Tulvan

Tulvan is a language developed to be spoken by humans of an Earth-like planet of an imaginary time-line. It showcases a very degraded noun morphology, erosion of compounds, relexification and other such traits. A particular characteristic is that words have become more and more specific in their meanings, thus countering a leveling in morphology with a diversification in semantics. The speakers of Tulvan are thought to be in a post-apogee civilization that values culture and scientific knowledge above all, although they still retain some superstitions in their culture.

Introduction

One of the main goals of the language was to experiment with having few to no declensions in a language tending to isolation and analytical morphosyntax. Of course some remnants of an older system remain, so it is not purely one thing or the other, but denotes a state of flux in the language continuum. In comparison to other conlangs of mine it is quite light in declension, only having a marked accusative. Other characteristics are meant to set it apart from common western european languages, such as the use of prefixes for derivation and the use of postpositions being preferred.

Name

The native speakers of the language believe the name Tulvan to derive directly from their word 'tulv' meaning "to think", stating that their language is the best and most efficient way to express thought. This is, of course, highly unlikely, and many experts consider it just a case of folk etymology. The origin of the root of the name is unknown, although archaeological and liguistic studies point towards the ancient use of the endonym Tuluan and the region called Tuluanna as more possible and credible sources of the name. The exact meaning of it remains, as of yet, undetermined.

Phonology

The phonology of Tulvan is not particularly complicated by design. It possesses no affricates or sibilant fricatives, and the velar fricative <c> [x] is becoming indistinguishable from the velar stop <k> [k] in most dialects. The language distinguishes between simple vowels <a, e, i, o, u> and palatalized vowels <ä, ë, ö, ü>, the latter ones not unlike those in Russian or other Slavic languages.

Consonants

	Bilabial	Dental	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Labio-Velar	Glottal
Stop	p b	t d		k g	q	kʷ gʷ
Fricative	f v	th [θ]		c [x]		cʷ [xʷ]	h
Sibilant		s z
Nasal	m	n				nʷ
Liquid		l r
Approximant			y [j]			w

Notes:

• Since labialized consonants are written just like the IPA reading but with a regular w, they are not repeated.
• In modern times, many dialects merge the consonants <c, q, k> into a single /k/ phoneme. Some varieties, however, preserve the <c> vs <k> distinction through a voicing contrast, featuring /kʰ/ for <c> and /k/ for <k>.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u ʲu
Mid	e ʲe		o ʲo
Open		a ʲa

Notes:

• The only distinction in vowels is between regular vowels and palatized ones, these last ones written: <ä, ë, ö, ü>

Grammar

Tulvan is a mostly analytical language, but some remnants of an older case system still remain, for example, in the accusative of nouns. Both pronouns and nouns are inflected for accusative, there's also an adjectival prefix i- to form adjectives from nouns and pronouns. In the case of pronouns they serve to create the possessive adjectives for each person.

The accusative is used in nouns to mark the direct object of a verb. The mark of the accusative in Tulvan is the affix -u. It can sometimes behave as a suffix and sometimes as a prefix. This phenomenon is called allotaxy, and is phonetically conditioned by the letter in which the previous word ends or the next word begins with, wether it is a consonant or a vowel to avoid a combination of C-C or V-V.

For instance, in the sentence cur mem uspär? "Do you want some water?" the u- marks the accusative because mem ends in consonant and spär begins with one. However in a sentence like:

• Levi crumu nus. "See an old man!" (imperative)

Where crum is "man", it is perfectly valid to put the -u as a suffix. But this could change in a sentence like:

• Lev kwam ucrum nus. "I see an old man." (present)

Even though, in this particular case, either prefix or suffix forms are valid, thus lev kwam crumu nus, is also valid. Depending only on personal taste; however in the sentence:

• Lev kwam ucrum ëv nus. "I see a man (who) is old."

The preferred choice would be to prefix the accusative to avoid the following vowel. However, in cases where both the previous word ends in a vowel and the next one begins with a vowel the word preceding usually has precedence. Although some dialects can show different patterns or uses.

The only other inflection Tulvan nouns mark is number, with a plural suffix -n (for nouns with a final vowel) or -en (otherwise). So a word like utim "tree", would have a plural utimen "trees". This also applies for pronouns and verbs.

• Lev kwam utimen nus. "I see the old trees" or "I look at the old trees."

A distinction between "look" and "see" may be made by altering the pronoun. See below.

Adjectives

Adjectives in Tulvan are invariable in number, declension or gender. They follow their respective nouns and they are divided into two main groups: full adjectives and derived adjectives, the latter are marked by an attributive prefix i-. One will notice that sometimes an English adjective doesn't have a full adjective in Tulvan. Even though this could be fixed by the attributive making it a derived adjective, sometimes this can give an awkward expression for native Tulvan speakers.

This is the case, for example, with such words as "good" in most common greetings. This is not expressed by an adjective in Tulvan, but by a word meaning "well-being" as a noun. Also this is the case for some more complex derived adjectives. Needless to say colors belong to the full adjectives category. Example:

• trum ni nari. "Good night."

literally; "well-being in the night (for you)".

Adjectives always follow their noun:

• Crum nus. "The old man."
• Utim cip. "The new tree."
• Nwir cnara. "The black sky."

This also applies to derived adjectives with the attributive prefix.

• Crum itrum. "A good man."
• Roth icrum. "A mannish woman."

Verbs

Tulvan verbs inflect for tense, aspect and voice, usually by a suffix or prefix that expresses all of them. Tenses are historically devided into strong and weak. Strong tenses include a vowel infix or a suffix, while weak tenses will rely on an invariable prefix

Strong tenses

Strong tenses include the present or aorist, the past, the imperative and a subjunctive. The last two being voices rather than "tenses", but being historically grouped together due to how they are formed.

Affix	Conjugation	Example	English
-ø	Simple Present	tulv	think, thinks
C1aV1C2...	Simple Past	taulv	thought
-i	Imperative	tulvi	think!
C1aV1C2...-i	Subjunctive	taulvi	may think

Weak tenses

Weak tenses include the present habitual, the past habitual, the perfect past, the future and the conditional.

Affix	Conjugation	Example	English
ki-	Present Habitual	kitulv	think, thinks (everyday)
ki-C1aV1C2...	Past Habitual	kitaulv	used to think, was thinking
ka-	Past Perfect	katulv	have thought, has thought
ku-	Future	kutulv	will think
kya-	Conditional	kyatulv	would think

Adverbs

Adverbs derived from adjectives are formed in one of two ways: full adjectives add a suffix -iv that replaces a final vowel, while derived adjectives add a prefix ni-. This way we have:

cnara, "black" → cnariv, "darkly"

cip, "new" → cipiv, "newly"

But:

itrum, "good" → nitrum, "well"

iroth, "feminine" → niroth, "femininely"

Other resources

• Tulvan Vocabulary page