Lemizh

Lemizh
lemỳzh.
Pronunciation	[lɛmˈɯ̀ʒ]
Created by	Anypodetos
Date	1985
Setting	Alt-history Europe
Native to	Lemaria
Language family	Indo-European Lemizh Lemizh
Early form	Proto-Lemizh
Writing system	Lemizh alphabet
Sources	Proto-Indo-European
Official status
Official language in	Lemaria

Lemizh ([lεmˈiʒ], native pronunciation: [lɛmˈɯ̀ʒ]) is a language I invented with the aim of creating a grammar as regular and simple as possible. It was originally intended as an international auxiliary language. However, it turned out that a simple grammar is not necessarily a grammar that is easy to learn: the more ways of simplification I found, the further away it moved from Indo-European and probably all other familiar language structures. Expecting anyone to learn Lemizh, at this point, would be completely unrealistic.

So I needed a new justification for the language: enter the Lemizh, a people living to the west and north of the Black Sea in an alternate history that slowly drifted away from ours between two and eight millennia ago. Of course, it is extremely unlikely that they would speak a language that was completely without exceptions. To be precise, the chances are two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand seven hundred and nine to one against. But they say that everything has to happen somewhere in the Multiverse. And everything happens only once.

History

Early stages

Lemizh is an Indo-European language and, together with Volgan, constitutes one of the ten recognised branches of the Indo-European language family. This branch is also called Lemizh, to the disgruntlement of Volgan linguists.

Proto-Lemizh, the ancestor of Lemizh and Volgan, is very poorly attested in form of some papyri found near the northwestern shore of the Black Sea, to the north of the Dniester Liman, dated about 2700 BC. Old Lemizh, by contrast, is fairly well attested. It had predominantly subject–verb–object (SVO) word order and was a quite typical old Indo-European language, but with a couple of interesting quirks:

• Adjectives were lost as a separate part of speech, being replaced with participles ("white" > "being white").
• Finite subordinate clauses had their subject in the case of the clause: the subject of a local clause was in the locative case without having a local meaning in itself.

The earliest known documents from this stage of Lemizh were probably written around 2100 BC along the northern and western shores of the Back Sea.

Ghean and Middle Lemizh

Ghean ([ˈɣɛən]) is a language with no known genetic relationships. It was spoken by a people of unknown origin, who subdued the Lemizh tribes in around 1000 BC and ruled for infamous three generations. Ghean was an inflected register tonal language with strict verb–subject–object (VSO) word order and head-first phrases. It had verbs, nominals (a combined noun/adjective/participle part of speech), pronouns and particles.

The Gheans discouraged the use of the natives' language, but obviously tolerated Lemizh words (or rather word stems) to stand in for unfamiliar Ghean ones. The grammar of simple sentences was easy enough to learn for the Lemizh, as they were used to inflection and head-first phrases, and likely still knew VSO sentences from poetry. After two or three generations, the natives must have spoken a creole with a more or less Ghean grammar but an abundance of Lemizh words, especially outside the core vocabulary. This is a quite unusual development as most creoles draw their lexicon mainly from the dominant group, and tend to be grammatically more innovative. (The Tanzanian language Mbugu might have had a somewhat similar development with more or less analogous outcomes.) After the disappearance of the Gheans, Lemizh patriots tried to revive their old language, which failed spectacularly for the grammar but reintroduced many Lemizh words of the core vocabulary.

The last three millennia

While Middle Lemizh as spoken after the Ghean occupation already had a non-Indo-European and unusually regular grammar, this trend was to continue over the following millennia. The factive case was innovated to express verbal nouns, which eventually supplanted verbs altogether. (At least part of the blame goes to the Tlöngö̀l, an epic novel published in 1351, which popularized the use of verbal nouns.) The tonal system was simplified to the present two-way pitch-accent system. Pronouns lost their status as a separate part of speech. The last particles died out a few hundred years ago, leaving the language with a single part of speech which is often called a "verb" but, historically speaking, is really a nominal. This means that the concept of parts of speech does not make sense in Modern Lemizh.

Orthography and phonology

The alphabet is phonetic: each letter corresponds to a certain sound, and each sound is represented by a single letter. The direction of writing is left to right. This article uses the standard transcription of the native Lemizh alphabet as given in the following table:

Letters of the Lemizh alphabet
a	e	y	i	o	ö	u	ü	l	rh	r	ng	m	g	d	b	k	t	p	gh	zh	z	dh	w	x	sh	s	th	f

Consonants

		bilabial	dental	alveolar	postalveolar	velar
nasals		m [m]				ng [ŋ]
plosives (voiceless • voiced)		p [p] • b [b]		t [t] • d [d]		k [k] • g [g]
fricatives (voiceless • voiced)		f [ɸ] • w [β]	th [θ] • dh [ð]	s [s] • z [z]	sh [ʃ] • zh [ʒ]	x [x] • gh [ɣ]
liquids	lateral approximant			l [l]
	approximant			rh [ɹ]
	trill			r [r]

The plosive-fricative combinations pf, ts, tsh, kx and their voiced couterparts only occur at word boundaries and in compound words. They are not pronounced as affricates but as separate sounds. The same applies for other combinations of a plosive plus another consonant (pm, tl etc.), as well as for two identical plosives (kk etc.): the release of the first plosive is always audible.

Vowels

	front		back
	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
close	i [i]	ü [y]	y [ɯ]	u [u]
open-mid	e [ɛ]	ö [œ]	a [ʌ]	o [ɔ]

Two consecutive different vowels are pronounced as a diphthong; two consecutive identical vowels as a long one. Single vowels are always short.

Lemizh uses moræ for structuring words: a short syllable equals one mora, and a long syllable equals two. In Lemizh, every vowel is the centre of a mora; consequently, two consecutive vowels result in two moræ or one long syllable.

Accent

Lemizh has got a two-way pitch-accent system, in that accented moræ are not only spoken louder (as in English), but also have either a lower or a higher pitch than the surrounding unaccented ones. The accented mora is always the ultimate or penultimate of a word. The vowel at the centre of a low-pitch accented mora is transcribed with a grave accent, the vowel at the centre of a high-pitch accented mora with an acute accent.

Accented vowel letters
à	è	ỳ	ì	ò	ö̀	ù	ǜ
á	é	ý	í	ó	ö́	ú	ǘ

Phonotactics

Phonotactics is rather permissive in Lemizh. A mora has the following structure, where the bracketed parts are optional:

• (O)(N)(L)V(L)(N)(O)

V is the mora's vowel, L a liquid, N a nasal, and O an obstruent that can be either a P(losive), a F(ricative), FP, PF, FF, FFP, FPF, or PFF. Word-initial consonant clusters cannot contain more than three sounds. No geminate consonants (*ff etc.) occur within a mora. Consecutive plosive-fricative or fricative-plosive combinations within the same mora must have the same sonority – either both are voiced, or both are voiceless. A plosive cannot have the same place of articulation as a following consonant with the exception of rh and r. *dzh, *ddh and their voiceless counterparts are also prohibited within a mora.

Word boundaries, including those within compound words, are always mora boundaries. Where mora boundaries would still be ambiguous, liquids and nasals are assigned to the earliest possible mora (as the m in lem·ỳzh.), and obstruents to the latest possible mora.

Morphology

All words are composed of the following parts:

• Prestem + inner case + poststem + outer case

Prestem and poststem form the stem, or the lexical part, of the word. The division of the stem into two portions is similar to English verbs such as sing/sang/sung, where the lexical part is s–ng while the vowels i/a/u convey grammatical information. The stem always denotes an action (but never a state, a person, a thing, a property, etc.) and thus resembles our verbs. The prestem can contain any sounds, or it can be zero (i.e. consisting of zero sounds). The poststem can only contain fricatives and plosives, or it can be zero as well.

The inner case is represented by one of the eight vowels, optionally followed by a liquid (the primary case suffix) and/or a nasal (the secondary case suffix). The outer case has the same structure. For the first word in each sentence, the main predicate, the outer case is missing.

Each case is defined by its descriptor: for example, the factive case denotes an action, the nominative a sender, the locative a place. The stem and the inner case's descriptor determine a word's meaning.

Examples

• wàx. w–x is the stem for "speak", -a- denotes the inner factive, so this word means "an action of speaking", translated as the verb "to speak" or the verbal noun "speaking".
• wèx. -e- denotes the inner nominative, so this word means "a sender of speaking" or "a speaker".
• àrdh. ∅–dh (having a zero prestem) is the stem for "eat", -ar- denotes the inner locative: "a place of eating".

Primary cases and their descriptors

№	Case vowel	Primary case suffix
		none	l	rh	r
		Plot cases	Causal cases	Temporal cases	Spatial cases
1	a	factive (fact): action	affirmative (aff): fact (point in causal chain)	temporal (temp): time	locative (loc): place/region
2	e	nominative (nom): source, sender	causative (caus): direct cause	ingressive (ing): starting time	elative (ela): starting point/region
3	y	accusative (acc): content	contextual (ctx): causal context	durative (dur): duration	extensive (ext): spatial extent
4	i	dative (dat): sink, recipient	consecutive (cons): direct consequence, effect	egressive (egr): closing time	illative (ill): end point / ending region
5	o	tentive (ten): intention	intentive (int): intention (intended point in causal chain)	episodic (eps): episode, "act"	scenic (sce): scene, "stage"
6	ö	comitative (com): company	persuasive (psu): reason	digressive (dig): time away from which	ablative (abl): place/region away from which
7	u	instrumental (ins): means, tool	motivational (mot): motivational context	progressive (prog): time that is passed	prolative (prol): crossing point/region
8	ü	benefactive (ben): beneficiary	final (fin): purpose, aim	aggressive (agg): time towards which, temporal aim	allative (all): place/region towards which, spatial aim

Each primary case has two corresponding secondary cases: a partitive case formed by adding ng (such as -ing- for the partitive dative or -erng- for the partitive elative) and a corresponding qualitative case formed by adding m.

The flow of the plot

Every action denoted by a word stem is considered a flow of information that comes from a source (sender), transports a content, and reaches a sink (a recipient). The terms "sender" and "recipient" may be more familiar, but "source" and "sink" are more accurate in not necessarily meaning living beings.

Consequently, a Lemizh action looks somewhat like this: nominative  accusative dative

This is called the action's plot. Here are some examples:

Inner factive	Inner nominative	Inner accusative	Inner dative
wàx. "to speak, to tell; (an act of) speaking"	wèx. "one telling something"	wỳx. "a tale"	wìx. "one who is told something"
dà. "to give; (an act of) giving"	dè. "one giving something"	dỳ. "a gift"	dì. "one who is given something; one who gets something"
làzhw. "to help"	lèzhw. "one helping"	lỳzhw. "help (given)"	lìzhw. "one whom is helped"
mlàtx. "to melt"	mlètx. "one melting something"	[mlỳtx.]	mlìtx. "a melted thing"
xöàgh. "to produce a sound; to hear"	xöègh. "one producing a sound"	xöỳgh. "a sound"	xöìgh. "one hearing something"
àdh. "to feed; to eat"	èdh. "one feeding someone"	ỳdh. "food"	ìdh. "one being fed; one eating"
ià. "to love"	iè. "one loving someone, a lover"	iỳ. "a beloved"	iì. "a beloved"

Importantly, there are no rules for which cases to use with which words. Both iỳ. (acc) and iì. (dat) mean "a beloved". The former describes the beloved as the content of love, the one being lovingly thought of, while the latter implies that the love reaches them, like words or gifts reach their recipient. Likewise, the reason why mlỳtx. is not translated in the table above isn't that "melt does not take the accusative", as grammars of other languages would say, but that "a content of melting" does not seem to have any obvious meaning. If someone wanted to describe, say, sun rays as content transported from the sun to the snow to melt it, they could well use mlỳtx. to express the concept.

Case usage is governed solely by the cases' descriptors; it is up to the speaker how to use them given some word's meaning and some context. If the wind opens a door, is it the source of the action of opening (ngèt.), the means of opening (ngùt.), or the cause (ngèlt.)? All are grammatically correct; the speaker decides which possibility best expresses their intention.

Nouns

This and the following section headers do not correspond to any concepts in Lemizh grammar. Calling something a noun or adjective is just an attempt to describe the grammar from an Indo-European viewpoint.

A large number of nouns are not derived from verbs in most languages: froth, ship, lion and many others. In Lemizh, however, we have verbs such as psràxk. "to froth", àksh. "to build a ship or ships", and làw. "to make a lion or lions". We will call these nominal verbs.

Looking at the verb àksh., the shipwright (nom) gives the building materials (dat) the properties or the function of a ship (acc). He confers, well, shipness on the materials. The shipness is sent by the shipwright, not because he is acting, but because he is the source: the image of the ship, so to say, comes from his head and materialises in wood, iron, ropes, and linen. In short, these words mostly appear with inner accusative.

Inner factive	Inner nominative	Inner accusative	Inner dative
psràxk. "to froth"	psrèxk. "one frothing something"	psrỳxk. "a thing having the properties of froth = froth"	psrìxk. "a frothed thing, a frothed liquid"
àksh. "to build a ship"	èksh. "one building a ship, a shipwright"	ỳksh. "a thing having the properties of a ship = a ship"	ìksh. "building materials for a ship, materials made into a ship"
làw. "to make a lion"	[lèw. "one making a lion"]	lỳw. "a thing having the properties of a lion = a lion"	[lìw. "building materials for a lion, materials made into a lion"]

Another very common kind of nouns are tool nouns, formed with an inner instrumental case:

• ghstù. "a sail" is derived from ghstà. "to sail", literally "a means of sailing",
• pslù. "scissors" from pslà. "to cut with scissors",
• skrùzh. "a finger" from skràzh. "to work with one's fingers".

Inflection

As mentioned above, all words can inflect for (outer) case. Thus, we have the nominative forms wàxe "(an act of) speaking, (an act of) telling", dèe "a giver", lỳwe "a lion", the causative lỳwel "because of a lion", the elative lỳwer "(starting) from a lion", etc.

Lemizh words do not inflect for number or gender. If desired, we can express this information by forming compounds. (Note the duplication of the inner case vowel; the first occurrence in each word is called the epenthetic case of the compound. The underlying grammar will be described later.)

	Neutral	Singular	Dual	Plural	Feminine	Masculine	Feminine singular	etc.
giver	dè.	derè.	dedwè.	demlè.	debè.	deèx.	deberè.
lion	lỳw.	lywrỳ.	lywdwỳ.	lywmlỳ.	lywbỳ.	lywỳx.	lywbyrỳ.
compound with	—	rỳ. "one"	dwỳ. "two"	mlỳ. "several"	bỳ. "female; woman"	ỳx. "male; man"	"female" and "one"

Adjectives and numerals

There is no difference between adjectival and nominal verbs: they mostly appear with inner accusative. This is the same situation as in, say, Latin, where albus can mean "a white one" as well as "white". Numerals are basically a sub-category of adjectives.

The inner consecutive case translates certain abstract nouns. (Often, however, these are better translated by rephrasing: "The whiteness of the house was blinding" → "The house was blindingly white".)

Inner factive	Inner nominative	Inner accusative	Inner dative	Inner consecutive
gmrà. "to heat, to make something warm"	gmrè. "one heating something up"	gmrỳ. "a warm thing; warm"	gmrì. "a thing heated up; heated, warmed"	gmrìl. "the consequence of heating = heat"
làbdh. "to whiten something, to make something white"	lèbdh. "one whitening something"	lỳbdh. "a white thing; white"	lìbdh. "a thing made white; whitened"	lìlbdh. "the consequence of whitening = whiteness"
dwà. "to make two things/individuals"	dwè. "one making two things"	dwỳ. "two (things)"	dwì. "something made into two (things)"	dwìl. "the consequence of making two things = twoness"

Inflection

Of course, adjectives can be compounded to express number and/or gender in the same way as nouns. Furthermore, we can form compounds expressing various degrees. (The epenthetic consecutive -il- in these compounds will also be explained later; it is actually the main application of the abstract nouns just mentioned.)

	Neutral	Diminutive	Augmentative	Absolute	Comparative	Superlative
warm	gmrỳ.	gmrilzhrỳ. "lukewarm"	gmrildmỳ. "hot"	gmrilghngỳ. "absolutely hot"	gmriltỳzhd. "warmer, hotter"	gmrilỳst. "hottest"
white	lỳbdh.	lilbdhzhrỳ. "whitish"	lilbdhdmỳ. "very white"	lilbdhghngỳ. "absolutely/completely white"	lilbdhtỳzhd. "whiter"	lilbdhỳst. "whitest"
compound with	—	zhrỳ. "few, little, a bit"	dmỳ. "much, many"	ghngỳ. "every, all, the whole"	tỳzhd. "more"	ỳst. "most"

Verbs

Most verbs correspond to Lemizh words with an inner factive. However, as Lemizh word stems always denote an action, the notable exception are stative verbs such as:

• zdìls. "to sit", literally "the consequence of sitting down (zdàs.)"
• gwìlt. "to know", literally "the consequence of learning (gwàt.)"

Inflection

• Person is not expressed with inflection but with pronouns.
• Number is conveyed by compounding pronouns with numerals. While verbs (i.e. words with an inner factive) can be compounded with numerals, ftraskmlà. does not mean "we/they sneeze" but "(there are) several acts of sneezing" (i.e. someone sneezes several times and/or several people sneeze).
• Voice (active/passive) is absent in Lemizh; word order serves a similar function.
• Tense is expressed by compounds with an epenthetic temporal case (-arh-), or with certain inner cases. The latter option is preferred if possible, as it is more concise.

	Neutral	Present	Past	Perfect	Future	Intentional
to sit down	zdàs.	zdarhswà.	zdarhsprilkà.	zdìls. (cons)	zdarhsprà.	zdòs. (ten)
compound with	—	pronoun	prilkỳ. "back"	—	prỳ. "front"	—

Note that the translation of the perfect with inner consecutive coincides with the translation of stative verbs: "having sat down" in the strict perfect sense of "the consequence/effect of this action exists" means the same as "to sit". Likewise, "whiteness" can sometimes be expressed as the abstract concept of "having whitened something".

• Mood corresponds to compounds with certain verbs for the most part. There is no equivalent to the subjunctive mood, as subordinate clauses are irreal (i.e. not necessarily real) by default. Here are some common formations:

	Indicative	Imperative	Commanding imperative	Interrogative Polite imperative	Optative
to feed, to eat	àdh.	adhpràk.	adhdàxt.	adhpà.	adhlàxt.
compound with	—	pràk. "to request"	dàxt. "to command"	pà. "to ask"	làxt. "to want"

• Aspect is a very heterogeneous category, expressed by a variety of compounds and syntactic structures in Lemizh.

Pronouns

The two demonstrative pronouns are technically nominal verbs:

• tà. "to make this/that one", typically used with inner accusative: tỳ. "this/that (one)"
• gwà. "to make someone/anyone, something/anything", with inner accusative gwỳ. "someone/anyone, something/anything"

The eleven relative pronouns play a far more prominent role in Lemizh grammar. Their scope is much wider than the one usually associated with the term. As they are closely tied to Lemizh syntax, they will be described further down.

Syntax

Level of words

There is only one more grammatical category: the level of words, which is the main building block of Lemizh syntax. A word can be of first level (the highest), of second level (the next highest), of third level (still one level lower) and so on; there is no limit for the number of levels, but non-positive word levels (zero, −1, etc.) are forbidden.

The first word in a sentence (the main predicate) is of first level by definition. The level of the next word is determined by the main predicate's accent and by the type of pause between the two words, the level of the third word is determined by the accent of the second and the pause between these two, and so on.

Here is the complete list of pause/accent combinations. (The meaning of an agentive level will be explained later.)

Following pause		Accented vowel	Type of accent	The level of the next word is …
in speech	in writing
barely audible	space	inner case	low	lower by 1
			high	lower by 1, and agentive (A)
		outer case	low	equal
			high	higher by 1
a bit longer	comma (·)	inner case	low	higher by 2
			high	higher by 3
		outer case	low	higher by 4
			high	higher by 5
the longest	full stop (∶)	inner case	low	none; end of sentence

Derivational morphology: compounds

From a Lemizh point of view, dè. "giver" and dỳ. "gift" aren't derivatives of dà. "to give" but grammatical forms of the same word. The only piece of true derivational morphology is compounding.

Forming a compound from a two-word sentence

A compound word is constructed from a two-word sentence – predicate and object of which become modifier and head of the compound, respectively – in the following way:

1. Prestem:
   1. the object's prestem
   2. the object's inner case
   3. the object's poststem
   4. an optional separator
   5. the predicate's prestem
2. Inner case
3. Poststem: the predicate's poststem
4. Outer case

Note that the object's stem comes before the predicate's; and also that the object's outer case (and, less importantly, the predicate's inner case) is lost. The separator can be used, for example, if the word boundary would be unclear otherwise, or for placing the second part of the word on a new line.

…

Example text

stedrỳzh thìrhfi xtrỳghy.

krỳgh dghngireì prilxpilghkỳarh. mangỳ srungbỳng lyngghỳng yngshwỳng fỳü. zhöazhghngìl tmỳil. ghngàgzh smìa prỳal ghngyé dhàbdhy lunguỳ ùyl mỳu fplyxár tỳarh. dmát feì sxngengzè ishkènge. ghìlt krighmyngthxì xtrỳngghi swyshỳ ghỳxy fplyxòr zhöyzhỳm xngàrorm. dmìlt öngkrỳngty zhryỳ rèshy esfàsy sxngyzdmýi, usrỳngy xazhgèsty ghngỳeng, frekrỳngfy rilghdzhỳwby pthèby, dgheipysrỳngdy psrèby rhèzhem, dghistngỳngty ghỳxy zangỳa dghildhfmlýyrh, ngiftngyghtmỳngy krültlìy zùe gỳghda. xtrỳgh swyshý stedrỳzh thìrfi. dngilszhrìl bdhyrgzhyngỳng xüxtrỳngyng prilkỳarh ötìlil skmyngìlng ghỳngsilng. dngilszhìlwb ráxpy thìlfi. fö̀l gwiltngìlöl dmàty föpysryfỳ ngỳu.

rỳ zhryỳrh thìzgy gwiltngìly rhàghgy dmatngìe thìrfy. là xángska matngiè ytfỳyrh dmyý fplyxór dyxtngyngà mànga prilzhryngỳr iltỳngzhdyr. dmàt ytfỳarh ryý mìlngorh xngyì prilkyár mìlngorh xtrỳngghi kshrextý mengthxì prỳar zìe, fplỳngxe fywýr déngske xtryghè sxngezì xngỳnge.

The Legend of the Seventh Planet

A long time ago there was a tribe of nomads. They possessed neither writing nor houses nor horses. But they were truly human. They were curious; this means, above all, that they took interest in the useless, for the celestial objects were of no use to them yet. They looked at the Sun and the Moon. They had named the constellations and the six planets moving across the sky like the humans across the earth. They knew dim Mercury, who liked to hide in the glare of the Sun; Venus, the brightest of all; reddish and angry Mars; majestic father Jupiter; Saturn, who seemed to stand still for weeks; and even Uranus had been caught by their keen eyes. Six planets, and the legend of a seventh. Maybe it had been the minor planet Vesta, or a comet centuries or millennia earlier. Maybe it was the attraction of the number seven. For Neptune is invisible to the naked eye.

One youngster thought to himself that he could not live without seeing the seventh planet. He lay awake searching the sky for many nights, neglected his duties, and became thinner and thinner. And one night, lying with the Earth behind his back, and with the looping planets and the stars above him, he saw the depth of the sky and the planets circling the Sun, and among them the Earth.

External links

• Lemizh homepage with comprehensive coverage of the language, including a dictionary

This article includes material from the Lemizh homepage, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.