Sisiwön

"Sisiwön" is the provisional name of a collaborative Conlang, started in June 2004, by a small group of members of the Conlang list: Paul Bennett, Alex Fink, Rob Haden, Joe, and Robert "Trebor" Jung.

The name itself, while phonologically compatible with the language, doesn't actually mean anything (yet).

This page is essentially a public repository of information on Sisiwön. Work on the language is conducted in the Yahoo group ConlangCollaboration. If you'd like to participate, feel free to join the group (as opposed to changing this page directly).

Phonology

Consonants

	Labial	Labiodental	Alveolar	Lateral	Postalveolar	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Plosives	p, p_h, p_>	-	t, t_h, t_>	-	-	k, k_h, k_>, k_w, k_w_h, k_w_>	q, q_w	-
Affricates	-	-	ts), ts)_>, ts)_w, ts)_j	tK), tK)_>	tS), tS)_> tS)_w	-	-	-	-
Fricatives	-	f	s, s_w, s_j	K	S [Why not S_w too? --Trebor]	x, x_w	-	-	h
Nasals	m	-	n, n_j	-	-	N, N_w	-	-	-
Liquids	-	-	r, r_j	l, l_j	-	-	-	-	-	-
Semivowels	-	-	-	-	j	w	-	-

There may be a restriction preventing labialized and palatalized consonants from occurring before [u] and [i], respectively.

Vowels

There are a total of twenty phonetic vowels: i [I], ii [i:], ü [Y], üü [y:], ï [U_c], ïï [M:], u [U], uu [u:], e [E], ee [e:], ö [9], öö [2:], ë [V], ëë [7:], o [O], oo [o:], ä [a], ää [a:], a [A], aa [A:]. However, due to vowel harmony, any given word will only contain a subset of these, either the front series (i, ii, ü, üü, e, ee, ö, öö, ä, ää) or the back series (ï, ïï, u, uu, ë, ëë, o, oo, a, aa). It makes sense to think of Sisiwön as having five basic vowel phonemes (i, ü, e, ö, ä), plus two suprasegmental phonemes, [+long] and [+back], the latter occuring zero or one times in each word, affecting all the vowels in it.

Syllable Structure

It seems the consensus is CV(N) with N being any non-stop, non-affricate, or alternatively the aforementioned vowel-lengthening suprasegmental [+long]. The symbol C may also stand for a word-initial 0-, allowing vowel-initial words.

Word Structure

Any number of syllables, as defined above, with no other constraints known at this time.

Grammar

Verbal Morphology

Verbs are marked agglutinatively for person and number of subject and objects (both direct and indirect), tense (past vs non-past), mood (indicative vs irrealis vs imperative), aspect (imperfect vs perfect) and evidentiality (probably as clitics, meanings as yet undecided).

Inchoative and completive will probably be derivational and independent of the aspectual system.

There are a small class of valence-increasing derivational operations that take f(x,y) -> g(z,f(x,y)), where g is "want", "cause", "allow", "prevent", or "fear", and maybe a small number of others.

Syntax

Syntax is overwhelmingly, perhaps exclusively, head-final.

Lexicon

Swadesh List

1. hand /p_hi:kE/
2. left (hand) -/K9/ (/p_hi:kEK9/)
3. right (hand) -/rE/ (/p_hi:kErE/)
4. leg /N_wAtS)U/
   1. left leg /N_wAtS)UKO/
5. foot /x_wi:pa/
6. to walk /x_wIxpE/
7. tooth /mAtAn/

Other

1. baby /pElE/
2. carry /k_wAnV/
3. snail /q9lm9s/