Mirmio

Mirmio
Mihirmio
Pronunciation	[mʲiɽ˨˦˨.mʲi͡o]
Created by	Suqi
Date	2026
Language family	language isolate

Mirmio /ˈmiːɹ.miː.oʊ/, natively spelled Mihirmio [mʲiɽ˨˦˨.mʲi͡o], is an artistic language.

Phonology

Consonants

		Bilabial	Coronal		Palatal	Velar		Guttural
			Plain	Labialized		Plain	Labialized
Nasal		mʲ	n̼		ɲ
Stop	Aspirated	pʲʰ					kʷʰ
	Tenuis	pʲ				kʲ	kʷ	ʔ
Affricate	Median		t͡ɕ	t͡σ̠
	Lateral		t͡ɬ	t͡ɬʷ
Fricative	Median		θ̼ ð̼		ç	x		χ
	Lateral		ɬ	ɬʷ
Approximant	Median	ɥ	ɹʲ		j	ɰ	w
	Lateral		lʲ
Flap			ɽ

ɽ > ⁿɾ̼ / V_V

t͡ɬ t͡ɬʷ t͡σ̠ t͡ɕ > t͡l̥ t͡l̥ʷ d͡ƍ₋ d͡ʑ / #_ !”_

t͡ɬ t͡ɬʷ t͡σ̠ t͡ɕ > t͡ɬʰ t͡ɬʷʰ t͡σ̠ʰ t͡ɕʰ / ”_ !#_

/kʷʰ/ and /kʷ/ do not appear before front vowels.

IPA	/mʲ/	/n̼/	/ɲ/	/pʲʰ/	/kʷʰ/	/pʲ/	/t͡ɕ/	/t͡σ̠/	/kʲ/	/kʷ/	/ʔ/	/t͡ɬ/	/t͡ɬʷ/	/θ̼/	/ð̼/	/ç/	/x/	/χ/	/ɬ/	/ɬʷ/	/ɥ/	/ɹʲ/	/j/	/ɰ/	/w/	/lʲ/	/ɽ/
Romanization	m	n	nj	ph	kf	p	c	cv	kj	kv	q	tl	tlv	f	z	xj	x	k	s	sv	wj	rj	y	g	w	l	r
IPA							[t͡ɕʰ]	[t͡σ̠ʰ]				[t͡ɬʰ]	[t͡ɬʷʰ]														[ⁿɾ̼]
Romanization							ch	cf				tlh	tlf														nb
IPA							[d͡ʑ]	[d͡ƍ₋]				[tˡ]	[tˡʷ]
Romanization							dj	djv				dl	dlv

Vowels

	–RTR						+RTR
	Front		Central		Back
	Oral	Nasal	Oral	Nasal	Oral	Nasal
Close	i	ĩ	ᵿ	ᵿ̃	ʊ	ʊ̃	ʊ̙
Mid	e	ẽ	ɜ	ɜ̃	o	õ	ɔ̙̈
Open	æ	æ̃					æ̙

Any two vowels can form a diphthong as long as they are both oral or both nasal.

Nasal vowel harmony occurs regresssively. +RTR vowels are opaque oral vowels. There is no tie to the presence or absence of nasal consonants.

IPA	/i/	/ĩ/	/ᵿ/	/ᵿ̃/	/ʊ/	/ʊ̃/	/ʊ̙/	/e/	/ẽ/	/ɜ/	/ɜ̃/	/o/	/õ/	/o̙/	/æ/	/æ̃/	/æ̙/
Romanization	i	ĩ	ú	ü	u	ũ	ù	e	ẽ	á	ä	o	õ	ò	a	ã	à

Tones

There are four phonemic tones: rising <ah>, falling <a'>, dipping <a'a>, and peaking <aha>, but there is also tonelessness <a>. Long vowels cannot have tone. Coda sonorants can receive tone, but not if the nucleus does not have a tone. If one coda sonorant has tone, all of that syllable's coda sonorants must also have tone. Diphthongs can receive the same tones as monophthongs. One syllable cannot have more than two tonal morae.

Tonal and toneless vowels may be adjacent. To orthographically distinguish /a˥˩.a/ and /a˩˥.a/ from /a˦˨˦/ and /a˨˦˨/, the former pair are romanized <a'ha> and <ah'a>, respectively. To orthographically distinguish vowel clusters from diphthonhs, the vowels are separated by <v>. Tonal diphthongs are marked <au'> for rising, <auh> for falling, <a'u> for dipping, and <ahu> for peaking.

Syllables and Morae

The language uses morae and syllables. One vowel in a nucleus counts as one mora. Onset consonants count as 0 morae. Each coda consonant counts as one mora. Sonorants that follow an obstruent in intrasyllabic clusters are allophonically preceded by an extra-short vowel. When avoiding phonemic ambiguity, syllable breaks are romanized with an apostrophe <'>, or with <v> in the case of falling and dipping tone coda consonants.

Syntax

Mirmio syntax does not allow for arguments to clearly be labeled subject or object, so it instead uses the terms initiator (I) and associate (A) for the two main arguments of a verb (V). The initiator is the argument that is most involved in the action, but not always the agent since agency is determined by pragmatic or grammatical animacy. The associate is the argument that is less involved in the action than the initiator, and in some cases can be the agent. There are 5 word orders used for different relationships between a verb and its arguments, and all of their components listed here are mandatory:

1. Associate - Verb (AV): used for when the verb is a particular state the associate exists in. This word order is commonly used to express adjective-like or adverb-like modification.
2. Initiator - Verb - Associate (IVA): used for when the verb is an action involving literal or metaphorical motion toward the associate.
3. Initiator - Verb - Coverb - Associate (IVCA): used for when the verb is an action involving the production of the associate from the initiator in some way.
4. Initiator - Associate - Verb (IAV): used for when the verb is a non-literal or non-physical action. This commonly includes irrealis, negative, vague, and other related statements. The lack of specificity for the true relationship between the verb and arguments that the other word orders express is due to the lack of tangibility to the event in discussion.
5. Verb - Initiator - Associate (VIA): used for when the verb is a relationship between the initiator and associate. It can be argued that "initiator" and "associate" are misnomers within this word order because no action is being taken. However, their usage can be justified as the argument in the initiator position is always dominant or equal to the argument in the associate position.

Animacy and Agency

When the associate is grammatically marked as animate, AV word order instead expresses reflexivity.

Parts of Speech

Mirmio has only three parts of speech: nouns and verbs.

Underlyingly, there are no words that can function as adjectives, adverbs, or adpositions. Rather, Mirmio uses relative clauses to convey lexical modification. This may result in only a singular modifier word if AV word order for the relative clause is used, creating the appearance of a modifier. Similarly, relative clauses with IAV, IVA, or VIA structures can give the appearance of a preposition or postposition.

Subordinate Clauses

Mirmio primarily distinguishes content and relative clauses through morphology, as both can have the same rules and variabiltiy found in independent clause syntax. There is a third type of subordinate clause unique to Mirmio called merged clauses which convey pragmatic coordination with syntactic subordination.

Content Clauses

Mirmio can substitute both noun and verb positions with a content clause. Uninflected content clauses are marked with a preclitic (dl- before a vowel, dlõ- before a consonant) attached to the first word of the content clause.

In example (1a), dl- is cliticized onto the animacy marker of the clause ácv dja'ukuh rlòxnj, allowng the clause to be placed in the initiator positon of “_ qùulkf nji'hu.”

1a)

Dlácv dja'ukuh rlòxnj qùulkf nji'hu.

Dl=ácv dja'uku.h rlòx-nj qùul-kf nji'hu

ccm=anim horse.nsd run-sv see-g3 1sg.g3

*I see the horse running itself.

“I see a horse running around.”

Inflected content clauses replace the preclitic with a complementizer (dlõ) preceding the content clause and inflected in whichever way the clause would be.

In example (1b), dlõ is placed after the same clause as dl- in (1a), but in order to communicate that the referent of that clause (the horse running around) is more animate than expected, the animacy marker is placed to precede the complementizer, applying animacy to the whole clause.

1b)

Ácv dlõ ácv dja'ukuh rlòxnj qùulkf nji'hu.

Ácv dlõ ácv dja'uku.h rlòx-nj qùul-kf nji'hu

anim ccm anim horse.nsd run-sv see-g3 1sg.g3

*I see the horse running itself.

“The horse running around draws my attention to it.”

Relative Clauses

Relative clauses in Mirmio encompass both adjectival and adverbial clauses as they have the same behavior in the language. Although relative clauses can have the same underlying word order as independent clauses, the word that is being modified by the relative clause is not represented inside of the relative clause.

There are two classes of relative marker: continuous and discontinuous, both of which precede the relative clause and connect it back to its modifiee, but the continuous marker appears directly after the modifiee and the discontinuous modifier appears after another, previous relative clause (if present) modifying the same word. Similar to content clauses, inflected markers are complementizers and uninflected markers are clitics, however relative marker clitics are attached to the word preceding the relative clause rather than the first word in the relative clause.

Relative markers mark the modifiee's role in the relative clause, removing the ambiguity that would result from omitting one of the words. This role does not have to be the same role that the word fills in the clause its inside of.

Relative Markers	Associate marker		Initiator marker		Verb marker
	Continuous	Discontinuous	Continuous	Discontinuous	Continuous	Discontinuous
Complementizer root	cvoh	õõn	kjĩ'ĩ	lee	ge	ò'k
Clitic	-cv	-n	-enj	-(n)ri	-(a)y	-ù, -w

In the example (2a), the relative clause rlòxnjkf modifies dja'ukuh, where dja'ukuh is the clause's initiator. This relationship is marked by the initiator continuous relative clitic -enj.

2a)

Djá'ukuh'enj rlòxnj qùulkf nji'hu.

Djá'uku.h=enj rlòx-nj qùul-kf nji'hu

horse.nsd=icr run-sv see-g3 1sg.g3

*I see the horse running.

“I see a horse that is running.”

Example (2b) shows the complementizer kjĩ'ĩ, instead of the clitic -enj, taking the animacy marker ácv that corresponds to the modifiee.

2b)

Djá'ukuh ácv kjĩ'ĩ rlòxnj qùulkf nji'hu.

Djá'uku.h ácv kjĩ'ĩ rlòx-nj qùul-kf nji'hu

horse.nsd anim icr run-sv see-g3 1sg.g3

*I see the horse running itself.

“I see a horse that is running around.”

Example (2c) uses the same sentence as (2b) but with an additional relative clause. The discontinuous clitic (-n) is used to mark that the noun djá'ukuh takes an associate role in the second relative clause xjiithnj, while the kjĩ'ĩ remains marking the noun as the initiator in the first relative clause rlòxnj.

2c)

Djá'ukuh ácv kjĩ'ĩ rlòxnjn xjiithnj qùulkf nji'hu.

Djá'uku.h ácv kjĩ'ĩ rlòx-nj=n qùul-kf nji'hu

horse.nsd anim icr run-sv=adr neigh-sv see-g3 1sg.g3

*I see the horse running itself neighing.

“I see a horse that is running around and neighing.”

Merged Clauses

Merged clauses are the same in structure to relative clauses, except that the event that occurs inside of the relative clause is not contextually relevant to the event that happens in the clause the modifiee is inside of. Merged clauses are a way of syntactically shortening coordinate clauses that share a referent. While merged clauses are syntactically embedded into another clause, pragmatically they are as important as the one they are embedded into, distinguishing them from relative clauses.

The complementizers of merged clauses are the same as for relative clauses, except they have a rising tone. Clitics either have rising tone themselves or give the final vowel of the previous stem a rising tone. The latter is marked written <-h> in morphological notation.

Merge Markers	Associate marker		Initiator marker		Verb marker
	Continuous	Discontinuous	Continuous	Discontinuous	Continuous	Discontinuous
Complementizer root	cvoh	õõhn	kjĩh	leh	geh	ŏhk
Clitic	-hcv	-hn	-hnj	-(n)rih	-(a)hy	-ŭh, -hw

Translations

Glossing key:

ACM: associate continuous merged clause marker

CCM: content clause marker

COLL: collective

G3: gender 3 (i.e. celestial)

NSD: non-specific definiteness (i.e. +uniqueness and +familiarity)

Q: interrogative clause marker

RV: relational verb

SG: singular

Horse Translation

Djá'uku': Svethùùgkf kvùùrthee dja'uku'.
[d͡ʑɜʊ̯˦˨˦χʊ˥˩ | ɬʷeθ̼ʊ̙ːɰkʷʰ kʷʊ̙ːɽθ̼eː d͡ʑɜʊ̯˦˨˦χʊ˥˩]
NP	S (VIA)
	VP		NP:Init			NP:Assc
N	V		N			N
Djá'uku'	Sve-	thùùgkf	kvùù	-r	-thee	djá'uku'
horse	rv-	store	knowledge.coll	-g3	-all	horse
*Horse: All-knowledges store horse
“Horse: Everyone knows what a horse is.”

Kitchen Translation

Mòscuhkf yẽ dlosxe'exjkf pü'nbũ pü'nbũhcv scuhkf yẽ?

[mʲɔ̙̈ɬ.t͡ɕʊ˩˥kʷʰ jẽ tˡoɬ.xe˦˨˦çkʷʰ pʲᵿ̃˥˩.ⁿɾ̼ʊ̃ pʲᵿ̃˥˩.ⁿɾ̼ʊ̃˩˥t͡σ̠ ɬt͡ɕʊ˩˥kʷʰ jẽ]

S (VIA)

VP

NP:Init

NP:Assc

V

ProN

ContCl (VIA)

VP

NP:Init

NP:Assc

V

N

N

MrgCl (VIA)

Comp

V

Comp

V

N

Comp

V

ProN

Mò=

s.

cuh

-kf

yẽ

dlõ=

s.

xe'exj

-kf

pü'nbũ

pü'nbũ

-h

=cv

s.

cuh

-kf

yẽ

q=

rv-

have

-g3

2sg.g3

ccm=

rv-

in

-g3

kitchen

kitchen

-nsd

-acm

rv-

have

-g3

2sg.g3

*You have kitchen in the kitchen of you?

“Do you have a kitchen in your kitchen?”

Lexicon

kjòu' [kʲɔ̙͡u̯˥˩] (dog)

mihir [mʲiɽ˨˦˨] (cat)

mio [mʲi͡o] (speak)

nõx [n̼õx] (want)