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Adwan, which shares the same name with its older predecessor, is the revival and renewal of a rediscovered conlang project that began somewhere around 2011.
{{infobox language
|name = Adwan
|nativename = amhdha
|pronunciation = ˈawðɐ
|creator = User:Lctrgzmn
|familycolor = conlang
}}


Adwan has a highly inflectional morphology, falling somewhere between synthetic and agglutinative. Moreover, Adwan is particularly motivated by algebra and further intersections of linguistics and other formalized studies of structure. Adwan's syntax and morphology is motivated by categorial grammar theory and the theory of freely generated modules. One goal in Adwan is to develope a system for linguistic representation structurally similar to that of many natural languages, but with fundamentally different expressions.


Adwan exhibits large amounts of symmetry in seemingly unrelated aspects. Key features of Adwan include morphism-generated synthetic fusional inflection, the impersonal 4th person, satellite markers, a wide inventory of fricatives, and the complete lack of some verbs such as "to be", "to have", "to want/to want to", and "to go", instead expressed using compound forms and morphims on endings to express equivalent meanings. The existence of special morphisms aid in the formalisms behind the grammar, and are theoretically what students would be taught in schools when learning grammar.
Adwan (''amhdha'' [ˈawðɐ]) is a personal ''a priori'' conlang. Primarily inspired by the notion of high density information packing and free word order, Adwan is characterized by a large presence of fricatives and a borderline polysynthetic morphology consisting of enclitic agglutination. Aesthetically, Adwan is heavily inspired by Polish, Welsh, and Portuguese, with an internal structure largely influenced by Basque, Nahuatl, and Latin.  


== General Characteristics ==
Adwan is a highly inflecting language, making use of agglutination to the morphosyntactic level. Nouns are the most heavily inflected class, not only inflected for grammatical case but also for the grammatical person of the primary verb argument (with grammatical number of verb arguments generally being ignored). Adwan verb arguments come in ''tiers'' corresponding to the valence of said verb. Verbs with only 1 argument (''intransitives'') require that the verb argument, which is usually in the nominative (but may be in any case other than the accusative), be appended a personal consonant identifying the subject of the intransitive verb. Verbs with 2 arguments require the argument ''furthest down the canonical list of cases'' be marked with the a personal consonant identifying the ''agent'' of the verb. Because the order in which cases are canonically ordered in declensional tables is <br><center>'' Nominative > Accusative > Genitive > Dative > Locative > Ablative > Instrumental''</center>
it follows that verbs with 3 arguments (''ditransitives'') require the argument in the ''dative'' be appended a personal consonant identifying the ''agent'' of the ditransitive verb.  Notice below that the suffix ''-m'' is separate from the transitive verb ''mys'' and instead attached to the direct object (in the accusative) ''purgw'' (nominative: ''purga''): <br><div style="text-align: left; padding-left: 20px;">''Mys purgwm''<br>mys purg-w-m<br>see.PRES dog-ACC-1<br>"I see a dog."</div>


<!-- ***Phonology*** -->
Furthermore, notice the third person personal ending ''-r'' attached to the noun in the ''dative'' below:
<!-- What sounds does your language use? -->
<div style="text-align: left; padding-left: 20px;">''Lgos cwenw gobur luga''<br>lgos cwen-w gob-u-r lug-a<br>tell.PRES story-ACC boy-DAT-3 girl-NOM<br>"The girl tells the boy a story."</div>
<!-- Here are some example sub-/other categories:


Vowel inventory
In this respect, one can say that Adwan verb conjugations are partially marked on ''nouns'' (for grammatical person, strictly speaking; grammatical number is another story). This is further reinforced by the lack of verbs for ''to be'', ''to do'', ''to have'', ''to arrive'', and ''to depart'', as these verbs are instead expressed by appending a personal consonant to the corresponding noun case ending (i.e., ''to be something'' has the noun corresponding to ''something'' in the nominative with a personal consonant suffixed to it, e.g., ''mimham'' "I am a cat"). Adwan therefore conjugates verb complements for the grammatical person of the verb subject. Moreover, the specific case of a given conjugated noun determines the perceived relation implied by such 'empty' verbs (i.e., in this system we have verb stems separated from conjugation endings; for the verbs mentioned above, we can think of them as belonging to one single verb with an empty stem, with different meanings expressed via variation in the verb argument's morphological case.
Consonant inventory
# Nominative: ''to be (something)''
Syllable structure
# Accusative: ''to do (something)''
Stress
# Genitive: ''to have (something)''
Intonation
# Dative: ''to arrive (somewhere)''
# Locative: ''to be (somewhere)''
# Ablative: ''to depart (somewhere)''
# Instrumental: ''to be (somehow)''


-->
==Phonology==
==Phonology==
Adwan has C consonants and V vowels, along with U diphthongs including vowel nasalization in the form of concatenating a vowel with /ɰ̃/.
===Orthography===
Clearly there are more consonants than graphemes available from the alphabet, and so therefore the Adwan alphabet is defined as the set of graphemes from which any other sound can be written. As such, the alphabet is essentially the basis for the graphemes used to describe phonemes, and therefore shorter than the actual sound inventory of the language.
<center>Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Yy</center>
===Consonants===
===Consonants===
The consonants ''g'', and ''h'' are used with other a finite amount of other consonants to form further graphemes that represent distinct sounds, where appending ''g'' marks historical palatalization, and ''h'' lenition/spirantization. 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 nasalized velar and palatal approximants /j̃/ and /w̃/, respectively.


The consonants 'g', 'h', and 'm' 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. Consonants in the onset of a syllable are also denoted by the term 'initial' state, while those in the coda are said to be in the 'final' state.
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
 
|+ '''Adwan consonant inventory'''
{| class="wikitable"
|-
!  || Bilabial || Labiodental || Dental || Alveolar || Retroflex || Palatal || Velar
|-
! Nasal
| '''m''' /m/
|
|
| '''n''' /n/
|
|
|
|-
|-
! grapheme !! b !! bh !! c !! ch !! d !! dg !! dh !! f !! g !! gh !! h !! hg !! l !! lh !! m !! mh !! n !! p !! ph !! r !! rg !! s !! sg !! t !! tg !! th !! v
! Plosive
| '''p''''' /p/, '''b''' /b/
|
|
| '''t''''' /t/, '''d''''' /d/
|
| '''tg''' /cç/, '''dg''' /ɟʝ/
| '''c''' /k/, '''g''' /g/<sup>1</sup>
|-
|-
| initial || b || β || k || x || d || dʒ || ð || f || g || j || h || ç || l || ɬ || m || w || n || p || φ || ɾ || ʐ || s || ʃ || t || tʃ || θ || v
! Fricative
| '''ph''' /ɸ/, '''bh''' /β/
| '''pg''' /f/, '''bg''' /v/
| '''th''' /θ/, '''dh''' /ð/
| '''s''' /s/
| '''rh''' /ʂ/, '''rg''' /ʐ/
| '''cg''' /ç/
| '''ch''' /x/
|-
|-
| final || -- || β || k || x || d̪ || dʒ || ð || f || γ || j || -- || ç || l || ɬ || m || w || n || p || φ || ɾ || ʐ || s || ʃ || t̪ || tʃ || θ || v
! Approximant
|}
|  
 
|  
Notice that 'd', 'g', and 't' are the only consonants for which the pronunciation varies.
|  
|  
===Vowels===
|  
There are a number of 7 non-nasal, non-diphthong vowels in Adwan.
| '''gh''' /j/, '''nh''' /j̃/<sup>2</sup>
{| class="wikitable"
| '''mh''' /w/, '''mg''' /w̃/<sup>2,3</sup>
|-
|-
! Vowel !! a !! e !! i !! o !! u !! w !! y
! Tap
|
|
|
| '''r''' /ɾ/
|
|
|
|-
|-
| IPA || a || e || i  || o || ø || u || ɪ
! Lateral fricative
|}
|  
 
|  
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.
|  
{| class="wikitable"
| '''lh''' /ɬ/, '''lg''' /ɮ/
|  
|
|  
|-
|-
! Vowel !! amg !! emg !! omg !! umg !! wmg !! ymg
! Lateral approximant
|
|
|
| '''l''' /l/
|
|
|
|-
|-
| IPA || ɐɰ̃ || ɛɰ̃ || oɰ̃ || œɰ̃ || uɰ̃ || ɨɰ̃
|}
|}


===Morphophonology===
# Under gemination, /g/ undergoes lenition to /ɣ/ such that the segment /g.g/ > /ɣː/, i.e., /gː/ does not occur.
==Morphology==
# /j̃ w̃/ only occur in falling diphthongs.
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.
# /w̃/ is realized as [ɰ̃]
 
== Morphology ==
=== Nouns ===
Noun morphology is largely agglutinative with varying mechanisms of agglutination based on the grammatical category and paradigm involved. Noun case can be viewed as appending a vowel suffix to the stem of a noun, and varying that stem according to the necessary case, i.e., case distinctions are made by variations in a single vowel.
 
Nouns may be marked for possession, where a possessed noun is marked for its possessor. Because of this, Adwan has no possessive pronouns, and in fact employs an empty nominal stem ("h", which incidentally is called the "pseudopronoun" as it is used for non-noun arguments to a verb, see pseudopronoun section for more details) in predicative constructions denoting possession such as "''that's mine!''". The affixes involved in marking nouns for possession are actually ''infixes'', fitting in between the noun stem and the case ending. Therefore, since the infix for the 1st person is ''-in-'', it follows that the noun ''purga'' ("dog"), would be expressed as ''purgina'' for the English translation of "my dog".
 
Adwan exhibits little to no standalone determiners as free morphemes. Instead, an array of determiner infixes are used with nouns, with determiner and possessive infixes exhibiting a complementary distribution (i.e., determiner infixes and posssessive infixes can never be found together in the same noun, each being seen as exclusive to the other). Thus, in order to express ''"This is my dog"'', the determiners corresponding to 'this' and 'my' would need to belong to separate head nouns. Consider the infix ''-ent-''. While the utterance '''purgenta''' and '''purgina''' roughly translate to 'this dog' and 'my dog', the corresponding expressions for 'this is my dog' and 'this dog is mine' would require the determiner infix ''-ent-'' corresponding to 'this' and the determiner infix ''-in-'' corresponding to 'my' would need to be situated in entirely different nouns; as mentioned above, the empty noun stem ''h'' is used in these sorts of situations, as shown below:
* ''Purg<u>ina</u>r h<u>enta</u>.''<br>''Purg-in-a-r h-ent-a''<br>dog-1.POSS-NOM-3 Ø-PROX-NOM<br>"This is my dog."
* ''H<u>ina</u>r purg<u>enta</u>.''<br>''H-in-a-r purg-ent-a''<br>Ø-1.POSS-NOM-3 dog-PROX-NOM<br>"This dog is mine."
 
==== Cases ====
Nouns in Adwan are inflected for grammatical case.
# Nominative case: marks the agent of a transitive verb and the subject of an intransitive verb
# Accusative case: marks the patient or direct object of a transitive verb
# Genitive case: marks the complement of a noun phrase; marks nouns as relational; marks the subject of an impersonal phrase; used to form adverbs of time
# Dative case: marks the recipient or benefactor of a ditransitive verb; defines an object as the ''direction'' or ''destination'' of a directed action, motion-related or not
# Locative case: marks the location of an action; marks nouns for which movement has no direction; used to form adverbs of place
# Ablative case: marks the source of an action; defines an object as the ''antidirection'' or ''source'' of a directed action, motion-related or not
# Instrumental case: marks the instrument or means by which an action is defined or executed; used to form adverbs of manner
 
Noun declension paradigms are generally regular and don't exhibit syncretism between cases, with each case ending being represented by a unique vowel in the vowel inventory.  


===Nouns===
While many roots themselves may seemingly describe nouns alone, there is no empty nominative case in Adwan, and therefore all dictionary form nouns end in 'a'. In particular, all nouns adhere to the same following paradigm.
{| class="wikitable"
{| class="wikitable"
|-
|-
! Case !! Singular !! Plural
! Nominative
| -a
|-
! Accusative
| -w
|-
|-
| Nominative || -a || -amg
! Genitive
| -y
|-
|-
| Accusative || -w || -y
! Dative
| -u
|-
|-
| Dative || -u || -omh
! Locative
| -e
|-
|-
| Genitive || -yn || -ynna
! Ablative
| -o
|-
! Instrumental
| -i
|}
|}


The nominative case, aside from being the dictionary form of a noun, is also the subject of a verb, and/or topic of a noun phrase. The accusative case marks nouns which are the direct objects of verbs and is quite distinct from all cases in that it is entirely dependant on a verb in order to form a noun phrase. The dative case marks indirect objects for which there are any directed prepositions and also marks the direction of motion. The genitive, in contrast to the dative case, marks motion in the exact opposite direction of the dative, aside from also marking possession and partialness (that which is usually used by a 'partitive case' in other languages).
== Syntax ==
 
Adwan generally has free word order, even in the case of compound clauses, as subordination is nontrivially expressed in general phrases. While Adwan word order is generally free, the standard unmarked word order follows a VOS pattern, though justifications for this are entirely based on the historical cliticization of now extinct personal pronouns, which can be identified by the general pattern of marking grammatical person of a verb agent (or subject) on a ''noun'' argument of the verb, rather than on the verb itself.
 
==Example texts==
==Other resources==
<!-- Example: Word order, qualifiers, determinatives, branching, etc. -->
 
<!-- Template area -->
 


[[Category:{{Adwan}}]]
[[Category:Languages]]
[[Category:Languages]]
[[Category:A priori]]

Latest revision as of 12:10, 15 July 2021

Adwan
amhdha
Pronunciation[ˈawðɐ]
Created byLctrgzmn


Adwan (amhdha [ˈawðɐ]) is a personal a priori conlang. Primarily inspired by the notion of high density information packing and free word order, Adwan is characterized by a large presence of fricatives and a borderline polysynthetic morphology consisting of enclitic agglutination. Aesthetically, Adwan is heavily inspired by Polish, Welsh, and Portuguese, with an internal structure largely influenced by Basque, Nahuatl, and Latin.

General Characteristics

Adwan is a highly inflecting language, making use of agglutination to the morphosyntactic level. Nouns are the most heavily inflected class, not only inflected for grammatical case but also for the grammatical person of the primary verb argument (with grammatical number of verb arguments generally being ignored). Adwan verb arguments come in tiers corresponding to the valence of said verb. Verbs with only 1 argument (intransitives) require that the verb argument, which is usually in the nominative (but may be in any case other than the accusative), be appended a personal consonant identifying the subject of the intransitive verb. Verbs with 2 arguments require the argument furthest down the canonical list of cases be marked with the a personal consonant identifying the agent of the verb. Because the order in which cases are canonically ordered in declensional tables is

Nominative > Accusative > Genitive > Dative > Locative > Ablative > Instrumental

it follows that verbs with 3 arguments (ditransitives) require the argument in the dative be appended a personal consonant identifying the agent of the ditransitive verb. Notice below that the suffix -m is separate from the transitive verb mys and instead attached to the direct object (in the accusative) purgw (nominative: purga):

Mys purgwm
mys purg-w-m
see.PRES dog-ACC-1
"I see a dog."

Furthermore, notice the third person personal ending -r attached to the noun in the dative below:

Lgos cwenw gobur luga
lgos cwen-w gob-u-r lug-a
tell.PRES story-ACC boy-DAT-3 girl-NOM
"The girl tells the boy a story."

In this respect, one can say that Adwan verb conjugations are partially marked on nouns (for grammatical person, strictly speaking; grammatical number is another story). This is further reinforced by the lack of verbs for to be, to do, to have, to arrive, and to depart, as these verbs are instead expressed by appending a personal consonant to the corresponding noun case ending (i.e., to be something has the noun corresponding to something in the nominative with a personal consonant suffixed to it, e.g., mimham "I am a cat"). Adwan therefore conjugates verb complements for the grammatical person of the verb subject. Moreover, the specific case of a given conjugated noun determines the perceived relation implied by such 'empty' verbs (i.e., in this system we have verb stems separated from conjugation endings; for the verbs mentioned above, we can think of them as belonging to one single verb with an empty stem, with different meanings expressed via variation in the verb argument's morphological case.

  1. Nominative: to be (something)
  2. Accusative: to do (something)
  3. Genitive: to have (something)
  4. Dative: to arrive (somewhere)
  5. Locative: to be (somewhere)
  6. Ablative: to depart (somewhere)
  7. Instrumental: to be (somehow)

Phonology

Consonants

The consonants g, and h are used with other a finite amount of other consonants to form further graphemes that represent distinct sounds, where appending g marks historical palatalization, and h lenition/spirantization. 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 nasalized velar and palatal approximants /j̃/ and /w̃/, respectively.

Adwan consonant inventory
Bilabial Labiodental Dental Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar
Nasal m /m/ n /n/
Plosive p /p/, b /b/ t /t/, d /d/ tg /cç/, dg /ɟʝ/ c /k/, g /g/1
Fricative ph /ɸ/, bh /β/ pg /f/, bg /v/ th /θ/, dh /ð/ s /s/ rh /ʂ/, rg /ʐ/ cg /ç/ ch /x/
Approximant gh /j/, nh /j̃/2 mh /w/, mg /w̃/2,3
Tap r /ɾ/
Lateral fricative lh /ɬ/, lg /ɮ/
Lateral approximant l /l/
  1. Under gemination, /g/ undergoes lenition to /ɣ/ such that the segment /g.g/ > /ɣː/, i.e., /gː/ does not occur.
  2. /j̃ w̃/ only occur in falling diphthongs.
  3. /w̃/ is realized as [ɰ̃]

Morphology

Nouns

Noun morphology is largely agglutinative with varying mechanisms of agglutination based on the grammatical category and paradigm involved. Noun case can be viewed as appending a vowel suffix to the stem of a noun, and varying that stem according to the necessary case, i.e., case distinctions are made by variations in a single vowel.

Nouns may be marked for possession, where a possessed noun is marked for its possessor. Because of this, Adwan has no possessive pronouns, and in fact employs an empty nominal stem ("h", which incidentally is called the "pseudopronoun" as it is used for non-noun arguments to a verb, see pseudopronoun section for more details) in predicative constructions denoting possession such as "that's mine!". The affixes involved in marking nouns for possession are actually infixes, fitting in between the noun stem and the case ending. Therefore, since the infix for the 1st person is -in-, it follows that the noun purga ("dog"), would be expressed as purgina for the English translation of "my dog".

Adwan exhibits little to no standalone determiners as free morphemes. Instead, an array of determiner infixes are used with nouns, with determiner and possessive infixes exhibiting a complementary distribution (i.e., determiner infixes and posssessive infixes can never be found together in the same noun, each being seen as exclusive to the other). Thus, in order to express "This is my dog", the determiners corresponding to 'this' and 'my' would need to belong to separate head nouns. Consider the infix -ent-. While the utterance purgenta and purgina roughly translate to 'this dog' and 'my dog', the corresponding expressions for 'this is my dog' and 'this dog is mine' would require the determiner infix -ent- corresponding to 'this' and the determiner infix -in- corresponding to 'my' would need to be situated in entirely different nouns; as mentioned above, the empty noun stem h is used in these sorts of situations, as shown below:

  • Purginar henta.
    Purg-in-a-r h-ent-a
    dog-1.POSS-NOM-3 Ø-PROX-NOM
    "This is my dog."
  • Hinar purgenta.
    H-in-a-r purg-ent-a
    Ø-1.POSS-NOM-3 dog-PROX-NOM
    "This dog is mine."

Cases

Nouns in Adwan are inflected for grammatical case.

  1. Nominative case: marks the agent of a transitive verb and the subject of an intransitive verb
  2. Accusative case: marks the patient or direct object of a transitive verb
  3. Genitive case: marks the complement of a noun phrase; marks nouns as relational; marks the subject of an impersonal phrase; used to form adverbs of time
  4. Dative case: marks the recipient or benefactor of a ditransitive verb; defines an object as the direction or destination of a directed action, motion-related or not
  5. Locative case: marks the location of an action; marks nouns for which movement has no direction; used to form adverbs of place
  6. Ablative case: marks the source of an action; defines an object as the antidirection or source of a directed action, motion-related or not
  7. Instrumental case: marks the instrument or means by which an action is defined or executed; used to form adverbs of manner

Noun declension paradigms are generally regular and don't exhibit syncretism between cases, with each case ending being represented by a unique vowel in the vowel inventory.

Nominative -a
Accusative -w
Genitive -y
Dative -u
Locative -e
Ablative -o
Instrumental -i

Syntax

Adwan generally has free word order, even in the case of compound clauses, as subordination is nontrivially expressed in general phrases. While Adwan word order is generally free, the standard unmarked word order follows a VOS pattern, though justifications for this are entirely based on the historical cliticization of now extinct personal pronouns, which can be identified by the general pattern of marking grammatical person of a verb agent (or subject) on a noun argument of the verb, rather than on the verb itself.