Dilba

Dilba
iktiil Dilba
Pronunciation	[[Help:IPA|ʔɛhˈtɛil dɛlˈvä]]
Created by	Resangir
Setting	Lamuella
Language family	Lamuellan Dilba

Introduction

Dilba (formally iktiil Dilba 'our tongue Dilba', assumed pronunciation [ʔɛhˈtɛil dɛlˈvä]) is an extinct language that was spoken by the Dilb people on the planet Lamuella.

The Dilb people migrated to another desert planet when the Lamuellan climate had become too moderate for them to live. When Lamuella was much later colonised, numerous hieroglyphic scrolls and rock inscriptions were discovered. By these means, the Dilba grammar and a large part of the lexicon have been reconstructed. The original pronunciation was subject to controversy but after compiling works of Dilba grammarians, a relatively plausible phonology has been established.

In this article, the Dilba hieroglyphs are mostly represented by Latin letters. Since the cultural contact with England, the Latin alphabet is also used on Lamuella. However, at this time the phonology has not been reconstructed yet, so the pronunciation of the Latin letters is rather unintuitive.

Grammar

Most Dilba words, referred to as root words, are obtained from consonantal roots by inserting vowels, adding affixes and mutating the root consonants. In the following, these three morphological operations shall be discussed separately.

Vowel Insertion

Root words have two vocalic positions, i.e. positions where vowels can be inserted. Root words that are built up by only one root consonant lack the second vocalic position.

• First vocalic position:

  	Definite	Indefinite
  Singular	–	i
  Plural		u

  The terms used in the previous table might be deceptive. The indefinite forms are used to introduce the number of a subject of speech. Whenever there is no need to give information about the number, the definite form is used. The singular indefinite form can also be used emphaticly while the plural indefinite often yields collective nouns. In the following article, the terms singular and plural will always refer to singular indefinite and plural indefinite.

  The first vocalic position can be expanded to a diphthong by inserting a second vowel before the one above. If there is no vowel, an a will be supplemented. This vowel connotes a deixis in either first (i), second (u) or third (a) person. Possibilities of translation are:

  	First person	Second person	Third person
  Possessive	mine, our	your	his, her, its, their
  Local demonstrative	this (close to me)	this your's (close to you), also pejoratively	yonder
  Temporal demonstrative	this (just said)	–	yonder (said before)
  Referring to speaker	said by me, us	said by you	said by him, her, it, them

  For example, the declension of gt = man is:

  	No deixis	First person	Second person	Third person
  Definite	gt	giat	guat	gaat
  Singular	git	giit	guit	gait
  Plural	gut	giut	guut	gaut