X-1
| X-1 | |
| Spoken in: | n.a. |
| Timeline/Universe: | n.a. |
| Total speakers: | n.a. |
| Genealogical classification: | a priori experimental language |
| Basic word order: | VSO (sort of) |
| Morphological type: | agglutinating, polysynthetic |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | logical language |
| Created by: | |
| Jörg Rhiemeier | 2005- |
X-1 (for 'eXperimental language #1') is the provisional designation for an experimental language that is intended to be a briefscript as well as a loglang. X-1 has only one open word class, the predicate words fulfilling the fuctions of nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. in natlangs, and a self-segregating morphology.
X-1 is based on a 2005 discussion in the CONLANG mailing list about an article by Jeff Prothero titled "Near-optimal loglan syntax" and incorporates ideas from Ray Brown and others. It was formerly named brz (a name coined by Ray Brown) but I dropped that name because it was meaningless and not even a morphologically correct expression in the language: b would be a uniliteral morpheme, and rz a fragment of a triliteral one - hence, brz would be garbage.
X-1 owes a lot to other people:
- to Jeff Prothero, the self-segregation system based on morpheme lengths indicated by the number of initial consecutive '1' bits;
- to Raymond A. Brown, the phonology;
- to veritosproject, the variable-based syntax.
X-1 is still under development; consider everything in this article work in progress.
Phonology
The language has 16 literals ('phonemes'), written with the following letters:
j g l z ñ d µ b p m t n s r k h
To each of these 16 literals a 4-bit pattern is assigned, running from 0000 to 1111 in the sequence given above.
How is this pronounced? You certainly have realized that this looks like all consonants, and actually, each literal has a consonantal value followed by a vowel. The vowels are inserted according to an automatic rule that is described below. The literals are realized thus:
| Bits | Letter | Pronunciation |
| 0000 | j | zero followed by a front vowel |
| 0001 | g | [k] followed by a back vowel |
| 0010 | l | [l] followed by a front vowel |
| 0011 | z | [s] followed by a back vowel |
| 0100 | ñ | [n] followed by a front vowel |
| 0101 | d | [t] followed by a back vowel |
| 0110 | µ | [m] followed by a front vowel |
| 0111 | b | [p] followed by a back vowel |
| 1000 | p | [p] followed by a front vowel |
| 1001 | m | [m] followed by a back vowel |
| 1010 | t | [t] followed by a front vowel |
| 1011 | n | [n] followed by a back vowel |
| 1100 | s | [s] followed by a front vowel |
| 1101 | r | [l] followed by a back vowel |
| 1110 | k | [k] followed by a front vowel |
| 1111 | h | zero followed by a back vowel |
When looking closer at this chart, you will notice some regularities. The second half contains the same consonant values as the first half, in reverse order. In fact, a bit pattern and its one's complement (i.e., what you get when you flip all the bits) have the same consonant value. The frontness is indicated by the least significant bit of the literal: 0 gives a front vowel, 1 a back vowel.
The consonant values of the first half of the chart are not assigned arbitrarily. The odds are obstruents, the evens are sonorants. The systematic becomes clear in the following chart:
| 0000 | zero | 0001 | [k] |
| 0010 | [l] | 0011 | [s] |
| 0100 | [n] | 0101 | [t] |
| 0110 | [m] | 0111 | [p] |
There are four vowels, namely [E], [i], [O] and [u]. Whether the vowel is high ([i], [u]) or low ([E], [O]) is indicated by the most significant bit of the following literal. A 0 gives a high vowel, a 1 a low vowel. If there is no literal following, the vowel is high. (Hint: nothing counts as zero.)
For example, dt is pronounced [tOti] because the bit pattern is {0101 1010}. The LSB of d is 1 -> back vowel. The MSB of t is 1 -> low vowel. The low back vowel is [O]. The LSB of t is 0 -> front vowel. There is no following literal -> high vowel. The high front vowel is [i].
Morphology
Morphology of X-1 is self-segregating. The length of a morpheme is indicated by the number of consecutive 1s at the begin of the morpheme, plus one. (This is the same rule as in Jeff Prothero's Plan B.) So, the morpheme length can be told by the first literal:
| Literal | Bits | Morpheme length |
| j | 0000 | 1 |
| g | 0001 | 1 |
| l | 0010 | 1 |
| z | 0011 | 1 |
| ñ | 0100 | 1 |
| d | 0101 | 1 |
| µ | 0110 | 1 |
| b | 0111 | 1 |
| p | 1000 | 2 |
| m | 1001 | 2 |
| t | 1010 | 2 |
| n | 1011 | 2 |
| s | 1100 | 3 |
| r | 1101 | 3 |
| k | 1110 | 4 |
| h | 1111 | 5+ |
If the first literal of the morpheme is h, the sequence of consecutive 1s extends to the next literal. For example, a morpheme beginning with ht is six literals long. This way, you can have infinitely many morphemes.
Morphemes with at least three literals are predicate words, which are the only open lexical class of X-1, taking the functions of nouns, adjectives and verbs. (Yes, nouns are predicate symbols, too. Think about it.) Biliteral morphemes are connectives, and uniliterals are variables (except j, which is a scope delimiter, indicating that variables in following clauses are not coreferent with variables in preceding clauses).
The arity (number of arguments) of a predicate word is indicated by its length. The arity is always the length of the predicate word minus 2. Thus, triliteral predicates are unary, quadriliteral predicates are binary, etc.
Syntax
A sentence consists of a sequence of clauses, which consist of a predicate word followed by one or more arguments. Each predicate word has a fixed number of arguments (see above). Arguments can be proper names or variables.
Example
An X-1 sentence could look like this:
strgrlggrdrgstllrkklkrbpgl
[sEtElukOlulitukulutOlukOsEtililElOkEkilEkElipOpikuli]
str-g-rlg-g-rdr-g-stl-l-rkk-l-krbp-g-l
fox x; brown x; quick x; dog y; lazy y; jump.over x y;
'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.'
