Stilio

Stilio zlacuru
Spoken in:	All
Conworld:	Harry Potter
Total speakers:	est. < 10,000
Genealogical classification:	a priori conlangs magic snakes and snake-like reptiles Stilio
Basic word order:	VSO
Morphological type:	Fusional
Morphosyntactic alignment:	Active–stative
Writing system:
Created by:
Francis Nolan/Robert Marshall Murphy	2002/2012 A.D.

Parseltongue (in this article) refers to Stilio, a reconstructed form of Parseltongue. This language has a unique morphosyntactic alignment (which is largely Ergative-absolutive, while incorporating elements of Fluid-S), and defaults to VSO word order. It is, however, strongly non-configurational.

1. Phonology
   1. Consonants
   2. Vowels
   3. Phonotactics
2. Morphology
   1. Nouns
   2. Verbs
      1. Adjectives
      2. Adverbs
3. Syntax
4. Texts
   1. From the Films
   2. Translations
5. Lexicon

It is everyone involved's sincere desire that this project would serve as an inspirational model for magical/muggle interactions in the future. Parseltongue is an excellent pattern to follow since it's existence is only known by magic and only muggles have developed the science of linguistics. This project is dedicated to the first martyr of this cause, Charity Burbage, and the very kind Parselmouth Penelope Gaunt, without whose help none of this would have been possible.

History

Paracelsus (1493—1541), was an Austrian physician, born Phillip Von Hohenheim. He discovered he could speak to snakes quite on accident. He had no explanation for the phenomenon and made no attempt to document it beyond a bare recording of his ability.

The features of Parseltongue show that it is learnable by humans, but not related to any one human language. There are a large number of Semitic and Indo-European features, but some African and East Asian one too. The famous ex-Parselmouth Harry Potter has documented that he never had to learn any vocabulary or grammar, yet could produce novel utterances with derived morphologies at will. We, therefore, speculate that the speech community of Parseltongue is all Parselmouths, Snake-animagi, and sentient snake-like creatures. The language is magically maintained among all speakers and updates itself. In Sapir's terminology, there is only short-term unidirectional drift, not long-term cyclic drift. Given the small number of speakers, this drift is assumed to be very small and gradual. Dialects are assumed not to exist.

Everyone can learn the language, but shall automatically then be able to speak to snakes. Their hearing does not include such slight vibrations of air as human speech, so magic is required.

Conceit

Cambridge professor Francis Nolan was commissioned to produce consistent phrasing across four movies (i.e. Chamber of Secrets, Goblet of Fire, and Deathly Hallows 1 & 2). He did not create a full grammar and dictionary, only a handful of phrases. As a professor of Finnish and Estonian, he subscribes to the theory that gemination in those languages follows three levels of gradation, though he seems to have recognized that this is disputed and only included two levels in Parseltonuge. In his notes, he often uses /ʕ/ but labels it a voiceless fricative, so we have used /ħ/ instead. Of the vowels, he only uses /a ɪ i ɛ e/, but the actors pronounce /œ æ/ on occasion. There are no stops or affricates in his phrases, but the snake in "Philosopher's Stone" says /θeiŋksː/. We also take it as a conceit to the actors that /j/ was used in place of the much more difficult /ɰ/. Ejectives, clicks, the tap and /ɹ/ were also not on Nolan's radar, so they must take a small, precise role in Stilio. Imprecise enunciation must be assumed with the actors to produce distinct cases, but I have tried to limit it to gemination. Nolan's own notes point at Ergative and Absolutive cases, but question strict E-A alignment.

In my defense, 90% of the Parseltongue heard in the films is in the imperative voice! -- Aquatiki 2012

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.

This must 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 eggs are inside, some eggs are 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!"