Bentovian
| Bentovian | |
|---|---|
| ceroveš | |
| Pronunciation | [/tseʁoˈveʃ/] |
| Created by | IlL, Praimhín |
| Setting | Verse:Tricin |
Isolate
| |
Tserovesh (cerov·eš /tseʁoˈveʃ/ language-1PL) is a language isolate spoken in Zagvneti in Talma, inspired by Modern Hebrew, Georgian, and Armenian.
Introduction
Unlike Classical Windermere or Tergetian, Tserovesh has many loans from an ancient (unnamed) pre-Lakovic substrate, often called the Kodṛcha-Tzameshut Archeological Complex (KTAC).
It went through some of the strangest sound changes in Lakovic.
Old Tserovesh grammar is much closer to Windermere or Häskä than to Modern Tserovesh.
Todo
f -> ɸ -> h? vowel reduction into 'a'?
A breathy voice vowel split
ikcav = "topic"?
be- = agentive?
xamak = Dr.
mic- = adverb prefix? (micloxer = furiously)
PLak with a Philly Cockney accent?
initial t could be added randomly to vowel-initial words in Tserovesh (from an earlier sandhi/liaison-like phenomenon)
Dialects
Tserovesh is fairly dialectally uniform. The dialect spoken in the eastern region of Kadzovetia aspirates voiceless stops.
Phonology
Orthography
Tserovesh 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
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i /i/ | u /u/ | |
| Mid | e /e/ | o /o/ | |
| Open | a /a/ |
Consecutive vowels are prohibited.
Prosody
Stress
Intonation
Phonotactics
Tserovesh phonology only allows open syllables (syllabic resonants count as vowels), except word final consonants are allowed.
Stress
Stress is always final.
Morphology
Nouns
Definite suffix -i or -ti: shemer 'a person' > shemeri 'the person'; etima 'a spider' > etimati 'the spider'
Somewhat agglutinating; no grammatical gender
Honorific is marked with -is.
Verbs
some uncanny hebrew or nahuatl prefixes (like mitz-)
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: masar "to dance" -> limasaret "danced")
li- ~ ni- some past tense morpheme in Proto-Ashanic?
Telic = ?
Pronominal suffixes
-ili, -eč, -ek, -eš, -eb?
Derivational morphology
- atse- 'style of, à la'
- atsegeban '(literary) realism' < geban 'true, real'
Syntax
Constituent order
Finnish relex
Noun phrase
The adjective comes before the noun in Tserovesh:
udvanit ertmati = the happy spider
(udvanit = happy, ertma = spider)
But relative clauses are placed after the noun:
ertma, ža-ves šmeri lixavenet = spider who the man killed
Verb phrase
Sentence phrase
Conjunctions
et = and
-eb = and (used like Latin -que)
Dependent clauses
Numbers
Windermere 1-5: doan, rath, stiw, smech, müets
azar, kin, šelvi, sṃči, mevci, cohi, avci, lucebi, azorbi, kteva?
kteva azareb, kteva kineb, kteva šelvib, ktela sṃčib, ... (could those be KTAC words?)