Matzeriei

Matzerieu
e’macerieu hišet
Pronunciation	[maˈt͡se̞.ɾje̞u̯]
Created by	Skry
Date	2020
Setting	Personal communication; conlanging exercise
Native speakers	1 (2021)
Writing systems	Latin

Matzerieu (Matz. e’macerieu hišet) is a personal conlang conceived in December 2020. As of July 2021, it’s still under development.

Introduction

Matzerieu started as a fun and interesting, but haphazardly made PIE-esque experiment based on a few marginal ideas, specifically that pre-PIE was a split ergative language, particularly active-stative, that had a genetic relationship to Proto-Uralic. The idea back in November 2020 was, simply put, to create some PU-looking roots, erode them to look like PIE and evolve a large family from it. Needless to say, this idea failed in a number of ways, including the fact that a beginner like myself wasn’t fit to tackle such a task.

When I realized that I didn’t know what I was doing, I scraped almost everything, but kept the semantic alignment, with Acehnese (Austronesian, Malayo-Polinesian; Indonesia) and Guaraní (Tupian, Tupi-Guarani; Paraguay) as the inspiration for this conlang’s grammar. The sound inventory is inspired on Armenian (Indo-European; Armenia), or rather stolen from it with a few tweaks, but the phonotactics is entirely my own. Semantically, this language doesn’t stray too far from Spanish, and thus it has some relexy properties.

The goals for this project are the following:

• Explore my capabilities as a conlanger by applying my (regrettably deficient) knowledge in linguistics.
• Build a fluid-S language in which volition and control from the speaker determines the semantics of an utterance.

Etymology

The word macero, the collective form of maca ‘chair’, refers to a place where people gather to tell stories, which is simply a group of chairs placed in a circle. Maceriei refers to a person that engages in such activity. Thus, the glottonym e’macerieu e’hišet means “the speech of the storyteller”.

Phonology

Vowels and diphthongs

The vowel inventory of Matzerieu is fairly simple, as it consists of only five vowels, all of which are identical to those of Spanish.

	Front	Central	Back
Closed	i		u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Matzerieu diphthongs

Falling
[ai̯]	tatai ‘grandfather’	[au̯]	Romau ‘of Rome’
[ei̯]		[eu̯]
[oi̯]	tarsoi ‘horse’	[ou̯]
Rising
[i̯a]	tosia ‘nothing’	[u̯a]
[i̯e]		[u̯e]
[i̯o]		[u̯o]
Levelled
[ui̯]	ʒenǯui ‘snake’	—	—
[i̯u]		[u̯i]

There are no phonemic long vowels. Instances of two identical vowels appearing together are normally simplified to a short vowel. In careful speech, though, both vowels are pronounced. Nasality isn’t phonemic either, but vowels next to nasals, especially in coda position, tend to be nasalized.

/d͡ʒan/

[d͡ʒãŋ]

‘year’

The vowels /e/ and /o/ are true mid [e̞] and [o̞]. For the sake of simplicity, however, the lowering diacritic will be omitted in the phonetic transcriptions. In unstressed syllables, all vowels retain their qualities, that is, there is no vowel reduction.

Diphthongs are a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds that act as the nucleus of a syllable, and consist of an open or mid vowel next to a closed vowel. Matzerieu has fifteen phonetic diphthongs. Two adjacent vowels in hiatus may be realized as diphthongs in rapid speech, as in oeltui /oˈel.tui̯/ [ˈo̯el.tui̯] ‘my sister’.

Consonants

The consonantal inventory of Matzerieu is moderately large at 27 distinct phonemes. Stops beside the glottal stop occur in three series of voiceless, voiced and aspirated sounds. Fricatives and affricates come in series of voiced/voiceless phonemes, except /x/, which has no voiced counterpart. The aspirated consonants are strongly aspirated, even more than in English.

		Labial	Dent.-alv.	Postalv.	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n
Stop	Voiceless	p	t		k	ʔ
	Aspirated	pʰ	tʰ		kʰ
	Voiced	b	d		g
Affricate	Voiceless		ts	tʃ
	Aspirated		tsʰ	tʃʰ
	Voiced		dz	dʒ
Fricative	Voiceless	f	s	ʃ	x
	Voiced	v	z	ʒ
Liquid			ɾ l
Approximant				j

Prosody

Stress

Stress in Matzerieu is usually fixed on the antepenult syllable. This means that bisyllabic and trisyllabic nouns have stress on the first syllable.

tauta	[ˈtau̯.ta]	‘weapon’
mistuni	[ˈmis.tu.ni]	‘cat’
iḳal-an	[ˈi.kʰa.lãŋ]	‘coil-pl’

Orthography

Alphabet

Matzerieu is written with two different scripts: a modified version of the Latin aphabet and a partially featural native alphabet. The Matzerieu alphabet is largely phonemic, that is, each letter corresponds to one phoneme and vice versa. There are no digraphs or silent letters. Out of the basic Latin alphabet, the only letters that aren’t used are x and y.

Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital letters)
A	B	C	C̣	Č	Č̣	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	Ḳ	L	M	N	O	P	Ṗ	Q	R	S	Š	T	Ṭ	U	V	W	Z	Ž	Ʒ	Ǯ
Minuscule forms (also called lowercase or small letters)
a	b	c	c̣	č	č̣	d	e	f	g	h	i	j	k	ḳ	l	m	n	o	p	ṗ	q	r	s	š	t	ṭ	u	v	w	z	ž	ʒ	ǯ

Morphology

Nouns

Matzerieu nouns can be divided according to their gender in animate and inanimate. Animate nouns refer to autonomous beings, like human beings, animals, plants and trees, deities, and even simple microorganisms and personified objects that exhibit apparent autonomous movement, like androids and automata. Inanimate nouns refer to any inert object: natural materials, man-made products, celestial objects, and abstract concepts. By nature, inanimate nouns cannot be the volitional agents of a verb.

Nouns decline for number and case.

Number

Matzerieu nouns have either one of two numbers: singular or plural. However, plural marking is unnecesary when a numeral is present. There’s a dual number, but it’s very marginal and it only applies to nouns that appear naturally in pairs, like certain parts of the body like the eyes or the hands. Mass, uncountable nouns, like šar (‘water’) or žul (‘rice’) are invariable for number, although they could optionally take the collective marker -éro, or a quantifier, if a sense of pluralization is needed. The plural number is marked with the suffix -(a)n, whereas the dual is marked with the suffix -ce.

cei šarhi šarel
cei	šarhi	šar-el
two	cup.abs	water-abl
‘two glasses of water’

onani saṭomce
o-nan-i	sa-ṭom-ce
1sg.poss-mother-abs	3sg.poss-eye-du
‘my mother’s eyes’

Ožek femel sasten hanirne.
ož-ek	femel	saste-n	han-irne
1sg-dat	red	apple-abs	cop.npst-3pl.inact
‘I have red apples.’

Case

There are seven grammatical cases in Matzerieu: ergative, absolutive, dative, genitive, locative, ablative, and instrumental. Semantically and sintactically, the first three are the core cases of the verbal phrase.

Case and number paradigm for nouns according to the last segment of their root

	Consonant-final		Vowel-final
Case	Sg.	Pl.	Sg.	Pl.
Ergative	-s	-ans	-s	-ns
Absolutive (inan/anim)	-∅/-i	-an/-ani	-∅/-i	-n/-ni
Dative	-ek	-anek	-k	-nek
Genitive	-u	-anu	-u	-nu
Locative	-er	-aner	-r	-ner
Ablative	-el	-anel	-l	-nel
Instrumental	-en	-anen	-n	-nen

Ergative case

Volitional agents always take the ergative case, even in intransitive verbs. This usage contrasts with that of typical ergative-absolutive languages, in which the subject of intransitive verbs take the absolutive case.

T’irs ilat.
t=ir-s	il-at
def=woman-erg	read(ipfv).npst-3sg.act
‘The woman reads/is reading.’

Te’vos te’ʒenǯui uhriʒetát.
te=vo-s	te=ʒenǯu-i	uhriʒe-t´-at
def=man-erg	def=snake-abs	kill(pfv)-pst-3sg.act
‘The man killed the snake.’