Bentovian

Tsrovesh/Lexicon

Tsrovesh (croveš /ˈtsɣoveʃ/) is a language of Southern Etalocin, inspired by Hebrew and Georgian.

Most Trician linguists classify it as an isolate.

Phonology

Orthography

Tsrovesh is most commonly written with the Clofabic alphabet.

Consonants

		Labial	Dental	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m /m/	n /n/		[ŋ]
Plosive	voiceless	p /p/	t /t/		k /k/
	voiced	b /b/	d /d/		g /g/
Fricative	voiceless		s /s/	š /ʃ/	x /x/	h /h/
	voiced	v /v/	z /z/	ž /ʒ/	r /ɣ~ʁ/
Affricate	voiceless		c /ts/	č /tʃ/
	voiced		dz /dz/	j /dʒ/
Approximant			l /l/	y /j/

Vowels

Bentovian vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i /i/		u /u/
Mid	e /e/		o /o/
Open		a /a/

Consecutive vowels are prohibited.

Phonotactics

Tsrovesh phonology is slightly less restrictive than Israeli Hebrew but much more so than Georgian. As in both languages, initial consonant clusters appear frequently in Tsrovesh. Initial clusters of the form l/r + consonant are allowed. For example:

• Croveš (the name of the language)
• ldag (door)
• šmer (man)
• cnaxat (dream)
• gzin (to shine)
• vlo (to live)
• lvar (to play)
• tkešet (regardless)
• švili (for me)

Medial consonant clusters are also common:

• ertma (spider)
• detkvisi (limestone)
• opxram (reed)

Clusters must obey a sonority hierarchy, i.e. a resonant (one of m, n, l, r) cannot come between two non-resonants. For example, /tkv/ is allowed but /kmv/ is not.

All final clusters are prohibited.

Stress

Stress is always penultimate.

Morphology

Nouns

Nouns have 6 cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, and locative.

Verbs

The present, past and future tenses are be-, ki- and sa- respectively. The present tense is also used as a timeless tense.

Kimežov ma-šmer la-detkvisi.

PAST-find NOM.DEF-man ACC.DEF limestone

The man who found the limestone.

Verbs do not inflect for person but they do inflect for number (except for the copula): the plural suffix is -eba.

The negative suffix is -tso, and when fused with the plural it becomes -sia. The negative form of the copula is tso, which is the same in the plural.

Participial forms are used in the perfect and progressive aspects.

Syntax

Constituent order

Tsrovesh sentence structure is VSO and head-final, except for complementizer phrases and prepositional phrases. Tsrovesh is not zero-copula; the word for 'to live' is used as a copula. Word order is strict, and topicalization occurs with the suffix -eti.

Noun phrase

The adjective comes before the noun in Tsrovesh:

ha-udvanit ertma = the happy spider

(udvanit = happy, ertma = spider)

But relative clauses are placed after the noun:

ertma, li-ves ha-šmer kixaven = spider who the man killed

Sentence phrase

Conjunctions

et = and

-eb = and (used like Latin -que)

Numbers

azar, kin, tvagi, lucmi, čorti, mevti, uškni, voherbi, adorgi, ktela, ktela azareb, ktela kineb, ktela tvagib, ktela lucmib, ...

20 = ktela mekin