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...
