Bentovian

Tsrovesh/Lexicon

Tsrovesh/Swadesh list

Bentovian
croveš
Pronunciation	[/tsʁoˈveʃ/]
Created by	IlL, Praimhín
Setting	Verse:Tricin
Language family	Lakovic Bentovian

Tsrovesh (croveš /tsʁoˈveʃ/) is a Lakovic language spoken in Txapoalli, inspired by Modern Hebrew, Georgian, Armenian and Finnish.

Todo

f -> ɸ -> h? vowel reduction into 'a'?

Hebrew-style vowel changes

ikcav = "topic"?

be- = agentive? (beda = doctor; the root is a Windermere loan)

Phonology

Orthography

Tsrovesh is most commonly written with the Windermere 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 /ʁ/
Affricate	voiceless		c /ts/	č /tʃ/
	voiced		dz /dz/	j /dʒ/
Approximant			l /l/

Syllabic resonants: ṃ ṇ ḷ ṛ ṿ

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 (Are those really syllabic resonants?). 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)
• detkvis (limestone)
• opxram (reed)

All final clusters are prohibited.

Stress

Stress is always penultimate.

Morphology

Nouns

Plurals by redup: crov 'a language' > circrov 'languages'

Definite suffix -i: lakov 'a person' > lakovi 'the person'

Somewhat agglutinating; no grammatical gender

Honorifics?

Verbs

some uncanny hebrew prefixes?

me- for the present imperfective? (it could use a welsh-like grammatical shift of progressive -> imperfective)

bare verb stem = subjunctive

past tense ablaut (like gzin -> gazan; lvar -> laver)

Ablaut patterns:

• C(ə)CiC -> CaCaC
• C(ə)CaC -> CaCeC
• C(ə)CoC -> CaCuC
• C(ə)CeC -> liCCaC
• C(ə)CuC -> liCCeCon

ə may appear as /a/ in some verbs, like žacem -> ližcam

Regular past tense: li-(VERB)-et (an example: žador -> ližadoret)

Pronominal suffixes

-i, -eč, -ek, -eš, -eb?

Syntax

Constituent order

Tsrovesh sentence structure is SVO and head-final, except for complementizer phrases and prepositional phrases (think Chinese). 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, ža-ves ha-šmer kixaven = spider who the man killed

Sentence phrase

Conjunctions

et = and

-eb = and (used like Latin -que)

Numbers

Windermere 1-5: doan, rath, stiw, smech, müets

azar, kin, šelvi, sṃči, mevti, cohi, avci, lucebi, azorbi, kteva?

?, ?, ?, ?, čorti, uškni, voherbi, adorgi, ktela, ktela azareb, ktela kineb, ktela tvagib, ktela lucmib, ...

20 = ktela mekin