Dhannuá
Dhannuá (dhannuá bhlóar [ˈdʱannuaː ˈbʱloːar] or dhannuá aurónar [ˈdʱannuaː ˈauroːnar]), also known as Aurónian is a Lúsanic language, itself a branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in the archipelago of Aurónar. It is a continuation of Middle Dhannuá, the official language used by courts during the Second Kingdom, which in turn descends from the insular Dānaiza dialect of Old Dhannuá, spoken during the Sawelis Empire.
| Dhannuá | |
|---|---|
| Dhannuá Aurónar | |
| Pronunciation | [ˈdʱannuaː ˈauroːnar] |
| Created by | – |
| Native to | The Island States of Aurónar |
| Native speakers | 32 thousand (2011) |
Indo-European
| |
Early forms | Old Dhannuá (Insular)
|
| Official status | |
Official language in | The Island States of Aurónar |
| Regulated by | Cósseneir Dhannuáor Aurónár (Council of The Language of Aurónar) |
| Language codes | |
| CLCR | qdh |
Background
Dhannuá was conceived in my mind when I decided to mess around with Indo-European lexical and grammatical root stock. It is my first attempt at creating a modern Indo-European conlang and it shows, in many aspects!
Dhannuá (and its immediate relatives) belong to the centum grouping of IE languages, that is, they have merged the palatal and the plain plosive series.
Phonology
Dhannúa has 22-24 distinctive consonants.
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labiode. | Dental | Alveol. | Postalve. | Velar | Glottal | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasals | m | n | |||||||||||||
| Plosives | p pʰ | b bʱ | t tʰ | d dʱ | k kʰ | g gʱ | |||||||||
| Fricatives | [f] | [v] | s | z | ʃ | h | |||||||||
| Trills | r | ||||||||||||||
| Glides | Approxim. | w | |||||||||||||
| Lateral Appr. | l | ||||||||||||||
The pronunciation of /f/ and its voiced counterpart /v/ is considered a dialectal variation on /pʰ/ and /bʱ/. Although they occur in a few standard words as borrowings from these dialects they are often not considered to belong in Dhannuá proper.
Vowels
| Front | Near-front | Central | Near-back | Back | ||
| Close | 
| |||||
| Near‑close | ||||||
| Close‑mid | ||||||
| Mid | ||||||
| Open‑mid | ||||||
| Near‑open | ||||||
| Open | ||||||
Grammar
Dhannúa, or as it has been more recently called Aurónian, has preserved an Indo-European synthetic-inflectional structure in both its nouns and in its verbs.
Pronouns, nouns, adjectives, and certain numerals decline (for case, number and often gender), while verbs conjugate for person and tense. The majority of nouns can be regularly inflected for six cases, a scarce few for a seventh, and adjectives generally agree with their headwords.
As the grammar seems to be undergoing quite a marked change in the common vernacular, certain word forms may be exceedingly rare to encounter in spoken form. Gender agreement for adjectives appears to be simplifying to a simple animate-inanimate category.
Morphology
Noun
Aurónian has six noun cases – nominative, genitive, accusative, dative, essive, comitative - of which the first four are inherited from Indo-European. The remaining two, the essive and comitative are innovations common to the Finio-Dhannic languages. Certain words appear to preserve a seventh case - the instrumental - but it is extremely rare to encounter this form in modern literature. There are two numbers - singular and plural - although certain words are only encountered in one of these. Grammatical gender appears to be in process of disappearing from the language, Dhannuá originally having had three - masculine, feminine, neuter - but now tendencies to merge the first two in adjectives and referents are becoming increasingly prevalent in certain forms of the spoken language, while morphologically the neuter has in many cases merged with the feminine, giving many "feminine" nouns for historical neuters, e.g. áranna 'a question'.
Nominative
As Dhannuá is a nominative-accusative language, the nominative (nom) is used for the argument of intransitive verbs (subject) and for the agent in transitive verbs.
In an intransitive sentence:
- Reidhadh aicuir riaros úiru.
- “The red man rides quickly.”
In a transitive sentence:
- Reidhadh supermarcetann úennan úiru.
- “The man rides the woman to the supermarket.”
Accusative
The accusative (acc) is used for the object of a transitive verb and also in certain expressions of time. Finally, it is also used to indicate the goal of verbs of motion.
Marked on the object of a transitive verb:
- Dhúmadh abhlonn so.
- “He is smoking an apple.”
In a fix time expression:
- Ísdh nósann so!
- “Tonight it is!”
As the goal of a verb of motion:
- Reidhadh supermarcetann úennan úiru.
- “The man rides the woman to the supermarket.”
Genitive
The genitive (gen) is used to indicate a relationship of sorts between nouns, for possession, after most prepositions, and yet again in certain time expressions.
Indicating a relationship:
- Ísdh sa dhannuá Súalannu!
- “That is the language of Swedes”
Indicating possession:
- Ísdh sa penna sar úennor.
- “That's the woman's pen.”
After a preposition:
- Bhúirann bhuanna palann í Sinaror.
- “They found a plain in Shinar.”
In a time expression:
- Bhúi bhresso scolann ía Iathassiár.
- “I walked to school last Thursday.”
Verb
The Aurónian verb is conjugated for person, number, mood, and tense. In the prescribed standard, the verb is no longer inflected for moods beyond the imperative. All other moods are instead formed by using specific postverbal particles. There are few fully irregular verbs, but many minor irregularities resulting from a conflux of analogical levelling, sound changes, and prior prescriptivism.
One major dialectal difference in Aurónian is found in the construction of tenses (didhánna úánnár). There is a multitude of ways to form both the future and the past tense, depending on whether or not one is using the synthetic form of the verb.
Present tense
The present tense is formed simply for all regular thematic verbs by adding the relevant person suffixes.
| person | suffix |
|---|---|
| I | -ann |
| thou | -as |
| he | -adh |
| we | -an,-am |
| you | -adh |
| they | -annad |
Past tense
There are several past tenses which differ in their aspect state.
Past I
The first past tense is used for events that occurred in the past without a specified end. It is formed morphologically by affixing -ir- to the naked consonantal stem and then the appropriate person endings.
| person | suffix |
|---|---|
| I | -ira |
| thou | -ira |
| he | -iradh |
| we | -irim, -irin |
| you | -iradh |
| they | -irann |
If the verb stem ends in a vowel, it is lengthened before adding -r-.
| person | sessedh “to sit” |
|---|---|
| I | sesséra |
| thou | sesséra |
| he | sesséradh |
| we | sessérim, sessérin |
| you | sesséridh |
| they | sessérann |
Future tense
There are two main strategies for the formation of the future tense: future I ('synthetic') and future II ('bhúi-construction').
Future I
The basis of this tense is formed morphologically by affixing -s- (or -r- in some cases) to the naked stem and then the appropriate person endings. This future form is able to occupy the first position of a sentence and thus word-order-wise it behaves just the same as a fully inflected present tense verb.
The relevant person suffixes for this future are
| person | suffix |
|---|---|
| I | -ann |
| thou | -is, -ir[1] |
| he | -idh |
| we | -im |
| you | -idh |
| they | -annad |
Future II
This tense is on the other hand formed by combining the future tense of ísan with the verbal noun.
| the verb ísan in the future tense | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| I | bhúirinn | ||
| thou | bhúiris | ||
| he | bhúiridh | ||
| we | bhúirim | ||
| you | bhúiridh | ||
| they | bhúirinn | ||
The inflected form is itself prone to reduction to bhúi in speech, whereupon the use of pronouns becomes obligatory,
- Bhúi lúcadh tódh sa vs. bhúiridh lúcadh tódh "She's going to light it"
Syntax
Aurónian Dhannuá syntax is markedly different from Indo-European syntax, especially in its typologically rare VOS word order
Default word order
- Negation1
- Verb
- Various postverbal particles2
- Auxiliary verb part3
- Manner descriptor
- Indirect object
- Direct object
- Location descriptor
- Time descriptor
- Subject
Notes
- 1. Usually, if the verb begins with a vowel, the negation ne is procliticised onto the verb, e.g. anúidannad an tódh? 'Don't they know that?' and loses stress.
- 2. e.g. ca 'and, also', an 'question particle'.
- 3. e.g. past tense participle, future II participle, etc.
The bare building block needed for an intransitive sentence is the verb with the subject as an optional component. Sentences with a transitive verb require a direct object.
In actual speech, word order may vary slightly, a bit freer than say English, as words are inflected for case and verbs may be marked for person thus permitting such variations such as verb-subject-object.
Example sentence
- Ne ísdh ca rédhan cun úaughod sann so nu. "And he isn't driving by car to her now"
Questions
Questions follow a slightly different word order from the default, depending on several factors (such as polarity, tense, particle) which makes them one of the more complex parts of the grammar.
In simple questions replace the direct object with the relevant wh-word.
- Ísdh úid? "What is that?"
- Náscas úid? "What do you doubt?"
For emphasis, it is possible to front the wh-word.
- Úid ísdh? "What is that?"
- Úíd náscas? "What is it that you doubt?"
In yes/no questions, the usual word order applies in the present tense.
- Ísdh an sád penna? "Is that her pen?"
- Ísdh. "It is."
- Anísdh. "It is not."
In the past tense, the position of the question element is variable. At the fundamental level it has to do with whether one is using the full (bhúir-) or the reduced form (bhúi) of ísan to form the past tense. This has some consequences for the negation and the postverbal particles.
- (Ne) bhúirann an dhann sod tódh? "Did I (not) give it to him?"
- An bhúi (ne) dhann sod tódh ía? "Did I (not) give it to him?"
The pattern can be described formally as
- Q V1 neg V2 particle… , e.g. An bhúi ne ússo ca méd tódh so "And he didn't tell me?"