Siye
Description
Siye is one of the two major languages, along with Ulok, of the Martian Equator, It is spoken by nineteen million people in the Valley of the River. The Guild of Scholars estimates that there are twenty million speakers, but the Terrestrial conservative estimate separates one million speakers whose inclusion within the Simakim is more political than linguistic.
'Simakim', a key concept in linguistic and political thought, means 'area where the Siye language is spoken.' The Simakim is defined by the presence of a Siye-speaker with immovable property. If the Simayam (Siye speaker) is bilingual, the Siye portion is dominant under Siye law.
The Valley is a federation of city states and autonomous regions whose only unifying government is the Guild of Scholars, a body of grammarians based in the Central Province which regulates the grammar of Siye and therefore the validity of contracts. The Valley is divided into provinces, but unless there is need for military action, provinces are more geographical descriptions than political unities. The only permanent militia is maintained by the Far Western Province, which borders the Ulok-speaking Kingdom of Nesa.
Phonology and Orthography
Phonology
/m/ [m], > [ⁿ]/V_#, V_C
/n/ [n]
/p/ [p], > [pʰ]/#_, [f]/_u, [ç]/_i
/t/ [t], > [tʰ]/#_, [ʦ]/_u, [ʦʰ]/#_u
/k/ [k] > [kʰ]/#_, [x]/_u, [ʧ]/_i, [ʧʰ]/#_i
/s/ [s] > [ʃ]/_i
/w/ [v]
/y/ [j]
/l/ [l]
/h/ [placeholder after /m/ [ⁿ]]
/i/ [i]
/im/ [ɪⁿ]
/e/ [e]
/em/ [ɛⁿ]
/a/ [ə]
/am/ [aⁿ]
/o/ [o]
/om/ [ɔⁿ]
/u/ [u]
/um/ [ʊⁿ]
Nasalization and Advanced Tongue Root
In Standard Siye, the nasal vowels share the feature retracted tongue root (RTR), while the oral vowels share the feature advanced tongue root (ATR). In studies of Siye, the feature is defined as +ATR and -ATR. Standard Siye has the typologically rare 10-vowel ATR. The Near and Mid Provinces reduce the ATR system by removing [ə] in favor of a generalized [a].
/i/ [i]
/im/ [ɪⁿ]
/e/ [e]
/em/ [ɛⁿ]
/a/ [a]
/am/ [aⁿ]
/o/ [o]
/om/ [ɔⁿ]
/u/ [u]
/um/ [ʊⁿ]
The Far Western Province uses a seven-vowel system:
/i/ [i]
/im/ [ɪⁿ]
/e/ [ɛ]
/em/ [ɛⁿ]
/a/ [a]
/am/ [aⁿ]
/o/ [ɔ]
/om/ [ɔⁿ]
/u/ [u]
/um/ [ʊⁿ]
The Far Eastern Province and the Lake have a slightly different seven-vowel system:
/i/ [i]
/im/ [iⁿ]
/e/ [e]
/em/ [ɛⁿ]
/a/ [a]
/am/ [aⁿ]
/o/ [o]
/om/ [ɔⁿ]
/u/ [u]
/um/ [ʊⁿ]
Vowel Dominance
Standard Siye vowels have a dominance system whereby one vowel eliminates an adjacent vowel rather than creating a long vowel or diphthong. Earlier Siye lacked this feature. The impact of vowel dominance in Siye is extensive, but many exceptions exist where the meaning would have become ambiguous. The dominance pattern follows a V-shape, starting in the high back, descending to low central, and ascending to high front. Thus the dominance hierarchy is as follows: /u/ > /o/ > /a/ > /e/ > /i/.
Examples of the effects of vowel dominance include the creation of the zero-marked subject prefix of the transitive verb, the existence of the ya-conjugation, and the differentiation, or lack thereof, of the nominative and accusative cases of nouns. Exceptions include vowel-initial verb roots with weak initial vowels, word-initial high vowels (including subject and object prefixes).
Stress Placement
A Siye noun or participle receives primary stress on the first syllable. Thus the phrase /laye silime/ has primary stresses on the syllables /la/ and /si/. A Siye verb receives primary stress on the first syllable of the verb root; thus the verb /pelekopuyammu/ and /lekunasonima/ receive primary stresses on /ko/ and /ku/. The secondary stresses are distributed according to the following rules: the first is that there is a minimum of one and maximum of two unstressed syllables between stressed syllables; the second is that only the first syllable of a root or a suffix can be stressed. Thus /elenesakampuyamna/ receives the stress pattern /EleNEsakamPUyamNA/ rather than /EleNEsaKAMpuYAMna/, because /nesakam/ is the three-syllable verb root, while /elenesakampulikena/ receives the stress pattern /EleNEsakamPUlikeNA/ rather than /EleNEsaKAMpuLIkeNA/, because /nesakam/ is a three-syllable verb root and /-like-/ is a two-syllable suffix.
Isoglosses
The Valley in which Siye is spoken stretches halfway across the Martian equator, so there are variations in speech along its length. The primary isogloss is the boundary line between nouns that use the Nominative and Accusative and those that use the Ergative and Absolutive. In Standard Siye, the dialect of the City in the Central Province and the variety on which this article is based, only pronouns and personal names can use Nominative and Accusative forms. As one travels east the range of the Nominative decreases; as one travels west towards the Mountain, the opposite occurs. Thus, all varieties of Siye use /le, la/ for the first person pronouns. All but the Far Eastern Province and the Lake use /pe, sa/ for the second person pronoun. The Mid-Eastern Province and points west place all pronouns, regardless of number, in the Nominative category. Standard Siye, from the Central Province, adds personal names to the Nominative category. The Near Western Province requires that nouns denoting humans must be in the Nominative category, reducing the number of complex cases in the spoken version of the western dialects. The Mid-Western Province treats all animate nouns as Nominative, and the Far Western Province is full nominative under the "contamination" of Ulok.
Diachrony: From Tiye to Siye
Tiye, the immediate ancestor of Siye, did not differ greatly from Siye. Tiye possessed two extra phonemes: /d/, which only appeared in initial position in native words) and /b/, which only appeared before /a/ in native words. /b/ and /d/ in other positions, and any instances of /r/, are indications of the extensive borrowing that the language endured before its current dominance. The Tiye female derogatives /yeda/, /deda/, and /tera/ are all borrowings, the sisters of the Tiye word /daye/, when the dying planet Kiba had more languages. The name of the language, Tiye, shows that /t/ was allowed before /i/. The following changes occurred in the transition from Tiye to Siye:
/d/ [d] > /l/ [l]
/t/ [t] > /s/ [s]/_i
/b/ [b] /w/ [w] > /w/ [ʋ]
/r/ [r] > /l/ [l]
Thus the Tiye words /daye/ and /date/ and the loanwords /yeda/, /deda/, and /tera/ became the native Siye terms /laye/, /late/, /yela/, /lela/, and /tela/. Although Tiye was (relatively briefly) a written language, the Guild of Scholars was founded centuries later, when Siye had penetrated to the Central Province; by that time the Tiye loanwords had become native Siye words.
