Stilio

Stilio slashuru
Species:	snakes and snake-like reptiles
Credits
Creator:	Robert Marshall Murphy
Created:	2012 A.D.

Parseltongue (in this article) refers to Stilio, a reconstructed form of Parseltongue. A script for this language is forth-coming. This language a unique morphosyntactic alignment, and defaults to SOV word order. (It is, however, strongly Non-configurational, but verbs usually end a complete utterance.)

Phonology

Snakes have vastly simplified mouths compared to human-being. We are capable of making every sound they make, though some are easier than others. Snakes have no lips, but their labial scales can contract and produce something like "lip-rounding", which is very important is Parseltongue. Their palate is occupied with the vomeronasal organ or Jacobson's organ, which acts as a sense of smell. Snakes have no uvula. Their glottis is where our pharynx is, but it can move aside when eating large prey. They have no epiglottal region.

Sentient and non-sentient snakes hiss their entire volume of air without interruption, so a Parseltongue utterances cannot be longer than about ten seconds. Stops are typically initial in an utterance. Whatever vocal-cords they are graced with by magic, snakes cannot speak very loudly or vary pitch beyond very low frequencies.

Given their anatomy, even with the aide of magic, Parseltongue

• has no labial consonants
• has no retroflex consonants
• has no palatal or alveolar-palatal consonants
• has no uvular, pharyngeal, or epiglottal consonants
• has no voiced consonants
• is all spoken in creaky-voice
• has no corarticulated consonants
• of the clicks, has only the dental
• may begin an utterance with a stop, but they are rare elsewhere in speech.
• affricates can appear anywhere and are common
• must end an utterance with a sibilant/fricative or - less commonly - a vowel
• has ejective forms of the stops
• contrasts lip rounding on several consonants

Consonants

Consonants
	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alv.		Velar	Glottal
Nasal		n̥			ŋ̊
Stop		t			k
Ejective		t'			k'
Click	ǀ
Fricative	θ	s	ʃ	ɬ	ʟ̝̊	h
Round. Fric.	θ̹	s̹	ʃ̹	ɬ̹
Approximants		ɹ		l	ɰ
Tap		ɾ

Because snakes use a wide range of glottis motion instead of changing vocal fold pitch, there are two versions of most letters. Humans can best approximate this change by tightly rounding their lips. There is one place where this is impossible for the human mouth, /θ̹/. This is sound is best approximated by rolling (also called curling) the tongue and passing air through as thin an opening as possible. Most English speakers round their lips anyway when shooshing someone, so great care must be taken to distinguish /ʃ̹/ and /ʃ/. Snakes don't appear to mind if /s̹/ produces some whistling. All the stops, whether in or out of affricate pairs, can be ejectives. /t/ can be followed by /θ/, /s/, /ʃ/, /ɬ/, /h/, /s̹/, or /ʃ̹/ to make affricates. /k/ can be combined with /s/, /ʃ/, /ɬ/, /ʟ̝̊/, /h/, /s̹/, /ʃ̹/, or /ɬ̹/. /t/ and /k/ can be ejectives on all these cases.

In our orthography, the voiceless indicator (e.g. n̥) would be ubiquitous, and so it is omitted. The velar nasal is often written as 'g', since /g/ cannot occur. The dental click is usually written as a pound sign (i.e. #), since the 'pipe' can be confused with a lowercase 'L'. Theta (θ, a.k.a. 'th') is usually written as a 'd'. Esh (ʃ, a.k.a. 'sh') is written as a 'c'. The alveolar lateral fricative (i.e. /ɬ/) is written as a 'z'. The addition of lip pursing/rounding is specified with the cedilla (e.g. ç, z̧, etc). The voiceless velar lateral fricative (i.e. /ʟ̝̊/) is written as a 'j'. The velar approximant (i.e. /ɰ/) is written as a 'w'. Of the two 'R's, the alveolar approximant is written 'r' and the alveolar tap is written with a dollar sign, $.

Vowels

Vowels
	Front-Unrounded	Front-Rounded	Back (Rounded?)
High	i	ï (=y)	u
Mid	e	ë (=ø)	o
Low	æ		a

The Parseltongue system of vowels is a simple of eight unique sounds. The "resting vowel" (like English schwa) is /a/, but snakes more often fill "gaps" with /s/. The sometimes despised "ash" (/æ/) is not rare in Parseltongue.

There is a not phonemic sound that snakes are readily capable of making, the trilled 'r'. However, this is a highly erotic sound which no snake would make in polite company.

Grammar

Nouns

Parseltongue is exceedingly pro-drop, like Japanese. Speakers often state the topic and then rely on context to make things clear. There are four 'core' cases - strangely called Active, Volitional, Stative, and Passive - and five 'oblique' cases - Dative, Possessive, Partitive, Genitive, and Ablative. The core cases form mostly by ablaut, the obliques by suffixing. The definite article is a prefixed /s/, while indefiniteness is marked in the verb.

kac / human Core Cases

Case	Paradigm
Active	kac
Volitional	këc
Stative	kaëç
Passive	kaæc

kac / human Oblique Cases

Case	Paradigm
Dative	kacgæ
Possessive	kaca
Part	kacæ
Genitive	kæcçë
Ablative	këcëa

There are four noun declensions (a->ë->æ ; e->ë->o ; i->ï->u ; and a consonant declension)

Pronouns

There are 'dummy' pronouns which are nearly contentless in meaning. However, 'measure words' can also be used a pronouns, with needing numbers attached.

Verbs

All verbs have a lexically contained expectation for which case the subject will be in. Hence, all verbs are active or passive and volitional or non-volitional by default, which will also indicate paradigm it follows. Active verb endings are suffixed, passive prefixed. Volitional verb endings are sibilant heavy, non-volitional vowel heavy.

Verbs inflect for an astronomical eight persons:

Person	Meaning	Example
-1	Universal negation	"No one eats himself."
0	Indefinite	"Someone ate the prey."
½	dim. part of ego	"Me (my tail) is coming."
1	Ego	"I ate the mouse."
1½	a.k.a. 2 inc.	"We (you and I) are friends."
2	Interlocutor	"You are handsome."
3	Near other party	"She is our daughter."
4	Obviative	"He bit her."

As with nouns, Parseltongue does not typically mark number. Tense is assumed or conveyed via adverbs.

Aspect is either imperfective or perfective. There are three mood: Indicative - for independent clauses; Subjunctive - for dependent clauses; and Illocutionary - for magical or imperative clauses. The subjunctive is very plain, conjugating for only aspect, but not person or evidentiality.

All indicative/independent verbs in Parseltongue must be marked for evidentiality. Snakes senses are (in decreasing order of assuredness):

Taste/Smell

Snakes extend their tongues into the air/water and pull "smells" into their mouths, where their "noses" (Jacobsen's organs) are. This gives them a very refined and directional sense. Knowledge obtained this way is the most certain and so is most analogous to human's "I see" or "I know".

Heat/IR

Snakes have special sensors where other animals' "noses" would be which detect heat or Infra-red radiation. Snakes report not "seeing" a field - as humans do with sight - but "feeling" the nearness and/or warmth of things. This is most akin to a human saying "I feel like you are ..." or "I sense not everyone in the room agrees with ...".

Hear/Vibration

A snake's entire body functions like an "ear", sensing vibrations. This knowledge is very accurate, but because it comes from their whole body (not just their head) it is more like "gut knowledge". Magic causes snakes internal ear to hear external speech.

Sight

Most snakes have poor vision, with a majority not being binocular. This mood is used metaphorically as a person would say, "I suppose" or "I guess".

Idioms

(like a) Human's face in the nose

"It's self-evident." Snakes' faces are unreadable, but they generally know how to read human body language, mainly through smell and temperature sensing. Smells are "in one's nose" because smell samples are brought into the mouth by the tongue and placed upon the Jacobsen's organ.

to pass over the nose

Food is passed over the Jacobsen's organ as it is eaten. If something is noxious, to eat it would be unbearably intense. Snakes say this meaning "It's too awful" or "I don't want to!"

Passing over roughness aids molting

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger in the end."

Some have eggs inside, some have eggs outside

"Different strokes for different folks." Some snakes have pouches for their eggs to hatch inside their bodies, giving the appearance of live births. Many snakes do not.

I am the venom.

Not all snakes are poisonous, but all snakes spur themselves on to overcome fear and strike out (often metaphorically) by willing themselves to be their own venom. "I can do this!"