Tseer

Tseer/Lexicon
Swadesh list for Tseer
Tseer/Sketchbook

Tseer
døluder Tseer
Created by	IlL
Setting	Verse:Tricin
Language family	Lakovic Tseer

Tseer is a classical language of Talma, second to Windermere; it left a significant influence on Windermere and Skellan. It is the language of parts of the Latlaseekh and other philosophical, historical and literary texts from Ancient Tseer civilization. It is inspired by Somali, Hmong and Vietnamese.

When the Windermere Empire fell in 1004 fT in the aftermath of the Jeodganite-Ngedhraist Revolt, many Tseeric- and Talmic-speaking peoples newly settled in the land. These Tseeric vernaculars represented variation that already existed in the originally Tseer-speaking area. These Tseeric vernaculars were already separate languages by then, and they came to be associated with different nation-states in Talma.

Todo

Wdm and Tseer: like Hebrew and Aramaic?

Diachronics

Compared to Classical Windermere, Classical Tseer has more conservative vowels but less conservative consonants.

Unlike Windermere, Tseer vocalized some laryngeals in clusters, namely *Q and *f. It also merged PLak *ä and *a into /a/.

Vocalized *f, vowels which were colored by *f, and u-umlaut of /a/ and /e/ are the main sources of /ø/ in Tseer.

The laryngeals *X ("far laryngeal") and *H ("near laryngeal") produced breathy vowels, which eventually became nasal vowels. (In Ashanic, *f functions as the far laryngeal.)

• Nasal vowels merge with nonnasal vowels before m/n/ng/l
• Final -ng disappears leaving nasalization (as in Skellan)
• p > f
• final -g, -w disappear
• ś, g > kh /x/
• s- > *θ > t /t/
• š-, y- > x-
• t- > dh /D/
• -s > -x, *s backs to s following ruki; feminine -s becomes -kh or -r
• c, ć > tx, ts
• CäC- > CaC-

Phonology

Consonants

Classical Tseer has 21 phonemic consonants: Syllable-final v ð are allophones of /b d/, and syllable final b d g are allophones of /p t k/.

m n ng /ŋ/

t th /ʈ/ k ' /ʔ/

b d dh /ɖ/ g

f x /s~z/ kh /x/ h

tx /ts/ ts /tʃ/

v đ /ð/ (only syllable finally)

w r /r̝~ʒ/ l y /j/

Notes

• /x/ is [ʂ] in some dialects
• b d g = [p t k] word-finally.

Vowels

Tseer has 10 vowels: 6 oral and 4 nasal.

a e i o u ø /a e i o u ɵ/

aa ee oo øø /ã ẽ õ ɵ̃/

/ɵ/ will be transcribed as /ø/ for convenience.

Stress

Classical Tseer had no stress; word boundaries were marked with intonation.

Phonotactics

No initial clusters are allowed; also, final -p -t -th -k are forbidden.

Morphology

Classical Tseer morphology is much like Classical Windermere: nouns have masculine and feminine gender, and verbs inflect for aspect, tense, voice, and gender agreement using prefixes, infixes and reduplication. Like Windermere, Tseer has lost Proto-Lakovic triggers.

Pronouns

	I	we (inc. du.)	thou (m.)	thou (f.)	he	she	we (exc.)	we (inc. pl.)	you (pl.)	they
Full pronouns	ree	baa	khen	kheer	in	eer	aari	baaba	kheekhe	inin
Enclitics	-ri, -iri	-b, -am	-kh, -ekh	-kher	-in	-ar

Correlatives

Todo: correlatives table

this, that = ti, fi

this/that man = ten, fen; this/that woman = teer, feer

here, there = mid, mif

Nouns

Like Classical Windermere, each noun has an intrinsic gender, either masculine or feminine. For most feminine nouns, the feminine is marked with -kh or -er (from PLak *-s).

• atev = son-in-law; atever = daughter-in-law
• bakhoo = uncle; bakhookh = aunt
• athaay = lion; athaayer = lioness

Plurals are formed by reduplication with the reduplicant modified for phonotactic or euphonic reasons.

• athaay 'lion' > a'athaay 'lions'
• moog 'feather' > momoog 'feathers'

TODO: plural reduplication rules

Verbs

Verb template

feminine-TAM-pluractionality-voice-ROOT-TAM

Agreement

Feminine subject: wa-

Danutx ree u ownakh = I loved the girl (male speaker)

Wadanutx ree u ownakh = I loved the girl (female speaker)

Voice

• Passive: ra-
• Causative la- (Wdm verbalizer lă-)

Verbal number

Pluractionality is used when a verb is done multiple times or done to multiple objects.

Pluractionality: e(e)Fe- or e(e)FeL- (cf. Windermere frequentative enFă-)

TAM

Aspects in early Tseer were reinterpreted as tense + telicity in Classical Tseer.

• Perfective aspect -> Telic past: if marked, -aa (from *-H)
• Imperfective -> Atelic past: if marked, reduplication
  • no wa- for feminine here
• Inceptive -> Atelic nonpast: sa-
• Intensive -> Telic nonpast: tho-, ~ Wdm. thu-

The citation form is the perfective or telic past form. For the verb dagoo 'he wrote', these forms are dagoo, dadagoo/ledagoo, sadagoo and thodagoo.

The progressive oo- also existed in Early Tseer and was added to the imperfective stem, but it was deleted. This explains the lack of feminine wa- in the imperfective form.

The imperative is marked with a particle ma: ma thodagoo toyab = 'write a book (to a man)'; eer ma wathodagoo toyab = let her write a book (perf)'.

A Tseer verb may have marked perfectives with -aa and unmarked imperfectives, or marked imperfectives (with reduplication) and unmarked perfectives.

Verbs are negated with di (in the imperative, by replacing ma with khay).

Derivation

• xi- adjectivizer (~ Wdm. yă)
• -ay- infix: nomz.
• -ee- or -kh- infix (from ⟨X⟩): instrument
• ø- = negative (from *f-)
• PLak Trigger infixes
• Nominalizers, verbalizers, instrument, place, etc.

Syntax

SVO or VSO

Poetry

Meter

Classical Tseer poetry is based on lines with

• a prescribed number of syllables
• a caesura somewhere in the middle
• the lines rhyme in some rhyme scheme, usually in rhyming couplets (aa) or rhyming quatrains (aaaa).

We use "m+n" to denote a meter of m syllables + caesura + n syllables.

Some meters were:

• 4+4
• 4+6
• 5+5
• 6+4
• 4+7
• 6+5
• 6+6
• 7+7