Fith
Fith | |
Spoken in: | Planet Fithia |
Conworld: | |
Total speakers: | |
Genealogical classification: | Fithian
|
Basic word order: | stack-based |
Morphological type: | isolating |
Morphosyntactic alignment: | |
Created by: | |
Jeffrey Henning | 1997-2005 |
Fith is a stack-based alien language invented by Jeffrey Henning. It is spoken by centauroid sapient marsupials on the planet Fithia.
LIFO Grammar
The grammar of Fith is based on a stack, which operates by the LIFO principle: last in, first out. Like, for instance, a stack of cards on which you can put a card on the top, or remove a card from the top.
Consider the sentence hong zhong lin lo rumn shkrung e 'The loyal man of the nation deactivates the robot'. The first word, the noun hong, is pushed onto the stack:
hong | 'man' |
The second is also a noun which is likewise pushed onto the stack:
hong | 'man' |
zhong | 'nation' |
The next word, lin, is an adjective. This results in the top item being modified:
hong lin | 'loyal man' |
zhong | 'nation' |
The fourth word, lo 'of', is a postposition which pops the two top elements from the stack and pushes a modified noun phrase onto it:
zhong hong lin lo | 'loyal man of the nation' |
The next word is a noun which is pushed onto the stack:
rumn | 'robot' |
zhong hong lin lo | 'loyal man of the nation' |
This is followed by a verb, in this case a transitive one, which takes two arguments and combines them into a clause that is placed on the stack:
zhong hong lin lo rumn shkrung | 'loyal man of the nation robot deactivate' |
Finally, the stack conjunction e finishes the sentence and pops it from the stack. As long as the e is not uttered, the sentence is still "under construction".
External link
Fith: The Alien Language With A LIFO Grammar (archived)