Tanpun
Introduction
This is a highly experimental engineered language, ultimately focused on flirting with ambiguity and a lack of grammar. It is spoken by no one because it is set in the real world and not set for a fictional people. Tanpun itself means "atomic language" or "individual language".
Phonology
Consonants
Consonants are fairly minimal. This table contains the written letter and the sound it makes.
| Labial | Alveolar | Velar |
|---|---|---|
| P /p/ | T /t/ | K /k/ |
| M /m/ | N /n/ | Ng /ŋ/ |
| W /w/ | S /s/ | Y /j/ |
Not found in this table is the glottal stop, which is written with H.
Vowels
Vowels contain a standard five vowel system generally, viz. A /a/, E /e/, I /i/, O /o/, U /u/.
Phonotactics
Syllables go in the format of CV(C) (consonant vowel consonant). Consonants can include glides, but not in coda positions. Vowel slot can include diphthongs, and diphthongs can have all permutations. Vowel length is not a feature. When a syllable ends with a particular consonant and the next syllable begins with that same consonant, gemination is produced. This is not strictly phonemic but instead a contextual feature. Syllable-final stops generally are unreleased but this is not itself phonemic.
Nasals do not phonemically assimilate but this may happen anyway.
Stress
Stress falls on the last root of the word.
Orthography
Being an engineered language, it has many choices for orthography. By default it is written in the Latin script, but it can be written in various other scripts, however those such scripts do not have an official or standardized orthography. Latin however works as described above.
Spaces
Spaces are somewhat optional, many sentences could go without spaces. For example, is the sentence Tianmentouh which means "it is good". This also can be written "Tian mentouh". Spaces are intended to disambiguate nouns and other things, all different grammatical objects or entities. Copular sentences are the only sentences which can go wholly without spaces in theory. Spaces are up to the author.
Grammar
Roots
The primary atomic element in Tanpun are roots. A root is in essence, a CVC syllable which represents a semantic concept and does not have an inherent part of speech aside from pronouns, numbers, and conjunctions. For example, the root "piur" means fire, burning, to burn, flame, and other such things; that list is not exhaustive.
Prefixes
Roots can take prefixes. Prefixes are inseparable from the root and the prefix modifies the root in a specific way, such as negation, position, temporal deixis, definiteness, number (singular vs plural), and honorific. A root with prefixes is analogous to a phrase in Early Middle Japanese. Prefixes, when attached to the first root of the sentence, are understood to modify the whole word.
The mechanics of root combinations
Roots combine in a semantic way, later roots within a word constrain earlier ones, and the first root of the word is considered the most fundamental. For example, the 'word' teksik decomposes into tek-sik, whose roots are art/science/skill and soul/mind/intent/brain respectively. The first root comprises the type of object, and the second root clarifies the domain. This word would thus mean possibly psychology, mental faculty, or soul technique. To make it more narrow, more roots would be added, or possibly choosing a different root like lok, which means discourse or study, instead of tek, but such a thing depends on what is intended.
Generally, later roots can be understood as constraining the previous roots by domain, i.e. "in terms of" or "with respect to" or other equivalent phrases.
Words
Words are defined in a strongly atypical way. A word represents a singular grammatical argument, concept, object, entity, idea, and any such thing. Noun phrases are generally considered to be within the same word, as well as adjectives and other modifiers. As stated, the first root generally represents the type of object and later roots fill in the details, so a word like "hiatporkap" can be understood as sound-neat-writing, sound-neat is neat sound, or more specifically song, and writing clarifies that it is written, so with all of this together, this would represent a poem.
Syntax
The syntax is unusual due to the language itself being so unusual. The word order can be described as SOV, though this is inaccurate. More accurately, the language follows a topic comment structure.
Pronouns
There are four pronouns. Pronouns do not distinguish number on their own. Pronouns do not distinguish animacy and do not imply or necessitate personhood or humanity.
| Pronoun | Usage |
|---|---|
| Yah | First person pronoun |
| Nak | Second person pronoun |
| Touh | Third person pronoun |
| Pen | Prominent third person pronoun; implies the topic or otherwise notable person. For when the subject and object are both third person. |
Verbs
The main verb of the sentence is always last. The main verb is always a verb phrase, and marking person is required. The sequence is always, in order:
- Auxiliary verb(s) (optional)
- Object (Or predicate) (optional)
- Content verb
- Subject (Always a pronoun)
The verb phrase is the only part of a sentence which breaks the typical rules for root interactions. It also must always be its own word. For example, the earlier sentence "Tianmentouh" is itself a verb phrase. The root "tian" means good, "men" being the copula, and "touh" being the third person pronoun. And again means "it is good" but the gloss is [good-COP-3]. As mentioned, "tian" can be its own word. With an auxiliary, there can be more variety, such as "wustianmentouh" which is [PAST-good-COP-3], which means "it was good". This can also be expressed saying "Tian wusmentouh," although it is better with pen: "Tian wusmenpen".
Subject and object
There is no singular accusative prefix or accusative expression, this ultimately depends on the verb. There is no case in Tanpun and generally such a thing is expressed with the object as a distinct word, followed by the verb phrase with "touh". For example, the above sentence could be expanded "man tian wustouhmenpen" with "man" meaning human or human being. So this means "person was good". Dative can be expressed with the prefix "ti-" meaning for, alternatively "ta" (to, towards) can be used. Other such relationships are up to specific deictic prefixes.
Example texts
UDHR Article 1 first sentence
Watengman raihkorokostaengrouptouh ketensotnom kokesotrokumsek taohpiertouh.
Gloss
Wa:teng-man raih-ko:ro:kos-taeng-roup-touh ke:ten-sot-nom ko:ke:sot-ro:kum-sek taoh-pier-touh.
TOPIC:all-human free-and:NEG:rank-REL-possess-3 DEF:thing-respect-name and:DEF:respect-NEG:can-cut passive-bear-3.