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Cân Gert: Difference between revisions
→Proper nouns
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The language is [[a priori]] in the sense that it is not derived from another language by way of regular sound changes and identifiable diachronic grammatical developments. However, as its vocabulary is mostly derived (albeit often in opaque ways) from the [[w:Scottish Gaelic|Scottish Gaelic]] lexicon, it could arguably be described as an [[a posteriori language]], depending on the definition applied. | The language is [[a priori]] in the sense that it is not derived from another language by way of regular sound changes and identifiable diachronic grammatical developments. However, as its vocabulary is mostly derived (albeit often in opaque ways) from the [[w:Scottish Gaelic|Scottish Gaelic]] lexicon, it could arguably be described as an [[a posteriori language]], depending on the definition applied. | ||
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==Introduction== | ==Introduction== | ||
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{{:Cân Gert/Vowels}} | {{:Cân Gert/Vowels}} | ||
Permissible diphthongs are /aɪ/, /aʊ/, /ɛɪ/ | Permissible diphthongs are /aɪ/, /aʊ/, /ɛɪ/ and /ɔɪ/ | ||
===Consonants=== | ===Consonants=== | ||
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Because Cân Gert is designed for clarity, its derivational and inflectional morphology generally features little phonological alternation, with a few minor exceptions. | Because Cân Gert is designed for clarity, its derivational and inflectional morphology generally features little phonological alternation, with a few minor exceptions. | ||
==== | ====A-dissimilation==== | ||
A short vowel will dissimilate from an adjacent /a/ or /aː/: | |||
# The final vowel of the first morpheme is an ɪ or ʊ and is not occurring as part of a diphthong | |||
* /ɛ/ adjacent to /a/ or /aː/ → /e/ | |||
* /ɔ/ adjacent to /a/ or /aː/ → /o/ | |||
This is not indicated in the orthography. | |||
====Iotic epenthesis==== | |||
Iotic epenthesis is the addition of a /j/ wherever two /eː/s, two /ɛ/s, or an /eː/ and an /ɛ/ are adjacent to one another. This is not orthographically marked. | |||
====Internal excrescence==== | |||
Internal excrescence refers to a process in Cân Gert where a glottal stop is inserted at a word-internal morpheme boundary with two vowels (or semivowels) where one of the following applies: | |||
# The final vowel of the first morpheme is an ɪ or ʊ and is not occurring as part of a diphthong, unless the first morpheme is the verbal clitic ''ni'' | |||
# All the adjacent vowels would form a licit diphthong | # All the adjacent vowels would form a licit diphthong | ||
# The immediately adjacent vowels (or semivowels) are identical | # The immediately adjacent vowels (or semivowels) are identical (except where the vowels are /eː/ or /ɛ/) | ||
# The first vowel is long | # The first vowel is long | ||
So: | So: | ||
: ''dro'' + ''ât'' (bad + place) → ''droât'' [dɾo. | : ''dro'' + ''ât'' (bad + place) → ''droât'' [dɾo.ˈaːt] (hell, damnation) | ||
But: | But: | ||
: '' | : ''mâ'' + ''ât'' (good + place) → ''mâ'ât'' [ˈmaː.ʔaːt] (heaven, exaltation) | ||
The reason for this process is partly phonaesthetic, but mostly to prevent morphemes from being ambiguated. The process is also marked orthographically with an apostrophe. Glottal stops do not occur anywhere else in the language, and nor do apostrophes, so the apostrophe is functionally the orthographic representation of a glottal stop. | The reason for this process is partly phonaesthetic, but mostly to prevent morphemes from being ambiguated. The process is also marked orthographically with an apostrophe. Glottal stops do not occur anywhere else in the language except due to prothetic sandhi (see below), and nor do apostrophes, so the apostrophe is functionally the orthographic representation of a glottal stop. | ||
====Prothetic sandhi==== | |||
Prothetic sandhi occurs when a word beginning with a vowel follows a word ending in a vowel, in which case a glottal stop is prepended to the second word. This is not marked orthographically. For example: | |||
: ''tei âl'' → [tɛɪ ʔaːl] "beautiful house" | |||
====Nasal assimilation==== | ====Nasal assimilation==== | ||
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===Stress and prosody=== | ===Stress and prosody=== | ||
<span style="color:red;">Length and stress | <span style="color:red;">Length and stress. Importance of prosody to distinguish compounds from separated morphemes</span> | ||
==Orthography== | ==Orthography== | ||
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===Punctuation=== | ===Punctuation=== | ||
As well as the apostrophe which marks the excrescent glottal stop, Cân Gert | As well as the apostrophe which marks the excrescent glottal stop, Cân Gert uses the interpunct (·) to separate a morpheme ending in ⟨n⟩ from a morpheme beginning with ⟨g⟩. This clarifies that it is not the digraph ⟨ng⟩, which could otherwise create ambiguities between roots within compounds. | ||
In all other respects, Cân Gert follows the punctuation conventions of Scottish Gaelic. | |||
==Lexicology== | ==Lexicology== | ||
Cân Gert fundamentally distinguishes three types of words: | |||
* '''Roots''', the most basic units of speech, i.e. morphemes. | |||
* '''Proper nouns''', representing names of specific people, places, or other entities. | |||
* '''Compounds''', consisting of several concatenated roots. | |||
===Roots, affixes and clitics=== | ===Roots, affixes and clitics=== | ||
All root words in Cân Gert are monosyllabic, and are generally inspired by Scottish Gaelic words related to the meaning of the root. Roots can be further subdivided into the following categories: | |||
* '''Substantive roots''' – The most common type of root, these refer to a thing, action, or idea. They can be turned into verbs and adjectives through affixation. | |||
** '''General roots''' – These are semantically broad and cover multiple meanings. They are highly productive in forming compounds. E.g. ''dîn'', "action, creation". | |||
** '''Common roots''' – These are semantically narrow, referring to commonly used concepts. They are less productive in forming compounds. E.g. ''corc'', "oats". | |||
* '''Functional roots''' – This includes grammatical function words like conjunctions, prepositions, demonstratives, and others. Whether or not these compound depends on the individual root; as a general rule, prepositions can compound while conjunctions, demonstratives, and other particles cannot. E.g. ''hiûn'', "of, from, since". | |||
* '''Bound roots''' – Affixes and clitics, which can only occur in compounds, not as independent words. E.g. ''-al'', the generic adjectival suffix. | |||
Some roots exist in two categories, for example the verbal clitic "ni" which can also appear as an independent particle under certain circumstances – see [[#Verbal morphology]]. | |||
Substantive roots are generally treated and used as nouns, and turned into adjectives or verbs using appropriate clitics or affixes, but see [[#Adjectival morphology]] for further detail. | |||
===Proper nouns=== | ===Proper nouns=== | ||
===Derivational morphology=== | As in English, proper nouns are distinguished through capitalisation. Proper nouns can be borrowed through a number of mechanisms: | ||
* '''Borrowed names''' are proper nouns that are not broken down into further meaning. These are usually borrowed from Gaelic or, failing that, English, without being reduced to monosyllables like roots are. E.g. ''Alabâ'', "Scotland", from Gaelic ''Alba'', and ''Colôn'', "Cologne", from the English. | |||
* '''Translated names''' are proper nouns that are translated into Cân Gert. E.g. ''Tormuintîr Êndînta'', "United Nations". | |||
Due to Cân Gert's nature, translated proper nouns can often be broken down into far lower-level transparent morphemes than their English equivalents. For the above example: | |||
* ''Tormuintîr'' – "nations" | |||
** ''tor'' – "many, [plural]" | |||
** ''muintîr'' – "nation" | |||
*** ''muin'' – "(a) people, tribe, cohesive social group" | |||
*** ''tîr'' – "country, land" | |||
* ''Êndînta'' – "unified, united" | |||
** ''êndîn'' – "unification, unity" | |||
*** ''ên'' – "one" | |||
*** ''dîn'' – "action, creation" | |||
** ''-ta'' – perfective participle{{ref|pn1|note}} | |||
<small>{{note|pn1|Note}} The ''-ta'' suffix obviates the need both for the general-purpose adjectival suffix ''-al'' and for the verbal clitic ''ni'' that would occur at the beginning of ''niêndîn'' to mean "unify, unite". That suffix tends to form adjectives with a more active/progressive meaning, somewhat like a gerundive; ''êndînal'' would mean "unifying, uniting" rather than "unified, united".</small> | |||
=== Compounds === | |||
Cân Gert morphology features both [[w:Morphological derivation|derivation]] and [[w:Inflection|inflection]], both of which create compounds. In Cân Gert this is distinguished by whether the compound is a lexeme, or a non-lemma form of an existing lexeme. | |||
When adding a root to a word to create a new compound, the following test can be applied to determine whether the new compound is also a lexeme: | |||
# Does the added root change the lexical class of the word (e.g. a noun into a verb, adjective, or participle)? | |||
# Does the added root always effect the exact same transparent and predictable change in meaning when added to any other word? | |||
If the answer to 1 is "yes" or the answer to 2 is "no", the new word is a lexeme. Otherwise, it is a non-lemma form of an existing lexeme. The process can be done in reverse, by taking away roots from a compound, to determine what form of a lexeme is its lemma form. | |||
==== Example: Derivation ==== | |||
Appending ''din'' ("person, human") to the word ''bartei'' ("workplace, office", from ''bar'', "work, job" + ''tei'', "house, building, facility") creates the compound ''barteidin'' meaning "officer, official, office worker". | |||
Appending ''din'' to just ''bar'' gives ''bardin'' meaning "worker". | |||
While the connection between ''bartei+din'' and ''bar+din'' is somewhat logical (as logic, by creating clarity, is part of Cân Gert's design goals), it is not fully predictable or transparent; adding ''din'' to different words results in the creation of a noun that describes some kind of person, but the way in which it describes that person is not necessarily the same from one word to the next. | |||
Therefore, this is an example of derivation, and ''barteidin'' is a lexeme, rather than a non-lemma form of ''bartei''. | |||
==== Example: Inflection ==== | |||
Prepending ''tor'' ("many, much") to the word ''bartei'' creates the compound ''torbartei'' meaning "workplaces, offices". | |||
Prepending ''tor'' to just ''bar'' gives ''torbar'' meaning "instances of work, jobs". | |||
This change in meaning is fully predictable and transparent: Prepending ''tor'' pluralises the modified root or compound. | |||
Therefore, this is an example of inflection, and ''torbartei'' is a non-lemma form of ''bartei''. | |||
=== Derivational morphology === | |||
When concatenating substantive and/or functional roots and/or compounds, the first modifies the second. That is: | |||
: ''orn'' ("song") + ''ion'' ("bird") → ''ornion'' – songbird, a bird which sings | |||
But: | |||
: ''ion'' + ''orn'' → ''ionorn'' – birdsong, the song of a bird | |||
This neatly disambiguates the meanings created by compounds from the meanings created by modifier nouns or adjectives. For example, with ''ûn'' "green" and ''tî'' "tea": | |||
* ''ûntî'' – green tea | |||
* ''tî ûn'' – a kind of tea that is green | |||
* ''tî ûnal'' – tea which happens to be green | |||
==Nominal morphology== | ==Nominal morphology== | ||
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===Nominal TAM=== | ===Nominal TAM=== | ||
===Determiners=== | ===Determiners and demonstratives=== | ||
<span style="color:red;">Emphatic circumduplication of determiners ("so ... so")</span> | <span style="color:red;">Emphatic circumduplication of determiners ("so ... so")</span> | ||
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===Tense, aspect and mood=== | ===Tense, aspect and mood=== | ||
===Non-finite verbs=== | ===Non-finite verbs=== | ||
==Adjectives | ==Adjectival morphology== | ||
The generic adjectival suffix ''-al'' is generally avoided unless it is needed to disambiguate meaning, because adjectives follow nouns, and a noun following a noun is taken to modify that noun much as an adjective would. This is epitomised in the name of the language, which hypercorrectly would be *''Cân Gertal'', but is instead ''Cân Gert''. This could be variously analysed as "short language" or "language of brevity". | |||
Thus for example ''sen'' normally means "age, great age", and ''senal'' would mean "old, aged", but it is perfectly acceptable to use just ''sen'' for "old, aged" if the meaning is clear. For example, to say "I am twenty years old", you would normally say ''Mi fît blîn sen'' rather than ''Mi fît blîn senal''. | |||
=== Adjectives === | |||
=== Modifier nouns === | |||
=== Adverbs === | |||
==Syntax== | ==Syntax== | ||
===Dependent clauses=== | ===Dependent clauses=== | ||