TolsianR: Difference between revisions

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Tolsian Revisited is an attempt at revamping much of that old conlang created something like 15 years ago by a child so that it becomes a slightly more consistent language. It is somewhat influenced by French and Latin but still an a priori conlang. It has its own alphabet which was actually created before the language itself.

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|colspan="2"| pʰ p b

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There is also an additional consonant, here transcribed as /h̪/.

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<!--Explain your conlang's alphabet. Use the International Phonetic Alphabet to describe the sounds of your language. If you are unsure on how to use IPA then visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet and read up. -->

Tolsian has its own script and an official, perfectly matching romanization. The alphabet is considered to consist of 36 letters, plus diacritics :

<poem>

Y y - /jo/, /oj/

Ƃ ƃ - /bɾa/

Ŋ ŋ - /ŋ/

Ƀ ƀ - /β/

</poem>

|colspan="2"| pʰ <ph> p <&#x70;> b <&#x62;>

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However, another Latin transliteration has been designed so as to be more phonemic and easier to write on a computer, and is getting more and more popular :

<poem>

/ɛ̃/ î ; /ɔ̃/ â ; /ɑ̃/ ê or õ

</poem>

====Tables of phonemes and their corresponding graphemes====

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|colspan="2"|e <e> ø <ö>

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!colspan="2"|Open-mid

|colspan="2"|ɛ <ä> ɛ̃ <î>

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!colspan="2"|Open

Additionally, an apostrophe is used to disambiguate ambiguous sequences which could be interpreted as either a digraph representing a single phoneme, or two graphemes in a row representing two phonemes. For instance, <lh> denotes /ɾ/, but <l'h> denotes /lh/.

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There are five main parts of speech in TolsianR : nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions.

Nouns have definiteness, gender, number, and case. The case system is actually very reduced, with only three cases : nominative, accusative, and genitive. Definiteness is marked by definite and indefinite articles which agree in gender and number with the nouns. There are two numbers, singular and plural. Finally, the gender system is fairly complicated, as it consists of two dimensions interacting : masculine vs feminine on the one hand and animate vs inanimate on the other. However, different parts of speech agree with these two gender systems : articles and adjectives will take masculine or feminine markings, while verbs are conjugated differently depending upon whether the noun is animate or inanimate. Nouns themselves are marked for gender, and for animatedness when in the accusative or dative case. Also, when an adjective qualifies several nouns which are not all masculine or feminine, they take a neutral plural suffix ; but beyond those special cases, neutral has disappeared from TolsianR.

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On many nouns ending in a vowel, gender is identifiable as -''e'' and -''o'' are masculine markers, while -''a'' and -''i'' are feminine markers. But nouns ending with a consonant don't provide such cues. Besides, there are occasional exceptions to these rules. Animatedness is marked in the accusative case as the prefix will be ''ke''- (or ''k''- before a vowel) in the case of an inanimate noun, and ''dake''- (or ''dak''- before a vowel) in the case of an animate noun ; and in the genitive case, with a suffix ''-o'' for inanimate nouns (transformed into /w/ after a vowel) and ''-do'' for animate nouns (see section on cases for more details). Also, "natural" gender is usually reflected in the grammatical gender (nous which refer to male beings usually are masculine, and vice-versa) ; and "natural" animatedness is usually reflected in grammatical animatedness as well : people, animals and, it is worth noticing, plants, are usually animate, while objects, concepts etc are usually inanimate.

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<poem>

[+asp] -> [-asp] /_-do

[-voice] -> [+voice] / _-do

/ɲ/ -> /n/ / _-do

</poem>

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!  !! Nominative !! Accusative !! Genitive

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There are two main classes of verbs : (A) those whose stem ends in a vowel, and (B) those whose stem ends in a consonant. Verbs ending with an -''a'' or an -''i'' usually just take an -''r'' to form the infinitive, while the other ones usually take a -''ƃ'' /bɾa/. Verbs agree in person, animatedness and number with their subject. There are formally seven persons in TolsianR : first singular, second singular, third singular, first plural, second plural, third plural, and the "polite" second person used in formal contexts for which number is neutralized.

TolsianR's tense system is divided into past, present, and future, which are encoded in the conjugation of the verbs in the indicative mode.  

A distinction between perfective and imperfective aspects is marked morphologically in the past tense, while other aspectualities, such as progressive and perfect, are marked with auxiliaries : progressive with the auxiliary ''cƿƃ'' "to be" and the present participle, and perfect with the auxiliary ''vuƃ'' "to have" and the past participle.

Conditional, Subjunctive : neutral, habitual. Also, they express a present tense by default.

Absolute : gnomic

Realis

The two other moods of TolsianR are subjunctive and conditional. Subjunctive is used for instance in dependent clauses whose main clause's verb expresses an opinion, an inference, a belief (verbs such as "to think", "to believe", "to consider", etc), a desire or a wish ("to want", "to hope"). It is also used to express commands, interdictions and requests, as there is no distinct imperative mood in the language. Conditional is used to speak of events whose realization depends on a certain condition ; then, it is used in both the main and the dependent clauses.

The default polarity is positive : something is asserted. In order to express negation, the negative adverb ''ne'' is placed right before the verb. If a subject pronoun is used, it is inserted between the negative adverb and the verb.  

Examples : ''æ̊ cƿ'' "I am" ; ''ne æ̊ cƿ'' "I am not".

Verbs are inflected for person, mood, tense, and animatedness. There are four moods : indicative, subjunctive, conditional, and so-called "absolute" (gnomic). The indicative mood splits into four tenses : present, imperfect past, perfect past, and future. There are also a present partitive and a past partitive, especially used for progressive aspect and passive voice, respectively.

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| '''Indicative Present''' || stemV-∅ ; stemV-s ; stemV-t ; stemV-m ; stemV-ts ; stemV-n ; stemV-ne || stem-jV ; stem-jVs ; stem-jVt ; stem-jVm ; stem-jVts ; stem-jVn ; stemV-je

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| '''Absolute''' (Gnomic) || stemV-jo ; stemV-jos ; stemV-jot ; stemV-jof ; stemV-joz ; stemV-jon ; stemV-je || stemV-joh ; stemV-joθ ; stemV-jot̚ ; stemV-joɸ ; stemV-joʒ ; stemV-jowi ; stemV-joð ; stemV-joː

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<poem>

Absolute Inanimate : ''bariniyh, bariniys, bariniyŧ, bariniyƥ, bariniyƶ̆, bariniyƿ, bariniyƶ, bariniyœ''

</poem>

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| '''Absolute''' (Gnomic) || stem-jo ; stem-jos ; stem-jot ; stem-jof ; stem-joz ; stem-jon ; stem-je || stem-joh ; stem-joθ ; stem-jot̚ ; stem-joɸ ; stem-joʒ ; stem-jowi ; stem-joð ; stem-joː

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<poem>

</poem>

'''Participles'''

Illustration : ''barinitɯ, barinitañ, barinid, bariniƶ̆ ; vekɯ, vekañ, vekid, vekiƶ̆''.

To express many spatial or temporal relations and mark some diverse semantic roles, TolsianR relies on several function words which are placed before their complement and are thus prepositions. Here is a non-exhaustive list of prepositions :

</poem>

TolsianR makes use of both prefixes and suffixes to derive new words from older ones ; some suffixes can change a word's grammatical category, whereas both suffixes and prefixes can be used to alter the meaning of a word. Word compounding also exists but is less prevalent in modern Tolsian.

a- turns a verb into a reflexive verb

u- creates an antonym

ki-, k- diminutive

go-, go͠- aumentative

</poem>

Word order in simple declarative sentences can be SVO or SOV. It is thought SVO order is used to highlight the object more, while SOV would emphasize the process instead. Anyway, the important point is that the verb be placed after its subject in the sentence. In complex sentences with a main sentence and a dependent sentence, the order of the constituents is Subject - Verb- Dependent sentence. I suck at syntax. Inside the dependent sentence, the word order can be SOV or SVO as well, but is also commonly OSV.

In yes-no questions, the order can be VSO or OVS ; there is an inversion between subject and verb. In open questions ("wh-questions"), an interrogative pronoun is used and placed before the verb and the subject : Pronoun - Verb - Subject. If the question is precisely about the subject, then the order is Verb - Pronoun (like in "Says who ?").