(R)V(R)(C)(C), where C can be any consonant, and R is any resonant—that is /ɾ ɻ w/.

We start with initial clusters. I'll be using mostly verbal roots to demonstrate since they all are one syllable and freely exhibit all the possible combinations. This also means most of my examples will contain a coda, though while describing the onsets I'll restrict myself as much as possible to roots with only C codas. Along with each PP example I'll provide the reflexes in four largest Pasuu languages: Pazmat, Qulshni, Sefir, and Jawąs.

Anyway, CV and RV were obviously possible, and could contain any consonants:

Image

The simplest clusters were CR; any consonant could freely combine with the three resonants available, and the daughterlangs generally preserve these well:

Image

Indeed an R may be freely tacked onto any cluster.

Moving onto actual CC clusters—due to mostly having them, most CC clusters are stop+stop clusters in PP. The only notable fricative ones are sC and zC clusters, which generally aren't of much concern. Stop+stop clusters, however, follow a very strict hierarchy, which changes depending on whether or not the stops are voiceless or voiced.

For voiceless clusters, any two stops may be combined, with the sole restriction that any aspirated stop MUST be the second element. Thus, clusters such as *ktʰr- *kʲp- *tᵐp or *qt- are possible, but ones such as **kʰt- or **tʰp are not by any means. For Pazmat, this means that voiceless fricative+stop clusters like <thp xt ft> are not acceptable and do not occur. PP examples:

Image

Note how the Qulshni and Jawąs reflexes have a nasal for *tᵐpost- when we would normally expect a modal stop.

Note that PP *pʲC clusters became Pazmat ṣC clusters.

Voiced stop clusters follow a much more restricted hierarchy:

Nasal aspirate/Palatalized Nasal > Aspirate > Nasal

All voiced stop+stop clusters in PP had to strictly follow this hierarchy, going down the list (sounds could also cluster with their own kind). Nothing was allowed to break this; thus, clusters like *ⁿgʰdʰ *ⁿgʰⁿdʰr and *ᵐbʰⁿd were possible, but, say, **dʰⁿgʰ wasn't. For Pazmat, this once again meant that fricative+stop clusters like <dhb xg vd> are not acceptable initially (though <bdh dv> are). Also note that for Pazmat, the palatalization of the dental voiced palatals into affricates often created awkward clusters, and they were often turned into fricatives. Pazmat overall is rather conservative for these clusters, many of the other Pasuu languages simplifying them, sometimes greatly (Jawąs, in particular, simply deletes the first stop without changing the second). Some PP examples:

Image


Because of these rules, there are no Pazmat onsets of three consonants that do not contain a resonant as the final consonant.

Final clusters are a little different. In general, if a cluster is possible in the onset, its “reverse” is acceptable in the coda. Thus, for instance, since <*krV> is possible, <*Vrk> is possible. Likewise, since <**ⁿgʰdʰr> is possible, <rdʰⁿgʰ> is possible. Note that <CCʰ> clusters like <ptʰ> are also possible in the coda, but in Pazmat, if said cluster had a velar/uvular continuant as its second component, that was dropped and the first stop lengthened. (cf. PP *kaptʰ- “wail” > Pazmat kapth “bemoan”, but PP *kapkʰ- “crack into pieces (intrans.)” > Pazmat kapp- “shatter”

Finally, it should be noted that in Pazmat, final clusters tend to undergo more assimilation; compare PP *ⁿdʰᵐbriq- “bump into” > Pazmat dmriq- “meet”, but PP *surᵐbⁿdʰ- “rip apart” > Pazmat surnd- “rend, tear apart”, with the expected /m/ assimlating into the stop (nasals are much more prone to this).

A final thing to be mentioned is a sound law I will call “Not-Grassman's Law”, as it behaves similar to that. It only occurs in the Eastern Pasuu languages such as Pazmat and Qulshni. This law states that in a word with two aspirates which are at most a syllable apart, the first will be deaspirated. For both languages, the voiced aspirates simply reflex as voiced stops, while the nasal aspirates and voiceless aspirates undergo whatever changes they normally do.

For instance, the Pazmat word batraḥ- “aim (a missle)” is derived from the root vat- “look torwards”, through this: *bʰat-raqʰ > *bʰatraqʰ > batraqʰ > batraḥ. In Pazmat, this law only applies when something is affixed to a root; this is why Pazmat still has roots like vag- “to read” (if the law applied in all cases, we would expect bag-, from *bʰaⁿgʰ > *baⁿgʰ > *bag), which has the derived noun vangog “paper”, by the way.

In Qulshni, the rule applies at all times; its cognate of vag- is bag- from *bʰaⁿgʰ > *baⁿgʰ > bag.
/////////////

Finally done with that. Not sure on what I'll do next...
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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Phonotactics)

Post by Chagen »

Irregular Verbs in Proto-Pasuu and Pazmat

Like any language there are a few verbs which are irregular in both PP and Pazmat. These form a class simply called “irregulars”; note that they are perfectly “regular” within their class.

One such example of this class is the root ko- “know”. If this were regular we would expect such formations like kāyona kāyovyī koyāyyī, but instead we find kāna kāvyī koyyī. I already went over one irregular, the negative verb i-, but note that i- is exceptionally irregular. Other such examples are:

gna- “grieve”
bu- “be happy”
qi- “stand up”
stro- “grab”
dru- “build, make”
jṛ- “shiver”
śi- “rain”
nga- “(of the sun) shine, be out”
kro- “bleed”
śra- “do”
dho- “rejoice”

And quite a few others. These verbs have resisted being reanalyzed into normal verbs for quite some time, and as you can probably guess, they represent a truly ancient level of PP vocabulary. They also all lack codas. Lacking a coda does not mean a verb is irregular though (cf. the regular verb thi- “see”)

They weren't utterly unchanged however; Pazmat sometimes tacked on a formant to an irregular to make a regular verb, and then discarded the original. For instance, the PP irregular verb kʰlu- “throw away” had the augmentive suffix -raqʰ tacked onto it with zero change in meaning which then led into Pazmat as kluraḥ- “discard, dispose of”, though the original verb still lives on in the two nouns xloyyū “garbage” and kluyog “trash can, waste container”.

These verbs all inflect for the normal categories of the Pazmat verb, but with slightly different methods of formation; the lack of codas gives them many epenthetic <y>'s:

Imperfect: L (gnēna “I grieve)

Perfect: L, -vy- (śauvyī “it rained”)

Perfective: Ø (druyī “I built”)

Future: -yy- (buyyū “she will be happy”)

Pluperfect: -ṣru- (koṣruna “I had known”, from ko-iru-na > koiruna > koyruna > koṣruna)

Desiderative: Imperfect -ra, Perfect -ranī, Pluperfect -vyay (dhorana dhoranīna dhovyayī “I want to rejoice”, “I wanted to rejoice”, “I had wanted to rejoice”)

Potential: Redup in L (kākroyot “you can bleed”)

Stative: O, -ubb- (gneyubbī “I begin to grieve, I break into tears”)

Deontic: -m- (drumot! “build!”)

Deverbal derivations are formed like normal; thus the infintive of kro- is kroyvau krāvūya et cetera et cetera...

Now we move on to the star of the irregular class: the copula. It is ya-, though that stem exists only for the imperfective and deontic. In PP, ya-'s ancestor pʲa- could only be used to say what you currently are at the exact moment. Since the past wasn't the exact moment, there was no way to say “I was”. Of course, this was quickly fixed, by taking the (regular) verb bʰeqʰ- (Pazmat veḥ-) “to lie at” for the perfective, perfect, and pluperfect. But there still was no stative or future, so the (irregular) verb ⁿgʲu- (Pazmat ju-) “to begin” was co-opted for those.

But there still was no desiderative or deverbal formations. Thus the Paz took the (regular) root ᵐbupʲ- (Pazmat muṣ-) “to exist” for those. There still wasn't a potential...and there still isn't. The copula in Pazmat simply lacks one.

But all of this means that the Pazmat copular uses four roots, two of which are regular, the other two irregular. The imperfect is yēna, the perfect, perfective, and pluperfect vīḥevyī veḥī veḥiruna, the future juyyī, the three desideratives muźaruna muźarunīna muźavyarayī, the potential nonexistent, the stative jūyubbī, and the deontic yayēmot!. The infintive is mūṣvau and the participles, though I haven't gone over those in general yet, are muyīḥ muyodh moyyurīḥ moyyurnos muyayyīḥ muyaṣṣnos.

////////

There is another small category of verbs which act oddly in Pazmat. They all end, in their dictionary forms, in -ṣ. These are verbs whose PP ancestors ended with *, such as zraṣ- “to unite”, from PP zrapʲ “to press together”. As the first post states, final *pʲ became either y before a vowel, and ṣ before a consonant and word-finally.

This means that these roots show an alternation in different forms. Since most PP suffixes are vocalic, this means that most of the time these roots actually end in y; conjugating zraṣ-, we get:

Imperfect: zrēyana “I unite”

Perfect: zrēyavyī “I (have) united”

Perfective: zrayī “I united”

Future: zrayēyyī “I will unite”

Pluperfect: zrayiruna “I had united”

Desiderative: zrayarana zrayaranīna zrayavyarayī “I want to unite”, “I wanted to unite”, “I had wanted to unite”

Potential: zēzrayī “I can unite”

Stative: zreyyubbī “I begin to unite, I start uniting”

Deontic: zrayēmot! “Unite!”

Then compare its derverbal formations:

Infintives: zreyṣvau zraṣēvyau zraṣēyyau

Participles: zrayīḥ zrayodh zrēyurīḥ zrēyurnos zrayayyīḥ zrayaṣṣnos

So in nearly every formation but the infinitives, the root ends in <y>. You might ask “why not call it zray- then?”, but it's tradition to have the root appear weak in its dictionary form. zray- may be more correct, but it looks like the overlong form of an e-root *zre-. Thus, the verb is cited as zraṣ-.

More important is what happens in nouns derived from this. For instance, zraṣ can form the nouns zrēyan “friend, comrade (lit. “one united [with])” and zrayō “relative, family member”. These inflect like rather normal ablauting suffix nouns in the indefinite; e.g zrēyēn zrēyēnya zrēyēnva and zrayō zrayōya zrayōva for the indefinite singular in the nominative, accusative, and locative.

However, in the definite, both of the suffixes used for these nouns, -ar and -an, almost always contract to -r- and -n-. Since the historical *pʲ is now next to a consonant, it reflexes as a ṣ in Pazmat, giving for the definite singular nominative, accusative, and locative zrēṣanā zrēṣnāya zrēṣnāva and zraṣarā zraṣrāya zraṣrāva (the ṣ has been generalized to the nominative through analogy, thus why they are not expected *zrēyanā *zrayarā). This is highly important to remember for nouns derived from the irregular verbs mentioned above—since they all end in a vowel, a linking <y> was added even in the proto-language to break hiatus, which then hardened in Pazmat before a consonant. It's also important for adjectives formed with the extremely common suffix -ī(y). Here's a chart listing the paradigms of several words like this:

Image


The last thing to mention is a small amount of -ar stem nouns ending in palatals irregularly change their final consonants to retroflexes in the definite, due to the -r- of the elided suffix; the -r- disappears. One such example is vajō “tree”, with indefinite vajō vajōya vajaraym vajōva etc. and definite vajarā vajhāya vajhāyīm vajhāva etc. This class of nouns, however, is almost moribund; compare the word zurjō “sandstorm” with regular definite zurjarā zurjrāya zurjrāyīm zurjrāva etc.

/////////

Another post done. Once again whatever comes next is whatever I feel like doing.

Also the more I work on this language, the more beautiful it becomes. I think there's not a single part of this language I don't like when it comes to asthetics.
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Phonotactics)

Post by Chagen »

-C stems and -Eqh stems

This is a small post which caps off the nominal classes. These two classes (for now at least) comprise the final two classes of the Pazmat noun, and are special in that they take the second declension endings mentioned much earlier. In addition, knowledge of the -eqh stems is important as 3 of the 6 Pazmat participles are formed from them.

Anyway, moving on:

-C stems: These are a class which directly suffixes second declension endings and its own special articles. They are not very common, indeed being mostly restricted to loanwords which cannot be warped into another class, and a few other nouns such as qrul “dog, guardsman (slang)”. Very few derivations turn a noun into this class. The indefinite uses a zero article and the familiar -vo for the plural. The definite article is -it in the singular and -ūst in the plural. Note that loanwords which end in a vowel will add an -r- (-l- if the last consonant is an /r/ already) before any of the endings (which are all vocalic) --almost zero Pazmat words in this class end in a vowel. In PP the indefinite placed fixed stress on the case marker, while in the definite plural the stress was fixed on the article (which was *-erst, whence the Pazmat reflex -ust). Oddly enough the definite singular in Pazmat has a weak article and case marker, as if there was no stress on any part of the word even though comparative evidence from Sefir shows that the article was stressed as in the plural (compared Sefir qroriṭ “the dog”, where the suffix -it could only come from PP *qruŕ-ít; no stress would result in Sefir *qroret).

Presumably Pazmat went through some analogizing; one idea is that since the -it suffix when stressed would result in the suffix -aut, which resembled the indef.loc.sg suffix -aut too much. -it would then be taken from Sefir in order to not have this problem.

Don't tell anyone but I just pulled that out of my ass, actually kinda works though...

Here are paradigms for the word qrul “dog” in PP and Pazmat. Afterwards is a paradigm of the Azenti loanword grana; literally “teacher”, but in Pazmat it's a slang term meaning “drug dealer” (as drugs from Dorishar were often traditionally consumed in an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the world—thus someone who supplies you them is “teaching” you about the deeper world, even though they're now mostly consumed for recreation these days); as the loanword is less than 100 years old, it has no PP forms to go along with it:

Image

Image

-eqh stems: The final class and one very important, as half of the participles are formed from it as stated above. This class is named because the singular definite marker in PP was *-eqʰ, which reflexes in Pazmat as -īḥ due to stress. This class is actually highly agglutinative; the singular is indicated by -ī, the plural by -u, the indefinite by -qq- and the definite by -ḥ(ḥ). Thus, the markers are:

Indef.SG: -īqq-
Indef.PL: -uqq-
Def.SG: -īḥ(ḥ)-
Def.PL: -uḥ(ḥ)-

(The definite shortens the ending to just one consonant in the nominative)

Nearly every word in this class is or once was a participle, including the nouns. The age of this class is reflected in its irregular inflections—they don't make sense unless the PP stress accent was bizarre and fixed for every inflection, hinting at a pre-PP stage. For an example, take the word mēcīḥ “lover”, obviously a present participle “loving” (whence “one who is loving [s.one else]”). For my example word I will use another once a participle, yēśīḥ “hero”, old-school present participle from yaś- “do heroic things, succeed”:

Image

Diachronically these are a fucking mess. Eh, I like them. Took me forever to get these looking right.

In terms of participles the active participles are all -eqh stems. For instance the verb ot- “to give” forms the participles otīḥ “giving”, otodh “being given”, āturīḥ “having given”, āturnos “having been given”, otayyīḥ “about to give”, and otaṣṣnos “about to be given”; an example:

Wurfrāya otayyīḥḥīs kurẓūte Egitīm jarjṛvyī
boy-DEF.SG.ACC give-PTCPL.FUT.ACT-SG-DEF-ACC poison-INDEF.SG-ABS NAME-DAT bind-PERF-1S
I bound the boy who was about to give poison to Egit

Wurfrāya jarjurīḥḥaut, qrāsrēḥvūva sārjubbū
boy-DEF.SG.ACC bind-PTCPL.PERF.ACT-SG-DEF-LOC plead-INFIN-LOC cry-STAT-3S
(I) having bound that boy up, he began to cry while pleading for his life

You may have noticed that the syllabic root jṛj- above has the long form jarj- and not jirj- like I originally said syllabics beginning with palatals would. I've decided to put it in free variation; the root may have either of jarj- jirj- as the long form depending on the speaker.

////////
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

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Re: Pazmat mk.II (Now Playing: Diachronics)

Post by R.Rusanov »

Nortaneous wrote:
Chagen wrote:If you're talking about how palatization and aspiration never co-occur on the same PP phoneme...I didn't think it to be that odd or unusual. Is that unusual?
yes
Russian has it tho,and this language could too if the clusters come from deleted front and back schwas

ʲa < æː, ɛ̃
a < ɒː
ʲe < i (strong), e
e < borrowings
ʲi < iː
i < yː
ʲo < e (under stress)
o < u (strong), ɒ
ʲu < eu
u < ou, ɔ̃
ʲØ < i (weak)
Slava, čĭstŭ, hrabrostĭ!

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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Phonotactics)

Post by Chagen »

I'll admit that the Proto-Pasuu phonology is incredibly bizarre and probably not naturalistic in places. The main reason for this is to have strikingly different reflexes in the daughterlangs--for instance, those prenasalized stops allow for me to have, say, nasals in Pazmat where voiced stops are in Qulshni.

But Pazmat beat it down into a system which scores 75% on the SAE test (though I'm thinking of redoing that, I messed some questions up).
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Phonotactics)

Post by Chagen »

Adjectives in Pazmat


Adjectives in Pazmat are words which modify nouns to give them descriptions. Simple enough. They decline like nouns, agreeing with them in case, number, and definiteness, many even changing their class to fit. There are also ways to derive adjectives from roots, verbs, and other nouns. This is a short post, meant to go before the one on participles because particples, after all, are adjectives.

Adjectives in Pazmat usually follow the noun they modify, but they can show up before it, usually for emphasis. Adj-Noun is not highly marked but the most neutral method is Noun-Adj. In addition, since they do agree, adjectives can be placed away from the noun they are modifying, sometimes being across the entire sentence, but this is extremely marked and is pretty much restricted to highly complex poetry.

There are two main broad kinds of adjectives. The first are called “athematics”, and they are extremely moribund in Pazmat. These decline like athematic nouns when aggreeing with any kind of word; for instance, the numbers are athematic adjectives. So, to say there is four of various nouns, you use the word vac; wurfrīyyīm vacīm “to the four boys”, cṛsūtṛvo vactarv “of the four girls”, and so. Note that athematic adjectives do not ablaut like athematic nouns, which means that the indefinite singular and definite plural are merged; to show an example with an athematic noun: pīzīm woḥīm “to one person”, payzīm woḥīm “to one of the people”.

The only athematic adjectives nowadays are the numbers. The participles technically would count, but since they are simple -eqh stems or ablauting suffix stems, they generally aren't considered athematics.

The vast majority of adjectives are called thematics, and these take all the endings and agree with the various classes: athematics, ablauting suffix ones (they always take the -ar stem suffix however), -ū stems, -C/V stems, and -eqh stems. One such example is nidh nidhō nidhū nidhīḥ “large”. To use a random inflection, let's put it with various nouns in the definite plural locative:

nidhva yaydva “at the large swords”
nidhrīṣṣva juqrīṣṣva “on the large burns”
nidhūyeṣṣva vegūyeṣṣva “in the large books”
nidhūstit qrulūstit “by the large dogs”
nidhuḥḥita krāyuḥḥita “on the large wounds”

Basically all adjectives in Pazmat are thematics. Thematics can be further split into two groups:

Root thematics are adjectives formed directly off of a root. In Proto-Pasuu, some roots were exclusively or partially adjectival. One such example is the already mentioned nidh- “large”. Other such examples are sens- “happy”, vṛk- “aggressive, bold”, źwus- “tasty”, ganz- “sick”, ṣil- “sandy”, and others. These may take the same kinds of formants that normal verbal roots do, and also more specifying adjective derivations. For instance, sens- can take the resultive suffix -uv to formed sensuv- “satisfied” (because satisfaction is a result of being happy). Another example is vṛk- taking the casuative formant -it to form vurkit- “causing someone to be aggressive or bold”, then the adjective suffix -ī to form vurkitī- “inspiring”. Nouns may also be derived from them; ṣilū “sand”, gēnzan “sickness, disease”, and so on.

Derived adjectives are formed by adding suffixes and sometimes ablauting roots, nouns, other adjectives, or even other kinds of words like adverbs. There are/were many various suffixes used for this purpose, some still productive, some not.

One such method was used exclusively for athematic nouns, where no suffix was used and the vowel was simply raised a grade; for instance, from swot “evildoer, criminal”, one gets swāt- “evil, bad”. Another example is qauḥ- “manly, cool” from qiḥ “man”. Other examples:

kor “blade” > kār kārō karū kārīḥ “sharp”
jriq- “water” > jrauq jrauqō jrauqū jrauqīḥ “wet”
dang- “hatred” > dēng dēngō dēngū dēngīḥ “hateful, awful, disgusting”
mat- “language, speech” > mēt mētō mētū mētīḥ “informative (as language informs)”
kṛs “digit, finger” > karś karśō karśū karśīḥ “allied, working together” (as the digits must work together for the hand to function well”)
vṛv “line” > varv varvō varvū varvīḥ “straight, correct”

However, the majority of adjectives are formed with suffixes. One such EXTREMELY common suffix is . Deriving from a PP suffix *-ē, this is incredibly common on nouns and less so on verbal roots. When attached directly to verbal roots, it lengthens the root:
nar- “to live” > nērī nērīyō nērīyū nērīyīḥ “alive”
ot- “to give” > ātī ātīyō ātīyū ātīyīḥ “generous”
draḥ- “to hear” > drēḥī drēḥīyō drēḥīyū drēḥīyīḥ “audiable, loud”
wers- “to defend” > wūsī wūsīyō wūsīyū wūsīyīḥ “safe”
ḥluj- “to urinate” > hloyjī hloyjīyō hloyjīyū hloyjīyīḥ “irreverent, trollish (as in “done to piss people off”)”

Sometimes adjectival roots are found redundantly marked with this suffix, but they do not lengthen. For instance, vṛk- up there is only found as vṛkī vṛkīyō vṛkīyū vŗkīyīḥ, but we know it's an adjectival root and not a verbal one because the root isn't lengthened.

For nouns, this appears the most often on ablauting suffix words and -er stem nouns. When added to an ablauting suffix, it's added to the weakest possible form of the suffix, for instance, added to -ar stem nouns, the result is -rī-, not *-arī- or *-ōyī-. When added to -er stem nouns, the result is -erī-. There's no change when applied to -C stems (though words ending in a vowel add a linking -r-), and when applied to -eqh stems the result is -eḥī-. Some examples yet again, showing the whole derivation process, including if the noun in question is from a verb:

juq- “to burn” > juqō “burn” > juqrī juqrīyō juqrīyū juqrīyīḥ “painful”
śi- “to rain” > śiyan “rain” > śiṣnī śiṣnīyō śiṣnīyū śiṣnīyīḥ “blessed (as rain is...rather rare and appreciated in the desert)”
vag- “to read” > vēgū “book” > vēgerī vēgerīyō vēgerīyū vēgerīyīḥ “literary”
mac- “to love” > mēcīḥ “lover” > mēceḥī mēceḥīyō mēceḥīyū mēceḥīyīḥ “romantic”
jreq- “to combine” > jrīqō “combination, mix” > jrīqrī jrīqrīyō jrīqrīyū jrīqrīyīḥ “diverse”
dumō “fire” > dumrī dumrīyō dumrīyū dumrīyīḥ “hot, fiery, feisty, boisterous”
kriyyom- “overuse” > kriyyomū “overconsumption, selfishness” > kriyyomerī kriyyomerīyō kriyyomerīyū kriyyomerīyīḥ “excessively overconsuming, pathologically selfish”
nox- “throw sand in s.one's eyes” > noxṛm “someone who does such” > noxṛmī noxṛmīyō noxṛmīyū noxṛmīyīḥ “sneaky, conniving”
kwitō “room” > kwitrī kwitrīyō kwitrīyū kwitrīyīḥ “enclosed, hidden, safe”
lorpīḥ “old person” > lorpeḥī lorpeḥīyō lorpeḥīyū lorpeḥīyīḥ “wise, perceptive”


Among this are other suffixes. One example is -uv-, which is added exclusively to verbal and adjectival roots and forms adjectives deriving from a result of the roots action (if the root is adjectival then it's a result of being the quality it describes); this is no longer productive though reflexes are abundant (and it's slowly being turned into a productive suffix yet again), and note that since it derives from PP *-ubʰ-, it alters historical aspirates through Not-Grassman's-Law:

ḥrit- “to run” > qrituv qrituvō qrituvū qrituvīḥ “tired, sore”
bunt- “to eat” > muntuv muntuvō muntuvū muntuvīḥ “full, satiated, satisfied”
bant- “to begin” > mantuv mantuvō mantvū mantuvīḥ “in-progress”
sub- “to learn” > sumuv sumuvō sumuvū sumuvīḥ “educated”
uc- “to fall” > ucuv ucuvō ucuvū ucuvīḥ “on the ground”

Yet another example is -ez- which is used exclusively to form nationalities:

pazez pazezō pazezū pazezīḥ “Paz”
asinez asinezō asinezū asinezīḥ “Azen”
pṛjhez pṛjhezō pṛjhezū pṛjhezīḥ “Chyffelb” (pṛjh- is the root “west”, as Chyffelb lies to the west of Luqṣil)
thrijjez thrijjezō thrijjezū thrijjezīḥ “Thrijian (a now-dead group of people who commanded an empire southeast of Luqṣil; the Paz empire wanted to conquer it, but civil war tore it apart before they got there and the resulting destruction was so widespread, the cost of establishing an empire there was deemed too high. Nomads from the farther east called the Ṣṇdez later moved there and settled down, forming a minor empire which still holds out as a country the Paz call Ṣṇdisel)”

By analogy with wurfō “boy being an -ar stem, and cṛsū “girl” being an -er stem, the -ar and -er variants of these adjectives are often used to refer to a person of that nationality:

Asinezūvavo kṣausivyī
azen-NATIONALITY-ER.STEM-INDEF-LOC-PL have.sex-PERF-1S
I've had sex with Azen girls (before)

If the gender is unimportant, then the -eqh form is used to refer to any person of that nationality regardless of gender.

Another suffix is -am-, which usually forms adjectives meaning “made from, composing X” when added to nouns, and “embodying X” when added to verbal roots (where it also makes the root overlong):

ḥrit- “to run” > hrūtam hrūtamō hrūtamū hrūtamīḥ “excited, restless”
vajō “tree” > vajram vajramō vajramū vajramīḥ “wooden, resilient”
kniźō “ice” > kniźram kniźramō kniźramū kniźramīḥ “frozen, sculpted from ice”
kṇs- “to die” > kānsam kānsamō kānsamū kānsamīḥ “dead”
ṣilū “sand” > ṣileram ṣileramō ṣileramū ṣileramīḥ “unreliable, weak (as sand is a...rather poor material to make something out of)”
śṛd- “to pulsate, vibrate” > śīrdam śīrdamō śīrdamū śīrdamīḥ “vibrating, exciting, suspenseful”
jṛj- “to bind” > jīrjam jīrjamō jīrjamū jīrjamīḥ “bound, tied-up, in jail (slang)”
e- “to go” > ayam ayamō ayamū ayamīḥ “on the move, impatient”

The final suffix is -uq-; not very common, it forms an adjective with an intense or even excessive feeling; applied to verbal roots it lengthens them:

kṇs- “to die” > kansuq kansuqō kansuqū kansuqīḥ “ghastly, grotesque (“full of dying”)
ngisō “chest” > ngisruq ngisruqō ngisruqū ngisruqīḥ “bulging, about to burst”
uc- “to fall > oycuq oycuqō oycuqū oycuqīḥ “disastrous”

There are a few other suffixes, such as the causative -awot- (sṛj- “to cry” > sṛjawot sṛjawotō sṛjawotū sṛjawotīḥ “intensely emotional, driving one to tears”) but these are the most common and what I'll go over today.

//////////
Moving on from that, since adjectives agree with their noun in so many ways, oftentimes the noun if known is simply omitted:

Śṛdū:
Ax...xṛḥaryēv cībefe? Źwusarvē burstaṣṣi.
INTERJECT meat-INDEF.PL-ACC cook-IMPERF-2S tasty-AR-INDEF.PL-LOC feel.like-PERFECTIVE-3P
Ah...are you cooking some pieces of meat? They look tasty.

Kārō:
Ṇn, dumrāva kroyamrīyya ngaśitī.
yeah, fire-DEF.SG-LOC red-AR-DEF.PL-ACC put.on.flat.surface-PERFECTIVE.1S
Yeah, I just put the red (ones) on the fire.

The adjective kroyam “red” (a derivation from kro- “to bleed”!) agrees with the word xṛḥō “meat” by being -ar stem, and thus the word doesn't have to be repeated again, not even with a dummy pronoun/word like the translation does with “ones”.

One semi-opaque construction is to put the adjective in the the athematic dative singular indefinite (thus simply tacking -īm to the end of it), and then using a copular sentence. This literally means “In regards to being [ADJECTIVE], X is Y” and means figuratively “X is as [ADJECTIVE] as Y]:

Ayamīm lessa nartarm yēna
impatient-ATHE-INDEF.SG-DAT right.now child-INDEF.SG.NOM be-IMPERF-1S
Right now I'm as impatient as a child (lit. “In regards to being impatient, right now I'm a child”)

There are no comparitive or superlative suffixes. To express a simple “X is Y-er” statement, use the copula with a indefinite locative adjective agreeing with the noun (even if unstated; names agree like normal nouns) in plurality and class, literally meaning “X is at [ADJECTIVE]”

Cṛsūyo lorpeḥīyūva yētha
girl-DEF.SG.NOM wise-ER-INDEF-SG-LOC be.IMPERF-3S
The girl is wiser (lit. “That girl is at [being] wise”)

Of course, since the adjective agrees with the noun in class, assuming the noun is already known, then one can simply omit it: lorpeḥīyūva yētha. And indeed, usually the copula is dropped as well: lorpeḥīyūva. Should one wish to bring in a thing to be compared to, then they can simply be placed in the dative:

Śreyamū Egitīm vṛkīyūva
NAME-NOM NAME-DEF bold-ER-INDEF.SG-LOC
Śreyamu is bolder than Egit

And of course, if the noun is already known, it can be dropped since the adjective agrees with it: Egitīm vṛkīyūva.

The superlative is simply expressed like a comparitive, but with the word uran “all” in the definite dative, urnāyīm:

Urnāyīm Śreyamū śiṣnīyūva
all-DEF.SG.DAT NAME-NOM blessed-ER-INDEF.SG-LOC
Śreyamu is the most blessed (of all)

If one wishes to say, say, “Śreyamu is the most blessed girl”, then we just use the word for “girl” with the adjective urī urīyō urīyū urīyīḥ “all”:

Cṛsūyeyyīm urīyūyeyyīm Śreyamū śiṣnīyūva
girl-DEF.PL-DAT all-ER-DEF.PL-DAT NAME-NOM blessed-ER-INDEF.SG-LOC
Śreyamu is the most blessed girl (lit. “In regards to all girls, Śreyamu is at being blessed”)

Of course, words may be dropped with enough context; for instance the first adjective: Cṛsūyeyyīm Śreyamū śiṣnīyūva, which is actually ambiguous between “Śreyamu is most blessed than the girls” or “Śreyamu is the most blessed girl”. With enough context, nearly everything can be dropped: Urīyūyeyyīm śiṣnīyūva though this is stretching it.


Pazmat does not derive adverbs from adjectives; to use one adverbially simply put it in the athematic indefinite singular dative:

Sīpōyeṣṣ, vṛkīyīm sepīmawa!
soldier-DEF.PL.NOM bold-ATHE-INDEF.SG-SAT fight-DEON-2P
Soldiers, fight boldly!

////////////

And with that I think I can consider myself done with this post.

Next up should be participles assuming I don't get sidetracked...

I know I'm gonna say this because it's my language, but seriously this language is beautiful.
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Adjectives)

Post by Chagen »

A minor bump--not an update, sorry.

I will be going through the -C stems and the -eqh stems and rebuilding them from the ground up. I don't like them at all compared to the 1st-declension words so I'm gonna be fixing that. This might delay the participles post.

Hell, at this point I might even change some of the endings for the first declension! That instrumental -ḥu just doesn't sit right with me; I might change the endings for the Ergative and Absolutive as well; they don't sit with me well either, especially the Ergative as that is often merged with the nominative too much for my liking.

In any case, the new 1st declension instrumental ending will probably be -nu, -ni, or something similar. I'm learning towards -ni because that would give lengthened -nau and look nice:

qiḥāni kārni sṛdrāni gēśrīṣṣni xṛḥarnau narūyoni...
"With the man, with a blade, with the drum, with the arms, with some meat, with the creature..."

I like it already. Though -mi also sounds tempting: qiḥāmi kārmi sṛdrāmi gēśrīṣṣmi xṛḥarmau narūyomi...
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Adjectives)

Post by Chagen »

Another minor bump. This post is an incoherent list of some random things I've been doing. I am still procrastinating working on the 2nd-declension nouns/adjectives. However outside of that I have made a few minor changes, mostly for aesthetic purposes, but some things have been shifted around. Anyway, a run-down of all this:

First the split ergativity has been lost. It didn't really add anything to the language and the Ergative and Absolutive have been replaced by two new cases, the Ablocative and the Privative. The Ablocative, as the name suggests, is an "anti-Locative" and means "away from X", "not near/by X", and the like. The (1st-declension) ending for it is -sam, strong -sēm. An example word with it:

ḥesōsam "away from home"
ḥesarsēm "away from some homes"
ḥesrāsam "away from the home"
ḥesrīṣṣam "away from the homes"
(In the definite plural the /s/ of the ending merges with the /ʂ/ of the article ending)

The Privative is an "anti-instrumental"; it means "without X", both in the comitative and instrumental sense. The ending is -sit, strong -saut. Another example of a word in it:

marjhēnsit "without a job"
marjhansaut "without some jobs"
marjhnāsit "without the job"
marjhnīṣṣit "without the jobs"

These will be expanded upon in a later post.

In terms of cases as well, the instrumental ending is now -mi, strong -mau. Nothing else to say about that.

Next, the ablauting suffix nouns have been messed around with a bit. The definite plural ending, originally strong suffix + -(y)eṣṣ, has now become weak suffix + (y)īṣṣ (the same definite suffix but strong). I'm explaining this as analogy with the definite singular which uses the same pattern, and because with the old method the -ar stem nouns was -ōyeṣṣ, which just did NOT agree with me. Now it is -arīṣṣ, which looks like and sounds much better to me, and gets rid of a <y> 'cause there are WAAAAY too many in this lang already.

Continuing on with ablauting suffix nouns; the definite singular and plural nominatives may now elide their suffixes like with the other cases. Thus iśtarā iśtarīṣṣ "the car, the cars" may be iśtrā iśtrīṣṣ and ḥīsanā ḥīsanīṣṣ "the citizen, the citizens" may be ḥīsnā ḥīsnīṣṣ. Note however that this is considered very casual and used mainly when talking with other people in informal contexts.You can compare to saying "I'm/You're/He's/She's/etc." and actually saying the copula out in full. The "old" method is still common amongst even the most teenager-y of teens in writing and other formal things like that, and in formal speech. Eliding the suffix in the other cases however is something basically everyone from a teenager texting to a scientist discussing string theory does; not doing it is like saying "he worketh"; understandable, but stiflingly archaic.

////////////

Once again talking about ablauting suffix nouns, the entire indefinite plural paradigm has been altered. I got rid of basically all the -v's at the end; however the fact that the case marker is strong still betrays the old presence of -vo. Anyway, the paradigm now is, using ḥīsan "citizen":

ḥīsēnvo
ḥīsanyē
ḥīsanīmē
ḥīsanvē
ḥīsantra
ḥīsanmau
ḥīsansēm
ḥīsansaut


And, because we clearly haven't talked about ablauting suffix nouns enough, I've added another suffix which makes them, this time -at. This originates from selqat "world, planet, Earth" which I treated like an AS noun (selqētva "on a planet", selqtāva "on the planet/Earth"). Originally I wanted to keep this as the only word in the language with -at. However it sounds nice and gives an arabic feel a little (must be the feminine -at suffix) so I expanded it. However it is rarely found on roots alone; the most common usage of it is to form abstract nouns. For instance, a negative prefix au- (from the negative verb i-) can be added to roots, which then take -at to form an abstract noun:

kṇs- "to die" > aukṇsat "immortality"
ot "to give" > awotat "cruelty"

The other common usage of it abstract nouns from verbal roots in the short grade, UNLESS the root has a syllabic consonant as its main vowel. Then the root is lengthened. Why it does this only on these roots is unknown. Then -in- is suffixed, and -at is also suffixed. This represents a method of derivation I'm trying out where something is suffixed BEFORE the actual derivational morpheme is put on.

I'm just really getting tired of always using the long grade for EVERYTHING and having all these damn macrons everywhere; they look cool but I overuse them. However I do like having the syllabics expand to VC, so that's why the syllabics are the only ones which lengthen in this instance. I have this irrational fear of having words derived from roots looking too similar which was the impetus for this derivational system in the first place, so I'm trying to keep more of a balance

ot- "to give" > otinat "generosity"
jṛ- "to shiver" > jirinat "fear"
mṛjh- "to work" > marjhinat "working, occupation"
tor- "to fight" > torinat "violence"
midh- "to ask" > midhinat "investigation, the scientific method"

/////////////

Moving away from AS nouns, I had been thinking of coming up with a method to derive nouns from adjectives. Well, at least for those derived with -ī-, I have found a way! Thanks to the glory of the ablaut system, one simply bumps -ī- up a grade into -ay-. Since in PP this was still a single vowel, a linking -y- was added, which results in Pazmat actually having -ayy- here. Anyway, usually the -ar stem suffix is used for this:

vṛkī- "bold" > vṛkayyō "audacity, bravery"
śiṣnī- "blessed" > śiṣnayyō "salvation"
vēgerī- "literary" > vēgerayyō "literature"
ḥīsnī- "civic" > ḥīsnayyō "citizenship"

However -an is also found nearly as frequently:

juqrī- "painful" > juqrayyan "torture"
wūsī- "safe" > wūsayyan "security"
wṛthī- "beautiful" > wṛthayyan "attraction"

As expected the <yy> becomes <ṣṣ> next to a consonant. Interestingly enough, in the definite plural the expected <ṣṣ> is only <ṣ>; the geminate <ṣṣ> already there forces it to shorten; "with the tortures" is juqraṣnīṣṣmi, for instance. Then again most of these words wouldn't be used in the definite plural all that often.

///////////////

This is about everything I wanted to mention. Maybe I missed something but I'll go back and expand on it if I did.
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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Adjectives)

Post by Chagen »

The Pronoun System, and Minor Tweaks

Welcome to yet another post of tweaks and changes, plus the pronoun system! I have been going through this lang and changing stuff I don't like and expanding on stuff I left vague, so here they are:

First up, a little word about adjectives. Adjectives in Pazmat only agree with their nouns when they are directly modifying it. In copular sentences, the adjective can show up in their bare stem form. Indeed, sentences like "X is [adjective]" don't even need a copula: wurfrā tṇjī (boy-DEF.SG.NOM lazy) can only mean "the boy is lazy", not "the lazy boy", for the latter would be wufrā tṇjīṣrā, where the adjective DOES agree with the noun.

////////

Moving on, a few verbal categories have gotten subtle changes. The most noticeable are the Desiderative and Perfect Desiderative. The first is now B, -ar-, taking second declension endings now, and the second is B,-aranī (the only change is that the stem vowel is no longer inserted into ending). Thus midharina "I want to ask" and midharinīna "I wanted to ask" are now midharī and midharanīna.

////////////

Now for the big one: I have finally worked out a preliminary pronoun system. The final system will almost certainly be exactly this or 95% close to it, but I don't like making promises.

The pronouns of Pamat obviously date back to the era of Proto-Pasuu, and have some quirks about them. Some can (sorta) be connected to the personal endings for verbs, others not at all.

First of all, the pronouns use a special set of endings:

NOM: -Ø
ACC: -ṣ
DAT: -ye
LOC: -v
GEN: -t
INSTR: -m
ABLOC: -sa
PRIV: -si

You should quickly notice that these appear very similar to the first declension endings, but without their final consonants/vowels (remember that PP *pj becomes Pazmat <y> pre-vocally and <ṣ> finally/pre-consonantly, thus explaining pronomial <ṣ> for nominal <-ya>). This was noticeable even to the Paz; the Ablocative and Privative are not of PP and are an innovation of the Eastern Pasuu languages; when it came time for the pronouns to get them, the Paz simple chopped off their final consonants. The only exception to this is the 3rd-person plural pronoun, which is actually a regular -ar stem noun.

Regardless, another aspect of the pronouns in that they clearly are ablauting suffix nouns, given that they clearly have the definite markers -ā and -ī for the plural. There are no 3rd-person singular pronouns, that function being handled by various demonstratives. All of these pronouns form possessive pronouns with the common suffix -ī. A chart; we haven't had one of those in a while...

Image

And now for commentary on them:

The first person pronoun is clearly just an -ar stem noun (albeit with a stem of one consonant, j-), the retroflexion in the oblique cases easily explainable with the fact that PP *r retroflexed palatals; thus jhaṣ is *ndjarópj > *jarāpj > jrāṣ > jhāṣ. The possessive pronoun is much the same, ndjraré > *jarī > jrī > jhī-. It has zero connection with any of the verbal endings.

The second person singular pronoun is mostly regular (as far as the pronouns go, that is). However, with the possessive pronoun being krī, the stem appears to actually be kr-, the <n> being some kind of derivation suffix; perhaps related to the common suffix -an? Sefir has a word xran "there", which would go back to PP *krandh; perhaps the pronoun here means "the one over there".

The first-person plural inclusive has little to say about it, though note that the stem is actually aś- as the possessive pronoun shows (remember the retroflexion of palatals by an r). Also, this is the first pronoun to clearly be related to a person ending: the 2nd-conjugation 1P.INCL ending -aśva; what the -va means is uncertain; it clearly has little to do with the locative ending. A possible link would be the collective ending -vo; the speaker is considering themselves and the people they're speaking to as a collective.

The first person plural exclusive exhibits a suffix -us, also seen in the second person plural pronoun. Presumably this could have encoded plurality, but then the inclusive pronoun, without it, sticks a wrench into the equation. One common idea is that originally there was only the exclusive and the 2P pronouns; the inclusive was marked solely on the verb, but eventually a dedicated pronoun came later, which fits in nicely with the -va suffix of the 2nd-conjugation 1P.INCL being related to the collective one; in this case, the inclusive pronoun is actually a back-formation from the verbal ending. Of course moving back to the exclusive ending, it's clearly connected to the 2nd-conjugation ending for the same category, -antu.

The second person plural exhibits the same suffix -us. It also clearly has something to do with the 1st-conjugation 2P ending -yudh. Usually this ending is thought to have derived from PP *-pjudh, but another school of thought has it that the ending was actually just *-udh, with the <y> merely being an epenthetic hiatus-breaker.

The third person plural is just a regular -ar stem noun; albeit, with the odd root of just one consonant, g-. It could have something to do with the 1st-conjugation 3P ending -guḥ, but what the -uḥ tacked onto it could mean is an utter mystery.

//////////////

The Passive Voice

I dunno where else to put this so here we go.

The passive in Pazmat is expressed in an almost insultingly easy way. A formant -ib is tacked onto the verb--note that unlike every other formant this can go on verbs that already have formants--which then inflects regularly. Thus for joyquna "I am burning" we have juqaubina "I am being burnt". And for stroṣruguḥ "they had grabbed" we have stroyibiruna "they had been grabbed". And for kluraḥavyarayaśva "they had wanted to throw away" we have kluraḥibavyarayaśva "They had wanted to be thrown away"...I think you get it. Note that the passive formant can go on a lot more verbs than English itself can passivize, often with an applicative sense; for instance śi- "rain" can form the passive śiyib- "to be rained upon".

Note that rarely nouns are formed with the passive formant: midhibō "question" ( < "that which is asked"), śiyauban "rain forest" ( < "that which is rained upon [often]").

Negating a passive sentence, however, requires another new thing: the passive infintive! This will be useful later when we get to relative clauses so you might as well learn it now. The passive infinitive is formed with a root in the short grade and -ibos. It acts like an athematic just like the active one, thus from mat- "to speak" we get mataubos matibāsya matibāsīm matibāsva matibāstṛ matibāsmi matibāssam matibāssit

Negating a passive sentence simply requires the infinitive to be the passive one; wūsvūya yī "I don't defend" wersibāsya yī "I am not being defended".

To express the agent if needed, place them in the instrumental: Śṛdūyo Kārīṣrāmi juqaubina "Śrdu is being burnt by Kariyo". Note that putting the "agent" in the privative has the sense of "but not by X": Śṛdūyo Kārīṣrāsit juqaubina "Śrdu is being burnt, but not by Kariyo". Any instruments in the sentence will also be in the instrumental, so you'll just have to use context: Kārīṣrā Śṛdūyomi Jirgnāmi gṛḥaubivyū can mean either "Kariyo was killed by Śrdu with Jirgan", "Kariyo was killed by Jirgan with Śrdu" or even "Kariyo was killed by Śrdu and Jirgan"!

//////////

That's about it for now. Next will come relative clauses: remember how I kept holding them off since they required the participles? Yeah I ended up not even using those damn participles for them anyway, now they use infinitives.
Last edited by Chagen on Wed Sep 10, 2014 1:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Adjectives)

Post by Chagen »

Relative Clauses:

I got nearly two and a half hours to kill here in the uni library, so here we go:

Pazmat's relative clauses are some of the more bizarre/baroque constructions in the language. The original idea for their current form came from Micamo, which I then altered a little; just making sure she gets the credit for the original idea.

Pazmat does not have a relative pronoun. Relative clauses are formed with deranked infinitive clauses. Basically, the infinitive clause is put in the genitive, and then it possesses the noun it modifies. Which means that for "The student who is working on the assignment", Pazmat literally says "The student of the working on the assignment":

śrayautnāya marjhvūtṛ vūqanā
assignment-DEF.SG-ACC work-INFIN-GEN student-DEF.SG.NOM
the student who is working on the assignment

Since the infinitive marks no TAM contrasts, this means that much of it either requires context or requires strings of infinitives with various auxillary verbs, many which are very rare outside of relative clauses. For instance, the irregular verb ro- "to desire" is used to show wanting in relative clauses, taking the main infinitive clause as an object:

Sunselāva ḥīsvūya rāvūtṛ cṛsū
sunzaku-DEF-LOC live-INFIN-ACC want-INFIN-GEN girl-INDEF.SG.NOM
A girl who wants to live in Sunzaku

The clauses can just keep nesting:

Sunselāva ḥīsvūya rāvūya itṛ cṛsū
sunzaku-DEF-LOC live-INFIN-ACC want-INFIN-ACC NEG-INFIN-GEN girl-INDEF.SG.NOM
A girl who does not want to live in Sunzaku

This is the method to use as long as the relativized noun is either the direct object or subject of the sentence:

Of course right now you are probably wondering how Pazmat handles things like "the house in which..." Well, first of all, the structure listed up here is some that dates back to Proto-Pasuu. PP had no way of relativizing obliques. Pazmat, however, does. How? Through a relative pronoun!

Yes, I did say at the beginning of this post that Pazmat does not have a relative pronoun. Well, it does, but only for relativizing obliques. It is uźa, which inflects with the pronominal inflection mentioned in the previous post (obviously, it does not have a nominative or accusative form). To relativize obliques, the same structure as mentioned before is used, with uźa simply stuck inside the sentence:

kansnīyya uźav śnirḥvūtṛ ḥesrā
corpse-DEF.PL-ACC REL-LOC discover-INFIN-GEN house-DEF.SG.NOM
The house in which (we) discovered these corpses

This works for all cases:

vēgūyoya uźaye otibāstṛ qiḥo
book-DEF.SG-ACC REL-DAT give-INFIN.PASS-GEN man.DEF-DEF.SG.NOM
The man to whom the book was/is given

jarā úzat zraṣrīyyīm mētvūtṛ wurfarā
1S-NOM REL-GEN relative-DEF.PL-DAT talk-INFIN-GEN boy-DEF.SG.NOM
The boy whose relatives I had spoken to
(Note how the pluperfect is simply assumed here)

swotātṛ narẓūyeyya uźam soybvūtṛ ngrauvrīyya varśnīṣrīyya otibiruzzir
criminal-DEF.SG-GEN wrongdoing-DEF.PL-ACC REL-INSTR learn-INFIN-GEN record-DEF.PL-ACC official-DEF.PL-ACC give-PASS-PLUPERF-1P.EXCL
We had been given these official records with which we had learned about this criminal's offenses

///////////

And there we have relative clauses. I'm not sure what will come next.
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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Relative Clauses)

Post by Pabappa »

I just wanted to say I love "old IE" languages and I think both of your languages are beautiful. I think I actually like the proto-language better, even if the phonology is a bit odd. It does seem you have a few nasals in the proto-language, is this just you writing ṃ as m for convenience? or does it have a non-syllabic allophone when connected to a vowel?
And now Sunàqʷa the Sea Lamprey with our weather report:
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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Relative Clauses)

Post by Chagen »

Publipis wrote:I just wanted to say I love "old IE" languages and I think both of your languages are beautiful. I think I actually like the proto-language better, even if the phonology is a bit odd. It does seem you have a few nasals in the proto-language, is this just you writing ṃ as m for convenience? or does it have a non-syllabic allophone when connected to a vowel?
Thanks for the compliment! Yah, Proto-Pasuu looks odd.

Anyway, those instances are probably typos.
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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Relative Clauses)

Post by Chagen »

A small note about Syllabics

This is another small post detailing some changes and clarifications I've made. Specifically, about this thing I mentioned in the first post.
The syllabic are a little tricky. Their long and overlong variants are <aC, āC>, except after palatals where they are <iC, īC> and retroflexes and labials, where they are <uC, ūC>:

tṛs-: tarsṛna "I pluck"
cṛs-: cirsṛna "I help" (cf. cṛsū "girl")
chṛs-: chursṛna: "I spoil, make unclean"
vṛdh-: vurdhṛna "I place down, I display"
I have been applying this rule REALLY inconsistently and now I've decided to actually clarify it.

First of all, the various sounds which cause this (<R> stands for "resonant"):

iR: ś, ź, c, j

uR: m, b, p, f, v, ṣ, ẓ, ch jh

aR: All other sounds.

Moving on, here are the rules for this:

When inflecting a verbal root, always expand the syllabic to aR unless there is a palatal or retroflex directly in front of the syllabic. Basically, this keeps things a little more consistent. Thus, the root mṛjh- "work" forms marjhṛna "I am working", despite the labial nasal. In the meanwhile, jṛg- "to feel" forms jirgṛfe "you are feeling", and sṇd- "to wander" forms ṣundṇtha "he/she/it is wandering". However, the root śkṇs- "to lighten" forms śkansṇna "I am lightening", NOT *śkinsṇna.

When deriving nouns or adjectives from roots, these rules apply randomly and lexically. In general, each root applies the rule or not over all derivations, and this must simply be learned. However, palatals and retroflexes always apply these rules. Read this as "I can do it whenever I thing it looks good. Thus mŗjh- above forms the noun marjhan "work", but the adjectival root mṛd- "clear" forms the word murdan "logic". Likewise the root vṛś- "to darken" forms the word vārśam- "black", while vṛdh- "to put down" forms vurdhō "placement, the act of putting something down, ritual action of placing one's possessions on the floor to show respect". In the meanwhile śṛd- "to pulsate" forms śīrdam- "exciting" and jhṇḥ- "jagged (adj.)" forms the word jhunḥan "rough-hewn wall". In rare, isolated cases the syllabic is affected by the sound directly behind it, often when there is no onset, such as ṛb- "hard (of form), tough" forming urban "stone, rock" and urbō "strength". On the other hand compare jṇb- "young (adj.)" and jinbō "youth, childhood", where it is the palatal in front which influences.

I am currently debating adding a third declension, formed by affixes which alternate between a syllabic and its expanded forms. Should these come to pass, these rules always apply, thus vip "to try" would form vipur, vṛś- would form varśir and vṛdh- would form vurdhar; note that despite the similarity, these are very different from the -ar stems. That last one vurdhar seems almost the same as vurdhō (underlyingly vurdh-ar, but they act completely differently; in the first, the -ar is a long ṛ while in the second the -ar simply a short grade morpheme. For instance, the locative singular definite of vurdhar would be vurdharam while for vurdhō it would be vurdhrāva (u.lyingly vurdharāva, while the instrumental singular definite for the two words would be vurdhṛbas and vurdhrāmi (u.lyingly vurdharāmi).
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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Relative Clauses)

Post by Chagen »

The Imperative

Yet another post of minor tweaks! I didn't like the Deontic as it stands currently (as a pseudo-imperative), so I've decided to give Pazmat a dedicated imperative. But it's not that simple. The imperative in Pazmat is not a verbal category, but actually the old locative (for an imperative) and ablocative (for an injunctive) of a verbal noun. It should be easy to see how the semantics of, say, "(be) at working!" and "(be) away from working!" changing to "work!" and "don't work!" Being a noun the person is not marked but the number is.

"The third-declension?", you say? Yes, I have made one recently. I'm not gonna teach you the whole thing because only two endings matter now: the locative is -am and the ablocative is -esa.

The imperative works by attaching these endings to the short grade root. Oddly enough, it acts like a noun with moveable stress, which laid on the second-to-last syllable of the noun. The plural was marked with the familiar -vo; this dropped later but its effects were left behind by shifting the stress around. Thus, from the root naj- "be responsible, protect" (from which we also get najir "adult, guardian (of a child)", which happens to be a third-declension noun by the way), we get:

Nējam! (*ndándjamb) "protect! (sg)"
Najēm! (*ndandjámbho) "don't protect! (sg)"
Najīsa! (*ndandjésa) "protect! (sg)"
Najesē! (ndandjesábho) "don't protect!"

This applies for all verbs.

Note that since the imperative diachronically isn't actually an inflection on a verb, adjectives can take it as well. Here's where things get a little tricky, however. Adjectives have to be split up into two distinct groups here. The first are root adjectives like nidh- "big", mṛd- "clear, sane", źwus- "tasty", sens- "happy", and others. The second are derived adjectives such as śiṣnī- "blessed", vajram- "wooden", sensuv- "satisfied".

The root adjectives act exactly like the verbal roots; thus naudham! "be big!", sensēm! "don't be happy!", źwusīsa! "be tasty!(?)", and so on. Note that this counts as deriving a new word for both kinds of roots, thus syllabic-roots must be memorized; mṛd- gives us murdam! "be sane!" but mṛjh- "to work" gives us marjham! "work!"

Now, for derived adjectives, they are put in a corrupted form of their 3rd-declension forms. All you need to know is that an -r- shows up; thus śiṣnīṣram! "be blessed!". Normally, this adjective in the 3rd-declension indefinite locative singular would be śiṣnīyiram. The other forms are śiṣnīṣrēm śiṣnīṣrīsa śiṣnīṣresē.

However--and here's where it gets tricky. Many root adjectives nonetheless have the adjective suffix -ī on them despite being roots; examples are vṛkī- "bold, audacious", jṇbī- "young", tṇjī- "lazy", murī- "stupid", and so on. Now, since these are root adjectives, they could act like them; vurkam! "be audacious!", muresē! "don't be stupid! (pl.)" (the -ī is not required on derivations from these roots: muran "idiot", jinbō "youth", etc.). On the other hand, they could act like derived adjectives: vṛkīṣram! murīṣresē!. Which one do they act like?

Well...it depends on what dialect you're speaking. Some treat these as root adjectives. Other treat them as derived adjectives. The prestige dialect is ambivalent on the matter. It's not terribly important but it is something to remember.


////////////

As for the Deontic, its form remains the same (at least for now) but it is now for what ought to be. Thus, it can be used to mean "should": imperfect sīpena "I am fighting", but deontic sepīmī "I should fight/be fighting". Note that this can also be expressed with an infinitive plus either vre- "to be correct" or cna- "to be incorrect" (for statements of "shouldn't"). The infinitive is the subject and the person who should/shouldn't be doing the action can be expressed in the Dative. For other tenses than the perfective and imperfect this is mandatory: saypvau Kārrāyīm vrīvyū "Karara should have been fighting", literally "Fighting was correct in regards to Karara". Oftentimes context allows you to drop either the infinitive (Kārrāyīm vrīvyū) or the person (saypvau vrīvyū). Yet another option is a subordinate clause: vrīvyū na Kārrāyīm sīpevyū = "it was correct that Karara fought".

With this some more subtle distinctions can be made than the Deontic alone allows. For instance:

gnayvau cnītha
gnayvau cneyū

Both of these roughly translate to "grieving is wrong (for you)", that is, "don't be sad". However, the first is in the imperfect. This gives the feeling that right now you shouldn't be sad, probably because of some other thing going on. Thus it's what you would say to someone who is currently sad; it's basicaly "aw, cheer up man!". The second is in the perfective, which gives the feeling "don't EVER be sad", and thus is more of a command some inspiring leader would give, but not something you would say to cheer someone else up.
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Re: Pazmat mk.II (NP: Relative Clauses)

Post by Chagen »

The Third Declension

I couldn't leave the third declension an enigma forever, now could I?

The third declension is a surprisingly minor declension. Despite having its own special set of case endings completely unrelated to the other two declensions, by sheer numbers it's not as common as the first one. Of course, a few common words are in it, such as najir "adult", naram "body", subuśir "education", vipī "attempt"...

There are two kinds of third declension nouns. They take the same endings and have the same basic concept, but they differ slightly in the specifics of inflecting. I'll start with the more simple syllabic-types. First of all, the endings:

NOM: -Ø
ACC: -ṣu
DAT: -at
LOC: -am
GEN: -bas
ABLOC: -(e)sa
PRIV: -(u)si

The first kind of third declension noun is the syllabic-type. These all end in either -r, -m, or -n (the three syllabics), with the r-type being the most common, to the point where adjectives agree with all third declension nouns in the r-type (najir knatar "a small adult", naram knatar "a small body", vipī knatar "a small attempt", and so on...). For instance, from the root naj- "be responsible (for), care for", we get najir "adult", and from nar- "to live", we get naram "body". Note that these suffixes (-ir and -am) are underlyingly long syllabics. Thus, they have different vowels depending on the final consonant of the root; the -r suffix applied to nar- would not give you *narir a la najir, but narar (note that this is not actually a possible word--stems ending in one of the three liquids never take the suffix with the same liquid). Remember this.

This leads to the most interesting part of the third declension; the suffix changes grade based on the suffix used after it. To put it simply: the suffix is long before vowels, short before consonants, and before the suffixes for the ablocative and privative (-esa and -usi), it forms a consonant cluster. Examples speak louder than words here; this is najir declined in the indefinite singular:

najir
najṛṣu
najirat
najiram
najṛbas
najresa
najrusi


And the same for naram:

naram
narṃṣu
naramat
naramam
narṃbas
narmesa
narmusi


You can see how it works. To make a noun definite, you infix -Vs before the suffix. The V changes depending on the root's final consonant is, just like the suffix did in the indefinite, and the suffix, now next to an <s>, becomes -ar; thus, najisar "the adult", and narasam "the body". The definite plural does the same thing except the article is -Vdd-. The indefinite plural suffixes -vo like always to the indefinite singular; bizarrely it mostly shows up metathesized as -ov. najir in the remaining inflections, in a chart this time because why not:

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As of now, the only inflection which is third declension (besides simply affixing the affix to the root) is -(u)śir, which indicates an instrument (with adjective roots, something that makes a thing be that quality):

śra- "to do" > śraśir "tool, implement, device"
nṛt- "to play" > nṛtuśir "the things needed to play a game, etc."
ṛb- "hard (of form)"> ṛbuśir "reinforcement, strengthening"
ḥluj- "to urinate" > ḥlujuśir "urethra"

As the last example shows, a lot of anatomical or otherwise scientific terms are formed with this: kośir "brain" (ko- "to think"), buntuśir "digestive system" (bunt- "to eat"), xṛḥuśir "canine (tooth)" (xṛḥ- "to slice away, butcher")

One final note: in their third declension forms, adjectives still follow the same rules: thus knat- "small" gives us knatar knatarvo knatasar knataddar but nērī- "alive" gives us nērīyir nērīyirvo nērīyisar nērīyiddar. Likewise ayam-
"impatient" gives ayamur ayamurvo ayamusar ayamuddar.

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The second kind of third declension noun is even rarer, and is formed with vowel suffixes to the root/suffix. They also change their grade depending on the inflection, but they do it a little differently. They are long in the nominative, but overlong before vowels (since most overlong vowels are diphthongs that can break before vowels, this is oddly convenient), and short before consonants. The ablocative and privative are -sa and -si in these types. The definite singular and plural and indefinite plural are formed much the same way as before (though the indefinite plural isn't exactly the same).Examples of such words are vipī "attempt" from vip- "to try", and murā "dumbass (sl.)". Declined, we get:

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These nouns are not very common, that much can be said.
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

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