Verse:Mwail/Old Gloob: Difference between revisions

[[Themsarian/Themsarian|Themsárimai: '''Gáthvār themsárimār''']]

|name = Themsarian

|script=Themsarian script, Raxic script

Themsarian is my first constructed language, intended to be a head-initial, head-marking language with a plausible development from an erstwhile dependent-/double-marking language. The grammar and syntax has been heavily influenced by Semitic and Celtic languages, with some drawing from Japanese, German and other languages, while the aesthetics draws on Latin, Germanic, Greek, Celtic and Finnish, with hints of Khmer and [[w:Gyeongsang dialect|Gyeongsang Korean]]. The morphology is an experiment with grammatical non-concatenative morphology: as Celtic grammaticalizes initial consonant mutations, and Semitic vowel patterns, Themsarian does so with tone patterns. The grammar is also an experiment on using inflections and agreement to show grammatical relations without case, hence the use of switch-reference on verbs and borderline polysynthesis. So I guess it ends up a tad more like some Native American languages. Other purposes of my language include mixing in un-English verb syntax, such as the use of optatives in subordinate clauses, and using principally non-finite subordinate clauses in the indicative. Themsarian morphology also inflects according to a four-gender (animate, inanimate, abstract, honorific) and three-number (singulative, collective, and plurative) system.

:''See also: [[Themsarian/Sound changes from Proto-Talsmic]].

The '''Themsarian''' (/θɛmˈsɑɹiən/) '''language''' (Themsarian: ''gáthvār themsárimār'' [gáθʋàːr θè̞msárimàːr] "the Themsarian throat") was traditionally classified into an [[Talsmic languages|isolated subbranch]] of the [[Zachydic languages|Zachydic]] language family, along with other para-Themsarian languages which are/were natively spoken in the peninsula of Tálsym in the northwestern part of the Pattiya subcontinent. (Since then, Talsmic's [[Raxo-Talsmic languages|close ties]] to Ractamic languages, such as [[Raxic]], has gained widespread recognition.) The language remains clearly Zachydic (It is often said that Themsarian uses the same affixes as Raxic with different meanings); however, due to its long period of isolation and substrate influence (the substrate is sometimes speculated to have been a head-initial polysynthetic language), Themsarian was a typological and lexical outlier in the larger Zachydic family, within which it was distinguished by its heavily head-marking inflection in both clauses and possessive NPs as well as its strongly head-initial syntax. The name of the Themsarian language comes from the Themsár region, from whose dialect arose the prestige language of the peninsula. This elevated register/lect existed in a state of diglossia with the vernacular "dialects", diverse and often mutually unintelligible but still quite similar at this time. Noble Themsarian was used as a living language by the ruling class for a period spanning 600 years until its demise in the year ca. 220 v.c., and was continued to be used as an important literary, academic and religious language on the peninsula and surrounding mainland areas.

In keeping with the greater Talsmic and Zachydic milieu Themsarian employs a mixed fusional and agglutinative inflectional morphology, notably doing so by using a combination of tone changes and affixes. It also shares with greater Zachydic the use of a 3-gender system and a number system based on a generic-specific opposition.

Noble Themsarian (''gávthā ħéntā'' 'the noble language') used 22 consonants (23 if /ʔ/ is analyzed as becoming silent V_V), a rather modest inventory for a Zachydic language.

Themsarian has a six-vowel system, symmetrical to a fault, with a quantity distinction. Short vowels have one mora (except for epenthetic ''i/y'' which has zero morae), and long vowels have two morae.  

Pitch accent, or tone, is phonemic in Themsarian. The following is the notation for tones:

The following rules govern the marking of Themsarian pitch accent:

[[Image:ŧā́thimā́ script.jpg|right|thumb|Themsarian script in the ''ŧā́thimā́'' style.|240px]]

-->The standardized Themsarian alphabet, variants of which are used to write other Talsmic languages, is a native alphabetic script with 28 letters in addition to diacritics for vowel length and tones. In the earliest texts vowel length and tone were not recorded; diacritics for these were first devised for religious and official purposes and gradually came to be universally mandatory. In texts meant to be sung (e.g. poetry or hymns) the tone marks are substituted with various cantillation marks that 'correspond' to the tone. Tone is generally ''not'' assigned when transcribing foreign words.

Themsarian also makes a state distinction in third person possessed forms, namely between the ''absolute'' possessed form, which indicates a noun possessed by a pronoun, and the ''conjunct'' possessed form, used to indicate a possessive relationship between two nouns and agreeing with the gender of the possessor. This distinction is marked with tone changes or zero.

:''See also [[Themsarian/Nominal subparadigms|tables for declension subparadigms]].''

This construction is not possible if the indefinite possessum is animate ''or'' inalienable; in such cases Themsarian resorts to using the phrase ''navé gil...'' (one/some of...) followed by the appropriate plural definite possessum.

A descendant of a language with developed noun and adjective cases, Themsarian preserves vestigial case marking. Many nominal and adjectival endings are themselves diachronically derived from Proto-Talsmic case suffixes.

Themsarian verbs display so-called ''first-conjunct agreement'' as common amongst VSO languages, i.e. when the verb precedes a subject composed of two or more conjunctive noun phrases (in the form ''A ie B ie C''), the verb will agree with the first NP. With 'or' conjunctions (''at'' or ''nu'') in the subject, the verb agrees with the nearest subject. In the case of coordinated objects the verb agrees with the first contiguous noun phrase (i.e. 'and' has higher precedence than 'or').

|+'''Themsarian finite verb template'''

The Themsarian jussive (''cýlinā́'' 'urging form') continues three different irrealis moods in Proto-Talsmic: desiderative, hortative and optative. The desiderative form was composed of the present tense plus a suffix ''-ʔe'', which caused the downstep to shift to the desinence in the 1ex singular and plural forms and, by analogy, in the 1ex dual. The hortative was marked with the suffix ''-ti'' (hence the ''-t, -ti-'' in the 1+2 and 2 forms), and the optative was marked with ''-aʔ'' (hence the final ''-á, -ā́-'' in the 3rd person jussive).

:''See also [[Themsarian/Verbal subparadigms|tables for conjugation subparadigms]].''

The zero theme vowel conjugation often contains irregularities from interactions between the final consonant and the ending (in fact some alteration occurs for all consonants except ''m'', ''r'' and ''ch'', unless the stem-terminating consonant is part of a cluster) and hence includes [[Themsarian/Verbal subparadigms|many subconjugations]].

Prepositions in Themsarian are inflected with pronominal enclitics.

!|Themsarian

!|Themsarian

Themsarian employs a pure vigesimal numeral system. In transcriptions of Themsarian, if positional numerals are desired, the vigesimal positional numerals should be used.

!colspan="8"|Themsarian numerals

Themsarian focusing fronts the whole noun phrase (prepositions and all), unlike topicalization in which the topic is appositional and is expressed with a prepositional pronoun in the clause. If the focus is the subject fronting with no pronoun is used. Focusing may alternatively employ a type of cleft construction, with fronting of the focused noun phrase, by using the inverse verbal or prepositional object corresponding to the role of the focus in the sentence. The cleft construction is the one used when the focus is the direct object.

!|Themsarian

Themsarian prefers sentences with one independent (tensed realis) clause, with infinitives, jussives or participles in subordinate clauses (except usually in complement clauses).

!|Themsarian

Three types of participial clauses are used in Themsarian: attributive participle clauses, absolute participle clauses and adverbial participle clauses. All participles are negated with ''daer''.

!|Themsarian

Themsarian uses chiefly finite complement clauses (with verbs of information, saying or knowing), unlike for other types of subordinate clauses. As in English, changes in tense occur if the matrix verb is in a past tense (not a present perfect tense):  

Themsarian uses the ''switch reference'' clitic ''-(i)s(e)'' to signal that the current clause has a different subject than the subject of the previous clause. This clitic goes between the conjunction and the first constituent in the clause.

The comparative particle 'than' is ''rū''. Themsarian enables one to discriminate "He loved me more than she [loved me]" and "He loved me more than [he loved] her", by focusing the argument in the main clause that is compared. The comparative phrase is by default placed after the subject or verb, and the compared noun phrase is stated, or repeated with a pronoun.

Impersonal pronouns do not exist in Themsarian. The verb is put into the passive with the subject as patient/object, or no subject if there is no patient.

Themsarian is poor in true modal and auxiliary verbs; "adverbial" and "adjectival" modal constructions are more common. Deontic modalities tend to be expressed adjectivally, while situational and epistemic modalities tend to have adverbial expressions. All modal expressions come before the (negation-) lexical verb (e.g. ''Jêr méŧar ħlomaréch thyrfāmâst!'' "How dare you betray my brothers!", note that the verb is in the preterite).

Themsarian prefers to compound verbs with directional verbs to indicate certain meanings, unlike English which uses adverbs:

Compounding and incorporation is the main, characteristically Themsarian method of derivation.

''Zinnṓðrir'' or simply ''nṓðrir'' (plurale tantum) is the Themsarian term for [[w:rhymed prose|rhymed prose]], a very popular literary form for oratory and other didactic works in both classical and post-classical periods, but not uncommon either for ordinary descriptive writings.

A Themsarian-English lexicon may be found at [[Themsarian/Vocabulary]].

[[Category:Languages]][[Category:Conlangs]][[Category:A priori]][[Category:Talsmic languages]][[Category:Zachydic languages]][[Category:Themsarian|*]]