Guaru: Difference between revisions

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===Particles===
===Particles===
===Pronouns===
===Pronouns===
Pronouns constitute a word class that differs syntactically only slightly from contentives. Unlike contentives, they never need to be preceded by the subject particle '''he''' and when appearing as the predicate, they always need to be preceded by the predicate particle '''hi'''. They also form their genitive case differently, not by gemination of the first consonant but by substituting /h/ for their initial (unwritten and often unpronounced) glottal stop /ʔ/.
Pronouns distinguish first second and third persons. In the third person, a distinction is made between animate and inanimate referents and these are further distinguished by whether they are visible or invisible to the speaker at the time of speaking.
Plural pronouns are formed additively by compounding these bases. Generally only two grammatical persons are combined at once grammatical persons together in the order of the following heirarchy:
: (1) second person '''ua'''
: (2) third person animate visible '''aa'''
: (3) third person animate invisible '''ao'''
: (4) first person '''ia'''
: (5) third person inanimate visible '''ii'''
: (6) third person inanimate invisible '''io'''
Very long pronoun forms may be used for groups comprising many different persons. For example, a group including more than one addressee, several third persons, both visible and invisible and the speaker will be referred to with '''uauaxaaxaoia''' (glossed as 2+2+3.ANIM.VIS+3.ANIM.INVIS+1). Because combining these can result in hundreds of available forms, the following tables are limited to forms that combine two bases. This is enough to show which combinations the epenthetic glottal stop /ʔ/ <'''x'''> appears between.
{| class="bluetable lightbluebg"
|+ '''Subject pronouns'''
|- align=center
! Header text !! singular !!  +1  !!  +2  !! +3.ANIM.VIS !! +3.ANIM.INVIS || +3.INAN.VIS !! +3.INAN.INVIS 
|- align=center
! 1
| ia || iaia || uaia || aaia || aoia || iaii || iaio
|- align=center
! 2
| ua || <span style="color:lightblue">uaia</span> || uaua || uaxaa || uaxao || uaii || uaio
|- align=center
! 3.ANIM.VIS
| aa || <span style="color:lightblue">aaia</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">uaxaa</span> || aaxaa || aaxao || aaii || aaio
|- align=center
! 3.ANIM.INVIS
| ao || <span style="color:lightblue">aoia</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">uaxao</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">aaxao</span> || aoxao || aoii || aoio
|- align=center
! 3.INAN.VIS
| ii || <span style="color:lightblue">iaii</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">uaii</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">aaii</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">aoii</span> || iixii || iixio
|- align=center
! 3.INAN.INVIS
| io || <span style="color:lightblue">iaio</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">uaio</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">aaio</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">aoio</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">iixio</span> || ioxio
|}
Many of these combinations are rarely used. For example, it is not often that one wishes to refer to the addressee(s) plus (an) invisible third person inanimate object(s) (ie. "you and it", "you and those things") but on the rare occasions that this happens, the pronoun is '''uaio'''.
The choice between '''iaia''' and '''aaia''' is a subtle one. '''Iaia''' is used to speak on behalf of a group which does not include the listener(s). '''Aaia''' is the same but does not carry this connotation of speaking on behalf of the group. '''Aoia''' is used when not all members of the group are present.
The following table, included for the sake of completeness, shows the genitive forms of these pronouns which are all regularly formed by prefixing /h/ (which substitutes the initial underlying glottal stop in all of the subject forms).
{| class="bluetable lightbluebg"
|+ '''Genitive pronouns'''
|- align=center
! Header text !! singular !!  +1  !!  +2  !! +3.ANIM.VIS !! +3.ANIM.INVIS || +3.INAN.VIS !! +3.INAN.INVIS 
|- align=center
! 1
| hia || hiaia || huaia || haaia || haoia || hiaii || hiaio
|- align=center
! 2
| hua || <span style="color:lightblue">huaia</span> || huaua || huaxaa || huaxao || huaii || huaio
|- align=center
! 3.ANIM.VIS
| haa || <span style="color:lightblue">haaia</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">huaxaa</span> || haaxaa || haaxao || haaii || haaio
|- align=center
! 3.ANIM.INVIS
| hao || <span style="color:lightblue">haoia</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">huaxao</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">haaxao</span> || haoxao || haoii || haoio
|- align=center
! 3.INAN.VIS
| hii || <span style="color:lightblue">hiaii</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">huaii</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">haaii</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">haoii</span> || hiixii || hiixio
|- align=center
! 3.INAN.INVIS
| hio || <span style="color:lightblue">hiaio</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">huaio</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">haaio</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">haoio</span> || <span style="color:lightblue">iixio</span> || hioxio
|}
===Contentives===
===Contentives===

Revision as of 23:40, 3 March 2017

Guaru [ˈŋuaɾu] (also Gualu, Nguaru, Ngualu) is a constructed language spoken by the inhabitants of Oru, part of an enormous space habitat in an uncertain location, which is putatively a conservation ark and research station developed by an unknown extra-terrestrial civilisation in order to conserve and study terrestrial life. The language itself was developed by a historical figure known only as Orimu, who appears to have been a human involved with the setting up of Oru several hundred years ago. The education system of Oru prescribes a strict adherence to the original structure of the language as detailed in Orimu's original documents, more or less preserving the original orthography and grammar, although sound changes have apparently taken place, most notably the universal change of [p] to [h].

Guaru appears to be unrelated to any other known language. It is a right-branching, analytic language with a very simple phonology, with a small inventory of eight consonants and five vowels and consisting only of open syllables.


Phonology

Consonants

Single Consonants
Bilabial Dental Velar Glottal
Nasal /m/
[m]
<m>
/n/
[n̪]
<n>
/ŋ/
[ŋ]
<g>
Plosive /t/
[t̪]~[d̪]
<t>
/k/
[k]~[g]
<k>
/ʔ/
[ʔ]
<(x)>
Fricative /h/
[h]
<h>
Tap / Lateral /l/
[ɾ]~[l]
<r>


The allophones listed are all in more or less free variation and chiefly subject to individual variation, with voiced allophones of /t/ and /d/ being used more often by men.

The phoneme /ʔ/ is usually elided word initially in casual speech. In both commonly used romanisations, it is not written at the beginning of a word. Any word that begins with a vowel can optionally begin with a glottal stop. A glottal stop within a word, however, is always pronounced and is thus indicated in the romanisation.

Similarly, the glottal fricative is optionally elided from the beginning of particles. It is, however, always written.

All consonants may be doubled and are then pronounced as geminate or "strong". This only occurs at the beginning of words in the genitive case.

Doubled Consonants
Bilabial Dental Velar Glottal
Nasal /mm/
[mː]~[mb]
<mm>
/nn/
[n̪ː]~[n̪d̪]
<nn>
/ŋŋ/
[ŋː]~[ŋg]
<gg>
Plosive /tt/
[t̪ː]~[t̪ʼ]
<tt>
/kk/
[kː]~[kʼ]
<kk>
/ʔʔ/
[ʔː]
<x>
Fricative /hh/
[ɸ(ː)]~[p(ː)]
<hh>
Tap / Lateral /ll/
[r]~[lː]~[ʈʼ]
<rr>

As with the single consonants, the allophones are essentially in free variation.

A geminate glottal stop is written in the romanisation (using the Schaeffer system as here, with <x> although the Tanner system uses <ʻ>), distinguishing it from the word initial single glottal stop which is omitted from romanisations.

Vowels

Guaru has a simple five-vowel system similar to Spanish, Hebrew, Japanese and Hawaiian.

Single vowels
front central back
close i u
open mid e o
low a

When stressed, these vowels have the tense cardinal pronunciations of [i e a o u]. When unstressed, they tend to weaken towards [ɪ ɛ ɐ ɔ ʊ].

Each vowel constitutes a mora or time unit of speech. Vowels may appear together in "couplets" (bimoraic pairs) as illustrated in the following table. The existence of couplets is important in understanding stress, syllabification and allowable vowel clusters within a word.

Vowel couplets
Ending in -i Ending in -e Ending in -a Ending in -o Ending in -u
Beginning with i- ii ie ia io iu
Beginning with e- ee ea eo
Beginning with a- ae aa ao
Beginning with o- oe oa oo
Beginning with u- ui ue ua uo uu

The sequences of identical vowels /ii ee aa oo uu/ are pronounced as long vowels [iː ɛː aː ɔː uː]. In the Polynesian influenced Tanner romanisation, these are indicated with macrons <ā ē ī ō ū> however the Schaefer romanisation, used here, depicts them as separate vowels as this helps better conceptualise the morae within a word.

Phonotactics

Monomoraic initial syllables have the structure CV as in te /te/, ha /ha/. Bimoraic initial syllables have the structure CVV, as in ia /ʔia/, nua /nua/.

Within a word, bimoraic syllables without an initial consonant (VV) are allowed but only under certain circumstances.

As can be seen in the table above, the vowel sequences /*ei *ai *oi *eu *au *ou/ do not occur as couplets. These may appear, however, where a couplet sits adjacent to another vowel or couplet, as in /ke.io/ which consists of the monomoraic syllable /ke/ followed by the bimoraic /io/, or /tio.ua/ consisting of bimoraic syllables /tio/ and /ua/.

Sequences of three or more vowels are only allowed where there is a high vowel /i/ or /u/ beginning a valid couplet. For example, the words /huo.ua/, /no.io/, /li.ie/ /mae.ii/, /ʔua.io.uu/ are permitted; /*laeoa/, /*tuoa/, and /*meeo/ are not. In addition, no more than two instances of any one vowel may occur together, meaning that /iiio/ and /uuuu/ are not permitted, even though they each consist of valid couplets. Illegal vowel combinations, where they come together, are broken up by one of two methods.

(1) By the glottal stop /ʔ/. Where these sequences could occur across word boundaries, underlying initial /ʔ/ or /h/, which may otherwise be elided, is triggered to appear in all but excessively casual speech.
(2) In casual speech before the particles /hi/ and /hu/ (which frequently lack /h/), by raising an /e/ or /o/ to /i/ or /u/ respectively, for example /kao hi/ becomes pronounced /ka.u‿i/. In more formal or careful speech, the /h/ is preserved and no raising occurs.


Prosody

Stress in Guaru is realised as a slightly louder, tenser and higher tone on the vowel of the stressed mora. Vowels in unstressed morae are laxer and quieter, although just as long.

All words of more than one mora have a strong word stress on the first mora. Any bimoraic syllables within a word also receive a slight stress on the first mora and in long words, there may be a slight stress on the second last mora, even if it is the second mora of a bimoraic syllable.

The last content word within a phrase receives sentence stress, with monomoraic particles being completely unstressed.

Sentences generally drop in tone from the last stress. A level or rising tone indicates that the speaker is not finished. Yes-no questions may be delivered with rising tone from the last stress although this is sometimes absent.

Word Classes

Particles

Pronouns

Pronouns constitute a word class that differs syntactically only slightly from contentives. Unlike contentives, they never need to be preceded by the subject particle he and when appearing as the predicate, they always need to be preceded by the predicate particle hi. They also form their genitive case differently, not by gemination of the first consonant but by substituting /h/ for their initial (unwritten and often unpronounced) glottal stop /ʔ/.

Pronouns distinguish first second and third persons. In the third person, a distinction is made between animate and inanimate referents and these are further distinguished by whether they are visible or invisible to the speaker at the time of speaking.

Plural pronouns are formed additively by compounding these bases. Generally only two grammatical persons are combined at once grammatical persons together in the order of the following heirarchy:

(1) second person ua
(2) third person animate visible aa
(3) third person animate invisible ao
(4) first person ia
(5) third person inanimate visible ii
(6) third person inanimate invisible io

Very long pronoun forms may be used for groups comprising many different persons. For example, a group including more than one addressee, several third persons, both visible and invisible and the speaker will be referred to with uauaxaaxaoia (glossed as 2+2+3.ANIM.VIS+3.ANIM.INVIS+1). Because combining these can result in hundreds of available forms, the following tables are limited to forms that combine two bases. This is enough to show which combinations the epenthetic glottal stop /ʔ/ <x> appears between.

Subject pronouns
Header text singular +1 +2 +3.ANIM.VIS +3.ANIM.INVIS +3.INAN.VIS +3.INAN.INVIS
1 ia iaia uaia aaia aoia iaii iaio
2 ua uaia uaua uaxaa uaxao uaii uaio
3.ANIM.VIS aa aaia uaxaa aaxaa aaxao aaii aaio
3.ANIM.INVIS ao aoia uaxao aaxao aoxao aoii aoio
3.INAN.VIS ii iaii uaii aaii aoii iixii iixio
3.INAN.INVIS io iaio uaio aaio aoio iixio ioxio


Many of these combinations are rarely used. For example, it is not often that one wishes to refer to the addressee(s) plus (an) invisible third person inanimate object(s) (ie. "you and it", "you and those things") but on the rare occasions that this happens, the pronoun is uaio.

The choice between iaia and aaia is a subtle one. Iaia is used to speak on behalf of a group which does not include the listener(s). Aaia is the same but does not carry this connotation of speaking on behalf of the group. Aoia is used when not all members of the group are present.

The following table, included for the sake of completeness, shows the genitive forms of these pronouns which are all regularly formed by prefixing /h/ (which substitutes the initial underlying glottal stop in all of the subject forms).


Genitive pronouns
Header text singular +1 +2 +3.ANIM.VIS +3.ANIM.INVIS +3.INAN.VIS +3.INAN.INVIS
1 hia hiaia huaia haaia haoia hiaii hiaio
2 hua huaia huaua huaxaa huaxao huaii huaio
3.ANIM.VIS haa haaia huaxaa haaxaa haaxao haaii haaio
3.ANIM.INVIS hao haoia huaxao haaxao haoxao haoii haoio
3.INAN.VIS hii hiaii huaii haaii haoii hiixii hiixio
3.INAN.INVIS hio hiaio huaio haaio haoio iixio hioxio

Contentives