Vilani language
| Vilani Bilanidin | |
| Spoken in: | The Imperium (Vilani settlements) |
| Timeline/Universe: | Traveller RPG (non-canon) |
| Total speakers: | |
| Genealogical classification: | Dirmani
|
| Basic word order: | VSO |
| Morphological type: | agglutinating |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | ergative |
| Created by: | |
| Kenji Schwarz | 1998 |
The Vilani language is the language of the Vilani, one of the major spacefaring civilizations of the Traveller RPG universe. The Vilani are humans; they descend from human beings who were transported to another planet by aliens in prehistoric times.
The Traveller RPG handbooks contain some material (mostly vocabulary) on the language on which Kenji Schwarz built the language described here.
Vilani is the only surviving language of the Dirmani language family, but contains loanwords from other, extinct languages of that group.
Phonology
Consonants
The Vilani consonant inventory is quite small with only 13 phonemes; its most unusual trait is certainly the lack of the otherwise very common phoneme /t/.
| Labial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stops | Voiceless | p | k | ||
| Voiced | b | d | g | ||
| Fricatives | Voiceless | s | ʂ <sh> | x <kh> | |
| Voiced | z | ||||
| Nasals | m | n | |||
| Flap | ɾ <r> | ||||
| Lateral | l | ||||
Vowels
Vilani has four short vowels and three long vowels (spelled with double letters).
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i, i: | u, u: | |
| Mid | e | ||
| Open | a, a: |
Morphology
Verbs
Vilani verbs are very complex and can be very long. The template of the verb is:
| Prefixes | Stem | Suffixes | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Modal proclitic] & Object/Subject | (Agent) | [Negative] | (Phase; Trajectory) | (Aspect) | ROOT | Tense/Voice | (Applicatives) | (Subordinator) & [Pluralizer] & [Modal enclitic] |
Example:
- Sheshmanenemnuriini kakarik kameliliish. 'I hope I’m going to stop keeping on finding you in the garden by [listening to] your screaming.'
Subject/Object prefixes
The subject/object prefixes mark the subject in an intransitive clause and the object in a transitive clause.
| Definite-Proximal | Indefinite-Distal | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Discourse participant | se- | me- | |
| Sophont | Neutral | a- | le- |
| Honorific | di- | zi- | |
| Obviative | maa- | ||
| Nonsophont animate | 0-,e- | ki- | |
| Inanimate | i- | ni- | |
| Reflexive | nii- | ||
| Abstract | re- | ||
Agent prefixes
The agent prefix marks the transitive subject. This prefix distinguishes human agents from non-human agents, and have a direct and an inverse form. The inverse forms are used when a lower-ranked human acts on a higher-ranked human, or a non-human agent on a human.
| Direct | Inverse | |
|---|---|---|
| Human | -k- | -s- |
| Non-human | -b- | -n- |
| Equal animacy | -z- (archaic) | |
Phase and Trajectory prefixes
A verb may have a phase prefix or a trajectory prefix, but not both. There are two phase prefixes, inchoative ga- and terminative ma-.
- lash 'it flies'; ga-lash 'it starts flying'; ma-lash 'it stops flying'
Only one trajectory prefix is in common use in Modern Vilani: the cooperative/reciprocal prefix ne-, which expresses that two or more agents are performing the action jointly or upon each other.
Aspect
Verbs in Vilani are either imperfective or perfective. There are no simple rules how aspect stems are formed; the situation is thus as in Proto-Indo-European, and aspect stems are listed in dictionaries for each verb.
Tense/Voice suffixes
There are two tenses in Vilani: future and non-future. The tenses are expressed together with the voices: active, antipassive and impersonal. The antipassive voice is an ergative mirror image of the passive: it demotes the patient and promotes the agent to an (intransitive) subject. The suffixes are tabulated below.
| Active | Antipassive | Impersonal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nonfuture | -0 | -u | -i |
| Future | -r/-zu | -ri/-zi | -ur |
If two forms are listed, the first is used after a vowel, the second after a consonant.
Applicatives
Applicative suffixes promote oblique arguments to direct objects (absolutive case). The following applicatives occur in Modern Vilani:
| Dative | -ka |
|---|---|
| Locative | -kan |
| Terminative | -kash |
| Benefactive | -kak |
| Instrumental | -kii |
Example:
- Kikhurdimna madlag ka Eneri 'He grants a fief to Eneri.'
Syntax
Vilani is a head-initial language. The unmarked word order in the clause is Verb-Subject-Object; however, noun phrases can be fronted for topicalization. Examples:
- Leskhugash liraamgim Eneri. 'An air raft hit Eneri.'
Topicalizations:
- Liraamgim leskhugash Eneri. ' An air raft hit Eneri.'
- Eneri leskhugash liraamgim. ' An air raft hit Eneri.'
In the noun phrase, adjectives follow the noun, then come possessors and relative clauses.
Vilani has an absolutive pivot. Unlike in English, where a sentence like The boy kissed the girl and laughed would mean The boy kissed the girl and the boy laughed, in Vilani such a sentence would mean The boy kissed the girl and the girl laughed. The sentence
- Akag Eneri in akgirma.
means 'Eneri arrived and s/he (other than Eneri) saw him (Eneri)'.
Vilani has four copulas. The equational copula is used in the sense 'X is a Y'; the existential copula is used in the sense 'X exists'. Both copula have positive and negative ('X is not a Y', 'X does not exist') forms:
| Positive | Negative | |
|---|---|---|
| Equational | iru | men |
| Existential | khii | gig |
