Castithan
Castithan is the language created by David J. Peterson for the Castithan race in the world of the TV series Defiance. It is a working language with its own vocabulary, grammar, phonology and writing system and currently it has grown from 1400 or so words[1] to over 2100 words[2] over 2013. It stands with Irathient as one of the two main usable alien languages of Defiance.
Castithan is a fusional language lightly inflectional tending towards isolating typology. The language is predominantly head-final with a strict subject–object–verb order. It can inflect for topicality, object and subject and is mostly pro-drop. In combination to these the language uses a set of particles, much like Japanese, which are described below, with verbs being fairly easy to conjugate. Verbs can be either stative or dynamic, an important distinction is made between the two in the language.[3]
Basic Sentence Structure
Word Order: head final
The word order in Castithan is strictly head-final often represented as subject–object–verb or SOV. This means that, unlike English, the head of the sentence will go last. Compare this sentence and its English translation:
- Noraka do deta
- 2nd.pers obj love
- I love you
If you had to explicitly mark the subject you would do it by means of another particle different than do. Hence:
- Nevitsa re noraka do deta
- 1st.pers subj 2nd.pers obj love
- I love you
However you can change the word order for emphasis such as in the sentence «You, I love». In the case of Castithan the new emphasized word would have to go with the topic marking particle ksa:
- Pawa ksa zwasitsa re zwasa
- pow-dir top cook-dir subj cook-pres
- The cook is heating the pow
Note that particles and inflection will change meanings depending on whether the verb is stative or dynamic[4]. This will be discussed below.