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Elodian: Difference between revisions
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While the IE origin of Elodian is today undisputed, it is to be noted that Hurro-Urartian and languages of the Caucasus definitely had a marked influence over Elodian, as shown by the development of split ergativity. | While the IE origin of Elodian is today undisputed, it is to be noted that Hurro-Urartian and languages of the Caucasus definitely had a marked influence over Elodian, as shown by the development of split ergativity. | ||
The history of Elodians has had a major impact on the vocabulary of their language, having lived for millennia at the crossroads of Europe and Asia and having been subjects of multiple foreign powers. A sizable amount of the Elodian lexicon is composed of foreign loans, sometimes integrating borrowed morphemes in the morphology (as with certain Arabic and Greek nouns), nevertheless, the vast majority of loanwords is considered to be fully integrated in the language, as all of them are fully transcribed into the Elodian script and, with the exception of a few proper nouns, all of them are transcribed as pronounced in Elodian and adapted to fit native morphology. | |||
The share of loanwords is not uniform: the vast majority of them, in all stages of the language, are nouns, with a smaller number of borrowed adjectives with no corresponding noun. Borrowed verbs are few and rare, as Elodian has only two suffixes that form verbs from other parts of speech (''-ez-ām'' and ''-haz-ēm'', originally two contextual variants of the same PIE root), already attested in the very first Elodian attestations in the 6th century CE; even those suffixes generally stopped being productive by the 15th century, replaced in productivity by compound verbs, with new compound verbs sometimes even replacing full verbs; the verbal part of compound verbs, which contributes little meaning of its own, is nearly always a native root. Verbal roots loaned from other languages are even rarer and all of them date to the prehistory of the Elodian language, being generally of Hurro-Urartian, Akkadian or Kartvelian origin. | |||
Moreover, loanwords are not evenly distributed in terms of frequency; all function words are native, inherited from Proto-Indo-European, as are many of the most commonly used words, so that the most basic forms of the language contain mostly native roots. However, very basic words are not always native, sometimes due to semantic drift that has caused loanwords to fit into the other meaning. Almost as a counterpoint to basic words being mostly inherited roots, words such as those for "man" and "woman" are borrowings (from Hurrian and Byzantine Greek respectively - but see below for the latter) and nearly all Elodians carry given names that are borrowed: most of them from Middle Persian, Armenian or Kartvelian languages, while Western names are typically borrowed through Medieval Greek or through Ligurian; Islamic theophoric names are borrowed from Arabic. | |||
The most ancient layer of loanwords dates back to Elodian prehistory, and it is probably the most represented layer of loanwords in non-technical speech. Such words date back from the arrival of Elodians in eastern Anatolia up to the first few centuries AD (roughly up until the influx of Christianity shown by Aramaic loanwords and the Parthian period); prehistoric loanwords generally include words of multiple origin: Akkadian, Hurro-Urartian, Anatolian, Proto-Iranian, Hattic, Kartvelian or from other Caucasian languages. Nearly all of the proposed etymologies attributed to these languages belong to (or originally entered the language in) the semantic fields of animals, plants, agriculture and early technology; see e.g. ''šorōn'' "cat", ''lešp" "honey", ''notwāx'' "knife", ''osmon'' "oil" (all from Akkadian), ''neht'' "bed", ''norāt'' "pomegranate", ''waṛā'' "countryside" (from Hurrian), ''hēr'' "road", ''ebēnā'' "country" (from Urartian), ''ğuygā'' "juniper", ''šewnī'' "beautiful", ''somlart'' "medlar", ''toğoy'' "mouse" (all with proposed Kartvelian cognates), as well as toponyms (the name ''Fulahmīwā'' of the capital city of ʔelodīhūto has been traced back to Hattic goddess Furušemu) and other proper nouns (as with the names of the first six planets, excluding Earth, also found in the names of the days of the week due to ''interpretatio Elodica'', which are likely Akkadian-mediated loans of ancient Mesopotamian words). A few dozen words are categorized as unspecified Iranian loans, either early loans from Proto-Iranian or mediated by other unidentified languages, cf. ''gōbām'' "I read", ''calīr'' "splendour" (likely from *ćriHrás and therefore cognate with Sanskrit ''śrī''), ''xašrā'' "world", ''sūftā'' "milk", possibly ''mirǝ̄jē'' "rice". As shown by ''gōbām'', prehistoric loanwords include loaned verbal roots, something not found at any other stage of the language. | |||
The largest share of loanwords into Elodian comes from Persian, including words borrowed from Parthian and Middle (Sasanian) Persian, Classical Persian, and a very small number of words from contemporary Iranian Persian. Persian words are found in every semantic field, including everyday words (''cǝtor'' "umbrella", ''obēl'' "necessary", ''pahrest'' "list, menu"); words related to general urban life (''šahr'' "city", ''bandar'' "port", ''doftar'' "office", ''moydān'' "square"), knowledge and literature (''nāmē'' "book", ''lānešn'' "knowledge", ''cāmē'' "poetry"); agriculture and food (, ''bālong'' "wine"), as well as more abstract concepts (''owlēn'' "doctrine", ''kārfron'' "hero", ''lēnā'' "religion"). More abstract concepts, ethnonyms, and Islam-related words come from Arabic, but in vast majority of cases they entered Elodian through Persian (with partially Persianized phonology), so that they are often considered among Persian loanwords; such words include e.g. ''farīk'' "group, unit, section", ''haylā'' "family", ''harzi'' "latitude, parallel" and ''tūl'' "longitude, meridian", ''nesf'' "hemisphere", ''ɂentefāzā'' "rebellion", ''sāhebi'' "companion, colleague", ''seyǝ̄sā'' "politics". | |||
Dating back to the first millennium CE are also likely most Armenian loans, which also cover many semantic fields, but more everyday words than Persian loans (except a few Parthian- or Sasanian-era loans). Armenian loans include even common verbs such as ''gurēm'' "I write" and ''sirēm'' "I like", but also words such as ''ōrēn'' "law", ''tolay'' "boy", ''nošan'' "mark, token, code", ''oromp'' "javelin, bullet", ''parew'' "hello", ''daktex'' "bell pepper". Also dating back from those times (around the earliest attestations of Elodian) are the Aramaic loans, introduced alongside Syriac Christianity and generally limited to that semantic field (or originally from it, later extended to more broad usage), such as ''kodīš'' "saint", ''ināš'' "human", ''pošītā'' "Peshitta (more generally the Bible for any Christian denomination)", ''Išoh Mošiho'' "Jesus Christ", but there are also words not strictly related to Christianity such as ''lap'' "paper", ''tewfā'' "box" or ''sfentā'' "ship". | |||
Greek loanwords belong to two layers: an earlier one with more varied semantic fields (''falem'' "room", ''ninfā'' "woman"<ref>The etymology of Elodian ''ninfā'' is debated: while the Greek origin is the most commonly cited one, many contemporary linguists do not agree: the existence of dialectal forms such as ''ninwā'', ''nimwā'' and even ''nimbā'' point to a non-IE source - perhaps linked with Sumerian ''nin'' - plus an unknown bilabial morpheme; folk etymology linking it to the Greek word then would have made the form with ''-f-'' prevalent in literary usage and in the modern standard (both written and spoken).</ref>, ''kal'' "jar", ''līlā'' ''kurfā'' "helmet"<ref>Many loanwords from Ancient Greek are feminine words due to Elodian having adopted the accusative form, whose ending in -α was generally interpreted as feminine unless the word explicitely referred to a male human.</ref>, ''sotālo'' "stadion; (colloquially) two hundred meters") and a later one, generally used in scientific terms, but using a sound correspondence that hints to the original (ancient) loanwords (''epatā'' "hallucination", ''linosawr'' "dinosaur", ''owtomot'' "ATM" (mediated from German)).<br/> | |||
During the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era, and - with few sporadic exceptions - up to 1971 the language of the ruling economical (and most recently political) élite was Ligurian, and many words entered Elodian from it, either from the more "rural" variety closer to Intemelio of most settlers, or from the more "refined" speech closer to Genoese of the élite. Many of these relate to administration or commerce (''palāng'' "money", ''dyugangā'' "customs", ''awǝntaji'' "profit, gain", ''bitēgā'' "shop", ''mazanggīng'' "warehouse", ''purpuzisyung'' "bill (legislation proposal)"), nautical terms (''bekezi'' "pitching"), but also quite a few general words (''bunamang'' "tip (monetary)", ''cǝ̄w'' "OK", ''turna'' "again") and some foodstuffs (''galetā'' "(salted) biscuit", ''pǝrbujūng'' "pasta- or dough filling from mostly spontaneous herbs, or a vegetable soup"). | |||
Words from other languages - mainly Turkish, Russian, French, more recently English - are rarer. | |||
Throughout the 20th century and particularly since the Emancipation - the ethnic riots of 1969-1971 which terminated the ''de facto'' hegemony of Pontic Ligurians over the country and led to the appointment of the first ethnically Elodian head of state in recorded history - newly coined Elodian words and particularly calques have been the predominant form of enriching the language's lexicon: over 90% of new entries in Elodian dictionaries since 1980 have been calques, either partial or complete. Some calques are new coinings (cf. ''xazi rasmok'' "comic", calque of Fr. ''bande dessinée'', or ''suhitmā'' "committee, council", a calque of Greek ''συνέδριον''), while some are meaning extensions of preexisting words (sometimes loans), e.g. ''moydān'' "square > forum" ''robbān'' "(ship) captain > Internet browser". There are also a few phonosemantic matches such as ''bǝndǝ̄dā'' "band-aid", the first part of which is from English ''band-'' while the matching part corresponds to the ending of ''zemǝ̄dā'' "bandage". | |||
==Texts== | ==Texts== | ||