Middle Ru: Difference between revisions

     <th>Coronal, not labialiazed</th>

     <th rowspan="2">Alveolar</th>

     <td><b><em>nes</em></b><br>thirst</em></b><br></td>

     <td><b><em>tuɬ</em></b><br>husband</em></b><br></td>

<p>Voiced fricatives (aside from /ɮ/, which shall be discussed later) are also an innovation in Middle Ru. They may arise sporadically from their voiceless counterparts (uvular /χ/ in the case of pharyngeal /ʕ/) in the vecinity of other voiced consonants (as in PRH <em>bʷuh</em>, 'to stir', to MR <em>buʕ</em>, 'to mix') or in the same contexts that cause plosives to become ejective (PRH <em>xʷoʕn</em>, 'town', to MR <em>ɣen</em>, both meaning 'town'; PRH <em>ʔaʔxa</em> to MR <em>áɣa</em>, both meaning 'land'). Any instances which could result in a voiced /f/ yield an approximant <em>v</em> /w/ instead: PRH <em>muʕf</em> 'to breathe', MR <em>myv</em>, 'to live'. Evidence indicates that in early Middle Ru (and possibly later in some dialectal pronunciations) these instances of Middle Ru <em>v</em> might have been realized as [v], contrasting with the phoneme /w/ as inherited from other sources (such as Proto Ru-Hulam /w/). The two sounds, however, had been fully merged in the Cadarmeni standard.</p>

<p>Middle Ru's three non-lateral approximants <em>r</em> /ɹ/, <em>j</em> /j/ and <em>v</em> /w/ correspond to Proto Ru-Hulam's approximants <em>r</em> (and <em>rʷ</em>; probably flaps /ɾ/ and /ɾʷ/), <em>y</em> /j/ and <em>w</em> /w/, except for instance of Middle Ru <em>v</em> which evolved as a voiced counterpart to <em>f</em>. Proto Ru-Hulam rhotic approximants contrasted labialization while <em>y</em> and <em>w</em> did not.</p>

<p>On its own, the locative case (expressed with the prefixes <em>by-</em> or </em>bw-</em>) is restricted to static location in or at a place. Other kinds of locative phrases will use an auxiliary word before the basic locative form of the noun. These preposition-like auxiliary nouns are often locative-case nouns themselves. For instance, 'below' uses the preposition <em>bycym</em>, the locative form of <em>cym</em> 'feet'; 'below the tree' becomes <em>bycym byselk</em>, literally 'at the foot of the tree'.</p>

<h4>Other cases</h4>

<p>Is the man sleeping?</p>

<h3>Voice prefixes and valency operations</h3>

<p>does not imply that the soldiers forced or even ordered the man to cut the trees but rather implies that the man did it on his own in order to ease their march. This contrasts with the causative form <em>ižycavdimax swroħúrwm sek mimýaħ </em> (the soldiers made the man cut the trees) where it could be assumed that the soldiers played an active role in having the man cut the tree.</p>

<p><em>Kocwñimax oħúrwmaħ mimy. </em></p>

<p>The man (subject, <em>mimy</em>) gave the stone (direct object, <em>p'áñel</em>) to the woman (indirect object, <em>xek'a</em>).</p>

<p><em>Λuwħåls xek'aħ [ga] [p'áñelt].</em></p>

<h3>The verb stem</h3>

<p>Verb stems whose romanized forms seem to end in a vowel, such as <em>da</em> (to remember) actually have a glottal coda (unwritten between vowels): /da.ʔ/, as seen in the conjugated form <em>daiħaŋ</em> (I remembered it): /da.ʔiˈχaŋ/. This is still the case when the vowel in the suffix coincides with the last vowel in the stem, as in <em>daarxes</em> (you remember me): /da.ʔaɹˈʃøs/, although a relatively small number of speakers might have contracted these sequences to a bare vowel (yielding */daɹˈʃøs/ for <em>da[a]rxes</em>). It should be noted that contracting /V.ʔV/ to /V/ is a nearly universal phenomenon for nouns (for instance, the ergative form of <em>c'áza</em> is <em>c'azat</em> rather than <em>**c'azaat</em>). The absence of contractions in verbs might be a result of Middle Ru speakers considering the glottal stop as being part of the verb root itself rather than an artifact of the language's phonology as in nominal affixes.</p>

<p>In order to incorporate a noun into a verb, the base form of the noun (with no number nor case affixes) is added after the verb stem. A connecting affix <em>-ö-</em> (<em>-e-</em> or <em>-o-</em> depending on the vowel harmony class <b>of the incorporated noun</b>) is used except for vowel-initial nouns. For instance, incorporating the vowel-initial noun <em>áɣa</em> (land, dirt) to the verb <em>myjt</em> (to cover) results in forms such as <em>myjt<b>aɣa</b>iħárga</em> (I covered it with dirt ~ I buried it) while incorporating <em>qana</em> (family) to <em>hwn</em> (to rule) yields forms such as <em>hwn<b>eqana</b>armat</em> (you belong to the ruling dynasty, literally 'you family-rule them'), with an extra <em>e</em> connecting the two words. It should be noted that incorporated nouns <b>might belong to the opposite vowel harmony class</b> as in the latter example (<em>hwn</em> being a dark-class verb while <em>qana</em> is a clear-class noun). In these cases, all suffixes occurring after the noun belong to the same harmony class as the <em>noun</em>. Because of this, we find the clear-harmony affixes <em>-armat</em> in <em>hwneqanaarmat</em> but their dark-harmony counterparts <em>-årmåt</em> when no noun is incorporated to the verb: <em>hwnårmåt</em> (you rule over them).</p>

<p>Additionally, noun incorporation would occasionally yield phrases with an <em>a priori</em> unexpected idiomatic usage. As seen before, <em>hwn</em> (to rule) plus <em>qana</em> (family) yielded a verb that meant ' to belong to the ruling family'. A more systematic example is the usage of <em>qurt</em> (hands) to indicate that an action is done by oneself. For instance <em>cavdoqurtwħåñ sek mimy</em>, literally 'the man hand-cut the trees' will typically imply that the man cut all the trees 'by himself' rather than doing it 'by hand'. <em>Qurt</em> can be incorporated into a verb with a more literal meaning, however: <em>dåfoqurtårmås</em> (incorporating <em>qurt</em> to <em>dåf</em>, 'to eat') would be more likely to be understood as meaning 'I was eating them using my hands (not cutlery)' than 'I was eating them on my own'.</p>

<p>Participles follow a drastically different structure than finite (or 'conjugated') Middle Ru verbs, being only marked by voice. The most basic form of participle, corresponding to the default unmarked voice, is constructed by a circumfix: <em>a-</em>(stem)<em>-a</em> for clear-harmony verbs (as in the previously mentioned example <em>azéva</em>, 'seen', from <em>zev</em>, 'to see') or <em>å-</em>(stem)<em>-o</em> (as in <em>åcẃño</em>, 'built', from <em>cuñ</em>, 'to build') for dark-harmony verbs. Unlike other verb forms, participles are stressed on the verb stem itself.</p>

<p>Negative participles are preceded by the particle <em>žwm</em> which is also used a noun meaning 'nobody'. Thus <em>žwm azéva</em> transaltes as  'not seen'.</p>

<p>A different structure is required for relative clauses where the described noun phrase occupies a role other than the participle verb's O-role (and thus requires a voice mark like antipassive <em>rrav-/rråv-</em>) with the original O-role being included as part of the relative clause. This is the case in the phrase 'the man that saw the mountain', where the described noun ('the man', <em>mimy</em>) takes the A-role (ergative, subject of transitive <em>zev</em>, 'to see') and the relative predicate includes the original O-role (the object, <em>ħox</em>). This requires a structure where the described noun is followed by the particle <em>a</em> (regardless of the vowel harmony class of any neighbouring words), the original O-role and then the participle with the appropriate participles:</p>

<h3>The copula verbs</h4>

<p>Noun-noun copula, be it indicating identity ("John is my father", here the two arguments are identified as being the same individual) or membership to a given class ("John is a man"), may be expressed with the copula verb <em>mi</em>, which could be considered to be the closest Middle Ru counterpart to English 'to be'. This kind of expressions, however, are often handled <b>without any verbs</b> (what is known as zero-copula, a common tactic cross-linguistically), simply putting the two phrases one next to the other. The first element in this type of copula must be expressed in the absolutive case, while the second one is used in its base, suffix-less form, as shown in the following examples:</p>

<p><em>I am your father.</em></p>

<table>

<p><b>Adjectives</b> behave like verbs in Middle Ru and thus adjective-noun copula does not require an equivalent of the verb 'to be'. For instance, the equivalent to the English adjective 'tall' is <em>ğwn</em> which may also be translated as 'to be tall'. This subject will be covered in more depth in the following section.</p>

<p><em><b>Searmis emimýaħ ñy.</b></em></p>

<p>Being functionally identical to verbs, Middle Ru adjectives can take any affix that could apply to verbs. For instance, the causative prefix <em>ižy-</em> may be used to form the verb <em>ižyaxan-</em>, meaning 'to cause [something or somebody] to grow old, to age'.</p>

<p><em><b>Ñiraxanarlys mimýaħ.</b></em></p>

<p><em><b>Axanarlys xek'aħ, ñiraxanarly mimýaħ.</b></em></p>

<p><em><b>Zeviħals mimýaħ añiraxána.</b></em></p>

<p>The number 'one' is always expressed as <em>ýla</em>, although in combining forms it may also appear as <em>ylárra</em> (literally 'and one', although shifting the stress to the second syllable unlike the more general usage of the affix <em>-rra</em>). The form <em>ylárra</em> is most commonly found after 'round' numbers such as <em>jat</em> (twenty); in a sense <em>ylárra</em> indicates that the value is one more than a number that would be more likely to be expected. The forms <em>játel</em> and <em>c'étel</em> alternate with <em>jat</em> and <em>c'et</em> (respectively) when not followed by any further numerals.</p>

<p>Ordinals are formed in a relatively unusual way. The first element is described as <em>ac'ála</em>, the participle of <em>c'al</em>, 'to come first'. Other ordinals are formed by using the particle <em>swr</em> and the number of elements that come <em>before</em>, followed by the suffix <em>-(a)rra / -(å)rrå</em>. Thus, 'the second man' becomes <em>mimy swr ýlarra</em> (~ man preceded by one other);  'the tenth mountain' becomes <em>ħóxol swr sótårrå</em> (~ mountain preceded by nine others) and so on.</p>

<h1>The Middle Ru script</h1>

<p>The glyphs used for Middle Ru consonants have a characteristic shape based on a slightly curved slanted lined over which further strokes are drawn (except for the glottal stop, marked by the slanted line alone). The characters are partially featural. For instance, the glyphs ejectives are clearly derived from the corresponding plain plosives.</p>

<p>Vowels other than <em>A</em> are marked with diacritics. Occasionally, the vowel <em>Å</em> and the no-vowel or <em>virama</em> mark might be omitted in a text; although the norm is to include all relevant diacritics.</p>

<p>Words are often separated by spaces although this is inconsistent. Some texts (particularly earlier ones) are written with no spaces whatsoever (<em>scripta continua</em>). On the opposite end, some texts also use spaces to separate each affix. Few punctuation marks are used; sentences are typically separated with an apostrophe-like mark.</p>

<p>Middle Ru script also has its own way of representing numbers. Unique symbols are used for the numbers 1, 4, 5 and 10, which are combined in order to form simple or composite symbols for each digit from 1 to 19. Then unique symbols are used for powers of 20, which are combined with digits in order to form any number.</p>

<h1>Sample sentences</h1>

[[Category:Middle Ru]]

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