Adwan

Adwan is the label used to refer not only to the constructed language itself, but also to its evolution throughout time. Conceived in 2010, as an exercise to understand better the nuance behind foreign language morphologies, Adwan has evolved from a boilerplate language meant to facilitate the learning of natural languages, to an actively engineered personal language.

Phonology

Consonants

The consonants 'g', 'h', 'm' and 'n' are used with other a finite amount of other consonants to form further graphemes that represent distinct sounds. Moreover, consonant sound realizations change based on position in the syllable. Therefore, a consonant typically varies depending on whether it lies in the onset of a syllable or the coda. Moreover, for the semivowel consonants representing the sounds /j/ and /w/ are represented by their vowel forms 'i' and 'w' when preceding a vowel and after a consonant, and by 'gh' and 'mh' otherwise, respectively. When preceding 'g', the consonants 'm' and 'n' become nonsyllabic nasalized velar and palatal approximants /j̯̃/ and /ɰ̯̃/, respectively.

Vowels

There are a number of 7 non-nasal, non-diphthong vowels in Adwan.

Vowel	a	e	i	o	u	w	y
IPA	a	e	i	o	ø	u	ɪ

Furthermore, the following vowels can be "nasalized", in which a diphothong involving a nasal consonant is introduced. On introducing the nasal consonant, notice that the vowel pronunciation is also slightly changed.

Vowel	amg	ang	emg	eng	omg	ong	umg	ung	wmg	wng	ymg	yng
IPA	ɐ̃ɰ̯̃	æ̃j̯̃	ɛ̃ɰ̯̃	ɛ̃j̯̃	õɰ̯̃	õj̯̃	œ̃ɰ̯̃	œ̃j̯̃	ũɰ̯̃	ũj̯̃	ɨ̃ɰ̯̃	ɪj̯̃

Morphophonology

Phonomorphisms

Morphisms on objects perform the same function as adding an affix with variable parts. In particular, this is easily seen in conjugations, where there exists a set of endings marking person and number, of the form -VC, where V is a vowel and C is a consonant. The aspect morphism is a set of rules describing just which affixes to be added for which aspect depending on the person and number, and vice versa. For example, the (present) first person imperfective ending is '-um', while in the perfective it is '-em'. So the 'u' becomes an 'e', and the 'm' stays the same. This is the case for morphing between verb aspects -- i.e., conjugating a verb in dichotomous aspects. In particular, we have the rules listed below for the verb aspect morphism:

• 'u' becomes 'e'
• 'e' becomes 'y'
• 'y' becomes 'u'
• consonants stay the same

Therefore, one may distinguish between aspects of a given verb based on the vowel paradigm involved. For example, the verb for 'to eat' is morgan, and so to say "I eat", one would either say morgum or morgem, where morgum translates closer to "I am eating", or refers to the ongoing action of eating, while morgem would refer to the complete action of eating, a distinction further covered in detail below, but which can be seen as the difference between talking about eating at a restaurant, and one's entire experience of eating at a restaurant.

Such a morphism is a constant factor behind the subtle permutations of a single lexeme.

Morphology

Lexemes are given types, and are further distinguished amongst other lexeme types via different inflection paradigms. A lexeme typically consists of a root and an ending. A great deal of Adwan grammar may effectively be described using the correct operations of concatenation of strings (i.e., adding strings of letters to words) and vowel and consonant morphisms, in which parts of current endings are changed rather than having any new endings appended). Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and determiners are declined according to four morphological cases and two numbers, while verbs are conjugated for person, number, tense, mood, aspect, and follow a pattern of conjugating pronouns in compound constructions. Nouns follow a relatively simple declension paradigm, while verb conjugations follow a more complex pattern of use. Adjectives have two separate declension paradigms and the distinction between the two paradigms plays a large role in further compound verb constructions. Furthermore, determiners share the same declension paradigm as verb participles used in certain constructions.

Nouns

Noun cases.

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	-a	-amg
Accusative	-w	-emg
Genitive	-y	-ing
Instrumental	-o	-yng
Dative	-u	-ung
Locative	-o	-oa
Ablative	-wy	-i
Oblique	-oe	-omh

Verbs

Verbs are perhaps the most heavily used part of speech in the Adwan language as a whole, and aside from a few crucial inflections, follow a relatively simple agglutivative structure. Verbs all end in the same infinitive ending of -an. In finite forms, verbs are inflected according to person and number (these inflections are simultaneously structurally distinct but not phonemically separable), tense (where the present tense indicative, the marker is null), mood (indicative vs conditional vs subjunctive), and aspect (perfective vs imperfective). Verbs have a large inventory of constructions, and are thus divided into simple constructions, consisting of verb conjugations acting on the same stem as the verb, and into compound constructions, which are the verbal forms associated with certain morphisms. Verb endings are given in pairs of the form a/b, where a = imperfective aspect, b = perfective aspect.

The vowel morphisms on verbs determines which combinations of vowels determine which grammatical meaning. In our case, we can view vowel morphisms as permutations of vowel phonemes, denoted by an asterisk. So if 'u' were to get mapped to the vowel 'e', then we would write u* = e. Below is a table of the vowel morphism used.

vowel (U)	new vowel (U*)	identity
a	o	a* = o
e	y	e* = y
i	i	i* = i
o	w	o* = w
u	e	u* = e
w	a	w* = a
y	u	y * = u

Realis

There is only really one realis mood, and that's the indicative mood.

Present

Person	Singular	Plural
1	-um/em	-amg/omg
2	-et/yt	-utg/etg
3	-yr/ur	-erg/yrg
4	-ys/us	-eth/yth

Past

Notice that the past tense is formed by inserting a variable infix after the root of the verb but before the personal endings.

Person	Singular	Plural
1	-eghum/yghem	-ocamg/wcomg
2	-yghet/ughyt	-ecutg/ycetg
3	-ughyr/eghur	-ycerg/ucyrg
4	-ughys/eghus	-yceth/ucyth

Other resources

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