Leonine: Difference between revisions

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====Nominal phrases====
====Nominal phrases====
====Sentence syntax====
====Sentence syntax====
The sentence order is [Subject], [Theme], [Verb], [Complements]:
''Kaichanen Oto doubú Shanden mae.''
[Driver] [car] [moved] [store] [in-front-of]
"The driver moved the car in front of the store."
If an object is not a verb theme, it is placed after the verb:
''Haoki käité Oto.''
[Well] [I drove] [car]
"I drove the car well."
There can be multiple chained verb themes:
''Zoubu san hä nai.''
[Foot] [three] [I have] [not]
"I don't have three feet."
A prepositional phrase can be a verb theme:
''Canada ni mïtá.''
[Canada] [in] [I saw]
"I saw him/her/it/them in Canada."


==Vocabulary==
==Vocabulary==

Revision as of 00:18, 19 December 2019

Leonine is a language spoken by people who have taken the Lion morph, following the spread of the Neo-Mutant virus. The main lexical base is Japanese, but a large amount of Chinese, Romance and Germanic roots and untraceable new words have made it into the vocabulary. The language is also known as "Leonian".



File:Flag-Leonine.png
Leonine
Reoni
Pronounced: /ɾeoni/
Spoken: Leonine
Writing system: Latin
Genealogy: Japonic
Japanese (creole)
Neo-Mutant Feline
Typology
Morphological type: Fusional and agglutinative
Morphosyntactic alignment: Theme-based alignment (similar to Austronesian alignment)
Basic word order: SOV
Credits
Creator: User:Madbrain


History

The Neo-Mutant virus, after spreading through humans, turned them into various "morphs". People with similar morphs tended to congregate together, and ended up creating new languages starting from creoles based on the various human languages they spoke. Japanese was a particularly important source, forming the base for all the Feline Neo-Mutant varieties. The Feline languages are characterized by their use of supra-segmental phonetic distinctions (length, tone, accent, etc) as a basis for their grammatical inflections.

Phonology

Consonants

The consonants in Leonine follow the rough structure of Japanese and Indo-European languages.

Labial Dental Palatal Dorsal Glottal
Stop p b t d k g
Affricate ts dz tʃ dʒ
Fricative f v s z ʃ ʒ h
Nasal m n ŋ ɴ
Liquid w l ɾ j

The orthography is similar to Japanese Romanization, with the following conventions: the affricates /ts dz tʃ dʒ/ are written "ts dz ch dj", /ʃ ʒ/ are written "sh j", /ŋ ɴ/ are written "ng nr", and /j/ is written as "y".

Non-initial consonants can also be long (written as pp, tt, kk, tts, cch, ssh etc). This is often produced by grammatical processes. The exception to this is "r" (/ɾ/), which cannot be lengthened.

Vowels

Short vowels

Front Central Back
Close i ɨᵝ u
Mid e~ɛ o~ɔ
Open a

The vowel /ɨᵝ/ is written as "u". In turn, /u/ is written as 'û' except when combined with a tone, in which case it is written as 'uh' with the tone mark added (resulting in "úh üh ùh" for the high, dipping and falling tone).

Long vowels

Front Central Back
Close ɨᵝː
Mid
Open ɑˤː

The lexical long vowels /eː oː ɑˤː/ are the result of diphthongs "ei ou ao" turning into monophthongs, and are written that way.

The other long vowels are the result of grammatical elongation or borrowing, are are written with double letters (aa ee ii oo uu ûû).

Nasal vowels

Front Central Back
Close ɪ̃ː ɨ̃ᵝː ʊ̃ː
Mid ɛ̃ː ɔ̃ː
Open ãː

Nasal vowels are somewhat rare, and are written as vowel+n (an en in on un ûn). In particular, /ɪ̃ː ɨ̃ᵝː ʊ̃ː/ are very rare.

Diphthong

Front
Open to close ai

The diphthong /ai/ can be turned into the vowel sequence /a.i/ by grammatical processes.

Tones

Leonine uses tone strictly as a grammatical process. Only a few syllables are marked for tone, which spreads to adjacent syllables.

Name Spelling IPA Contour Use in Nouns Use in Verbs
Plain a (˧ ˩ etc) Very variable, depends on intonation Non-theme non-qualified nouns 3rd person present
High (final) ...á ...˥ High last syllable Theme and qualified nouns 3rd person past
High (right-spreading) á... ˥˥˥... High first syllable, spreads to whole word Implicit possessive Imperative (2nd person)
Dipping ä ˨˩˦ Falls low and rises, similar to Mandarin 3rd tone (never used) 1st person present
Dipping + High ä...á ˨˩˦...˥ Initial dipping tone + high tone on final syllable (never used) 1st person past
Falling à ˥˩ Falls from high to low (like Mandarin 4th tone) (never used) 2st person present
Falling + High à...á ˥˩...˥ Initial falling tone + high tone on final syllable (never used) 2st person past

The final high tone on theme/qualified nouns is not written. Instead, when the noun not the theme and isn't qualified but the context implies that it should, the next word is written with an initial capital letter.

Syllable Structure

The syllable structure of Leonine strictly (C)V, where C stands for a consonant and V stands for a vowel or the /ai/ diphthong. If the /ai/ diphthong is followed by a vowel, it is resyllabified as /a.jV/ (where V is the vowel). Various vowel sequences are possible. Sequences of a nasal vowel followed by another vowel are generally disallowed, and are normally transformed into /V.nV/ (where V V are non-nasal vowels). In spellings, apostrophes are used to break up ambiguous spellings (ex: /ao/ is written as "a'o").

The following syllables are not used outside of loanwords: /ti, tɨᵝ, tu, di, dɨᵝ, du, tse, tsa, tso, tsai, ji, wo, wɨᵝ, wu/, plus long and nasal versions of these.

Prosody

The concept of stress doesn't apply very well to Leonine, but generally you could describe the process as a right-leaning accent on the last syllable of the word. The syllable rhythm is moraic.

Grammar

The Leonine language is morphologically rich. Morphological processes fall into two categories: supra-segmental (where a tone, long vowels/consonants or extra syllable boundaries are added), and agglutinative suffixing. It's not clear if the suffixes are independent words, clitics or true affixes.

Nouns

Leonine nouns are declined for number (singular, plural), qualified/possessive state (normal, qualified, implicitly possessed), and theme vs non-theme (roughly equivalent to accusative vs non-accusative case). Using the noun oto ("car") as an example, the following forms can be seen:

Singular Plural (1) Plural (2)
Normal state Non-theme Oto Otoe Ootoo
Theme Otó Otoé Ootóo
Qualified Non-theme Otó Otoé Ootóo
Theme Otó Otoé Ootóo
Implicity possessed Non-theme Ótó Ótoé Óotóo
Theme Ótó Ótoé Óotóo

(Note: nouns with a final acute accent are not written as such. Instead, the following word is not capitalized.)

Plural takes two forms: either an -e suffix (-ne if the noun ends in -e), or elongation of the vowels (generally only applied to the first two syllables). Ex: oto -> otoe or ootoo. Either form can be used interchangeably.

The qualified state indicates that a noun is further qualified by adjectives, possessive pronouns, possessive nouns, relative clauses, demonstratives (nra) etc., which are added after the noun. The qualified state is indicated by an absence of break in the intonation after the noun, which generally means that the last syllable takes a high tone. Ex: oto -> oto me (as opposed to oto Me).

By putting a noun in qualified state and adding a pronoun, you can form pronominal possessives:

Person Example Gloss
1st person singular oto me "my car"
2nd person singular oto ne/te "your car (singular)"
3rd person oto a "his/her/its/their car"
1st person plural oto mou "our car"
2nd person plural oto nou "your car (plural)"

The implicit possessive indicates that the noun has a pronominal possessor, and while the person is left implicit, most of the time it is the same as the verb subject. It is roughly equivalent to the changing "house" into "home", "father" into "dad" etc. It is indicated by giving a high tone to all the syllables (written as a high tone on the first syllable).

Nouns which are used as verbal theme (generally equivalent to the object in nominative-accusative languages) appear directly in front of the verb in the sentence, and are linked to the verb by removing the intonation break between the noun and the verb, which generally results in a high tone on the last syllable of the noun. This process is similar to verb incorporation, and the distinction often translates into a subject vs object distinction:

Noun Thematicity Example Gloss
Non-thematic Sente Doubu. "The body moves."
Thematic Sente doubu. "He moves his body."

Adjectives

Adjectives in Leonine are generally invariable, aside from intonation changes. They always follow the noun.

When used in noun phrases (as epithets), the intonation of the adjective depends on if there are further qualifiers applied to the noun - in which case there is no intonation break after the adjective and the last syllable generally has a high tone (and the next word is not written with an initial Capital letter). Ex: oto hao me (as opposed to oto hao Me).

When used with the verb da (to be) as an attribute, the adjective becomes a verbal theme and there is no intonation break either (so the verb da doesn't start with a Capital). In some sentences, this intonation change is meaningful:

Adjective Thematicity Example Gloss
Non-thematic Oto hao Da. "The good car is (like that)."
Thematic Oto Hao da. "The car is good."
Thematic Oto hao da. "It's a good car."

The adjective can be used as an adverb by adding the -ki suffix. This can be used either as a theme or not:

Adverbial Thematicity Example Gloss
Non-thematic Haoki Tsuté. "Well he/she/it/they did it!"
Thematic Haoki tsuté. "He/she/it/they did it well."

Verbs

Verbs in Leonine are compact and expressive. The verbal complex expresses the subject, object, second object, tense, mood a polarity of the action, in addition to various other distinctions (using auxiliaries). However, aspect is not an important distinction in Leonine and is generally left implicit. The verbal complex is made out of two parts:

Inner Core

The inner core is formed by the verb root and the verb tone, which indicates the verbal person (1st, 2nd or 3rd person) and core tenses (present, past or imperative). Along with the plural subject suffix (which is part of the outer section), the base verb conjugation forms a simple paradigm, which can be shown using the verb mita (see):

Subject Present Past Imperative
1st person singular Mitä. (I see) Mïtá. (I saw)
2st person singular Mità. (You see) Mìtá. (You saw) Míta! (See!)
3rd person Mita. (He/she/it/they see) Mitá. (He/she/it/they saw)
1st person plural Mitä you. (We see) Mïtá you. (We saw)
2nd person plural Mità you. (You(pl) see) Mìtá you. (You(pl) saw) Míta you! (See!(pl))

Some verbs have multiple forms. Examples:

Irregular negatives
Positive Negative
Rai Ra nai
Ha Dja nai, ha nai
Da Nai
Short vs long forms
Short form Long form
Tsu Tsute
Ha Haya
Ya Haya
Ku Iku
Shou Shoubu
You Youbu

Outer Section

The verb's outer section is made out of suffixes added after the verb. They include object pronouns, auxiliary verbs (including the negative auxiliary) and the 1st/2nd person subject pluralizer (you). Using mita as an example:

Object Example Gloss Position
1st person singular Mita me. "He* sees me." Before auxiliaries
2nd person singular Mita ne/te. "He* sees you." Before auxiliaries
3rd person Mita (n)a. "He* sees him*." *After auxiliaries and you*
3rd person reflective Mita i. "He* sees himself*." Before auxiliaries
1st person plural Mita mou. "He* sees me." Before auxiliaries
2nd person plural Mita nou. "He* sees you(pl)." Before auxiliaries

(* "He" can be replaced by "he/she/it/they" and so forth, since the 3rd person is not distinguished by gender or number.)

The 3rd person object pronoun "a" can generally be dropped and is usually implied by context. The pronouns a/i become na/ni if the verb ends in a/i respectively. A second object pronoun can be used: Mita me a. ("he sees mine") etc. This second object pronoun logically is always a. In trivalent verbs such as "to give", the first object is the recipient (benefactive), and the second object is the thing that is being given.

The verbal auxiliaries are added to form a wide variety of tenses, moods, voices, valency changes, and the negative. Here are the most common auxiliaries:

Auxiliary Example Gloss
ba Mitä bá. "I was seen."
tsu Mitä tsu a. "I make him see."
ku Mitä ku. "I will see."
kai Mitä kai. "I'm starting to see."
hai Mitä hai. "I've stopped seeing."
rai Mitä rai. "I can see."
nai Mitä nai. "I don't see."

The auxiliary rai becomes ra when used in the negative: Mita ra nai. "I can't see". When an auxiliary in -ai is combined with -you (subject pluralizer), they are phonetically combined: Mita rai you. /mita ɾa joː/ ("They can see").

The last part of the outer section that can be added is a postposition. This adds an implicit locative argument to the verb: Mitä ni. ("I look in it/there."), Mitä mae. ("I look in front of it/forwards."), etc.

Syntax

Nominal phrases

Sentence syntax

The sentence order is [Subject], [Theme], [Verb], [Complements]:

Kaichanen Oto doubú Shanden mae. [Driver] [car] [moved] [store] [in-front-of] "The driver moved the car in front of the store."

If an object is not a verb theme, it is placed after the verb: Haoki käité Oto. [Well] [I drove] [car] "I drove the car well."

There can be multiple chained verb themes: Zoubu san hä nai. [Foot] [three] [I have] [not] "I don't have three feet."

A prepositional phrase can be a verb theme: Canada ni mïtá. [Canada] [in] [I saw] "I saw him/her/it/them in Canada."

Vocabulary

Example text