Wanian
| Wanian Wanyat | |
| Spoken in: | Wania (Wanya) |
| Conworld: | Melin |
| Total speakers: | ? |
| Genealogical classification: | Weniti
|
| Basic word order: | SOV |
| Morphological type: | agglutinative |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | nominative-accusative |
| Writing system: | |
| Created by: | |
| Pierre Abbat | late 1970s |
Wanian is the Weniti language that best preserves the grammar of the family. It features:
- four noun cases (ergative, nominative, accusative, dative) for the main verb arguments, plus other cases such as locative and genitive
- double case, when a noun is an argument of two verbs
- agreement of case marking on nouns and verbs.
Examples:
- Certer-u-be-n-yod nebat-it-ab-en-s cobens-es-ev tibas-at-be-s-er-v-eth?
- cistern-PL-2ND-GEN-LOC cold-CAUS-PAST-FOLL-NOM water-NOM-ACC have-PRES-2ND-NOM-PREC-ACC-QUES
- Do you have in your cisterns water that has been made cold? (Out of the Silent Planet)
The verb ending -ens (or -nes; many endings have a CV form and a VC form and use one or the other for euphony reasons) indicates that the subject cobenses follows the verb nebatens; this gives it the force of a participle. The suffix -erv in tibaserv indicates that the object cobensev precedes it, which is the normal order. The 2nd plural suffix is -bu, which unlike -be does not metathesize. The 1st person pronoun is -li. The ergative ending is -l and the dative is -m.
- Jan-es-es adrab-u-re-s jan-ay-a har-er-s.
- man-NOM-NOM language-PL-PREC-NOM man-SAMENUM-IS worth-PREC-NOM
- A man is worth as many men as he speaks languages.
The noun janeses has two nominative endings, indicating that it is the subject of two verbs. adrab is both a noun and a verb; being plural, it indicates that the man speaks more than one language. -res is metathesized for euphony. The plural of janeses is januses, where one NOM ending loses its vowel. The same number ending is -a, but since it precedes another ending -a, a y is inserted between them. The second -a makes a verb "to be a man" out of a noun "man", or is a case indicating "as a man". har has a homophone meaning "see", but that would normally take the accusative case.
- Be janes adrabens zimasares.
- the man-NOM language-FOLL-NOM animal-NOM-IS-PREC-NOM
- Man is the animal that speaks.
This illustrates -a forming a verb. zima takes the ending -s indicating that it's the subject of adrabens, then -a makes it a verb, which takes -res indicating that the subject janes precedes.
Pronouns
Wanian has three different third person pronouns, depending on whether the referent is in the same sentence or not, and if so, whether it is before or after the pronoun. This marking is obligatory when the pronoun is a verb suffix; when it is a standalone word, it is used sometimes loosely. The pronouns are li "I", be "you", te "it" (not in the sentence), re "it" (preceding), and ne "it" (following).
