Kílta Lexember 5: haimavo "disappear, fade from view"

Kílta already has the verb tëníto go/be away which I've sometimes used to mean disappear. But that refers to a physical absence. Today's word is visual.

haimavo /xaɪ̯ˈma.βo/ disappear, fade from view (new root, no etymology)

Nama asíkár, Ótahwa haimavësto.
nama asík-ár ótahwa haimav-ëst-o
sun rise-CVB.IPFV mars fade.from.view-INCH-PFV
As the sun rose, Mars faded from view.

Kílta uses the inchoative/inceptive more often than English will say "start to, get" with verbs.

You can even use haimavo and tëníto together:

Luëkëlva në úkár haimavët tëníto.
train TOP go.CVB.IPFV fade.CVB.PFV go.away.PFV
As the train went it faded from view and was gone.

Kílta Lexember 4: mukélës "symbiote"

Another fairly straightforward word for Kílta today, but with a few obvious and related derivations in the mix:

mukélës /muˈkeː.ləs/ symbiote < muko live + -él- co-, con- + -ës agent nominalizer

This is a straight-up calque of symbiote, but the derivation is fairly obvious and I couldn't think of anything else that wasn't torturously clever.

To state relationships, the postposition is tin (together) with.

Lita në kiva tin vë mukélës no.
mushroom TOP tree with ATTR symbiote be.PFV
Mushrooms are symbiotes with trees.

In Kílta, generic nouns are in the singular.

Probably a more natural way to express this is with an adjective, which is mukélarin symbiotic, again using tin with for the relationship.

Lita në kiva tin mukélarin no.
mushroom TOP tree with symbiotic be.PFV
Mushrooms are symbotic with trees.

Because I spend a certain time worrying about how systems interact and influence things, Kílta has a nominal derivation just to mean systems. So, mukéluista symbiosis, system of symbiosis.

Mukéluista në ummul vë muër no.
symbiosis TOP forest ATTR interconnectedness be.PFV
Systems of symbiosis are the interconnectedness of the forest.

The translation for that is a bit of a mouthful, but is a good example of one of the main functions of a personal conlang. It allows the language creator to express things they find interesting or important concisely.

Of course, now I've had to add parasite to my ever-growing backlog of vocabulary to create.

Kílta Lexember 3: tavëlár "slang"

Today's is a simple word:

tavëlár /taˈβə.laːɾ/ slang < tavo run + lár speech, utterance, word

The verb tavo run is used in various derivations to mean "fast, quick."  Here I'm not referring to speed of enunciation, but lifetime. The -ë- ligature is normal for verb-initial compounds.

Kattëkës kë mítarpe, tavëlár si míti hómë re.
boss DAT speak.COND.CVB.IPFV, slang ACC speak.IMP PROH PTCL
If you're talking to the boss, don't use slang.

Note that Kílta prefers the verb míto speak to anything meaning "use" here, even if that means the verb is repeated. The particle re is here to soften the imperative a bit.

Kílta Lexember 2: ísama "grave"

One funny feature of the Kílta grammar is that in the derivational section I describe some affixes as productive and others as nonproductive. On first glance, this is a bit absurd. It's my language, I can derive words however the hell I want. But even though Kílta doesn't have a deep historical process in its development, I do use historical thinking as an esthetic choice, and so I have layers of history in various places, including the word derivation system. And, I have a friend learning Kílta, an unusual circumstance for most conlangs. The productivity notes have turned out to be useful there.

Today's word has layers of derivation involved.

ísama /iːˈsæ.ma/ grave < ímo hide + -sa nominalizer + -ama place/time nominalizer

The -sa is an "older" nominalizer covering instrument, agent, and abstractions. It's not even documented in the public Kílta grammar, though it does have a long comment in the LaTeX sources. I should probably include it in a footnote or something. 

At any rate, in some parts of Kílta grammar nasal+s eliminates the nasal and lengthens the previous vowel, so there was an intervening *ísa. However, that conflicts with another *ísa exile described here. So it got the location derivation, resulting in ísama (opening the door for a possible *-sama variation for location derivations).

Though the plain verb ímo does mean hide, it is used in derivations meaning other things, especially relating to covering. If you look at the CLICS³ graph centered on hide, you find both cover and bury as common polysemies with hide.

Intentionally in keeping with using salko put, place, for planting in a garden, that'll be the verb for burial:

Avur në atta si ísama nen salko.
1PL TOP father ACC grave LOC put.PFV
We buried our father.

For location, naturally one lies there:

Ël në ísama nen ké nulo më.
3SG TOP grave LOC already lie.PFV NEG
She's not yet in the grave.

It is an interesting accident of development that the word for grave, ísama, looks related to ísui in the manner of an exile, and ína exile, outcast itself. There's a possibility for wordplay here I might explore later.

Kílta Lexember 1: këllekunaima "cave"

The Lexember 2020 Season is upon us! I have no particular theme for this season, apart from the ever-growing backlog of words I want to create for Kílta.

Today's word is cave. I was briefly tempted to coin a unique root for it, but to be honest my interaction with caves is not frequent. Since this is a personal language I do try to take into consideration just how often I'm going to use a word. I thought about various compounds, and settled on naima mouth for the final element, since that is already used as an entrance to places.

Këllekunaima /kəl.le.kuˈnaɪ̯.ma/ cave < këlleka hill, mountain + naima mouth

It's not enough just to coin the word for me most of the time. I want to spend some time thinking about prototypical usage. The normal motion in a cave is generally downward, so hímo go down, descend is the main verb for wandering a cave. For entering the cave, just use the inchoative.

Ilivëstët, útan li këllekunaima si tëtti hímësto.
iliv-ëst-ët útan li këllekunaima si tëtti hím-ëst-o
rain-INCH-PFV.CVB matter ABL cave ACC a.bit descend-INCH-PFV
It started to rain so they went in the cave a bit.

The expression útan li "from (that) matter" is an idiom for so, therefore.

I'll need to think more about how to express a cave-in.

Culture and a Point of Word Usage in Kílta

One of the things I have tried to do with Kílta, though it is a personal language intended for use in the here-and-now, is to assemble an invented legendarium I can use to expand the range of expression beyond the nakedly literal. Stones, for example, are associated with a (completely undefined) oracle system, allowing the creation of idioms like ëkin mika si autto she touched another stone, to refer to someone altering their fate in a notable way.

Within this legendarium are váchur, semi-personified representations of certain forces and entities in the world, not gods, but certainly beyond the human. Perhaps like genius loci but expanded beyond just locations.

Kílta already has a word for plague, epidemic: vós [ˈβoːs]. But it entered my mind that a vácha for that might be useful. After a bit of percolation my brain, the vácha Hësas [ˈxə.sas] has entered the legendarium. It is represented by flies, who in Kílta already have associations with the more remorselessly brutal parts of the natural lifecycle.

In Kílta, many things that move in the air tunáko hang there. Because Hësas is represented by flies, I have decided that when expressions of location are used with the plain old word vós epidemic tunáko will be used.

Vós në méka nen metúnakësto.
vós në méka nen me-túnak-ëst-o
plague TOP America LOC CIS-hang-INCH-PFV
The plague is now in America.

Normally using a posture verb for location is confined to people and animals, but I've extended it to vós because of the association with Hësas and flies. This is probably the most subtle result of using the legendarium to drive Kílta expression to date — a single usage note in the lexicon entry for vós.

Words of Immiseration

You never know what's going to lead your conlang to new grammar.

More than a month ago I was reading a bit by and about Hannah Arendt, and I realized Kílta was lacking a few bits of vocabulary I'd need if I wanted to convey some thoughts on my reading. In particular, I was looking to be able to describe ways in which communities and societies immiserate and even kill people. In particular, I was struck by the notion of entire populations being essentially ignored to death (refugees, mostly, come in for this sort of treatment).

But to say someone has been ignored to death is actually a fairly complex bit of grammar. The to death part here is a resultative secondary predicate. I had been considering secondary predicates ("I painted the wall red," for example) in Kílta for a while, and had some notes from a little research I had done on the topic, but hadn't committed to anything yet. If I wanted my immiserable expressions, I'd need to make a decision, to go with secondary predication, or pick some other method. Not all languages use secondary predication, after all.

In the end, I decided to use secondary predication, and picked a slightly unusual (but attested) way to do this: an adverb immediately before the verb can be interpreted either as a manner adverb or as a secondary predicate. Given Kílta's love of argument dropping, some ambiguity is possible, but I try not to let potential ambiguity stop me, especially if I can convince myself context will clear things up (most of human communication is context, anyway). At any rate, here's an example:

Tërta si mámui tëlpo.
meat ACC soft.ADV cook.PFV
They cooked the meat (until) soft.

The secondary predicate here is the adverb form of the adjective mámin soft.

Postpositional expressions in the shape [N mai] (the lative), can also be used preverbally as secondary predicates:

Këchar në vós mai këkíno.
government TOP plague LAT ignore.PFV
The government ignored its way into a plague.

Note here that, while in standard English secondary predicates can only refer to the object, in Kílta the subject (or topic, as here) can also take secondary predication. For more possibilities and subtleties of Kílta secondary predicates, see the grammar (section 10.6, as of July 2020).

So now I had constructions for secondary predication, but I did not just create a schematic way to handle all these expressions of immiseration. While Kílta is not a rigorously naturalistic conlang, I do consider plausibility an important part of its esthetics. A too tidy chart always makes me wince a bit. In any case, in a few places result converbs are used rather than secondary predication. That said, I did concoct a small number of rather specific adverbs for use as secondary predicates.

For example, I already had the word ína outcast, exile, pariah. I needed an adverb for this, and decided to use an "archaic" derivation to produce an unused intermediary form *ísa which was then turned into the adverb ísui in the way of an exile, outcast, and as a secondary predicate, into exile:

Ámatulásilur si ísui pëcho.
refugee.PL ACC into.exile oppress.PFV
They oppressed the refugees into exile.

On the other hand, I simply conconcted a new root adverb, méstë, which means something like harming the household or family. It turned out to be surprisingly easy to find uses for this outside secondary predicates.

Vós në méstë memúlo.
plague TOP harming.family CIS.arrive.PFV
The plague reached us, harming the household.

As a secondary predicate:

Símur në mélá si méstë túkwilo.
3PL TOP parent.PL ACC harming.family humiliate.PFV
They humiliated the parents until the family took harm.

Finally, I needed to death. I did not simply want to use the verb die or some expression too like English here. Kílta already has a strong association in other expressions of os dust with the entropic effects of time, and it was only a little stretch to push this into dying territory. I used a special locative adverbial derivation, which means down(ward) to, giving ostorë:

Avur në ámatulásilur si ostorë këkíno.
1PL TOP refugee.PL ACC to.death ignore.PFV
We ignored the refugees to death.

Not the lightest topic, to be sure, but I've now filled out a parts of a sadly useful semantic field, and acquired a useful piece of new grammar as part of the bargain. On my phone I have a document that's just an ever-growing list of expressions I want to add to Kílta. Most of the time I get new words out of this, but once in a while a whole new corner of grammar appears.