Sajem Tan

Sajem Tah or Common Honey is a collaborative conlang started in November 2015 by members of the CONLANG mailing list.[1] [2] As of 29 December 2015, the phoneme inventory and romanization have been decided along with some of the phonotactics, a few words have been coined and a few simple sentences written; work on the native script, syntax and morphology are proceeding.

The Sajem Tah community is based on the following creation myth, posted by Shanoxilt Cizypij on 30 November 2015:

So very long ago, during gray and overcast days past, Thunder rumbled. From the shaken sky tumbled Thunder's noises and with them Rain. By the fallen Rain, Flower was nourished and River was filled. Upon its web, between Flower and Stone, Spider gathered Rain. When Rain ceased and Thunder silenced, Bee gathered Flower's pollen. Bee then flew away to its hive to make our Common Honey. Upon the hive came Bear who so loved our Common Honey that it shared with all who would sample. Witnessing all this, from atop Stone, Bird declared, "May this recur until all our tribe partakes of Common Honey."

The characters in this myth are also the titles or roles of members of the community:

Thunder	phonology	Samantha Tarnowski
Rain	morphology	Scott Hamilton
Spider	syntax	Jim Henry
Flower	semantics	Brett Williams
Stone	orthography	Daniel Swanson
River	pragmatics	Samantha Tarnowski
Bee	corpus	Jim Henry
Bear	pedagogy	Jon Michael Swift
the swift feathered one	supervision	Shanoxilt Cizypij

Each of the roles has certain taboos as well as responsibilities for the development of the language. For instance, Bee (who was the last to edit this document) cannot refer to the swift feathered one by name.

As the language and its documenation grow, we will separate these into subpages.

Phonology and romanization

IPA	romanization
i	i
e	e
ɛ	eh
æ	a
u	u
ɑ	ah
ɤ	ul
ʌ	uh
y	y
ø	ol
ɵ	o
œ	el
ts	c
t	t
k	k
m	m
n	n
f	f
s	s
ʒ	zh
ɮ	zl
x	x
ʎ	j
θ	th
v	v
z	z
ʃ	sh
d	d
g	g
ɬ	sl

The phonotactics are still somewhat undecided. So far the only allowed coda consonants are fricative, voiceless plosive and nasal. Any consonant by itself is allowed in onset; the only atttested clusters are fricative + homorganic nasal, e.g. /vm-/, /zn-/.

Syntax

• default OVS word order (probably variable if we have case marking)
• relative clauses before their head nouns
• auxiliary verbs after main verbs
• adjectives before nouns
• postpositions (for whatever we aren't marking with case, including some weird stuff that other languages mark with verbs); postpositional phrases precede what they modify
• several grammatical particles that introduce neologisms and their initial definitions, or words being used in new senses

Morphology

• Self-segmenting morphology
• Agglutinating
• Dependent marking
• Case endings for oblique roles
• Lots of applicatives
• No noun classes
• Minimal declension/conjugation classes
• Minimal irregularity

Rain's proposals for self-segregating morphology, as amended by Bee and Stone:

1. Root words are to consist of zero or more C(C)V syllables followed by a C(C)VC syllable, containing a restricted subset of vowels: ol, e, el, i, a, ul, uh, y

2. Suffixes and particles are to consist of one (C)V(C) syllable using the other vowels not used in content roots: o, ah, eh, u

3. The final consonant of a syllable can only be a nasal or unvoiced plosive.

4. If a syllable begins with a consonant cluster, the first consonant must be a fricative and the second a nasal at more or less the same point of articulation. E.g. fm-, vm-, sn-, zn-, shn-, thn-, etc.

Rain's verb morphology proposals of 30 December:

Marked on the verb (agglutinating suffixes)

• aspect
• valency changing operations (voice, applicatives) (optional)

Template: root-aspect-(valency)

Auxiliary verb (following the verb, as per the Spider's weave - i.e. syntax)

• optional
• root indicates mood
• optional suffixes for tense

Template: mood-(tense)

Aspect markers for verbs are obligatory. If you want to explicitly mark tense, then you have to use a mood auxiliary.

Aspects:

• durative (this includes instantaneous actions)
• continuous
• gnomic
• habitual
• perfective

-fe would be durative

Tenses:

• remote past
• mid past/indeterminate past
• immediate past
• non-past

Lexicon

tah -- honey, vomit, language; (with verb affix(es)) to speak, to vomit

kizhul -- bee

sajem -- common, communal, public

zhimahn -- feather

solm -- fast, swift, quick (of moving objects, e.g. "the feathered one is *solm*")

theln -- fast, quick(ly) (of processes/actions other than motion verbs, e.g. "*Kizhul* coins words *theln*")

vith -- bird

mafe -- to thank

fmyvufe -- to make, to create

znolsfe -- to gather, to collect

tahzluv -- utterance, short speech, sentence, dollop of honey

so -- derivational suffix: an entity having the thing referred to by the stem, e.g. zhimahn "feather" > zhimahnso "feathered one", tah "honey/speech" > tahso "someone who has honey/speech"

thofe -- to scribble, to scrawl

thefahm -- stone

-fe -- provisional verb ending; Rain has yet to issue decisions about the verb system. The swift feathered one suggested that it be an honorific indicating friendliness.

Corpus

[2015-12-25]

Kizhul mafe Vith.

ke solm Zhimahnso mafe Kizhul.

tahzluv znolsfe Kizhul.

[2015-12-29]

sajem tah thofe thefahm.