Verse:Hmøøh/USB
Tizian (amysso tízimso /ˈʔamʉsso ˈtʰizimso/)
Phonology
| Tizian consonants | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labial | Coronal | Lateral | Velar | Radical | Glottal | |||
| Nasal | m m̥ | n n̥ | ||||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | ʡ | ʔ | ||
| voiced | b | d | g | |||||
| voiceless aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | kʰ | |||||
| voiced aspirated | bʱ | dʱ | gʱ | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | θ s | ɬ | x | ħ | h | |
| voiced | v | ð z | ɮ | ɣ | ɦ | |||
| Affricate | plain | ts dz | tɬ dɮ | |||||
| aspirated | tsʰ dzʰ | tɬʰ dɮʱ | ||||||
| Approximant | w ʍ | j ɧ | ||||||
| Trill | r r̥ | |||||||
| Lateral app. | l | |||||||
Word-finally consonant aspiration is realized as aspirated or released consonants. Medial voiced aspirated consonants may be prenasalized in less careful speech.
Consonant gradation
Tizian employs grammatical consonant gradation (namely alternation between unaspirated (commonly called "viscous") and aspirated ("dilute") consonants, of which the latter is marked with an acute accent (historical high tone) after the affected consonant) in nouns, adjectives and verbs. For most consonants this is straightforward; viscous plosives/affricates are unaspirated whereas dilute plosives/affricates are aspirated, and there are viscous/dilute resonants as well (l ↔ ɬ, r ↔ r̥, m ↔ m̥, n ↔ n̥, j ↔ ɧ, w ↔ ʍ). If a cluster contains non-alternating consonants, the alternation coming from the following vowel/suffix is not blocked.
Nouns
- Main article: Tizian/Declension patterns
Four numbers are used in Tizian: generic, partitive, singulative and plurative. The generic number refers to an unspecified member or members of a set or to the whole set. The partitive number is used with quantifiers and also with the meaning "some X". Singulative and plurative respectively denote one and multiple specific items.
| Declension | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number→ | Generic | Partitive | Singulative | Plurative | ||||||||||||
| Indefinite | -Ø | -ch | -s | -syr | ||||||||||||
| Definite | -so | -sno | ||||||||||||||
| 1sg | ||||||||||||||||
| 2sg | ||||||||||||||||
| 3sg.animate | ||||||||||||||||
| 3sg.inanimate | ||||||||||||||||
| 1ex | ||||||||||||||||
| 1in | ||||||||||||||||
| 2pl | ||||||||||||||||
| 3pl.animate | ||||||||||||||||
| 3pl.inanimate | ||||||||||||||||
| Impersonal | ||||||||||||||||
| Relative | ||||||||||||||||
Possession
Possession is marked on the possessum with a possessive suffix (possessum-suffix possessor) if and only if said possessum is definite.
Aspiration may be lost or gained in conjunct state: byrs /bʉrs/ "a cloud" > býrs /bʱʉrs/ "a cloud of..."
Pronouns
The first person singular can be used as an impersonal pronoun.
Besides their respective literal meanings, in contexts with unclear clusivity exclusive 'we' has a more "objective" connotation and inclusive 'we' a more "rhetorical" one.
- 1sgv: nó
- 2sgv: í
- 3sgv.an: ðe
- 3sgv.inan: ŧé
- 1plv.ex: cho
- 1plv.in: wéen
- 2plv: sló
- 3plv.an: ðu
- 3plv.inan: ŧú
- 3gen: ða
- 3part: ti
- Impersonal: is
Verbs
Verbs display consonant gradation based on tense and subject agreement. The predesinential consonant is unvoiced resonant/aspirated plosive in the present, and changing this to voiced resonant/unaspirated plosive in the jussive or past tense: (arlí /ar̥ɬi/: "I set up, prepare (transitive)"; arli /arli/: "that I may prepare"; arl´ /ar̥ɬ/: you (singular) prepare; arl /arl/: prepare!)
Split ergativity
The ergative particle le is used before an ergative noun phrase. The default alignment is ergative, with 1st and 2nd person arguments inducing nominative/accusative alignment on both nouns and verbs; only 1st and 2nd person patients can be passivized, and only 3rd person agents can be antipassivized.
Syntax
Word order
In independent clauses the word order is most commonly SVO, but in dependent clauses will change to VSO. It will not be difficult to analyze Tizian as a topic prominent language in which the canonical VSO word order changes to front the topic in independent clauses, or simply as an invariantly V2 language.
Copulas
The copula im literally means "to be an element/subset of", thus it turns the predicate into the generic number.
Equivalence of one entity to another, on the other hand, is expressed with a different copula vók.
Relative clauses
The relativizer r(i)- and/or the relative pronominal suffixes are used only for the case of restrictive relative clauses. In non-restrictive relative clauses 3rd person resumptive pronouns are used as in a full clause; in the same vein, predicate adjectives are used as non-restrictive adjectives.