Sajem Tan

Sajem Tan or Common Honey is a collaborative conlang started in November 2015 by members of the CONLANG mailing list.[1] [2] As of 29 December 2015, the phoneme inventory and romanization have been decided along with some of the phonotactics, a few words have been coined and a few simple sentences written; work on the native script, syntax and morphology are proceeding.

As the language and its documenation grow, we will separate these into subpages.

Creation Myth

The Sajem Tan community is based on the following creation myth, posted by Shanoxilt Cizypij on 30 November 2015:

So very long ago, during gray and overcast days past, Thunder rumbled. From the shaken sky tumbled Thunder's noises and with them Rain. By the fallen Rain, Flower was nourished and River was filled. Upon its web, between Flower and Stone, Spider gathered Rain. When Rain ceased and Thunder silenced, Bee gathered Flower's pollen. Bee then flew away to its hive to make our Common Honey. Upon the hive came Bear who so loved our Common Honey that it shared with all who would sample. Witnessing all this, from atop Stone, Bird declared, "May this recur until all our tribe partakes of Common Honey."

snymmeht keh slnuhm znolkah sno kemfeh dulc Divolm. kem zhasikzheh metfeh dulc Divolmvmeh dolnah keh zloahkahm Telzlnoln. znim Telzlnolnvah gulslimumsun Jidolk keh jelkzhutumsun Shelsheln. sehvmeh zathelndin navnyc, Jidolk keh Thefam sholmak, Telzlnoln znolcfeh Zatheln. vaslnulmfeh Telzlnoln keh simemzhutfehsun Divolm zult, Jidolkvmeh zhetam znolcfeh Kizhult. zhuhzhuhmfeh Kizhult zlovmeh kizhultdin seln dehahvmeh Sajem Tan fmyvuhkfehjahk. kizhultdin dathnycfeh Thefnolm. dehahvmeh Sajem Tan zhejulnmunfeh Thefnolm tyk zo vesneneht zlo shasholcfeh fnit xyt duahkahm. "kasynsho sin duah Sajem Tan shasholcum xyt dehahvmeh molm taznoln" tanzlulcfeh xyt duah duldoltfeh Thefam navnyc Vithit.

Roles

The characters in this myth are also the titles or roles of members of the community:

Thunder	phonology	Samantha Tarnowski
Rain	morphology	Asher Drummond
Spider	syntax	Jim Henry
Flower	semantics	Brett Williams
Stone	orthography	Daniel Swanson
River	pragmatics	James Constable
Bee	corpus	Jim Henry
Bear	pedagogy	Jon Michael Swift
Bird or the swift feathered one	supervision	Shanoxilt Cizypij
Ants	other members of the community	Scott Hamilton, Mia DeSanzo, Noelle Morris et alia
Tree		James Hyett
Dust		Steel-kun
Wind		Reuben Staley
Star	idioms	Dave Hayes
Lightning	music	Emmaline Tarnowski

Each of the roles has certain taboos as well as responsibilities for the development of the language. For instance, Bee cannot refer to the swift feathered one by name, Thunder must never rhyme, and River must always mark tense. Animate roles (Bird, Bear, Bee and Spider) must speak in the third person, and vegetal roles (Flower) in the second.

Phonology and romanization

Vowels:
IPA            i  e   ɛ  æ  u   ɑ   ɤ   ʌ  y   ø  ɵ   œ
romanization   i  e  eh  a  u  ah  ul  uh  y  ol  o  el

Consonants:
IPA            ts  t  k  d  g  m  n  f  v   θ  s  z   ʃ   ʒ   ɬ   ɮ  x  ʎ
romanization    c  t  k  d  g  m  n  f  v  th  s  z  sh  zh  sl  zl  x  j

The proper alphabetical order is: d, g, x, j, f, v, th, s, z, sh, zh, sl, zl, m, n, a, el, e, ol, i, y, uh, ul, c, t, k, ah, eh, o, u

The only allowed coda consonants are voiceless plosives and nasals. Any consonant by itself is allowed in onset; the only atttested clusters are fricative + homorganic nasal, e.g. /vm-/, /zn-/.

1. Root words consist of zero or more C(C)V syllables followed by a C(C)VC syllable, containing a restricted subset of vowels: ol, e, el, i, a, ul, uh, y

2. Suffixes and particles are to consist of one (C)V(C) syllable using the other vowels not used in content roots: o, ah, eh, u

3. The final consonant of a syllable can only be a nasal or unvoiced plosive (t, k, c, m, n).

4. If a syllable begins with a consonant cluster, the first consonant must be a fricative and the second a nasal at more or less the same point of articulation. E.g. fm-, vm-, sn-, zn-, shn-, thn-, etc.

Syntax

• default OVS word order
• relative clauses before their head nouns
• auxiliary verbs after main verbs
• adjectives before nouns
• postpositions (for whatever we aren't marking with case, including some weird stuff that other languages mark with verbs); postpositional phrases precede what they modify
• several grammatical particles that introduce neologisms and their initial definitions, or words being used in new senses

Morphology

• Self-segmenting morphology
• Agglutinating
• Dependent marking
• Case endings for oblique roles
• Lots of applicatives
• No noun classes
• Minimal declension/conjugation classes
• Minimal irregularity

Verbs

Marked on the verb (agglutinating suffixes)

• aspect
• valency changing operations (voice, applicatives) (optional)

Template: root-aspect-(valency)

Aspect markers for verbs are obligatory. If you want to explicitly mark tense, then you have to use a mood auxiliary.

durative   -feh
continuous -sho
gnomic     -um
habitual   -eht
perfective -dah

Auxilliary verbs

Nonpast                         ol       i
immediate past                  el       e
mid past/indeterminate past     y        a
remote past                     uh       ul

That is, the nonpast dictionary form of an auxiliary verb would have "i" or "ol" while inflected past forms would keep the same consonants but change the vowel as above.

Agent, force, patient and experiencer marked by word order (agent and force after the verb, patient and experiencer before the verb)

Morphological cases

-zheh	focus/source
-thot	recipient/beneficiary
-gu	instrmental I -- tools that fit in the hand
-vah	instrumental II -- tools too big to hold in the hand, and intangible tools like software
-kahm	comitative
-vmeh	genitive

Lexicon

See Sajem_Tan/Lexicon or http://mr-martian.github.io/Sajem_Tan/lexicon.html

Suffixes

-ah -- plural

-da -- perfective aspect [archaic, xref "dah"]

-dah -- perfective aspect

-eht -- habitual aspect

-fe -- durative aspect [archaic, xref "feh"]

-feh -- durative aspect

-jahk -- in order to (valency suffix)

-kah -- suffix for "energetic" and/or "coffee"

-kahf -- suffix for "energetic" and/or "coffee" [archaic, xref "kah"]

-ku -- interogative suffix

-meht -- having a surfeit or plenitude of something

-mon -- collective noun; a group of something

-mun -- very; extremely; maximal intensification

-noc -- the end state or product of an action (suffixes to verb root, not to inflected verb)

-ok -- horrendous; excedingly awful

-so -- derivational suffix: an entity having the thing referred to by the stem, e.g. zhiman "feather" > zhimanso "feathered one"

-sho -- continuous aspect

-sun -- passive voice

-tuc -- part of

-um -- gnomic aspect

-zhum -- noun derivational suffix, indicates a pet

-zhut -- to cause to be

Numbers

	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Decimal	tim	dec	fam	vulc	sluht	zlik	shen	zhat	kulk	guhn
Senary	tyt	dolk	felt	vyk	slolc	zlelc

Decimal multipliers:

10 -- znek

100 -- thnolt

1000 -- vmelt

Senary multipliers:

6 -- xek

36 -- folt

216 -- zhelt

Decimal point (both): nolk

Senary numbers are used in formal or poetic registers, for items naturally occurring in groups of six, and for units of time smaller than an hour.

Examples:

• 360₁₀ / 1400₆ = vulcthnolt shenznek / zhelt slolcfolt
• π ≈ 3.142₁₀ / 3.0503₆ = vulc nolk dec sluht fam / vyk nolk tyt zlelc tyt vyk

Pronouns

	1st person	2nd person	3rd person
inanimate	theh	vu	zo
vegetal	thu	vo	zeh
animate	seh	zhu	zlo
neutral	deh	do	du

	1st person	2nd person	3rd person
inanimate	thehs [archaic]	vuzh [archaic]	zozl [archaic]
vegetal	thuzl [archaic]	vos [archaic]	zehzh [archaic]
animate	sehth [archaic]	zhuv [archaic]	zloz [archaic]

Animacy in Sajem Tan does not depend on any notion of personhood. Instead, animate pronouns are used for those beings in the kingdom Animalia, vegetal for all other living beings, and inanimate for everything else. The neutral series may be used in cases of mixed, unknown, or undisclosed animacy.

The third person pronouns, particularly du, also function as demonstratives.

Evidentials

Evidentials are declared as adverbs. Nouns may be agglutinated before the adverb to create compound evidentials with more specific meaning (e.g. "femektholk").

slet -- traditional lore, known by many subjects or ascertained from a now-dead person

shan -- hearsay via a living person

tholk -- direct sensory evidence

thec -- deduced from sensory evidence

thef -- deduced from sensory evidence [archaic, xref "thec"]

snat -- learned via seconday/tertiary/etc. sources, especially writings

voln -- understood through the reversal of a previously deep belief

sluln -- based on faith/beliefs/subjective experiences

kic -- carefully discerned through protracted study

femektholk -- discovered by telepathy

Corpus

See also: Zhetammeht Delgemnocah

[2015-12-25]

Kizhul mafe Vith.

ke solm Zhimahnso mafe Kizhul.

tahzluv znolsfe Kizhul.

[2015-12-29]

sajem tah thofe thefahm.

[2016-01-08]

cehsh sulslem thom "nectar" znolcfeh kizhult.

[2016-01-12]

thekeht Thefam.

sulsem znolcsho Kizhult.

[2016-04-07]

Vu xanolnfeh Vithit.

Tools

A Github repository of tools can be found at https://github.com/mr-martian/Sajem_Tan

Phonotactics Checker: http://mr-martian.github.io/Sajem_Tan/check.html

Random text/sentence generator: http://mr-martian.github.io/Sajem_Tan/randsen.html

Root lists: http://pastebin.com/0S5GsiqP http://pastebin.com/mVr9trze

Interactive Lexicon: http://mr-martian.github.io/Sajem_Tan/lexicon.html

The Wikiversity Courses on Sajem Tan are available to practice basic skills! https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Sajem_Tan

Automatic Glosser: http://mr-martian.github.io/Sajem_Tan/gloss.html