Wardwesân

In January of this year a Frenchman working under the pseudonym Frédéric Werst had a book published, Ward : Ier-IIe siècle. I first heard about it at Language Hat. It's a historical anthology of the Wards, an invented people, in an invented language, Wardwesân. I figured my library of conlang grammars (Láadan, Esperanto, Klingon) could use some Gallic company, so I ordered the book. It finally arrived, and I thought I'd give a quick overview of the language a bit. I haven't yet had time to read the main body of the text too much — my French is rusty, and literary French is much harder going for me than technical French — but I'll grab a few examples from it for analysis.

Sound System

The vowels are a, ā, e, ē, o, ō, i, y and u. Long ā has regional variantions, pronounced either [œ] or, apparently, as a long /a/ (ou commme un â français très marqué). For /e/ and /o/ sounds the ones with the macrons are tense, those without are lax, e [ɛ] ē [e], o [ɔ] ō [o]. The y is IPA [y], but is also usable as a consonant, [j]. The diphthong ae is [aɪ].

These consonants are as in French: b, d, j, k, l, m, n, p, ph, s, t, z; g is always hard, [g], r is "always rolled;" sh is [ʃ], kh is [x], gh is [ɣ], th is [θ], zh is [ð] (really!), x is [ts] and xh is [tʃ], q is [q], jh is the ich-laut, [ç].

Word accent is always on the first syllable.

There is no discussion of phonotactics or phrase accenting.

The Noun

Much loving attention was devoted to the morphology of the noun.

Most nouns do not have overt gender marking; inanimates never do, animates may, -a for masculine, -e for feminine: westa "king", weste "queen." There are some other minor patterns.

Plurals got quite a lot of work, though not all nouns get plural forms.

• First, there is the common class of internal plurals which show some vowel change: gan "night" gaen, mazira "pheasant" mazōra. These seem quite common.


• Second, some may have an internal vowel alteration, with or without additional change: thanor"pond" thōnar.


• Third, some take a prefix al- or ar-: karz "child" alkarz. This may also involve vowel changes: barw "name" arbyrw.


• Fourth, some take suffixes or other word-final alterations: rame "sister" rameth.


• Fifth, nouns in -ael may form a plural in -aldon: zagael "young man" zagaldon.


• Sixth, nouns starting in o- often have a plural in wo-: ora "plant" wora.


• Finally, many nouns, abstract nouns especially, have no proper plural at all. But, if one is really needed, the postpositive particle amōn may be used.

Werst had fun with these many plural forms, with a number of lexical items with the same singular having different plurals: gem, gemazhan "cheek" (actually an example of the dual, -zhan) but gem, argym "cloud."

Vowel alterations are not only used for marking the plural. Agent nouns will convert an /a/ in the first syllable to /e/, and an /e/ in the first syllable to /o/: merwān "to manufacture" morwa "author."

There appear not to be adjectives, but nouns of qualification, which are joined to nouns with the appositive particle ab (which reminds me a lot of Persian ezafé). So, mega "something new", but mega ab magha "new god".

The Verb

The verb system is rather simple. There is a small collection of co-verbs which encode person and time, and participles which encode number. There are three active participles, and these are mixed and matched with co-verbs to produce quite an array of tense forms.

The co-verbs are regular: present wena (1st person), wega (2nd person), weza (3rd person masc.) and wetha (3rd person fem.), with er- replacing we- for the perfect, me- for the imperfect and wa- for the subjunctive.

The participles are -an (pl. -anōn) for present, -azan (pl. -azanōn) for past and -agō (pl. -agōn) for future.

A full conjugation for arbān "to write":

	Singular	Plural
1st	wena arban	wena arbanōn
2nd	wega arban	wega arbanōn
3m.	weza arban	weza arbanōn
3f.	wetha arban	wetha arbanōn

This strikes me as rather regular, but an interesting way to split the load. There is, however, a small number of verbs which have irregular — and fully conjugated — perfects (which I will not give here).

There is no passive conjugation, though there are passive participles in -ēnd, which are joined to their noun with ab: kamazh ab arbēnd "a written book."

There is a "gnomic" tense, which ends in -aoth. It has neither tense nor number, and indicates general activities, arbaoth "one writes, people write, it is usual to write." The ending may alter the final consonant of some stems.

The imperative is in -ax (pl. -axō): jarān "to come" jarax, jaraxō.

Prepositions

Prepositions have two forms, strong and weak. It is easiest to say that the weak forms are used whenever the governed noun is modified by another noun, and the strong in all other situations. For example (in order of weak then strong) az, azōn "with". First, strong forms:

• azōn yarn "with a friend"


• azōn yarn nēs "with my friend"


• azōn yarn ab Xamōn "with (my) friend Xamôn"

Weak forms:

• az Xamōn yarn "with Xamôn's friend"


• az warma yarn "with a sick friend"

Note especially the last form: it causes the qualifying noun to act more like what we expect with an adjective, rather than the warma ab yarn we'd otherwise expect.

Particles

Indeclinable particles do a number of syntactic jobs. As we have seen above, there is the appositive particle ab. The genitive relation is handed with tha, as in barzha tha qaman "the destruction (qaman) of the building."

The particle zha means something like "which has," which can also be used to create the effect of an adjective, mazaraon zha kazhar "a certain dating" (kazhar "certitude").

Various combinations and particles are used for verb aspect (which I'll omit here).

Et Cetera

There are several particle combinations with na which combine evidentiality and judgement, na zant for opinion from experience ((se) dire), na qant to express certainty, etc (these are a little regular for my taste, all in C-ant).

There are several kinds of article and demonstratives.

The grammar as a good (though not huge) section on the syntax of the language, which I will omit here.

Small Examples

A sentence grabbed at random from the text part of the book.

Na warzawēr nama aw aexeth ren ab arkan em aw bamastan baratha ab eman. (Il et évident à tout le monde que l'oeil a pour fonction de voir, et pour utilité de regarder, p. 215).

• na, nāz, "in the function of; according to"


• warzawēr "all, everyone"


• nama "evidence, spectacle"


• aw (also ā, ō) aspectual particle, quant à


• aexeth "use, utility"


• ren "act, action"


• arkan "vision"


• em, emzhan "eye"


• bamastan "utility, service"


• baratha "action, movement"


• emān "to see," here in the present participle.

More interesting, for the verse of the Wards he picked a system of assonance and alliteration (a few lines, untranslated):

dura meth math derw mez denan

ukan gōn garth ag urben ganta danagh

dwan jaen jar jarga darnan

zeman nāz naen nāz naba zeran...

A cute little word

I have in the last few months been spending more time working on natural languages. In particular, a treasure trove of documents on Uto-Aztecan languages has been interesting. Unfortunately, the English translation of Michel Launey's "Introduction to Classical Nahuatl" keeps having its release date pushed back. I look forward to getting my hands on that. Most Nahuatl textbooks in English currently available make the old-fashioned philological approach I learned Greek with look like progressive language pedagogy.

As an experiment, I started working on a new language back in October, not using my normal methods of notebook-then-webpage, but straight into LaTeX. The results certainly look more impressive once the major sections start to fill out. The cross-referencing is nicer, too. I think I need to work on a few more style tweaking macros. In any case, the language, Tsariku, started off as a cross between inspiration from Uto-Aztecan languages and ancient Greek. However, it has evolved somewhat from there. I realized last week that I had snuck in a variant on split-ergativity, with the split working along animacy. Inanimate subjects of transitive verbs get a case marker, -s, but are unmarked as the direct object of a transitive verb or the subject of an intransitive.

aiku-s	tsi-nepá-n
this-ERG	3IN-hurt-1SG
This hurt me.

aiku	ni-nepá-h
this	1SG-hurt-3IN
I hurt this.

sé	tsi-lemya	aiku
not	3IN-function	this
This didn't work.

Note that the conjugation, obligatory for both subject and object in transitive verbs, is still nominative-accusative alignment.

In any case, a tasty little tidbit of vocabulary. A noun recently concocted is kwehtsa, fear and uncertainty in response to sudden and uncertain social or political developments. This is less interesting than a recent compound, kwehtsulatú the sudden hush that comes over a conversation when an unexpected person approaches because one is uncertain of their loyalties.

If Zamenhof had been Cree

In the last few days there has been a few posts on the conlang-l list about conlangs based moribund or dead languages. Since Native American languages were named, it reminded me of thoughts that have rolled around in my head from time to time over the last year or so.

I don't really deal in auxlangs, but it a moment of musing it occured to me that the only real chance one has of being widely adopted in the U.S. is if Native Americans one day get sick of conducting their inter-tribal business in English and decide they need something else. No existing Native language would probably really work for several reasons. First, an auxlang should be a lot easier than a natural language to learn, and there not a single Native language easy enough to reasonably fill the auxlang role. Second, there would be political problems — there are standing tensions between some tribes, some of which go back very far indeed. For example, there are probably very few Hopi or Navajo who would be willing to learn each other's language (you can google their land dispute on your own).

I'm not actually going to concoct a North American Native auxlang, but I offer here some of my thinking about how one might go about such a thing, with a few hints of what this might look like were I to do so.


Easier — not Easy. Any NAN-auxlang would have to take into consideration the fact that large numbers of Native Americans are now monolingual English speakers, but I don't think a goal should be to make the language familiar to speakers of European languages. There are very widespread areal features in North American languages, and as much as possible these should be drawn on in creating the language. I would, for example, include regular conjugation of verbs, very probably by prefixing. I've been using WALS to verify commonalities in N.A. languages.

The Stock. Taking inspiration from Lojban, as a practical matter I'd draw on the largest language families — Na-Dene, Algonquian, Uto-Aztecan, Siouan and Iroquoian. The Salish family might belong in there, too, as well as Kiowa-Tanoan and Muskogean. For the many isolates, we'd have to rely on areal similarities.

Phonology. A simple, 4 or 5 vowel system. I would, sadly, omit tone, and, more happily, nasalization.

For the consonants I would at the very least include /p/ /t/ /ts/ /k/ /s/ /n/ /m/ (maybe only one nasal) /w/ /y/ /ʔ/ /h/ (which could be [h] or [x]) and /l/. I would probably include /ɬ/. That's less common the further east you go, but occurs even in the Muskogean family. I was prepared to omit ejectives at first, but now I think I'd consider including them. Thanks to Na'vi, I know that most L1 English speakers can learn them pretty easily, and they really extend pretty far east, too.

I'd keep syllable structure simple or at most moderately complex, allowing, say, syllable onsets to have /w/ or /y/ as a second element (if not, I'd add /kᵂ/ to the base inventory), maybe a nasal coda. Accent strictly initial or final.

Grammar. In favor of Esperanto's gender system, I'd differentiate by animacy. I'm still not sure if I'd include 4th person/obviation mechanics.

Rather than tense, the verb would be more preoccupied with aspect, by regular suffixing. A future tense adverb might sneak in.

Nominative-accusative alignment, but no case marking. Subjects of verbs would be person prefixes; not sure about objects, but I could be talked into putting those into the verb, too.

Plenty of North American languages have some sort of classifier system. I'm not sure that I'd add those, or if I did it'd be a very simple and regular system, attached to numbers only (i.e., I would regretfully lay aside the verbal encoding that goes on in so many languages).

At the very least, reportative evidential. Maybe inferential.

I probably would include adjectives as a word class, maybe with special marking for predicate adjectives.

Haven't decided on word order, probably SVO with SOV a strong contender.

Vocabulary would be churned through some automatic system to find any mnemonic cross-family similarities there might be, and ensure equal representation.

Old High Coochy-Coo

Of those few conlangs that reach a pretty well-developed state (beyond 1500 words or so, a reasonable corpus), a good number will have well-defined formal and literary registers. Part of this is probably yet another lingering influence of Tolkien, though for most people a literary conlang may be the first they encounter. In my own Vaior I created syntax and a good dose of parallel vocabulary for fairly common words used only in the poetic register (raie was the normal word for star, emme poetic), as well as poetic syntax (animate direct objects of perception verbs are in the genitive, not accusative).

One thing I've never seen in a conlang is baby-talk. How different cultures talk to children isn't exactly universal. Some people don't talk directly to children until they have something interesting to say back, without apparently causing developmental problems. But it's a pretty common practice. What I would not have suspected, until I read about it a few days ago, is that it is fairly common for people to use baby talk — or something much like it — when speaking to animals.

A few things are common to baby talk —

• Reduplication is very common (in my own family, a bottle is either a ba or a baba).


• Much wider pitch range, and a tendency to stay in higher registers.


• Simplified grammar (not a surprise).


• Vocabulary that exists only in the baby-talk register ("binkie" for "blanket"; in Nootka, paapash "eat!" for adult ha'ukw'i).


• Particular patterns of phonological deformation (not exactly simplification, but nearly so).

The word deformations are most interesting to me, and in Native American languages dovetail with some interesting things that happen in story telling registers. In Cocopa, for example, the onset consonant of stressed syllables is turned into a /v/, while other consonants are fronted. Adult kwanyúk "baby" becomes kanvúk. Cocopa uses a very similar register with animals, with different informants finding the register appropriate for speaking to cats, dogs, horses or even chickens. In this register, every word gets a palatalized lateral fricative, /łʲ/, inserted or substituted into every word.

In Quileute certain prefixes might be used when speaking to people with particular characteristics, /s-/ for a small man, /tł-/ for someone who is cross-eyed. But certain characters in traditional stories also have their language altered in particular ways. Raven prefixes /ʃ-/; Deer prefixes /tłk-/ and turns all sybilants to laterals. Coyote, of course, speaks inappropriately and often in highly distorted ways all over the West.

One of the great things about using formal registers is that it becomes that much easier to be rude and impolite. So I was delighted to read that in Nootka, the word deformation for Raven — /-tʃx-/ inserted after the first syllable of the word — is also used to speak of greedy people. But not to their face.

I'll have to try out some of this in some future project.

The Bixwá Verb: Part the Third

If the multiple layers of affixing on the verb stem aren't enough, there are also three slots for preverbs in Bixwá. The idea for these comes from the Algic/Algonquian languages. In those the preverbs are actually affixes, too, but in Bixwá these are separate words. I did this for two reasons. First, Bixwá has more phonetic flexibility at the end of a word than it does at internal syllable codas. Second, I didn't want to deal with noun incorporation — inanimate direct objects come between a verb and its preverbs, while inanimates do not.

Tense and Mood

The leftmost preverbs have to deal with tense, sequencing and mood. The tense preverbs aren't much used, though the future, ivi is most likely to be seen of the bunch. Much more frequent is wil, which indicates sequencing, "and then, and next" and the like. Two of the preverbs are involved in conditional sentences, which I will save for a different post.

Adverbial One

After the tense and mood preverbs come a set of preverbs with various adverbial senses. One I pilfered from, I think, Wiyot, is diwáa on arrival:

be	né-l	wil	diwáa	ho-xod
3SG	1SG-DAT	next	on.arrival	PFV-speak
Then when he arrived he spoke to me.

Another good one of this set is haaz, which indicates senses like in vain, it isn't so, it didn't really happen. In the perfective, it indicates a thwarted expectation:

haaz	ho-síis
in.vain	PFV-rain
It was supposed to rain (but didn't).

One of this set, sa' has branched out into interesting territory. It's base meaning is of proximal deixis, in time, place or discourse, here, thus, there. It has developed to also assert narrative integrity, asserting that the statement fits into the conversation. This is useful for propping up unexpected information.

be	wil	sa'	áka-n	ka'a-ho-dal
3SG	then	thus	book-ACC	by.hand-PFV-toss
Then she threw the book (really!).

Note in the example above the location of the direct object, ákan. If she had tossed something animate, it would occur before wil.

Adverbial Two

This is a more motley set of adverbial senses, and I anticipate more appearing over time. Many of these describe path and location: cháa for horizontal motion, kwee apart, separating, zót away, but more exotic senses appear as well, such as e'ar leaving a detectable trace or path.

jó-né	bé	zha'o	ho'-áán
PL-1	back	unwillingly	PFV-go
We returned against our will.

One of my current favorites is chaash, which says that an action took place out in precipitation,

ko	ivi	chaash	mi-'o'éé
2SG	FUT	in.weather	IPFV-labor
You will be working in the rain/snow.

The exact nature of the weather will depend of course on the season. I have also been giving metaphorical extensions to some of the simpler senses. For example, ta'ii means to completion, fully, to exhaustion, but has been extended to be practically a marker of attitude, conveying weariness.

Bixwá by Foot

Right now both Bixwá and Tsrai are in a phase of moderate vocabulary growth. I'll ponder a few days, the bang out a few dozen words in a short time. Apart from creating a number system (which I always dread), creating vocabulary is always the most trying task of language creation for me.

As part of my campaign to avoid orthogonality, I have been making an effort to use analogy more. This has lead in interesting directions with the instrumental prefix zu-, which has the base meaning of by foot, with the foot. For example, tik means fall (over), and zu-tik means to knock over by foot (remember, using the instrumental prefixes always results in a transitive verb).

I decided that zu- could also be used to indicate mob violence of some sort, by way of the idea of trampling or stampeding over people. For example, from dó'a rule, custom, tradition, we get zu-dó'a impose a political or social regime on people. From there I went to zu-bayí subjugate, oppress from bayí endure, tolerate.

A few days ago zu- completed its march into the political realm when it encountered gísa be silent. With help from the detransitive suffix -óó I got zu-gísa'óó self-censor.

A Gallimaufry

Na'vi

I've managed to get myself on a panel for a local con this fall to chat about the science of Avatar. In theory, I'm there to talk about language. We'll see how many people in the audience are interested in that.

Tsrai

Tsrai now has nice set of postural verbs. I'm still thinking about the semantics of these, especially in verb chains, but I'm ridiculously pleased to be able to say this,

we	or-ta	blas	rabbë	dzwai
3SG	drink-PST	beer	get.horizontal	happen
He drank so much beer he ended up on the ground.

Inspiration

I recently got myself a copy of The Languages of Native North America by Marianne Mithun. What an astonishing diversity of languages this continent used to have. Language inventors will find so much inspiration in this book.