X-1

X-1
Spoken in:	n.a.
Timeline/Universe:	n.a.
Total speakers:	n.a.
Genealogical classification:	a priori experimental 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 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.

Phonology

The language has 16 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 phonemes is a 4-bit pattern 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 phoneme has a consonantal value followed by a vowel. The vowels are inserted according to an automatic rule that is described below. The phonemes 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 it's 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 phoneme: 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 phoneme. A 0 gives a high vowel, a 1 a low vowel. If there is no phoneme 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 phoneme -> high vowel. The high front vowel is [i].

Morphology

Morphology of X-1 is self-segregating, if I made no mistake, at both the morpheme level and the word level. 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 phoneme:

Phoneme	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 phoneme of the morpheme is /h/, the sequence of consecutive 1s extends to the next phoneme. For example, a morpheme beginning with /ht/ is six phonemes long. This way, you can have infinitely many morphemes.

A word consists of one root followed by any number of suffixes. There are no prefixes. I don't know yet if compounding is allowed, but if yes, a special morpheme is inserted between the roots to indicate that the second root belongs to the same word. Otherwise, a root marks the begin of a new word.

Roots are morphemes with at least five phonemes, i.e., morphemes beginning with /h/. Thus, all words begin with a back vowel.