Revision as of 08:51, 20 March 2014

Mésylþo is my ongoing effort - one that's been scrapped and reworked a good number of times - to create the most beautiful language possible to my sensibilities. I have developed a keyboard layout for typing the characters used in the written language.

Phonology

Consonants

1. Plosives may not occur word-finally.
2. /r/ has many possible realizations, including a trill (immediately after an alveolar), rhoticization of the previous vowel (in coda position), or a uvular approximant (in onset position).
3. Consonant clusters within syllables do not exist.

Vowels

Length and tenseness is represented by an acute accent over the nuclear vowel of the accented syllable.

Diphthongs

Diphthong formation is complex. There are four diphthongs: øy, ai, oi, and au. The second monopthong in contact between vowels dictates the roundness of the resulting diphthong (ie ‹øi› > ‹øy›; ‹ay› > ‹ai›). Vowel contact that would result in an opening diphthong instead result in a glide followed by a monophthong (ie ‹ia› > ‹ja›).  Vowels with a similar openness and roundness in contact, or back vowels in contact, cause the initial vowel to be deleted and the second to become long and tense.  ‹ei› becomes ‹é›.

Phonotactics

Mésylþo allows V, VC, CV, and CVC syllables.

Approximants only appear in onset position.

/ç/ only appears in coda position. When it appears after a consonant, the previous consonant is unpronounced and typically unwritten.

Posterior coronal fricatives assimilate regressively when adjacent.

Nasals and coronal fricatives in contact regressively assimilate.  /s/ in prefix þis- also may assimilate to a nasal.

Voicing of consonants in contact regressively assimilates.

Morphology

Mésylþo has two grammatical genders, also called classes: animate and inanimate. These are by and large also semantic classes, but there are a number of nouns that are semantically inanimate while grammatically animate and so are better treated as genders.

"Root" refers to the word as shown in the lexicon: a single open-class morpheme. "Stem" refers to a word without affixes; that is, the open-class morpheme and any clitics.

Nouns

Nouns are inflected for person, case, animacy, and number, with the latter three features typically expressed together within a single suffix.

Eight cases exist: Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Instrumental/Associative (considered a single case), Locative, Comparative, Ablative, and Vocative, though for semantic reasons, not all exist for both animate and inanimate classes.

Many adjectives may also be attached to nouns in a clitic form, as a prefix closest to the root.

Animate Paradigm

• The vocative is a postposed particle.

Inanimate Paradigm

Person

Singular possessive markers are prefixes. Plural markers are suffixes paired with the appropriate singular marker.

Inanimate nouns cannot be possessors: phrases such as "the name of a city" are expressed in head-final compounds (ie þáfolasacál).

Verbs

Verbs come in four different paradigms: Animate Intransitive (AI), Inanimate Intransitive (II), Transitive Animate (AI), and Transitive Inanimate (AI). Crucially, this means that verbs must be used appropriately for their paradigm: for instance, the root for throwing an inanimate noun such as a ball is hílo, while throwing an animate object (whether actually alive or not) is arrówe.

Verbs are obligatorily inflected for person and number (in a single prefix). Transitive verbs are obligatorily inflected for the person and number of the object (in a single suffix). They may also be inflected for tense, aspect, and voice as individual agglutinations.

The verb to be does not exist; a noun may be derived as a verb with the suffix vi immediately following the stem.  In a similar fashion, to possess takes the form of the suffix lowe (plural lovø).

Person

Subject prefix is always furthest from the root. The plural suffix is paired with the singular prefix, before the object suffix.

Object

Object suffixes are always furthest from the root.

The object suffix placement is also that of the passive suffix -oc.

Tense

Aspect

Mood

Other Affixes

Adjectives

Adjectives can be treated as verbs ("to be X") but also tend to have clitic forms that prefix the noun, closest to the root. In the lexicon here, verbal adjectives will be marked with (v), and clitics with (c).

Lexicon

Demonstratives

Demonstratives precede the noun.

Particles

Numbers

Base-12 system. Numbers are prefixes or particles (cardinal). Ordinals are prefixes immediately before the stem.

Open Class

Examples

The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11: 1-9)

1. Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
   Óma þírmar, waþáfiwes þissýlþolowøsil.
   (At this time, all people had one language.)
2. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
   Ic þáfiwes þisróvahøsil wi avášmar, þisollǿsil folášma Šinaršu ic þiséssisøsil amójiššu.
   (And at the time people moved from the sea, they found a field in Shinar and lived there.)
3. And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.
   Ic þissýlþøsil þísana, "Yrnamója, mácnicsamøs ilmonácvešali, ic ilǿcvoršuvešali." Ic þimmácnicsalovél sucénamøras, ic þimvíþumenlovél morþarmar.
   (And they said to them, "You all should come, bricks we will make, and we will burn them much." And they had bricks for stones, and bitumen for mortar.)
4. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth."
   Amójis þáfiwes, þissýlþøsil, "Yrnamója, ilmonácvešali þáfolasma ic mocélima, jífyr élišu, ic ilmonácvešali acálma ísenes, el ilvoréðveoc vórra némsi.
   (At that time, they said, "Come, we will build a city and a tower, the top in the sky, and we will make a name to us, or we will be dispersed across the world's face.
5. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.
   Ic Áfisþawa þinnamǿs þisveóvøs amósi þáfolasma ic mocélima. Ér enwoijin þimmonácøsilšali.
   (And Spirit came and saw the city and tower. Men's children built them.)
6. And the Lord said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
   Ic Áfisþawa þissýlþøs, "Yrveóvøsja, þisneþóšavíl, ic sí þisjéil sinšícevi úsyþ ómisji. Ic málinja þiswoljøyl simmálicanðoil þísawes.
   (And Spirit said, "See, they are one, and this is only the beginning of the things they will do. And nothing they want to do will be impossible to them.)
7. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech."
   Yrnamója, ilróvave ic ilmusmúrveþari, ic þiswacájílša ilmésylþovena."
   (Come, we will go and confuse them, and they will not understand their own speech.")
8. So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
   Ic Áfisþawa vóreþþari wi amójis folássi vórra némsi, ic þismálmonácøsilša þáfolasma.
   (And Spirit dispersed them from that place across the world's face, and they did not build the city.)
9. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.
   Ic acálja sinVávelvjøs. Amójis foláššu Áfisþawa ilmusmúrveþari vórra šinþáfiwes. Ic wi amójis foláššu vóreþþari vórra némsi.
   (And its name was Babel. From there Spirit confused the world's people. And from there Spirit dispersed them across the world's face.)