Verse:Mwail/Old Gloob: Difference between revisions

[[Themsaran/Themsaran|Themsárimai: '''Gávthā themsárimā''']]<br/>

[[Themsaran/he|'''ראו דף זה בעברית''']]

|name = Themsaran

|script=Themsaran script, Raxic script

Themsaran is my first constructed language, for my conworld of Hheergrem. It is 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 Germanic, Celtic, Finnish, Semitic, 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, Themsaran does so with tone patterns. The grammar is also an experiment on using inflections and agreement to show grammatical relations without case, which explains the gender system (however minimalistic), switch-reference on verbs, and the 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.

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

The '''Themsaran''' (/ˈθɛmsɑɹən/) '''language''' (Themsaran: ''gávthā themsárimā'' [gáʊ̯fθàː θè̞msárimàː] "the Themsaran throat") was traditionally classified into an [[Talsmic languages|isolated subbranch]] of the [[Zachydic languages|Zachydic]] language family, along with other para-Themsaran languages which are/were natively spoken in the (relatively large) island of Tálsym off the northwestern coast 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 Themsaran uses the same affixes 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), Themsaran 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 Themsaran language comes from the Themsár region, from whose dialect arose the prestige language of the island. This elevated register/lect existed in a state of diglossia with the diverse and often mutually unintelligible vernacular "dialects". Noble Themsaran 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 island and surrounding mainland areas.

Similarly to the greater Talsmic and Zachydic milieu Themsaran employs a mixed fusional and agglutinative inflectional morphology, notably doing so by using a combination of tone changes and affixes.

Noble Themsaran (''gávthā ħéntā'' 'the noble language') used 23 consonants (24 if /ʔ/ is analyzed as becoming silent V_V), a rather modest inventory for a Zachydic language.

Themsaran 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. Short vowels in open syllables were pronounced approximately 1.5 times as long as short vowels in closed syllables; long vowels in closed syllables, 2.5 times as long; open long vowels, thrice as long.

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

The following rules govern the marking of Themsaran pitch accent:

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

The standardized Themsaran alphabet, variants of which are used to write other Talsmic languages, is a native alphabetic script with 29 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.

Nouns (''véliach'') and adjectives (''artulvellách'') have a rich morphology, albeit less ornate than verbs. They inflect for number (''ðūré''), definiteness (''thrȳ́zamétīd'' 'rememberedness') and possessedness (''ránmolíħe'' 'attribution'), but not for case. Nouns have singular (''cḗminnáth''), dual (''líntáth'') and plural (''ūráth'') numbers, and masculine (''qulzáth'') and feminine (''deiáth'') genders. In third-person possessed forms, Themsaran makes a distinction, realized tonally, 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.

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

This construction is not possible if the indefinite possessum is animate ''or'' inalienable; in such cases Themsaran 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, Themsaran preserves vestigial case marking. Many nominal and adjectival endings are themselves diachronically derived from Proto-Talsmic case suffixes.

Themsaran 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').

|+'''Themsaran finite verb template'''

The Themsaran 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 [[Themsaran/Verbal subparadigms|tables for conjugation subparadigms]].''

Shown below are the final and combining forms of subject suffixes of the three conjugation paradigms: the first conjugation, with null thematic vowel, the second conjugation, with thematic vowel ''a'', and the third conjugation, with thematic vowel ''e''. Passive is marked by theme vowel changes (The passive voice suffix has fused with the theme vowel in the history of Themsaran).

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 [[User:Ílchőfti Lēmáthīd/Themsaran/Verbal subparadigms|many subconjugations]].

Prepositions in Themsaran are inflected with pronominal enclitics.

!|Themsaran

!|Themsaran

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

!colspan="8"|Themsaran numerals

Themsaran 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.

"X has Y" is expressed with the construction "''[[Themsaran/Verbal subparadigms|mór]]''  Y ''vo'' X", or "''mór''-[pronoun affix for pronominal X] Y" if X is animate. If X is inanimate, the construction ''X ā Y'' ('X is with Y'), or ''X ast Y'' ('X is without Y') is used. (''Mór'' is a suppletive verb.)

!|Themsaran

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

!|Themsaran

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

!|Themsaran

Themsaran 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):  

Themsaran 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''. Themsaran 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 Themsaran. The verb is put into the passive with the subject as patient/object, or no subject if there is no patient.

Themsaran 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).

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

''Zinnṓðrir'' or simply ''nṓðrir'' (plurale tantum) is the Themsaran 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.

Old Vernacular Talsmic dialects are largely similar to Noble Themsaran, but there are grammatical, lexical and stylistic differences:

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