TolsianR

Background

Tolsian Revisited is an attempt at revamping much of that old conlang created something like 15 years ago by a child so that it becomes a slightly more consistent language. It is somewhat influenced by French and Latin but still an a priori conlang. It has its own alphabet which actually was created before the language itself.

Phonology

Consonants

		Bilabial		Labio-dental		Dental		Alveolar		Post-alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Uvular		Glottal
Nasal		m				n						ɲ		ŋ
Plosive		pʰ p b				tʰ t d								kʰ k g
Fricative		ɸ β		f v		θ ð		s z		ʃ ʒ				x ɣ		χ ʁ		h
Approximant												j		w
Trill																ʀ
Flap						ɾ
Lateral approx.						l
Prenasalised occlusives		ᵐb				ⁿd								ᵑg

Vowels

		Front		Central		Back
Close		i y				u
Close-mid		e ø				o
Open-mid		ɛ				ɔ
Open				ä

There are also three nasalized vowels : ɑ̃, ɛ̃, ɔ̃.

Orthography

Tolsian has its own script and an official, perfectly matching romanization. The alphabet is considered to consist of 36 letters, plus diacritics :

Y y - /jo/, /ɔj/
Æ æ ; Æ̊ æ̊ - /aj/ ; /ja/
A a - /a/
B b - /b/
Q q - /ʃ/
D d - /d/
E e ; Ê ê ; Ě ě - /e/ ; /ɛ/ ; /ø/
G g ; ; Ñ ñ - /g/ ; /ᵑg/ ; /ɲ/
H h - /h/
I i - /i/
Ƶ ƶ ; Ƶ̆ ƶ̆ - /ð/ ; /ʒ/
K k - /k/
L l - /l/
M m - /m/
N n - /n/
O o ; Œ œ - /o/, /ɔ/ ; /o/
P p ; Ƥ ƥ - /p/ ; /ɸ/
R r - /ʁ/
C c ; S s - /s/ ; /θ/
T t ; Ŧ ŧ - /t/ ; /tʰ/, /t̚/
U u - /y/
V v ; F f - /v/ ; /f/
Ƿ ƿ - /wi/
Z z - /z/
Ɯ ɯ ; Ɯ̂ ɯ̂ ; Ɯ̌ ɯ̌ - /ɑ̃/ ; /ɛ̃/ ; /ɔ̃/
W w - /u/
X x (ou Ħ ħ) - /χ/
Ƃ ƃ - /bɾa/
Ŋ ŋ - /ŋ/
Ɋ ɋ - /h̪/
Ƀ ƀ - /β/

Grammar

Morphology

There are five main parts of speech in TolsianR : nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions.

Nouns

Nouns have definiteness, gender, number, and case. The case system is actually very reduced, with only three cases, corresponding to two forms : Nominative, Accusative, and Oblique, the lattest having formally merged with Nominative (it is considered Oblique mostly out of grammatical tradition). Definiteness is marked by definite and indefinite articles which agree in gender and number with the nouns. There are two numbers, singular and plural. Finally, the gender system is fairly complicated, as it consists of two dimensions interacting : Masculine vs Feminine on the one hand and Animate vs Inanimate on the other. However, different parts of speech agree with these two gender systems : Articles and Adjectives will take Masculine or Feminine markings, while Verbs are conjugated differently depending upon whether the nouns is Animate or Inanimate. Nouns themselves are marked for gender, and for animatedness when in the Accusative case. Also, when an adjective qualifies several nouns which are not all masculine or feminine, they take a neutral plural suffix ; but beyond those special cases, Neutral has disappeared from TolsianR.

Definiteness

There are definite and indefinite articles, agreeing in Gender and Number with the nouns they modify.

	Definite	Indefinite
Singular Masculine	êl (ê before a consonant)	one (on before a vowel)
Singular Feminine	la (la' [l] before a vowel)	ona (ona' [on] before a vowel)
Plural Masculine	lec (lecͪ [le] before a consonant)	onec (onecͪ [one] before a consonant), dalec (dalecͪ) (neutral)
Plural Feminine	lec (lecͪ [le] before a consonant)	onac (onacͪ [ona] before a consonant), dalec (dalecͪ) (neutral)