Sevvuferyn History:Linguistic

Language Families up to Sevvufery

The oldest lanuage in The Sevvuferyn tree of whose existence scholars are aware is ȢȤȜȿ ("ZZanu" being the best approximation according to Sevvuferyn orthography and phonetics, though the real pronunciation was likely closer to /sʛˈæɴɯ/ in the times when ȢȤȜȿ was most commonly spoken. From this language, the gradual loss of the phoneme /ə/, which still puzzles contemporary researches, caused it to diverge into 4 separate languages, one being proto-Gusvia-Jwar#ða, which further diverged into proto-Gusvia and proto-Jwar#ða, of which proto-Gusvia is the most important. Proto-Gusvia, naturally, evolves into Gusvia, the most famous ancestor of the Sevvuferyn languages; the language from which the name of the planet Erad comes, and also the first to use a similar writing system to Sevvufery.

The phonology of Gusvia, however, was in many ways quite different from that of Sevvufery. For one, it had kept the unrounded close back vowel /ɯ/, which Sevvufery does not have, and still allows tripthongs and consonant clusters of up to 8 consonants - an extreme example of this is the word "milamndiitspruji" /milamⁿʝztxpruji/, which refers to the concept of a person who has just died, having spent a long time in injustice. Additionally, the language had 5 more cases for nouns than Sevvufery and had 4 distinct declensions: 1 for abstract concepts; 1 for natural objects; 1 for things related to humans; and 1 for anything else. Its verbs also were more complex as, despite only having 1 conjugation, there were 7 moods: indicative, subjunctive(used to talk about things which one may do), predictive (used to talk about things which may happen), optative (used to talk about things which one wishes to do), causative, and 2 moods for capability (e.g "I am able to do") and necessity (e.g "I must do"). The only saving grace is that the verbs of Gusvia did not inflect in any way.

However, over time some developments occured which caused the language to evolve into Kaåbarun, the next stage of the language, including the following:

• The declensions for human-related and natural objects merged into a single declension for animate objects
• The predictive was lost, merging with the subjunctive, and the optative mood merged with the mood for necessity to create a stronger version of the mood for capability (e.g I am capable of doing this and wish to achieve it), which was then subsequently lost by merging with the already existing mood for capability. An example is the word "øa" /aɔa/, which meant "to do, achieve, continue" and had these (slightly irregular) forms before these changes:

	Indicative	Subjunctive	Predictive	Optative	causative	for capability	for necessity
Present	øa	aðlõ	øjú	aåil	iiaʰaw	ødë	øðo
Past	øu	aðlow	øjü	aåül	iiaswu	ødeu	øðoj
Future	øø	øðø	øjoj	øåo	iiøwte	ødjö	øðuʰu

And these after the first set:

	Indicative	Subjunctive	for capability (strong)	causative	for capability (weak)
Present	øa	aðúlõ	aåi	iiaðo	ødej
Past	øu	aðüloʰo	aåü	iiaswÿ	ødew
Future	øø	øjðø	øåo	iiøwu	ødjön

And these after the second set:

	Indicative	Subjunctive	causative	for capability
Present	øa	aðúlõ	iiaðo	ødeå
Past	øu	aðüloʰo	iiaswÿ	ødeuå
Future	øø	øjðø	iiøwu	ødjönå

From here, Kaåbarun evolved further, one last time into Krushildnajs before splitting into 2 daughter languages, Sak∞e, from which North-Sevvufery emerges, and Enuú, from which South-Sevvufery emerges. Here are the changes leading up to the development of Krushildnajs

• Many people started saying pronouns after verbs rather than before, due to the fact that emphasis tended to shift from the person doing the action to the action itself, especially in the first person, leading to the creation of new verb forms which were essentially just the verbs with the pronouns added on (the verbs without stem developed into infinitives), and then developed further as forms also emerged for the 3rd person singular and 1st and 3rd person plural.

Take, for example, the sentence "I see the shore" (in modern Sevvufery this would be "saåalen wasul"). In kaåbarun this would be "ez euloa tatun". However, that is only the case in the official version of Kaåbarun. Most people would instead switch to saying "euloa ez tatus" or even "tatun euloa ez", which over time contracted to "tatun euloyz", giving the 1st person singular ending for some verbs.

However, there was still no form for the 2nd person, as this form was only common in direct speech, where the person doing the action was still emphasised, which would now require the infinitive plus a pronoun.

• The declensions for abstract concepts and "anything else" merged into a single declension for in-animate objects in general, leaving only 2 declensions.