ʾÅa̩en

ʾÅa̩en Gohuȋlim
ʾÅa̩en
Pronunciation	[[Help:IPA|ɕɑ.ˈajen]]
Created by	–
Native to	Early Cosmological/Cosmogony of the Universe
Native speakers	all sentient beings (2013)
Language family	ʾÅa̩en Indo-European Proto-Semitic ʾÅa̩en Gohuȋlim
Early form	(?)
Official status
Official language in	the Universe before it existed
Regulated by	The Heavenly Host
Language codes
ISO 639-2	qaa
ISO 639-3	qaa
The image of Divine Gematria and Anamancy, this crest has represented the Invested mortals dedicated to carrying out the will of the First Emanation of the Godhead, regardless the cost -- personally or to the entire human race. The Seraph Michael heads this Order, but he leads with a very "hands-off" approach, causing generations of mortals to pass without even a word from their Celestial paragons.

Čåbåhȋndor Cuȋnen

Čåbåhȋndor Cuȋnen

Background

At the beginning of the creation of the physical universe, God used speech to bring all things into being (Genesis 2:19), but there is some debate as to whether this was the same language that God used when speaking with Adam and his first creations, or even if it was used to communicate to, between, and among the Celestials. Jewish authorities maintain that the Hebrew language was the language of God while the sacred language in Islam is classical Arabic, a descendant of the proto-Semitic language along with Hebrew and Aramaic. In Vedic traditions, Vedic Sanskrit, the language of liturgy, was considered the language of the gods. Coptic, the Greek derived replacement for the lost Hieroglyphics in Egypt is also still used in religious liturgical services. In his 1510 work De Occulta Philosophia, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa writes:

We might doubt whether Angels, or Demons, since they be pure spirits, use any vocal speech, or tongue amongst themselves, or to us; but that Paul in some place saith, If I speak with the tongue of men, or angels: but what their speech or tongue is, is much doubted by many. For many think that if they use any Idiome, it is Hebrew, because that was the first of all, and came from heaven, and was before the confusion of languages in Babylon, in which the Law was given by God the Father, and the Gospell was preached by Christ the Son, and so many Oracles were given to the Prophets by the Holy Ghost: and seeing all tongues have, and do undergo various mutations, and corruptions, this alone doth alwaies continue inviolated.

But later Agrippa further writes:

But because the letters of every tongue, as we shewed in the first book, have in their number, order, and figure a Celestiall and Divine originall, I shall easily grant this calculation concerning the names of spirits to be made not only by Hebrew letters, but also by Chaldean, and Arabick, Ægyptian, Greek, Latine, and any other...

Later in the 16th century, the Elizabethan mathematician and scholar John Dee and alchemist Edward Kelley claimed to have received a “Celestial Speech” directly from the angels. This was recorded in Dee's journals published as The Five Books of the Mysteries along with a complete text called the Book of Loagaeth. In these works, it was claimed that Angelical (the name Dee referred to in his journals) was the language God used to create the world, then later used by Adam to speak with God and the Heavenly Host, as well as being used to name all things in existence. Upon Adam's fall from grace and expulsion from Eden, he lost the ability to speak this language and constructed a form of proto-Hebrew based upon his vague recollection of Angelical. This proto-Hebrew was the universal human language used until the time of the Confusion of Tongues at the Tower of Babel. Technically speaking, the ʾÅa̩en Gohuȋlim (AG) can, in most practical ways, be seen as the progenitor tongue of all the Semitic languages, including Hebrew and Arabic, as well as the Hamitic languages, Egyptian, Akkadian, and Phoenician. Put another way, it is the proto language of Proto-Semitic, which itself can only be hypothetically reconstructed from available archaeological and linguistic data. More to the point, it shares more similarity with the Proto-Semitic, or more correctly, with early forms of Akkadian and Eblaite of the Afro-Asiatic macro-family of languages as well as Aramaic, although many sounds, morphological rules, and syntactic structurings have been lost or otherwise corrupted in those languages. However, a student of these ancient languages will find many similarities among them.

Phonology

According to Arabic grammarians of authority, a sentence is “an intelligible group of words after which silence seems good.” From this vantage point of grammar, the constituent elements in the sentence are words disposed to express subject, object, predicate, etc. From the point of view of morphology, each word contains a root, and in most cases also a formative element, including inflections, affixes, suffixes, etc. Phonology regards the same sentence as its subject matter, but treats it as a series of syllables which is continuous from the point at which the sentence begins after a greater or lesser interval of silence, until the point at which speech again tends toward a stop. The components of language, speech in particular here, lies between two intervals of silence and forms a phonetic unity we call a sentence. And while the phonetic unit is considered the syllable, the syllable is a part of a continuous speech lying between two intervals of silence. It is possible for a single syllable to form a complete phonetic group which may or may not be a sentence, like when using the imperative, but more likely, and specifically in the ʾÅa̩en, single syllables are used as nuclei and scaffolding upon which to compose your dialog.

The sound system of ʾÅa̩en Gohuȋlim is as follows:

Consonants

In the Semitic and Hamitic language families, all syllables must begin with a consonant, which may be in the same word as the vowel, or may be the final consonant of a preceding word. If a syllable begins with a vowel, it must be commenced with the voiceless palatal fricative of the emphatic pronounced as /ç / (see the previous section on transliteration notes for how this is marked). Doing so essentially converts the vowel into a consonant for all practical purposes. This behavior can still be found in modern Hebrew and Arabic and is called a hamzah الهَمْزة in Arabic and is used in Arabic to designate a glottal stop. That is, a short pause of sound produced by obstructing air flow using the larynx and soft palate. In Hebrew it is the letter aleph א, and in the Syriac alphabet it is used in word-initial position to mark a word beginning with a vowel, although sometimes in practice it is elided. Poetically, one can say the hamzah is the sound of silence. Which letter is to be used to support the hamzah depends on the quality of the adjacent vowels. In Greek, spiritus lenis “smooth breathing” represents this notion and is a diacritical mark used in polytonic orthography and in the ancient days of Greek history, it marked the absense of the voiceless glottal fricative /h/ from the beginning of a word.

So, it remains that a syllable is composed of two elements: an initial consonant, and a following vowel. Therefore, syllables must start with a consonant followed by a vowel. A consonant may not follow another consonant unless forming a word where the previous word ends in a vowel, allowing a consonant to be added for closure, in which case, it may be necessary to prefix the word with a prosthetic vowel. More on this in the vowels section.

The initial divine language consisted of 35 consonantal phonemes, 5 more than Proto-Semitic and 6 more than Arabic, whose phonology and morphology is extremely conservative, as languages go. As is found in the Proto-Semitic language family, the consonant system is based on triads of related voiced, voiceless, and emphatic consonants. ʾÅa̩en is triconsonantal, or triliteral, meaning the roots of verbs and many nouns are characterized as a sequence of consonants, or radicals. These abstract roots are used in the formation of actual words by adding vowels following the particular morphological category around the root consonants and with appropriate patterns. It is worth noting that biliterals and even quadriliteral roots do exist.

Biconsonantal Roots

By far, the most common roots in ʾÅa̩en are tri-radical, but some of these triconsonantal roots were originally bi-radical and the transformation from biliteral to triliteral usually follows a pattern of causation i.e. ġ-h-l → ġohuilen “language, to lift up” from ġ-l “to speak; it is said.”

Group 1A Two Consonant Roots Two consonant noun stems which show no assimilation to three consonant stems. These include words like dm 'blood' and mw 'water.'

Group 1B Two Consonant Roots Noun stems which show two consonants but are frequently treated as having three. This may be an assimilation by early pre-Mosaic lineage man to tri-consonantal forms that were easier to mouth and pronounce, or it may be that they were originally tri-consonantal themselves. Words like ʾm → ummu 'mother' and ʾb → abba 'father' are common.

Quadriliteral Roots

A quadriliteral is a consonantal root containing a sequence of four consonants used to derive the appropriate quadriliteral word form. It is believed that quad-radical roots came about from the agglutination of biliteral roots, although the evidence is lacking since its inception was at the dawn of creation itself. Many quadriliteral roots have special significance.

The four triads making up the dental and alveolar plosives and fricatives are known to be in use in its construction, shown below the consonant table that follows. Phonemes in a dotted-blue box are voiced variants.

	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Epiglottal	Glottal
Nasal	m [m]		n [n]					ԅ [ŋ]
Plosive	p [p] b [b]		t [t] d [d] ț [ţ]	j [dʒ] t̾ [ʦ]			ʾ [ɕ]	c [k] g [g] c̦ [ķ̧]	q [q]			̛ [ʔ]
Fricative
Affricate
Approximant
Trill
Flap or tap
Lateral fric.
Lateral app.
Lateral flap

NB. The fricative sounds [x] and [ɣ] are allophones of the phonemes /k/ and /g/, respectively.

Emphatics

In Semitic languages, an emphatic consonant is an obstruent consonant which contrasts with both voice and voiceless stops and fricatives. Orthographically, emphatics have a comma below the letter (and the appropriate IPA symbol for the phonetics). As mentioned, there are four constructed triads in ʾÅa̩en whose phonetic realization is straightforward:

• dental stops d t ț
• velar stops g k ķ
• alveolar sibilants z s ș
• interdental ḋ t̆ ț̌

It might be realized that emphatic sounds occur in nearly all Semitic languages, as well as being shared with most other languages of the Afro-Asiatic family. The emphatic is speculated to have been glottalized as the secondary articulation in Proto-Semitic (PS), but as truth would have it, in ʾÅa̩en the secondary articulation becomes a voiceless palatal fricative, whereas in modern Semitic languages to include Hebrew and Modern South Arabian languages, it has changed over time to be pharyngealized, velarized, ejective, or in some cases, unaspirated. For practical purposes, consider the emphatic phonemes to be a lateral tie to the [ç] sound. So, the phoneme / ș / could be pronounced / s͡ç /, which in English would sound similar to /shya/ but with the /sh/ being more palatoalveolar in structure.

For learners of the language, it may be easier to pronounce the emphatic as an ejective, which are voiceless consonants that are pronounced by simultaneous closure of the glottis. Strictly speaking, ejectives are glottalic egressive consonants that can loosely be described as sounding like the pure phonemic quality of the letter with little aspiration, followed by an abrupt stop then a vowel. However, those endeavoring to increase their mastery of the language should practice the correct secondary articulation of the emphatic.

Note that the emphatic or anything resembling a glottal can never occur in word-final position.

Fricatives

From the above table, you can discern that the language has <TODO> fricative sounds that are mostly reflected as sibilants in later languages.

• two voiced fricatives [ð] and [z]
• four voiceless fricatives [ɵ] [s] [ʃ] [ɬ]
• three emphatic fricatives [ɵ̧] [ş] [ɬ̧]

However, by the time of <TODO>, the early Akkadian that was spoken there already had affricate realizations of at least ș. Further linguistic research into Phoenician, Biblical Hebrew, as well as Old Babylonian and Canaanite will, no doubt, bring further information and evidence to light about how the spoken (and written) language of the ancients came into being in relation to its angelic, mother tongue.

Vowels

Vowels are interesting. In the Semitic languages where the syllabic order is very clearly defined, it cannot contain more than one vowel, although a diphthong may be allowed as a single vowel. Also, as you already know, syllables may not start with vowels unless preceded by <TODO>

	Front	Near-front	Central	Near-back	Back
Close
Near-close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open

Another borrowed morphology is found in Hebrew and some other Semitic languages, called matres lectionis “mothers of reading,” referring to the use of certain consonants to indicate a vowel. This is less of a feature of AG because the language has vowels but can be found in a very primitive, prototypical form.

Diphthongs

There are no real diphthongs in Gohuȋlim speak. What you get are gentle glides and aspirated inter-vowel connections. Generally speaking, when two vowels are found next to each other, pronunciation consists of an easy glide between the sound of the first to the second. Otherwise, both are pronounced fully with a stop between them and this is represented orthographically with a syllabic marker below the vowel before which the stop must be applied, as in ʾÅa̩en. In some more antediluvian representations, a further syllabic marker can sometimes be found indicating the relationship between the second vowel and the next consonant, like when the name of the language is written as ʾÅa̩e̯n. When unmarked, however, and a sequence containing multiple vowels is encountered, each such vowel represents a separate syllable.

Vowel Endurance

Many oppositional (or duality-based) words use the vowel space as a continuous phonetic variable. That is, there is not just one word between agim 'ecstasy' and agum 'contentment'; the precise degree of joy (or lack thereof) is indicated by the frontness parameter of the vowel annunciation.

Phonotactics

The logotome is the space of all possible words given the phonotactics of a language. When a phonetic inventory is very small, you begin to see two things: lots of minimal pairs and not many short words. A first look would yield the following numbers: Maximum biconsonantal roots: 2,209 Maximum triconsonantal roots: 103,823 Maximum quadriconsonantal roots: 4,879,681

To say it a little differently, we have the following ʾÅa̩en phonotactic heuristics:

Initials (C) bcdkslakw <TODO>

Middle (Vowels) (V) a e i o u y ai au ei ia ie io iu oi ua ue uo ui <TODO>

Final (F) p t k b d g m n ng <TODO>

The syllable structure is (C)V(F) such that C and F may or may not be present, but V will always be, acting as a bare syllabic nucleus.

Consonant Clusters

When two consonant phonemes are next to each other, the first as the syllable-final of the first syllable, and the second as the syllable-initial of the second syllable, it creates an obstruent cluster. In some cases, a voicing assimilation may occur causing the first consonant to be voiced or devoiced according to the second consonant.

• When s is followed by g then /s/ → [z]
• When x is followed by z, or then /z/ → [s]
• When b, d, or g is followed by š then /ʃ/ → [ʒ]
• When b, d, or g is followed by p, t, or k then /b,d,g/ → [Ɂ]
• When v is followed by t or t̆ then /v/ → [f]

In compound words, assimilation is likely to take place before a voiced consonant Vk + bVC → VgbVC and to a lesser extent involving nasals n + bVC → mbVC.

Stress

Stress is the strength placed on a certain syllable of each word. English has an unpredictable stress and it's not marked anywhere. Spanish is also unpredictable in this sense, but it can be read correctly without trouble. French words always receive stress in their last syllable. Quechua receives stress in the second-to-last syllable. Latin stresses the second-to-last, or penultimate, syllable if both final syllables are short, else it falls on the ultimate syllable.

In ʾÅa̩en, stress is most always placed on the first syllable of a word, especially if that word is lead by a vowel. Unstressed syllables are pronounced clearly, without vowel reduction. Transliteration of ʾÅa̩e̯n supports stress marking, although the orthography does not pay particular attention to it. In interlinear texts it is indicated with a “ ˈ “.

Tone

Tone is the intonation contour of a syllable. Tone exists in all languages, but it's not phonemic in every one in which its found. The ʾÅa̩e̯n Gohuȋlim is tonal in certain cases but as a general rule, tone is ignored. The tone, when otherwise not indicated, is flat and short, else the acute and grave symbols are used to indicate whether the tone is ascending or descending, further implying that the vowel is elongated. This is rare and considered archaic.

Sound Change

Nobody knows why, but sounds change in all languages. The only languages that don't change are the dead ones and the heaven-bound Tongue of Annunciation, since its speakers are eternal, non-changing, and everlasting, and therefore exist outside of time and its merciless push toward entropy. There is, however, considerable change taking place between the ʾÅa̩en progenitor tongue and the language in use by the Grigori Gohuȋlim who inhabit and participate in the physical realm of earthly concerns.

The main types of sound change are:

Assimilation	Example
Dissimulation	Example
Metathesis	Example
Elision, syncope, apocope	Example
Haplology	Example
Liaison	Example
Prothesis	Example
Epenthesis	Example

Rules of sound change

• Sound change is grammatically unrestricted.
• Sound change has no memory.
• Sound change is unstoppable.

Orthography

Radical Notation

As mentioned elsewhere, root word stems may be biliteral, triliteral, or quadriliteral. When denoting a particular consonant in the base the following notation is common.

First Radical	Second Radical	Third Radical	Fourth Radical
◷	◶	◵	◴

Morphology

Morphology is the way in which words are formed by various smaller units of meaning, called a morpheme, to make a valid and meaningful word. It is probably an academic exercise to question as to whether nouns or verbs came first in this language. It does seem true, just as in many Semitic languages, that there tends to be more older forms surviving amongst the nouns than among the verbs. However, in Aaen, the consonantal roots may reflect either a noun idea or a verb idea. They then later, through derivational processes, created nouns from their verb ideas and, accordingly, verbs from their noun ideas.

Before proceeding into more detailed coverage of the different morphological categories, it might be interesting to note a few morphological paradigms that are shared among the different morphological categories (such as between nouns and verbs, for example).

Nominal Morphology

In this section, we look at inflections on nouns. Many nouns, as mentioned earlier, are derived or inflected from a consontantal root stem and accordingly usually follow some easily recognizable pattern of inflection. Further, during agglutinative derivations, more specific information is brought into the system through the use of precise semantic roles.

Semantic Roles

A semantic role is the underlying relationship that a participant has with the main verb in a clause or utterance.

Semantic roles will be discussed further in the appropriate semantics section, but for now it should just be kept in mind that nominal derivation using semantic roles is usually performed on a base/stem and not a consonantal root. That is more often the role of casing. The following semantic roles are recognized:

Semantic Role	Description
accompaniment	Accompaniment is the semantic role of a thing that participates in close association with an agent, causer, or affected in an event.
agent	Agent is the semantic role of a person or thing who is the doer of an event.
beneficiary	A beneficiary is the semantic role of a referent which is advantaged or disadvantaged by an event.
causer	Causer is the semantic role of the referent which instigates an event rather than actually doing it.
counter-agent	A counteragent is the semantic role of a force or resistance against which an action is carried out.
dative/controlled	Dative is the semantic role of a referent that is conscious of being affected by the state or action identified by the verb.Also known as: Recipient or Controlled.
experiencer	Experiencer is the semantic role of an entity (or referent) which the effect of an action.
factitive	Factitive is the semantic role of an referent that results from the action or state identified by a verb.
goal	Goal is the semantic role of
instrument	Instrument is the semantic role of an inanimate thing that an agent uses to implement an event. It is the stimulus or immediate physical cause of an event.
locative	Locative is a semantic role which identifies the location or spatial orientation of a state or action. A locative semantic role does not imply motion to, from, or across the location.
manner	Manner is a semantic role that notes how the action, experience, or process of an event is carried out.
measure	Measure is a semantic role which notes the quantification of an event.
path	Path is the semantic role describing the locale(s) transversed in motion or propulsion predications.
patient	Patient is a semantic role that is usually the surface object of the verb in a sentence.
range	Range is the semantic role of the entity that completes, is a product of, or further specifies an event.
result	A result is a semantic role that refers to that which is produced by an event. This role is usually encoded as the surface object of a sentence.
source	Source is the semantic role of the following referents:
time	Time is the semantic role of the temporal placement of an event.
abstraction
state

Grammatical Case

Case is a grammatical category determined by the syntactic or semantic function of a noun or pronoun and provides a way of marking nouns by function. Classically, there are many different cases, Latin probably being the most well known (and severely hated for them). Examples include nominative, accusative, vocative, genitive, dative, ablative, essitive, partitive, translative, and looking at Finnish, as Mark Rosenfelder wrote in The Language Construction Kit, it has a whopping 15 cases and further includes cases along the lines of inessive, elative, illative, adessive, allative, instructive, comitative, and abessive. Inflecting a noun through its possible forms is called declining and the patterns of case endings are called declensions.

One of the most useful utilities that case provides is in making the language more compact as well as freeing up word order. It should be noted that the casing system indicates the arity and what participatory role the word plays in a sentence while the classifier system links the noun (or verb) to a modifier. More on this later.

A case is further marked by number, or plurality called its arity. ʾÅa̩e̯n recognizes several arities including singular, dual, septaginal, and “more than three but not seven.” Of course, not all nouns will make sense when inflected beyond the singular. For instance, 'justice' is nonsensical when thought of in plural.

There are <TODO> cases in ʾÅa̩en and include <TODO> cases, <TODO> cases.

What follows are the cases using the root b-l-t or balt 'justice' as an example and following this table is a detailed breakdown of each case with its relevant inflection, description, use, and examples. One should recognize that nominative declensions may be infixional (usually between consonants of the root word), prefix, or suffix applied. In some cases, more than one inflectional rule is applied to place it correctly into the case being inflected for.

Case	Singular	Dual	Septaginal	Plural	Meaning
NOMINATIVE	bålt	Example	Example	Example	Example
ACCUSATIVE	båltum	Example	Example	Example	Example
GENITIVE	båltis	Example	Example	Example	Example
ESSIVE	baltitå	Example	Example	Example	Example
VOCATIVE	båltus	Example	Example	Example	Example
INTEGRITIVE	båltindor	Example	Example	Example	Example
TRANSFORMATIVE	båltim	Example	Example	Example	Example
ALLATIVE	bålut	Example	Example	Example	Example
ABLATIVE	bålit	Example	Example	Example	Example
GENERATIVE	båltas	Example	Example	Example	Example
ABSOLUTIVE	båltoh	Example	Example	Example	Example
IMPLEMENTIVE	bulat	Example	Example	Example	Example
CAUSATIVE	bilat	Example	Example	Example	Example
INTENSIVE	balatabalt	Example	Example	Example	Example
LOCATIVE	bålt̛̛ammaam	Example	Example	Example	Example
ABESSIVE		Example	Example	Example	Example
		Example	Example	Example	Example
		Example	Example	Example	Example
		Example	Example	Example	Example
		Example	Example	Example	Example
		Example	Example	Example	Example
		Example	Example	Example	Example
		Example	Example	Example	Example
		Example	Example	Example	Example
		Example	Example	Example	Example

¹ There is no morpheme of number (arity) for the singular and only the case morpheme is present.This is referred to as being zero marked.

ABASIVE. [] (ABASE) This case is used by lesser ranking angelics when speaking to any celestial entity above their station. As its name suggests, it is highly self-deprecating and is used to show full submission to the will of angels of higher divinity. For a lesser ranking angelic not to abase themselves to a higher angel is tantamount to blasphemy and is swiftly, quickly, and decisively punished. This case will often be found in use with other honorifics and grammatically-encoded deference structures of the language. Compare to DESPECTIVE. Angels do not use any special case when speaking to other angels of the same grade.

ABESSIVE. [-hå] (ABESS) This case is used when the meaning that X is not near Y, or perhaps that X is not performed at the location Y. This is the same hå as the demonstrative introduced in a previous chapter, this time acting as an inflectional affix for the abessive case. When the initial angels fell during the Minor Emergent Discord they were said to be Eå̯odahå or 'far away from God.'

The abessive is also commonly used with verbs of motion to show movement away from a place (the place being moved away from would be in the abessive case while the place being moved to might be in either locative or allative case). It is important to note here that the abessive case is only used when the object being declined is not moving of its own free will (volition). If it is moving of its own volition, the ABLATIVE case would be used instead. It is also worth pointing out that the abessive is not near or actively moving away from some physical location, place, or other spatial referent.

ABLATIVE. [-[C]a[C]i([C])-] (ABL) The ablative is the case to use when you need to indicate either something moving away from something else of its own volition, something is far away from something else (due to its own volition), or that some aspect of the object being declined is moving in a negative direction (or toward the negative aspect).

ABSOLUTIVE. [[C]-å-[C][C]#-oh] (ABS)

ACCUSATIVE. [[C]-å-[C][C]#-um] (ACC) Also called the 'object' case. Used when the noun or NP is acting as the object of the sentence. Mary opened the door.

ALLATIVE. [#[C]-å-[C]-u-[C]] (ALL) APARTIVE. [] (APART) Denotes that the declined noun exists apart from the subject or object of the sentence. It can be thought of as “without, bereft of, apart from.” In some cases, it acts as the conjunctive opposite of the COMITATIVE case. That is, whereas “and” indicates inclusion, the APARTIVE conjunction indicates “and not.”

CAUSATIVE. /[C]-i-[C]-å-[C]/ (CAUS) Indicates that the marked noun is the cause or reason for something. Not to be confused with the causitive form of a verb which indicates that something causes something else to be done. This meaning can vary depending on the tense of the sentence. For instance,

COMITATIVE. [-ȋԅ](COM) Use denotes the conjunctive 'and.' Since there is no word for 'and' in the language, this is shown by simply placing both nouns next to each other and casing the second (or all after the second, if more than two) in the COMITATIVE. båltrȋ etohȋmȋԅ 'king and priest'.

DATIVE. [] (DAT) Generally used to mark the indirect object of a verb. It is also used to express the object of one's emotion, as in I am in love with Peter, where the emotion is expressed with the ACCUSATIVE, leaving the one you are emoting about to be constructed in the DATIVE.

DESPECTIVE. [-cas̆] (DESP) Declensions used by angelics when speaking to other angelics or beings of a lower grade/station/sphere/house/caste. The DESPECTIVE is incredibly disdainful and really shows how despicable the higher ranking angel thinks of the lower ranking one(s). Truly, the lower ranking angel must feel especially blessed for a higher ranking angel to even acknowledge them. Even the sound of this case ending seems harsh.

ESSIVE. [#[C]-å-[C]-i-[C]-a] (ESS) GENERATIVE. [[C]-å-[C][C]#-ås] (GEN) GENITIVE. [[C]-å-[C][C]#-is] (GEN) Possession was a foreign concept to Angelicals for a very long time causing the possession to be accomplished only in a limited way. Its ordinary use renders a kind of possessive meaning by placing the noun that is the possessor in the GENITIVE case and putting it before another noun in any case. The dog's water bowl. This works with both mass and count nouns. With count nouns, the possessed object must be in the indefinite whereas with mass nouns it can be definite or indefinite. The Celestials made quite a distinction between the types of possible possessing forms. There are forms for mutable possession, mutable immediate possession, and immutable possession. A mutable possession is any possessing of an concrete or abstract object that is possible to be taken away in the future. A mutable immediate possession is an object that may be possible to take away in the future, but which is currently (time frame reference of utterance) physically possessed (e.g. a person has it in their hands or is wearing it). An immutable possession is a possesion of a concrete or abstract object that is inalienable or unable to be deprived of, like say, a soul or dignity.

IMPLEMENTIVE. /-ūå/ (IMPL) Primarily used to express the object with which an action has been implemented, hence, the implement, but can also be used to denote a living agent. coraz̆ 'heart; courage' coraz̆ūå 'by means of the heart or courage'

INTEGRITIVE. [[C]-å-[C][C]#-indor] (INTE) The case of absolute virtue. For instance, the virtue ⟦strength⟧ would have meanings ALLATIVE 'strong' with ABLATIVE 'weak' or ⟦justness⟧ (båltindor) with ALLATIVE bålut 'just' and ABLATIVE bålit 'unfair.' <TODO> INTENSIVE. /[C^1]-å-[C^2]-å-[C^3]-å-[1]-å-[2][3]/ (INTENS) The case of intensification of the essential quality of the meaning of the noun. This case may look intimidating, but it's really a case of ååå-infixing-with-reduplication. The use of this case indicates a higher level of intensity of the meaning or substance of the noun. In some cases, the reduplication may be repeated several times to further clarify or explicitly state a greater intensification.

LOCATIVE. [-m{å|u}] (LOC) Denotes the time or place of the action or state designated by the root, or the place abounding in or producing the material denoted by the parent noun. This inflectional affix is attached to the front of the stem word and its shape is determined by the number of consonants in the root and any affixed during additional derivations or inflections. In bi/triconsonantal roots or stems with no more than three consonants, the stem må- is used, while any root or stem with four or more consonants will use the mu- preformative.

(a) Time: TODO 'time' TODO 'bear child' → TODO 'birthday'

(b) Place: TODO 'enter' → 'entry'; TODO 'dwell' → 'dwelling'; 'lion' → 'lions' den'; 'pray' → 'temple';

<EXAMPLES>

MALEFACTIVE. [] (MAL) Used for nouns that are harmed or affected negatively by some action.

NOMINATIVE. [#[C]a-] (NOM) Also called the 'subject' case, used when the noun or noun phrase is acting as the subject of the sentence.

PROMOTIONAL. [] (PROMO) Used for nouns that are the beneficiary (that is, they are helped, advanced, benefited) of some action.

TRANSFORMATIVE. [[C]-å-[C][C]#-åksi] (TRANS) Something has turned into the noun under declension. ažåren 'praise' → ažårenåksi 'turned into praise'

VOCATIVE. [#[C]-å-[C][C]-us] (VOC) Commonly used in interjections and such indicating that a noun refers to a person or thing being addressed. O Caritas! It has also changed to encompass an aspect of politeness when trying to get someone's attention. Instead of saying Hey, you! you can case the person's name for a softer interpretation. Finally, the VOCATIVE has picked up some use as a naming case when designating the formal name of something.

Classifiers

As previously mentioned, a noun classifier is a small word in ʾÅa̩en that connects a word modifying a noun to the noun that is being modified. The classifier provides additional information about the noun in such a way that one unfamiliar with the noun (that is, the don't know the word) is given pertinent (contextually) information about it and might allow the listener/target the ability to recognize or better understand it.

A noun classifier may be used without a modifier in the place where the indefinite article would be used: (terrestrial) mountain 'a mountain.' The definite article is supported through w:deixis when not modifying it, or normally with a modifier.

The question of how noun classifiers came to be used can be understood from biblical history. From Genesis 1:20 “God said, 'Let the water swarm with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth...” and in Gen 1:24 “God said, 'Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: cattle, creeping things, and wild animals, each according to its kind.' It was so.” and in Gen 1:26 God gave humankind the capacity and authority to rule over “the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the earth.” Later, God created and gave to man “every seed-bearing plant on the face of the entire earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.”

Further, dominion over all things is given to man through the act of naming, as in Gen 2:19-20 “The Lord God formed out of the ground every living animal of the field and every bird of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them, and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man named all the animals, the birds of the air, and the living creatures of the field...”

This primordial act of naming a thing “according to its kind” is reflected in the language through the use of the noun classifier system. While evidence is lacking in the historical and religious texts, it seems that Angels as well as God were in communication with Adam and Eve (as well as Lilith) and their children. This didactic interaction between Angels and man during the naming and teaching process is what drove the need for these classifiers. As the first humans explored their world, new creatures and objects were introduced to them and to help facilitate learning new words for things, the Angels started putting these things into classifications that would help man to more easily learn about them and develop their own rudimentary language.

<TODO TABLE>

Class I.

Class II. This classifier word acts like and is essentially a measure word used along with mass nouns. For instance, 'water' in English is a mass noun. You can't say 'I have three waters' and expect to make much sense. But you can say 'I have a drop of water,' or “I have a glass of water.” In these examples, drop and glass are both measure words used in conjunction with the mass noun water.This classifier functions very similar to a measure word with the exception that it doesn't further clarify what type of measure you are using, but instead extends any commonplace notion that might be in common usage.

Class III.

Generating Stems from Roots for Nouns

Generating working nouns from bi-/tri-/quardi-consonantal roots is generally straightforward and follows several easily discernible patterns. That being said, there are some forms that do not obey conventional morphological rules and these, like in any contemporary language spoken today, just have to be learned and memorized. However, because of the celestial nature to provide as rich and deep (trans. perfected) language, the primogenitor angelics strove to leave as little to doubt and chance in the language that was to be given to the forebears of all humans.

Consonants and vowels may be characterized by their point of articulation, namely front, mid, and back. The general nominal stem generation follows these rules:

1. If the initial consonant or vowel is sounded at the front of the articulation space, the following vowel will most always match and be one from the front part of articulation.
2. The second vowel after the second consonant is usually from the back part of articulation.
3. If the initial consonant or vowel is sounded from the back part of articulation, the first vowel will also be from the similar back articulation point.
4. The second vowel is often fronted.

Refer back to the consonant and vowel charts in the phonology section of this text if you're fuzzy on what sounds are produced where.

[TODO fix table below]

Point of Articulation First Vowel Second Vowel Front m p b t n d f v r l e a ś ș́ ț t t̆ ț̆ i e a ā ȋ

Front

i e a ā ȋ [u ȇ]

Back

ū ō o å [u ȇ]

Back g w x h c y ʾ c̆ y̆ y͒ ḫ c̦ ğ h̥ ū ō o å

Back ū ō o å [u ȇ]

Front

i e a ā ȋ [u ȇ]

N.B. Consonantal roots not forward or back (mid/center) are not shown in the above table. For reference, they are j s y ʾ c̆ y̆ y͒ t̾ s̆ ș z̆. These consonants may or may not follow the described rules.

So what this is saying is that if you have some root, say, c̆-c-l, you can expect the first verb of the stem for nouns to be one of ū ō o å [u ȇ] with the following noun coming from the set i e a ā ȋ [u ȇ], as in c̆åcalū, 'mind'. Similarly, for a root of the form m-ț is formed with the preceding rules to create mȋțū 'man.'

You will find a similar, but different, set of rules governing stem word generation for verbs later in that section.

<TODO>

Prefixes

There are only a few single-phoneme prefixes but they play a wide role in the language.

Verbalizing prefixes produce verbs from nouns. English examples include 'a text' (as in an instant message) → 'texting,' and 'a party' → 'partying.'

Affix	Meaning	Examples
ʾag-	not; undo; negative	balt 'justice', agbalt 'without justice'
[aspirated after C1]	diminutive	bialus 'the voice', bhialus 'the little voice'
x(ḫ)as-	verbalizer

Adjectivizers

Affix	Meaning	Examples
-neth	nominal adjectivizer	cnilaneth 'bloody' ʾarş̌eneth 'dirty'
-rȋ	v → adj; [genitive material plural, of a quality]	baltri 'the just', grigori 'the fallen'
-ȋm	v → adj; [genitive objective plural, of a quality]	ġohuilȋm 'it is said; those who speak'

Attitudinals/Honorifics

[TODO table below]

Pluralizers

The semantic effect of pluralizing a word is to create a collection of the element indicated by the word. Most concrete nouns can take plurals as well as some abstract nouns, but not all abstract nouns can be pluralized (e.g. 'justice' in the plural makes no sense).

Pluralization is accomplished by one of three methods, depending on the word being pluralized:

Pluralization by Reduplication. Reduplication is a morphological process where a reduplicant is prefixed to the base word stem. In ʾÅa̩en, reduplicants have the form (C)Vː, formed by matching the first CV shape of the base word and lengthening the vowel, if necessary.

In vowel-initial words, the reduplicant has the shape Vː and appears in hiatus.

Pluralization by Prefix Šaː-. Some words can have three meanings of multiplicity. For example, the word for 'eye' can be singular (one eye), symmetric plural (two eyes, as they occur in nature), or general plural (some count of eyes). Words like this are said to be complex nouns and their default multiplicity is symmetric, as they occur naturally. To change to general plural, the prefix ša- is added to the noun base.

This same process can also be used to convert mass nouns to the general plural without losing their general semantic notion of mass. For instance, 'grass' is a mass noun, but if you want to talk about several 'grasses' you can use this pluralization strategy.

Making them singular is done through a nominal classifier particle in the same manner that mass nouns are converted to count nouns.

Definite and Indefinite Articles

In some Semitic languages, such as Arabic, a demonstrative -l- is used where Hebrew uses the prefixed demonstrative ha-. In Aramaic this appears as suffixed -a, the so-called “emphatic” form. No definite article appears in Assyrian or Abyssinian. Like Aramaic, Abyssinian often conveys the determining or demonstrative sense by the use of a redundant suffix be'si 'man' → be'sihu 'this man.'

A noun is also determined by the use of a possessive suffix restricting the common noun to one individual article known and defined. The construct is also defined by the following genitive. Thus the common noun “house” becomes definite and individual in the phrase “the house of the king.” English uses the definitive article “the” before “house” in this expression, but Semitic does not attach the article to the construct, as the noun is sufficiently defined by the following genitive.

As you may have already guessed, because of the structure of the language, the use of traditional indefinite and definite articles, as in ancient Sumerian, are non-existent. So, båltrȋ 'king' could mean 'king,' 'a king,' or 'the king.' However, in practical use there is very little room for ambiguity.

Pronouns

Traditionally, pronouns are a relatively small, closed class of words that function in the place of nouns or noun phrases. Depending on the features of the language, they may include personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, relative pronouns, interrogative pronouns, and indefinite pronouns. Pronouns in the Angelic progenitor tongue came into their present form from two primary, strong influences: a Celestial's connection and unity with the Divine and their later contact and interactions with mankind.

In the countless eons of eternity before man, there was not only no cause for creating the “person” of pronouns (because all Celestials are at one in unity and harmony with the natural universe and all other celestial inhabitants and they couldn't conceive of being a separate, distinct entity from the rest of existence), but there, of course, was no cause for the creation of any language at all in those countless eons before humankind left their footprints in the dust of the earth.

Due to their innate connection to the waking and living Divine, and to support their unending desire to praise and emulate the most divine, the celestial language has been affected by this, particularly noticeable in the personal pronouns. Gohuȋlim and w:Grigori all recognize the special case of singular, dual (2 people), tripartite (the nod to the holiest of trinities, the Triune God), a special class of seven, then all others fall into the “many” plurality.

Practically, what this means is that there are four separate ways to single individuals or items, with groups of two, groups of seven, and groups of four or more but not seven.

[TODO TABLE BELOW]

The ʾÅa̩en of the Gohuȋlim has a fairly normal four-member pronominal system that includes an interrogative pronoun. Further, there is no distinction or indication of gender, owing undoubtedly to the unfathomable lineage the Celestials had without any physical form to differentiate any particular gender. In fact, most Celestials are able to change the outward appearance of their gender at will and is usually only a concern with mortal dealings. Due to the innate understanding of the oneness of all things, there is also no distinction between animate and inanimate (or neuter) objects.

However, it bears mentioning that there is an alternate classification that some might like to group into gender agreement and this concerns the subject under question's ability to act on their own. That is, the ability to exercise free-will to affect a change or bring a desire into fruition. Celestials know that all matter in the physical universe is conscious, but depending on their level of conscious envolution, will have a varying ability to execute their free will (if they have any at all, such as its firmly held with subatomic particles). Free-will is an exercising of choice by force from within while with a deterministically-bound entity, the force comes from without. The Grigori are said to have up to 50 different values of possessing free will and their language has adapted to support this.

Since verbs are never conjugated to show person or plurality, the use of personal subject pronouns may be needed but only for emphasis or clarification. The rank and file celestials from Heaven are known for entirely abandoning the use of the third person pronoun when the meaning is obvious or clear and mortals are keenly warned to avoid their use, instead opting for direct address with honorifics and titles.

Ruling Determiner

These affixes are used predominantly on verbs to inflect subject and object of verbs that take those components. See Bipersonal Inflection of Verbs for further information.

Governing Pronoun

This is a suffixed pronoun attached to a verb or preposition to denote the objective governed by the word to which it is attached. When suffixed to a noun, it denotes the genitive on which the noun depends and therefore acts as the possessive, where that is applicable. It is always attached to the full word and not the root alone.

Demonstratives

'This' and 'that,' as adjectives are closely related to the words for the numerals 'one' and 'two,' although there can be a deictic connection between the words for 'two' and 'farther,' and 'three' and 'even farther.' As standalone pronouns these become roughly då(kum) 'this one (these ones)' or 'here' and hå(kum) 'that one (those ones)' or 'there.' då 'here,' hå 'there,' <TODO> 'now,' <TODO> 'then' function as adverbs. You will note that there is no distinction here between 'this' and 'here,' and they both connote a relative closeness to the object under discussion, the same boring for hå for 'that' and 'there.'

The demonstrative då can be combined with the ruling determiners of the 2nd person, as in dåne! 'Here you are!' in the sense of “Take this!”

då-ne! dem.PRON.here 2sd-PRON.you Here you [are]!

nå-ne-sehån. 1sd-PRON.I 2sd-PROM.you v-PRES.EVID.see I see you.