Hwnic

Hwnic
isloxvn
Pronunciation	[ɨ́sɫø̠xʋń̩]
Created by	SN2rname
Date	2024
Language family	language isolate Hwnic

This article uses U+2011 non-breaking hyphen ‑.

Hwnic is an a priori semi-naturalistic agglutinative language. It attempts to broadly delineate what a future natural language might look like. Hwnic is an exonym and is pronounced like WHUH-nyk.

Hwnic is a pitch-accent language. Connected speech is subject to a set of more complex rules involving use of non-modal phonation.

Hwnic is written in the Latin alphabet. It can be written with no punctuations other than spaces, where particles and capitalization are employed to denote quotation, change of topic, intonation, and so on; however, an English-like pattern of punctuation is also possible.

The grammar of Hwnic is quite complex. Nouns are not declined, but may take affixes that denote number, negation, state, or property. Verbs are conjugated to person, number, and sometimes mood; an auxiliary verb can show tense, aspect, and animacy/volition.

Phonology

Phonemes

	Labial	Coronal	Dorsal	Gutteral
Nasal	m	n	(ɲ)
Plosive	p b	t d	k g	q
Fricative	f v	s z	ç, x ɣ
Affricate		t͡s
Liquid	(v)	ɾ	(j)
Lateral		l

• Among the continuants, /n/, /r/, and /l/ are sometimes syllabic. /m/ and /z/ are syllabic in a handful of words and affixes.

	Front	Center	Back
Close	i	ʉ	ɯ
Close-mid		o
Open-mid		ə
Low		a

• Vowels often lack front-back contrast, and vowels tend to assimilate to consonants and not the other way around.

The orthography is based on the IPA. However, a key point is usually vowels assimilate to consonants and not the other way around: pe te ke qe would be [pɛ tɛ kə qɤ]. The most common value for ‹i› is [ɯ] which is often realized as [ɨ̞], whereas the less common value [i] appears in some particles and palatalizes the preceding consonant. The values for y and u are the same in native words, although y can be [ai] in loanwords. Syllabic l has a schwa-onglide to distinguish it from /o/.

Stress and prosody

Most words have initial stress. A syllable containing a syllabic /l/, most commonly bl, ml, and dl, is stressed. For words that start with a syllabic /m/, /n/, or /r/, the stress may be on the second syllable. Particles have low pitch, and as such a few pairs of words are distinguished by pitch alone. Compound words retain the stress of their constituents, although consecutive stress causes pitch sandhi and the second stress takes on a low or falling pitch. Additionally, ‹j› after a vowel indicates a falling pitch, which may be contrastive with neutral/low pitch. In the future, Hwnic might become a tonal language.

Hwnic is stress-timed. Stressed syllables are longer, unstressed a may become voiceless, but other vowels aren't usually reduced.

Phonotactics

Syllable structure is (C)(C)V(C)(C), with most word roots taking the form of C(C)V.

Morphology

Nouns

Nouns are not declined based on grammatical roles. Nouns may be split into two categories, namely those singular by default, often solitary, unique, or abstract, and those plural by default, often gregarious or measured by amount (including uncountable nouns in English). When the usage indicates a different number than the default or when specification is desired, a suffix of number may be attached to the noun to express a wide range of meanings.

Suffix of number	-il	-ix	-ij	-is	-ik	-ies
Meaning 1	linear arrangement of	spatial arrangement of	unordered grouping of	member of	diminutive	augmentative
Meaning 2	linear continuity of	structure made of	irregular continuity of	unit of	small amount of	large amount of

A noun may be preceded by a particle that may express determinate/indeterminate, figurative/literal, and general/specific. Although the particle corresponds to the determiner in English, in Hwnic it is frequently seen as part of the noun, where certain combinations may have idiomatic meanings in certain contexts, such as ci ceqn "a specific pattern of excessive buying for the purpose of obtaining collectibles".

Verbs

Verbs are conjugated to person, number, and sometimes mood. A suffix for person-number is glossed as 1Sg, 1Pl, 2Sg, 2Pl, 3Sg, 3Pl, 3N, or "3I". With a non-person subject, the singular and plural forms are the same. "3I" is only used in agreement when the subject is "nothing", "one" (as in an if-clause), or another hypothetical concept, and has no corresponding pronoun.

An auxiliary verb added after the main verb can show tense, aspect, and volition, glossed as PST.PFV, VOL.PRES.IPFV, or similar. For volition, there is a distinction among voluntary actions, involuntary actions which the agent is conscious of but cannot control, involuntary actions which the agent is not conscious of, and events involving no willful agents.

Adjectives and determiners

Adjectives are categorized as inherent, attributive, and stative. An inherent adjective, often ending in ‑u or ‑r, describes inherent properties of an object that cannot be separated from it. Such an adjective may be used by itself, where it can be a noun of degree like English ‑ness, or it fuses with a noun and serve to narrow down a category, creating a noun-adjective compound with a definitive meaning, like oqulqomu "the blue apple". In this case the definite determiner is omitted. An attributive adjective, often ending in ‑ui and palatalizes the preceding consonant, describes an attribute of an object that is considered relatively stable but can be altered. Such an adjective usually fuses with a noun, like edrpatlui "busy person, person who is always busy". A stative adjective, often ending in ‑u, describes a state that is usually temporary and can be changed. Such an adjective may or may not fuse with a noun, like edrpatlu "busy person, person who is busy in the context of that sentence".

Adverbs

There isn't an adverb suffix, unlike in English. An adverb applied to a verb usually takes the form of "particle + noun", sometimes fused into one word like nrit "here". An adverb applied to an adjective may take the form of a modification on that adjective, like -[R]ui "well" and -[R]ur "badly", where [R] is the final consonant of that word reduplicated, although this is limited to a few words. The common way of having a word act like an adverb is with a determiner that describes the branching structure of the phrase.

Numerals

Hwnic uses Arabic numerals. Previously the numbers 5, 6, 7 and 9 were made up by other numbers, but their names were shortened as inspired by East Asian counting systems.

Number	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Pronunciation	kul	xa	vu	bim	ces	gis	os	it	cu	den

Numerals above 10 are formed with a special affix at the beginning, followed by an enumeration of the digits. Which prefix to use depends on how many digits the number has. Additionally, lei is inserted every three digits as the digit separator, written as a space. The numerical dot is rap.

Number of digits	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Prefix	xoq	xem	rea	ran	osugo	itugo	cuugo	denugo

Large numerals can have a scientific-notation-like system. The affix is added at the end instead, and digits are enumerated from least significant to most significant. Unspecified digits are zeros, but note that trailing zeros can be significant.

577 014, osugogisititleikulxaces

3.141 59, binrapxacesxaleigisden

6.02×10^23, oskuvuugoxoqubim

Fractions have the numerator before the denominator, like 3/7 binlecit, "three out of four parts", and thus both are cardinals. Some fractions have common names: 1/2 leci; 1/4 lagi; 1/12 loi.

Hwnic has a unusual way to express grouping with to "multiplied by": xoqavu means 12 in no particular arrangement, bintoces means 3×4 arrangement, vutoos means 2×6 arrangement. The smaller number goes first. However, to say 1×12 or 12 objects filed in one row, it would not be *xatoxoqavu, but rather with a collective suffix. A row of 12 apples (oqul) would be xoqavu oqulil.

Syntax

Constituent order

Word order is SOV, although sentences frequently appear as OV due to pro-drop, or SV due to an indefinite noun phrase and the verb coming together to form a compound. Some words trigger a reordering of the sentence into VSO, like negation of multiple elements, unusual topic or focus, some temporal relationships ("before"), and reduplicated forms of verbs ("undo", "redo").

Ordering of delimiting(?) words is usually NAG, and follow a rule of familiarity. For example, in "expensive family dinner", typically "family dinner" is more common and would be put together as dinner-family-expensive, but if this particular family often have expensive dinners, then dinner-expensive-family is also possible.

These rules may lead to ambiguities. The ultimate disambiguation technique is to include a morpheme in the determiner that comes before a noun phrase to describe its branching structure. This morpheme may be omitted in further mentions of the same noun phrase.

Noun phrase

Noun phrases are generally right-branching.

The demonstrative system is currently incomplete. This is one of the most important parts of Hwnic and I have been studying other systems to decide what it will look like here.

Verb phrase

Transitive and intransitive verbs work mostly like in English. But each adjective can have a linking verb and a complementary verb, formed with attaching -tni "to become" and -sdi "to remain" to an adjective, respectively. Transitive verbs can be used without an object, where the object of that verb is seen as (null), with a number of possible interpretations. Intransitive verbs usually cannot be used with an object (unless the word is used in a different sense with a transitive meaning).

Lexicon

The lexicon is built around nouns. Generally, a nominal concept is expressed with a single word. Many scientific words are borrowings or calques from English, but also combined into one word and reordered, as in Axtosugul "covert aggression".

The lexicon has a wealth of words related to geometry, set theory, graph theory, and other concepts from mathematics and computer science. In fact, the terms for some everyday items are formed with a geometry term denoting its shape and a part denoting its function.

On the other hand, the lexicon lacks specific words (other than calqued scientific names) for many plants and animals. In Hwnic, "daffodil", "chrysanthemum", and "osmanthus" are all isalbunr "conspicuous flower". Some recognizable species may have unique names, such as isalibordal "rose; poet's flower". This is because flowers have become rare as a result of ecological events, and any allegorical or cultural meanings have been taken up by other terms.

Idioms

Hwnic idioms are often long compound words that describe a specific mood or situation; el- can form a multi-morpheme word by joining together items in a list. Often, this word consists of four morphemes, like four-character compounds in Chinese and Japanese. The terms about time are borrowed from English, as Hwnic time is expressed in a different way, but Hwnic is open to incorporating foreign words into its vocabulary and mixing foreign and native words. An example would be elaurminitseknd.

Example texts

Babel text

Qs niciq b odqoasu velo isloxait bizitsnsui arlek

and LOCV-context GEN world-whole ACC-and language-single speak-nominalizer-common be.3Pl.PST.GNO

Qs toi rt todosrilovarn qoro u Miufshinar qozorn ust nct onspern

and happen-3N TEM from_west-move.3Pl they ACC plain-Shinar find.3Pl then this-LOC settle.3Pl

Qs e ptopo bizirn xopinc yza nozn u qiq myzon ust uoro saqezon xasrfn

and DAT each_other say.3Pl quote go EXCLM ACC brick make.HORT then they-ACC bake.HORT thoroughly

Qs u qiq e gida u Bitumen e cesble fozorn

and ACC brick DAT stone ACC tar DAT mortar use.3Pl

Qs bizirn xopinc yza nozn velocti odn blboc eoro varozon ni parcembo jesctiboqro

and say.3Pl quote go EXCLM ACC-and-to_be city tower we-DAT build.HORT LOCV arriving-heaven top-to_be-this-GEN

Qs labasyizon stso xersyireis lnu nr meruicdignodqoasu

and be_famous.HORT lest be_scattered.3Pl.SUBJ FUT.STATE LOC spreading-surface-earth-whole

Qs Fnri rumxud ti mxazitblboc cit ci qmocqoxn varorn lsvo

and the_Lord come_down.3N REL sight-tower this the children-of-man build.3Pl PST.PFV

Fnri bizid xopinc mxazon ci qoxnxuigu irn boqro isloxuir in ust uctsmy lectn

the_Lord say.3N quote look.HORT the people-united be_property.3Pl they-GEN language-singular be_property.3N and this-ACC-do.3Pl PRES.INCHO

Cit rt zand pndirka lqn cit srdri boqro

now TEM nothing restrained-NEG be_property.3I this imagined_thing-instance they-GEN

Yza zinbn yzmxuzon ust u isloboqro ubocnezon ti pimuk u bizit ptopo rotarnq

go EXCLM go_down.HORT then ACC language-they-GEN confound.HORT REL purpose ACC speech each_other understand.3Pl.NEG

Zal Fnri t cirgn nr meruicdignodqo uoro blted lsvo cist varocodnka ectnrn

hence the_Lord ABL there LOC spreading-surface-earth they-ACC scatter.3N PST.PFV then construction-city.NEG stop.3Pl

Zal alorboq Babel klr bimuk ubocnx b Fnri u isloodqoasu

hence name it-GEN Babel be_eqivalent.3N because_of confounding ABL the_Lord ACC language-earth-all

Cirgn b blted Fnri uoro nr meruicdignodqoasu

There ABL scatter.3N the_Lord they-ACC LOC spreading-surface-earth-whole

Notes for Babel text

• rumxud is ru·mxu·d, "come-down.3N" ...
• Fnri is from fntu + -ri, meaning "before the beginning"; nokr "chief, lord" is the name of a megacorporation and has negative connotations, and the native word cirom "gods" indicates polytheism.
• LOC, ACC, DAT all refer to particles.
• Hwnic is head-initial. The broadest category comes first and the most specific comes last. This order applies to qualifier sequences, compound words, and more.
• Nouns are not declined, but a particle may fuse with certain pronouns and other particles.
• Most nouns are by default plural, and the suffix -is makes a noun singular.
• There is only one locative particle, nr. To express "near somewhere", for instance, it would be nr cnos[somewhere], where cnos means "vicinity" by itself. Similarly, there is only one temporal particle, rt.
  • Justification for this design choice (and others below) will be presented later.
• Qs is a particle that only indicates the start of a sentence where the subject pronoun is dropped.
• The two exclamation particles, nozn and zinbn, come from two speech registers.
• LOCV or "virtual locative" is a concept I made up for the preposition ni, meaning "in a specified context/situation/state".
• Negation constructs display an unusual form of negative concord. For example, "The house is not here" requires a negative marker on "is" and a suffix meaning "in this context does not exist" on "the house", whereas "I'm not going to build the house" requires a negative marker on "build" and a suffix meaning "will not exist in the future" on "the house".
• The "and ACC-and": the former is a conjunction that forms the parallel structure; the latter marks a list of items, in the form of "and X Y Z ..." until the next verb or particle.
  • The latter "and", elo, is further fused with the accusative particle u, and here it means the accusative particle applies to each item in the list.
• The tense-aspect auxiliary verb is flexible: it can govern a full sentence, as shown here, or apply only to the one verb before it.
• A single concept often corresponds to a single word, which is common in agglutinative languages.

Digression

I've been writing original texts in Hwnic, in order to keep note of events in my life or thoughts that frequently arise, based directly on how the memory or thought is structured.

1. Hwnic/For Ri of the Lab
2. Hwnic/For the Future
3. Hwnic/For the End of Introspection