Brooding: Difference between revisions

Brooding was created by Scott L. Hamilton for the [http://www.riddlesbrood.com/ Riddlesbrood Touring Theater Company] based on elements developed by the theater's director Ryan Long. In the fall of 2014, development and curatorship of the language was assumed by [[User:Bpnjohnson|BenJamin P. Johnson]].

Brooding has been featured in Riddlesbrood's theme song, the 2012 play ''The Dark Side Show'', the 2015 play ''Harken'', and the 2016 novel ''[https://www.createspace.com/5858564 Riddlesbrood and the Greatest Brochure in the World]''.

Both Scott's and Jamin's involvement with Brooding was facilitated by the [http://conlang.org Language Creation Society (LCS)].

languages where a single word translates as "I went down to the stream to catch a fish and cook it for dinner". The other end is languages where grammar is based on word order with lots of little words - Chinese is much like this. Most languages are in between (English is more isolating than Spanish, Latin is more synthetic than Spanish, etc). Brooding falls in the middle with some of the core grammar built into words, but in other places, word order is important.

The basic order of a Brooding sentence is Subject-Verb-Object. This means that the subject comes before the verb, and if there is an object it follows the verb. This is like English. This order is somewhat variable due to things like adding words, artistic license, etc. The one thing that is invariable is that the verb is always the second constituent in the sentence. If you were to add something to the beginning of the sentence (an adverbial phrase, starting off with saying something like "So..." or "Meanwhile", etc.), that phrase would take the first place in the sentence. The next phrase has to be the verb phrase, and the subject moves to after the verb. Any object will be after the subject. Languages with this structure are known as V2 languages.  

(Note, a 'constituent' can be a single word or a phrase. 'I' in "I love you" is one constituent. In the sentence 'The man down the road loves you', the whole phrase 'The man down the road' is one constituent.)

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|colspan="3"| '''''Stops'''''

| '''b''' || /b/ || as in 'bee'

| '''p''' || /p/ || as in 'pea'

| '''d''' || /d/ || as in 'deed'

| '''t''' || /t/ || as in 'tea'

| '''g''' || /g/ || as in 'get'

| '''k''' || /k/ || as in 'key'

|colspan="3"| '''''Fricatives'''''

| '''f''' || /f/ || as in 'fee'

| '''th''' || /θ/ || as in 'thin'

| '''s''' || /s/ || as in 'see'

| '''z''' || /z/ || as in 'zed'

| '''sh''' || /ʃ/ || as in 'she'

| '''kh''' || /x/ || as ''ch'' in German 'Bach'

| '''h''' || /h/ || as in 'he'

|colspan="3"| '''''Affricates'''''

| '''ch''' || /t͡ʃ/ || as in 'cheek'

|colspan="3"| '''''Nasals and Liquids'''''

| '''m''' || /m/ || as in 'me'

| '''n''' || /n/ || as in 'need'

| '''ng''' || /ŋ/ || as in 'ring'

| '''l''' || /l/ || as in 'leaf'

| '''r''' || /ɹ/ || as in 'reed'

|colspan="3"| '''''Semi-Vowels / Glides'''''

| '''w''' || /w/ || as in 'we'

| '''y''' || /j/ || as in 'yea'

* ''th'' is always pronounced as the 'th' in thin (/θ/), never as the 'th' in thee or they (/ð/)

* ''l'' always pronounced like the 'l' in leaf (/l/), never like the 'll' in all or ball (/ɫ/)

* ''g'' is always pronounces like the 'g' in get (/ɡ/), never like the 'g' in 'gee' (d͡ʒ)

Several of the sounds have a 'blended' version.  A consonant blend is two consonants in a row pronounced one after the other.  Most of these blends only appear at the beginning of syllables. While these blends are represented by a single letter in Brooding orthography, they are two consonant sounds (and this subject to Brooding word structure rules that apply to two consonants in a row).

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| '''br''' || /bɹ/ || as in 'bread'

| '''pl''' || /pl/  || as in 'plea'

| '''dr''' || /dɹ/ || as in 'drum'

| '''gr''' || /gɹ/ || as in 'grow'

| '''kl''' || /kl/ || as ''cl'' in 'clean'

| '''fl''' || /fl/ || as in 'flee'

| '''sl''' || /sl/ || as in 'sleep'

| '''shl''' || /ʃl/ || as ''schl'' in 'schlep'

| '''sk''' || /sk/ || as in 'skill'

| '''sp''' || /sp/ || as in 'spill'

| '''st''' || /st/ || as in 'still'

* As noted above a few of the blends do not occur in English. They take a little practice to say, but aren't hard. Avoid putting a sound between the sounds - English speakers might have a tendency to insert a vowel in there (like some people pronounce ''sphere'' as 'suh-fear')

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|colspan="3"| '''''Front'''''

| '''ee''' || /i/ || as ''ee'' in 'bee'

| '''i''' || /ɪ/ || as ''i'' in 'bit'

| '''ae''' || /e/ || as ''ay'' in 'bay'

| '''e''' || /ɛ/ || as ''e'' in 'bet'

| '''aa''' || /æ/ || as ''a'' in 'bat'

|colspan="3"| '''''Back'''''

| '''a''' || /ɑ/ || as ''a'' in 'father'

| '''uh''' || /ʌ/ || as ''u'' in 'but'

| '''aw''' || /ɔ/ || as ''ou'' in 'bought'

| '''o''' || /o/ || as ''oa'' in 'boat'

| '''oo''' || /u/ || as ''oo'' in 'boot'

|colspan="3"| '''''Diphthongs'''''

| '''ai''' || /aɪ̯/ || as ''i'' in 'bite'

| '''au''' || /aʊ̯/ || as ''ow'' in 'cow'

Brooding has a concept of contrasting vowels. These are pairs of vowels that are used in various grammatical operations. Some processes require you to take a vowel from a word and change it to its contrasting vowel. For example, if the vowel is 'oo', it changes to 'o'. If it is 'o', it changes to 'oo'.

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Syllables in Brooding come in the format (C)(C)V(C)(C). (The C's are consonants, the V is a vowel.) The ones in

Some parts of speech have specific requirements in their 'basic' forms. The basic form of a word is the form the

These "faces" (called ''gawbren'') may be used in various props, illustrations, or even mimicked by actors to tell a "story within a story." The angle of the head may also be manipulated to create dual meanings. On the left are two examples of a clue which could mean "Gate of Faces" (''gedreen e doon'') or "Gate of Dreams" (''gedreen e wis'').

[[File:Brooding-klaan.jpg|thumbnail|A sign, containing the Riddlesbrood logo in the middle, which reads, ''klaan'', 'the proper or correct way to do something.']]

* The primary difference between 'teeth visible' and 'teeth clenched' is whether the teeth are touching.

* 'Puckered' might be tight or loose, but visibly puckered.

to blind characters). These characters each represent sounds in Brooding, either single sounds or 'blends',

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how they are used. We'll go through each use below.

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Nouns can be marked as singular, plural or 'mass' (collective). Mass nouns are nouns that where there are multiple entities in the group, but the group is considered as a coherent whole. For example, a bee would be singular, bees would be plural and a swarm of bees would be a mass noun.

Let's look at the word for 'tree': ''geeth''

* ''chendi'' - a group of shoulders (probably used to refer to both shoulders at once as in 'you have a good head on your shoulders')

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Sometimes you want to say something belongs to something else. You turn a noun into a possessive noun to do so. If we have someone named ''Klaid'' (Clyde in English), we make it a possessive by inserting an ''l'' after the last vowel. ''klaid'' becomes ''klaild''. So 'Cylde's tree' is translated as ''geeth klaild''.

Propositional phrases (i.e. "On the water", "with a duck", etc.) can be appended to modify a noun. See the Prepositional Phrases section.

A relative clause is a short clause that describes the noun. In "The tree that burns", the relative clause is "that burns". A relative clause is like a mini-sentence embedded after the noun. In our example, you could visualize it as "The tree (it burns)". In English, we add "that" on the beginning and remove the pronoun that refers to the noun. The noun is called the 'head' and "that" is called the relativizer. The head noun might be the subject or the object of the clause. If I say "The tree that burns", the tree is the thing burning - it's the subject of the burning. However, I can say "The tree that I burn". In that case, the tree is the object, the thing being burned.

So let's take the above example. If I say "The tree that burns down", the head is "tree", and the relative clause is "that burns down", that you can look at as "The tree (it burns down)". In that clause, the tree is the subject (it is what is burning). So it's the subject of the relative clause. When you write the clause, you use the relativizer ''ai'':

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|colspan="3"|'The tree that burns.'

If I say "The tree that I burn", the head is the same (tree), but the tree is now the object, the thing being burned. In this case, the relativizer is ''au'' instead of ''ai'':

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|colspan="4"|'The tree that I burn.'

(Note: There is a subject in the relative clause - ''leed'' ("I") - since "I" am doing the burning. It appears after the verb because the verb is always second. Also, the verb is slightly different. ''aekhlaat'' means something is burning. I am making it burn, so the verb is literally "to cause-to-burn." For more on that construction, see the section on

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|colspan="5"|'I see a tree that burns'

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Note that Brooding has no distinct words for articles (i.e. "the", "a/an"). Rather, when "the" would be used in English, a Brooding speaker would use a demonstrative instead. There is no equivalent to "a/an".

A noun clause is a clause that, instead of modifying a noun, replaces a noun in a sentence. English has a few versions of a noun clause. For example, in "He saw that I hit him", "that I hit him" is a noun clause. It is the action "I hit him" that is being seen. In this case, it is the object of the sentence. English sometimes drops the "that" (e.g. "He saw I hit him"), but it still remains as a replacement for a noun.

The other English variation is to use an infinitive verb in places of a noun: "I want to hit him." This is equivalent to "I want that I hit him". Once again, "I hit him" is the object of the noun.  

In Brooding, there is only one form for this sort of construction. The action of the dependent clause is converted into a noun (as per the rules for nominalization) and then it modified by prepositional phrases and relative clauses. In Brooding, "I want to hit him" would be:

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|colspan="6"|'I want to hit him.' (Literally: "I want my hitting of him.")

Several of the pronouns have an alternate 'clique' version. These are for referring to people who are part of your clan, group or 'side' to things.

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=== Locational ("Essive") Prepositions ===

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=== Motion ("Lative") Prepositions ===

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All verbs in Brooding are multi-syllable. The first syllable is a single vowel - this vowel is called the 'key vowel' of

* progressive - the action is being looked at as underway - it's ongoing.

We'll use the example verb: ''agen'' "to see"

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'I see.'

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'I am seeing.'

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'I see (often, usually).'

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'I saw.'

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'I was seeing.'

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'I used to see.'

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'I do not see.'

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'I did not used to see.'

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|colspan="4"|'I saw, ran, and hid.'

In this case, the verbs for see, run and hide are all in sequence and act as a single constituent. Note that only the first verb (''aagen'') is marked in the past - the rest of the verbs are just listed in their basic form. Also note that this isn't a long compound verb. The words are pronounced separately, but as the same phrase.

sentence is combined with the verb. For example, instead of saying "He hits the cow", the object incorporated

version of the sentence would be "He cow-hits".

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|colspan="3"|'He hits a cow.'

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|colspan="2"|'He hits a cow.' (Literally: "He cow-hits.")

This is a productive procedure in Brooding - you can do it with any sentence with a single word object. However, it is more likely to be used when incorporating the object gives a distinct meaning. By using an incorporated object, the verb would indicate a specific idiomatic meaning, or a connotation to the action that would be specific to that combination of verb and object. An example from English would be 'cow-tipping', which has a more specific meaning. Or it would contrast to a verb like 'waiter-tipping' (the two having very different meanings).

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|colspan="2"|'I hide.'

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|colspan="3"|'He hides me.' (He make-hides me.)

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|colspan="5"|'He causes me to hide.' (Literally: "He causes the hiding of me.")

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|colspan="3"|'I hit myself.'

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|colspan="3"|'They hit themselves.'

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|colspan="3"|'They hit each other.'

As in English, you can use a reflexive as part of emphasis for an intransitive verb ("I hide myself"). However, in Brooding, you explicitly have to make the intransitive verb a transitive one:

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|colspan="3"|'I hide myself.' ("I cause-hide myself.")

In English, we can de-emphasize the object (or omit it entirely) through the use of a passive voice, such as "The cow is seen". If the subject is mentioned at all, it is in a prepositional phrase: "The cow was seen by me."

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|colspan="4"|'I see that cow.'

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|colspan="3"|'That cow is seen.'

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|colspan="5"|'That cow is seen by me.'

majority of this is done with the verb 'is'. This type of verb is called a copula, since all it does is link a subject to

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|colspan="3"|'I am cold.'

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|colspan="3"|'She was a sibling.'

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|colspan="4"|'I am with him.'

Existential predicates indicate that something exists. In English, we use "there is" or "there are" to indicate this. Brooding has

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|colspan="2"|'There is a tree.'

Possessive predicates indicate possession of something. In English, this is its own verb "to have". Brooding uses a

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|colspan="4"|'I have a name.'(literally "A name is with me")

Brooding has a unique 'degree' system for adjectives. Adjectives can be compounded with degree words or

Let's start with the word for 'happy': ''taefuh''

"Very happy" would be ''staitaefuh''. "Very unhappy" would be ''yuhneetaefuh''. However, by adding numbers (1 - 4 and negative 1 - 4) different degrees are available. When adding the number, the last consonant of the number is dropped.

Positive numbers are positive degrees and negative numbers are negative degrees. There isn't an exact

There are some adjectives which can't be used on their own, but must be used with degree words as above.

like how the suffix '-ness' is used in English.

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|colspan="3"|'happier than you'

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|colspan="3"|'as high as a kite'

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|colspan="3"|'less quickly than a cow'

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|colspan="5"|'I am happier than you.'

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|colspan="6"|'She sings like she's higher than a kite.'

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|colspan="6"|'This vehicle which is less quick than a cow'

Where in English we would add an 'ly', Brooding uses an adverbial phrase with the preposition ''otlai''. For example, 'happily' would be ''otlai taefuh'' (literally "as if happy").

Those times when an adverb would indicate time ("tomorrow", " a long time ago", etc), the preposition ''tootlende'' is used. Example: ''tootlende hlaud'' (literally "during now")

More complex adverbial clauses use an adverbial preposition followed by a sentence to make a dependent clause, for example "When I see it" is an adverbial clause. This would be ''tleste agen leed awtluht''.

''leed agen awtluht otlai taefuh'' - "I see it happily."

''otlai taefuh agen leed awtluht'' - "Happily, I see it."

* ''tleste agen leed awtluht'' - "When I see it"

* ''tlande agen leed awtluht'' - "Where I see it"

* ''otlai agen leed awtluht'' - "As if I see it/Like I see it"

* ''tlauspuh agen leed awtluht'' - "So that I see/in order that I see it"

* ''felde agen leed awtluht'' - "Because I see it"

* ''tootlende agen leed awtluht'' - "While I see it"

* ''tlelma agen leed awtluht'' - "If I see it"

* ''zretle agen leed awtluht'' - "Unless I see it"

* ''yuhslo agen leed awtluht'' - "Although I see it"

* ''stooslaedi agen leed awtluht'' - "Instead of me seeing it"

* ''klodeste agen leed awtluht'' - "In addition to me seeing it"

like "and", "and not", "but". Brooding has similar words, but there are some distinctions that Brooding has that

English doesn't. Different types of conjunctions are available depending on what is being joined: phrases or

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Clauses have their own conjunctions. We'll look at them in groups.

The difference between the two above 'and's is a subtle one. In English, we use 'and' to string things that

happen in order but are connected, such as "I asked and he answered". This is different than when they

are happening at the same time (as in "I asked and I prayed"). Brooding has two different words for each

case. ''daebuh'' means they are simultaneous, while ''shenga'' is more equivalent to "and then". Note that

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Commands are formed with the 'subject' of ''a'' followed by the verb in its basic form. The verb can be negated as

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|colspan="2"|'Run!'

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|colspan="2"|'Don't Run!'

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|colspan="5"|'Do you see that cow?'

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|colspan="3"|'Who are you?' (Literally: "You are who?")

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|colspan="5"|'Where did the cow run (to)?'

The Brooding number system is hexadecimal, which means that the basic numbers are counted up to fifteen before adding another digit, so the number "10" is equivalent to sixteen. (The numerals between 10 and 15 are often written as the letters A-F in hexadecimal notation, but only the words are used in Brooding.)

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Compounding words is pretty simple overall. Except for a few variations, the word creator just combine the words. Usually the 'core' word is the last word, with the modifier word or words first. Different parts of speech

To make compounds that indicate a noun in possession of a noun, you compound the core word with the possessive form of the possessor noun. For example, "cow's foot" would be ''foolshem'' (possessive form of ''foos'': ''fools'' + ''hem''). Note that the word is pronounced ''fools-hem'', not ''fool-shem''.

There is a special way of compounding nouns to mean x and y. It's similar to English constructions like 'salt and pepper', but packing it into a single word. You connect the words with the i sound. You can use regular conjunctions, of course. However, by building a single compound word, the two concepts are tied very tightly.

the-high-and-the-low

raves-and-kudos ('hello')