Rówok

Nota bene, care lector, this is a work in progress

Rówok is an artlang created by Ioscius.

It is the only known daughter language of the as yet presumed language isolate Ruk.

Introduction

Setting

Spoken by a rather reclusive community that lived high in the preindustrial Ural range, Ruk was an extremely isolating language, with largely monosyllabic words and next to no inflection of any sort. Rówok on the other hand is morphologically complex. This is the result of the Ruk speakers, after centuries of living mostly on their own, having underwent a period of dispersion and travel through lands inhabited by Finnic and Slavic speakers. This resulted in both a cultural explosion and a rapid evolution of the language, as affected by analogy with speakers picking up the languages of the peoples they mingled with.

Armed with new knowledge and now speaking a radically altered language, the nation moved back up to the hills, and Rówok represents a stage of the language's evolution in about the 3rd generation of leveling after their return to the homeland. It is mostly stable, but there are some forms still competing for widespread acceptance (cf., e.g., copula).

Rówok speakers live in a mountainous, forest environment with snow-cover nearly year round, with just a tiny bit of summer of which to speak. They are intimately dependent and symbiotic with their dogs, and there are thus many, many semantic elements of or relating to canines and canine/human interaction, not to mention a huge amount of idioms containing references to dogs. Lastly they are extremely mathematically, if not technically, advanced and utterly areligious.

Design goals

The main motive behind creating Rówok was to explore patient and agent relationships, and to employ and self-indulgently tweak and torture a complex and fully productive middle voice system.

Other motivating (syntactical) considerations were:

• trying a set of uniform case endings (barring vowel harmony and reduction) instead of the typical IE several declension patterns, so that all the case endings are recognizable throughout all grammatical numbers
• a vague attempt at trying vowel harmony in a conlang
• blurring the lines between adjective/substantive/verb, so the same root can easily be used in any of those categories, and implicitly an extensive participial system
• having a strict and productive dual in all applicable grammatical categories

Inspiration

Rówok’s creator placed the speech community where he did, wanting to steal liberally from both Finnic and Slavic semantics and grammar without having to justify himself to anyone. You could say the natlangs that had the greatest impact on the author’s aesthetics and inspirations were Latin, Ancient Greek, Pan-Slavic, Finnic and Sami, just a tiny bit of Basque, and enormous inspiration from the author’s absolute favorite, simply darling language that he’s never learned: Guarani.

Morphology

Roots and principal parts

Nominal/verbal roots in Rowok are overwhelmingly triglyphs, with /a/ being the only vowel that can occur either initially in a root, or medially. All roots have an underlying "theme vowel" for lack of a better term in my attempt at vowel harmony, either /a/ or /o/, which shift to /e/ and /u/ in perfect verbal stems and many nouns derived from verbal stems. Additionally words with /w/ in any position have some stems where /w/ is reduced to [u]. The rules are simple for the majority of stems, and are as follows: If /a/ appears in the root (by law only initially or medially), the theme vowel is automatically /a/. If the root is tri-consonantal and does not contain /w/, the theme vowel is also /a/. As a note, roots with medial /a/ are almost exclusively (specific) plants, and thus lack verbal roots, and thus have only two principal parts: nom/erg/voc, and oblique. If /w/ appears medially or finally in a root, the theme vowel is /o/. Exceptions: There are some rare, quad-consonantal roots. These are always of the the form C*XCC, where C* can only be /b/, /p/, /d/, /t/, /g/, /k/, /z/ and /s/, and X can be /w/, /l/, or /r/; ones with /w/ have /o/ as the theme vowel, and those with /l/ or /r/ have /a/. Roots with initial /w/ are very old stems and anything goes as far as theme vowels; this is the only word type whose vowel structure isn’t deducible from the form of the root and just need to be learned. Which brings us to what I guess we could call principal parts; roots are listed in order of: lemma - definition; finite verbal stem-, participial stem (de facto the nom/erg singular imperfect active participle), vocative stem*, ergative/nominative form, oblique stem-, adverbial form

• The similative and partitive cases are also based on the vocative stem, as well as adjectives. More on that in the next post.

Verbal stems tend to group in (C)VCC and participial stems in (C)V(C)C; nominative/ergative stems tend to be CVCVC, and oblique nominal stems CCVC if allowed by phonotactics (which I will have to elaborate on in a new post as a supplement to the first post on phonology). Unstressed epenthetics are inserted where needed, giving possible ^VCC(C/V) instead of expected CC(C/V), or CVCVC instead of expected CCVC. Examples, starting with theme vowel [a]: medial /a/: pan - moss; pan, pna- Triconsonantal roots with no /w/ and those with medial /w/ are the easiest. Both are very regular in their pattern. With medial liquid: srn - claw; sarn-, srn, srna, sáran, srán-, sarná drb - fall/to fall/fallen; darb-, drb, drba, dárab, dráb-, darbá bls - snow; bals-, bls, blsa, bálas, blás-, balsá non-liquid medial: bgs - bags-, bags, bágsa, bágas, bagás-*, bagsá zpt - zapt-, zapt, zápta, zápat, zpát-*, zaptá

• If the cluster is not allowed initially, like [bg], epenthetic /a/ is inserted. Further, /zp/ is definitely going to be realized as [zb]

ddz - idle mischief/fiddling/to idle about; dadz-, dadz, dádza, dádaz, đaz-*, dadzá

• if a reduplicated letter can fricativize/affricatize, it will in the oblique nominal stem

pps - imitation/to fake/artificial; paps-, paps, pápsa, pápas, pas-*, papsá

• if the reduplicated consonant cannot fricativize, it reduces so ppas=>pas (since /f/ is lacking in the inventory).

There are variations if the initial or medial consonant is /y/, where /y/=>/i/: dym - light/shine/bright; daym-, dim, díma, dáyam, dyamá-, dimá ryz - seed/to plant/incipient; rayz-, riz, ríza, ráyaz, ryazá-, rizá ygn - a cared for object/to rear/lovingly; yágn-, ígan, igána, yágan, igná-, yagná Roots with initial /a/: azl - life; ázl-, zal, zála, azála, azalá-, zalá ayt - run; áyt-, yat, yáta, ayáta, ayatá-, yatá akb - count; ákb-, kab, kába, akába, akabá-, kabá Now examples where /o/ is the theme vowel, starting with medial /w/: pwt - clearing/to clear/deobstructed; powt-, pot, put, pówot, pwót-, putú rwk - tongue/speak/of or relating to tongue or speech/language; rowk-, rok, ruk, rówok, orwók-, rukú*

• as a semantic tidbit, Rukú is how you would say "in Rowok", as opposed to rwógdo (tongue.inst) "(doing something) with your tongue", and Ruk is the name of Rowok's protolanguage. More on that 3 years from now or when I get a clone...

final /w/: gdw - tool/to fashion/skillful; gódw-, gdo, gódu/gódw-*, gódow, gdów-, godú

• In roots with final /w/ the vocative is CóCu, while the similative and partitive are built off of CoCw

lsw - running water/flow/fluent; lósw-, ólso, lósu/losw-, lósow, olswó-*, losú A similar variation as above when a final /w/ root begins with /y/: ybw - still water; yóbw-, íbow, íbu, yóbow, ibwó-, ibú Cw/r/lCC: p(w)zn - non potable water, to flow destructively, to pollute; powzn-, pozn, pwózno, powózon, pzón-, puznú brds - to lie, fib, in the middle to bullshit; bards-, bards, brádsa, barádas-, brdás-, bradsá The occasional initial /w/, some a-stems, some o-stems, lots of /u/ even in imperfect stems and even in words that otherwise have /a/ as their theme vowel: wst - sky; wásta-, wast, ústa, awásata, áwsat-, ustá wkd - kill; úkdo-, úkod, úkud, wókod, úkod-, kudú

Diminutives and augmentatives

Diminutives and augmentatives (one of which functions as the comparative as well) are formed through root mutation and suffixation, respectively. As with most all derivational morphology they can be applied to almost all lexical categories.

Diminutives

Diminutives are formed by changing the root’s rightmost possible consonant into its corresponding fricative or affricate according to the chart below. X indicates that the phoneme does not have a possible fricativized variant, e.g. p=>X, since <f> is lacking in Rówok. In this event the next rightmost consonant is fricativized.

Additionally more than one consonant can be fricativized, for a sort of double diminutive effect, which indicates either extreme smallness or lends a cutesy feel. Cf. bálas (snow) => bálaš (snowflake) => varašín (the finest snowflakes you ever saw; powder); or mówok (dog) => mówoč (puppy *one of maaaany words for puppy) => móvoč (cute little puppy doggie)

Augmentatives

Augmentatives are formed through infixes between the root and the case or conjugation endings.

The most common are:

• -jXš- = great, grand, noble, relatively large (also functions as a comparative)
• -nXč- = the biggest, greatest