View source for Tanpun



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==Introduction==

<!-- Design goals, inspiration, ideas, who speaks it?, when was it created?, where does it come from?, any peculiarities? -->
This is a highly experimental engineered language, ultimately focused on flirting with 
ambiguity and a lack of grammar. It is spoken by no one because it is set in the real world 
and not set for a fictional people. 
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Goals
Setting
Inspiration

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==Phonology==

===Consonants===
Consonants are fairly minimal. This table contains the written letter and the sound it makes. 
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Hi
|-
! Labial !! Alveolar !! Velar
|-
| P /p/ || T /t/ || K /k/
|-
| M /m/ || N /n/ || Ng /ŋ/
|-
| W /w/ || S /s/ || Y /j/
|}
Not found in this table is the glottal stop, which is written with H. 

===Vowels===
Vowels contain a standard five vowel system generally, viz. A /a/, E /e/, I /i/, O /o/, U 
/u/. 

===Phonotactics===
Syllables go in the format of CV(C) (consonant vowel consonant). Consonants can include glides, 
but not in coda positions. Vowel slot can include diphthongs, and diphthongs can have all 
permutations. Vowel length is not a feature. 
When a syllable ends with a particular consonant and the next syllable begins with that same 
consonant, gemination is produced. This is not strictly phonemic but instead a contextual 
feature. Syllable-final stops generally are unreleased but this is not itself phonemic. 

===Stress===
Stress falls on the last root of the word. 
==Orthography==
Being an engineered language, it has many choices for orthography. By default it is written
in the Latin script, but it can be written in various other scripts, however those such 
scripts do not have an official or standardized orthography. Latin however works as 
described above.
===Spaces===
Spaces are somewhat optional, many sentences could go without spaces. For example, is the 
sentence '''Tianmentouh''' which means "it is good". This also can be written "Tian mentouh".
Spaces are intended to disambiguate nouns and other things, all different grammatical objects or 
entities. Copular sentences are the only sentences which can go wholly without spaces in theory. 
Spaces are up to the author. 

==Grammar==
===Roots===
The primary atomic element in Tanpun are roots. A root is in essence, a CVC syllable which 
represents a semantic concept and does not have an inherent part of speech aside from pronouns, 
numbers, and conjunctions. For example, the root "piur" means fire, burning, to burn, flame, and
other such things; that list is not exhaustive. 
===Prefixes===
Roots can take prefixes. Prefixes are inseparable from the root and the prefix modifies the root 
in a specific way, such as negation, position, temporal deixis, definiteness, number (singular vs
plural), and honorific. A root with prefixes is analogous to a phrase in Early Middle Japanese.
===The mechanics of root combinations===
Roots combine in a semantic way, later roots within a word constrain earlier ones, and the first 
root of the word is considered the most fundamental. For example, the 'word' teksik decomposes 
into tek-sik, whose roots are art/science/skill and soul/mind/intent/brain respectively. The 
first root comprises the type of object, and the second root clarifies the domain. This word 
would thus mean possibly psychology, mental faculty, or soul technique. To make it more narrow,
more roots would be added, or possibly choosing a different root like lok, which means discourse
or study, instead of tek, but such a thing depends on what is intended.

Generally, later roots can be understood as constraining the previous roots by domain, i.e. "in 
terms of" or "with respect to" or other equivalent phrases. 
===Words===
Words are defined in a strongly atypical way. A word represents a singular grammatical argument,
concept, object, entity, idea, and any such thing. Noun phrases are generally considered to be 
within the same word, as well as adjectives and other modifiers. As stated, the first root 
generally represents the type of object and later roots fill in the details, so a word like "hiatporkap" can be understood as sound-neat-writing, sound-neat is neat sound, or more 
specifically song, and writing clarifies that it is written, so with all of this together, this
would represent a poem.

==Syntax==
The syntax is unusual due to the language itself being so unusual. The word order can be 
described as SOV, though this is inaccurate. More accurately, the language follows a topic 
comment structure. 
===Pronouns===
There are four pronouns. Pronouns do not distinguish number on their own. Pronouns do not 
distinguish animacy and do not imply or necessitate personhood or humanity. 
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Pronouns
|-
! Pronoun !! Usage
|-
| Yah || First person pronoun
|-
| Nak || Second person pronoun
|-
| Touh || Third person pronoun
|-
| Pen || Prominent third person pronoun; implies the topic or otherwise notable person. For when
the subject and object are both third person. 
|}
===Verbs===
The main verb of the sentence is always last. The main verb is always a verb phrase, and marking
person is required. The sequence is always, in order: 
* Auxiliary verb(s) (optional)
* Object (Or predicate) (optional)
* Content verb
* Subject (Always a pronoun)

The verb phrase is the only part of a sentence which breaks the typical rules for root 
interactions. It also must always be its own word. For example, the earlier sentence 
"Tianmentouh" is itself a verb phrase. The root "tian" means good, "men" being the copula, and 
"touh" being the third person pronoun. And again means "it is good" but the gloss is 
<nowiki>[good-COP-3]</nowiki>. As mentioned, "tian" can be its own word. 
With an auxiliary, there can be more variety, such as "wustianmentouh" which is 
<nowiki>[PAST-good-COP-3]</nowiki>, which means "it was good". This can also be expressed saying 
"Tian wusmentouh," although it is better with pen: "Tian wusmenpen".

==Example texts==
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==Other resources==
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[[Category:Tanpun language]]
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[[Category:Conlangs]]