Wanian
| Wanian Wanyat | |
| Spoken in: | Wania (Wanya) |
| Conworld: | Melin |
| Total speakers: | ? |
| Genealogical classification: | Weniti
|
| Basic word order: | SOV |
| Morphological type: | agglutinative |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | nominative-accusative |
| Writing system: | |
| Created by: | |
| Pierre Abbat | late 1970s |
Wanian is the Weniti language that best preserves the grammar of the family. It features:
- four noun cases (ergative, nominative, accusative, dative) for the main verb arguments, plus other cases such as locative and genitive
- double case, when a noun is an argument of two verbs
- agreement of case marking on nouns and verbs.
Examples:
- Certer-u-be-n-yod nebat-it-ab-en-s cobens-es-ev tibas-at-be-s-er-v-eth?
- cistern-PL-2ND-GEN-LOC cold-CAUS-PAST-FOLL-NOM water-NOM-ACC have-PRES-2ND-NOM-PREC-ACC-QUES
- Do you have in your cisterns water that has been made cold? (Out of the Silent Planet)
The verb ending -ens (or -nes; many endings have a CV form and a VC form and use one or the other for euphony reasons) indicates that the subject cobenses follows the verb nebatens; this gives it the force of a participle. The suffix -erv in tibaserv indicates that the object cobensev precedes it, which is the normal order. The 2nd plural suffix is -bu, which unlike -be does not metathesize. The 1st person pronoun is -le. The ergative ending is -l and the dative is -m.
- Jan-es-es adrab-u-re-s jan-ay-a har-er-s.
- man-NOM-NOM language-PL-PREC-NOM man-SAMENUM-IS worth-PREC-NOM
- A man is worth as many men as he speaks languages.
The noun janeses has two nominative endings, indicating that it is the subject of two verbs. adrab is both a noun and a verb; being plural, it indicates that the man speaks more than one language. -res is metathesized for euphony. The plural of janeses is januses, where one NOM ending loses its vowel. The same number ending is -a, but since it precedes another ending -a, a y is inserted between them. The second -a makes a verb "to be a man" out of a noun "man", or is a case indicating "as a man". har has a homophone meaning "see", but that would normally take the accusative case.
- Be janes adrabens zimasares.
- the man-NOM language-FOLL-NOM animal-NOM-IS-PREC-NOM
- Man is the animal that speaks.
This illustrates -a forming a verb. zima takes the ending -s indicating that it's the subject of adrabens, then -a makes it a verb, which takes -res indicating that the subject janes precedes.
