User talk:Chrysophylax/Misqazan

Background

So I had a funny idea at 4 am regarding how to express relations and ablauted nouns using Semitic-inspired construct state logic. IN THE JUNGLE. Because everything improves if its location is in the jungle.

Morphology

Stems

Stems are usually predicate bases of the form CVC. These CVC can never have the same consonant in the first and second position, thus forbidding theoretical stems such as lul or rer.

Similar to Semitic languages and European languages there is considerable vowel variation, something which has been grammaticalised. The basic vowel variation pattern is e – u – ø. These patterns have acquired specific names based on their predominant usage in the language. The e–pattern is called the nominal pattern, the u–pattern the verbal, and the ø–pattern is named the qualifying pattern. Certain stems do not have a verbal form and are termed deprived stems.

A general example: from the consonant stem g–r “straight” we get the possible configurations ger–, gur–, gr– all used in words such as geraz, guruti, and grtaz.

As mentioned, not all stems have all the possible vowel patterns as in the case of the deprived stem t–r “person” with the only forms being ter, tr–, and therefore missing a hypothetical verbal pattern **tur.

Nouns

Nouns are internally constructed on stems of the e–pattern affixed with the appropriate case endings. Optionally a derivative suffix may be applied to nominalize the root with a narrower meaning. Nouns take three grammatical cases and three numbers. These are the absolutive, the relative, the oblique, the singular, the dual and the plural.

Case marking

The absolutive is the unmarked form of the noun and as such does not require any further elaboration on its formation. It is used for an intransitive verb’s subject and the direct object of a transitive verb in the present tense. In an irrealis clause it is still the direct object of a transitive verb but cannot be used as the primary argument of an intransitive verb.

The second case, the relative marks some sort of relationship between the inflected noun and following noun. This is somewhat similar to the construct state in Semitic languages. It is formed by using a reduced form (the qualifying pattern) of the noun stem and affixing –ät. E.g. absolutive peraz yields prät.

The third case, the oblique is used for many things, being the general catch-all case for the rest of the possible arguments. It is primarily used for marking the agent of a transitive verb and what in other languages falls to the dative case. The oblique is also used for marking the subject of an intransitive verb in sentences with a non-real component. It is formed by affixing –an to the absolute form of the noun. E.g. peraz yields perazan. It is also used in constructions with the relative case, giving constructions like prät gerazan.

Grammatical number

As was previously mentioned, there are three grammatical numbers in Misqazan. The desinences that mark number are always added after the case markers. The singular being unmarked is not very hard to learn. The dual is always –āt. The plural form is –tlāt.

Syntax

Word order

The default unmarked word order in Misqazan is SOV.