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Lemizh: Difference between revisions
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Lemizh is an Indo-European language and, together with Volgan, constitutes one of the ten recognised branches of the Indo-European language family. This branch is also called Lemizh, to the disgruntlement of Volgan linguists. | Lemizh is an Indo-European language and, together with Volgan, constitutes one of the ten recognised branches of the Indo-European language family. This branch is also called Lemizh, to the disgruntlement of Volgan linguists. | ||
Proto-Lemizh, the ancestor of Lemizh and Volgan, is very poorly attested in form of some papyri found near the northwestern shore of the Black Sea, to the north of the [[w:Dniester Liman|Dniester Liman]], dated about 2700 BC. Old Lemizh, by contrast, is fairly well attested. It had predominantly [[w:Subject–verb–object|subject–verb–object]] (SVO) word order and was a quite typical old Indo-European language, but with a couple of interesting quirks: | |||
* Adjectives were lost as a separate part of speech, being replaced with participles ("white" > "being white"). | * Adjectives were lost as a separate part of speech, being replaced with participles ("white" > "being white"). | ||
* Finite subordinate clauses had their subject in the case of the clause: the subject of a local clause was in the locative case without having a local meaning in itself. | * Finite subordinate clauses had their subject in the case of the clause: the subject of a local clause was in the locative case without having a local meaning in itself. | ||
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===Ghean and Middle Lemizh=== | ===Ghean and Middle Lemizh=== | ||
Ghean (<span style="font-family:Gentium,'DejaVu Sans','Segoe UI',sans-serif">[[Help:IPA|[ˈɣɛən]]]</span>) is a language with no known genetic relationships. It was spoken by a people of unknown origin, who subdued the Lemizh tribes in around 1000 BC and ruled for infamous three generations. Ghean was an [[w:Inflected|inflected]] register [[w:Tonal language|tonal]] language with strict [[w:Verb–subject–object|verb–subject–object]] (VSO) word order and head-first phrases. It had verbs, [[w:Nominal (linguistics)|nominals]] (a combined noun/adjective/participle [[w:Part of speech|part of speech]]), pronouns and particles. | |||
The Gheans discouraged the use of the natives' language, but obviously tolerated Lemizh words (or rather word stems) to stand in for unfamiliar Ghean ones. The grammar of simple sentences was easy enough to learn for the Lemizh, as they were used to inflection and head-first phrases, and likely still knew VSO sentences from poetry. After two or three generations, the natives must have spoken a [[w:Creole language|creole]] with a more or less Ghean grammar but an abundance of Lemizh words, especially outside the core vocabulary. This is a quite unusual development as most creoles draw their lexicon mainly from the dominant group, and tend to be grammatically more innovative. (The Tanzanian language [[w:Mbugu|Mbugu]] might have had a somewhat similar development with more or less analogous outcomes.) After the disappearance of the Gheans, Lemizh patriots tried to revive their old language, which failed spectacularly for the grammar but reintroduced many Lemizh words of the core vocabulary. | The Gheans discouraged the use of the natives' language, but obviously tolerated Lemizh words (or rather word stems) to stand in for unfamiliar Ghean ones. The grammar of simple sentences was easy enough to learn for the Lemizh, as they were used to inflection and head-first phrases, and likely still knew VSO sentences from poetry. After two or three generations, the natives must have spoken a [[w:Creole language|creole]] with a more or less Ghean grammar but an abundance of Lemizh words, especially outside the core vocabulary. This is a quite unusual development as most creoles draw their lexicon mainly from the dominant group, and tend to be grammatically more innovative. (The Tanzanian language [[w:Mbugu|Mbugu]] might have had a somewhat similar development with more or less analogous outcomes.) After the disappearance of the Gheans, Lemizh patriots tried to revive their old language, which failed spectacularly for the grammar but reintroduced many Lemizh words of the core vocabulary. | ||
===The last three millennia=== | ===The last three millennia=== | ||
While | While Middle Lemizh as spoken after the Ghean occupation already had a non-Indo-European and unusually regular grammar, this trend was to continue over the following millennia. The factive case was innovated to express verbal nouns, which eventually supplanted verbs altogether. (At least part of the blame goes to the Tlöngö̀l, an epic novel published in 1351, which popularized the use of verbal nouns.) The tonal system was simplified to the present two-way [[w:Pitch-accent language|pitch-accent]] system. Pronouns lost their status as a separate part of speech. The last particles died out a few hundred years ago, leaving the language with a single part of speech which is often called a "verb" but, historically speaking, is really a nominal. This means that the concept of ''parts of speech'' does not make sense in Modern Lemizh. | ||
==Orthography and phonology== | ==Orthography and phonology== | ||