Ulion

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Omzinesý
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Ulion

Post by Omzinesý »

Ulion or Uliōn [ʊlɪ'(j)ɔ:n] is my newest conlanging project. My feeling is that it has some Indian (of India) but idk.
There seems to be some effect from DesEsseintes' Ch’eweyõw̌e, as well. I think it is not too heavy.








Consonants
p t t͡s t͡ʂ t͡ɕ k q <p t c č ć k q>
s ʂ ɕ <s š ś>
m n ŋ ɴ <m n nk nq>
l r ʀ <l r r̠>
ʋ j <v j>

Vowels
i: ĩ: u: ũ: <ī ĩ ū ũ>
ɪ ɪˀ ʊ ʊˀ <i ị u ụ>
ɛ: ɛ̃: ɔ: ɔ̃: <ē ẽ ō~o õ>
ə ʌ ʌˀ <e a ạ>
ɑ: ɑ̃: <ā ã>


Phonotactics
Onset
- Onset can be any consonant. ŋ ɴ don't however appear word-initially.
- Onset can be a cluster of stop, affricate, fricative or nasal and a liquid or/j/. (/j/ in that position is rare.)
- Syllables don't have to have an onset.
Nucleus
- Nucleus can be any vowel.
- Liquids can also appear as nuclei.
- /ə/ or a liquid cannot however be stressed.
Coda
- Only the last syllable can have a coda. Then it is always stressed.
- Any consonant can appear as a coda.

/ə/ or liquids cannot be followed by a coda and they cannot be followed by a consonant cluster.


Stress
Stress is not phonemic. It appears on the second-to-last syllable, if the last syllable has a short vowel or a liquid without coda. Else, stress appears on the last syllable. /ə/ and liquids cannot be stressed.


Allophony and other notes on phonemes

/ʌ/ is a rare phoneme. Usually it appears as an allophone of /ə/ in uvular environments.

/i:/, /ĩ:/, /u:/, and /ũ:/ lower and merge with /e:/, /ẽ:/, /o:/ and /õ:/ respectively before uvulars. /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ are also somewhat lowered.
/ə/ merges with /ʌ/ before uvulars.
/u:/, /ʊ/, and /ɑ/ are somewhat fronted after palatals.
The environment C[palatal]_C[uvular] must be an interesting tongue twister.

Glottalization affects the consonant following the vowel more than the vowel itself.
- Before stops, it is pronounced as a glottal reinforcement. (More or less as a glottal stop)
- Before other consonants, it is a creaky voice that realizes more during the consonant than the vowel.
- Before vowels or word-finally, it is a glottal stop.
Phonemically, it is however part of the vowel. Phonotactically, ɪˀ ʊˀ ʌˀ behave like ɪ ʊ ʌ. Glottalization does not make the syllable closed, and open syllables with short vowels are unstressed word-finally. It is also evident that glottalization does not appear with other vowels.

/j/ and /ʋ/ are pure fricatives/v/ and /ʝ/ word-finally. If the following word begins with a voiceless consonant, they are devoiced as a sandhi phenomenon.

There are some morphological processes caused by historical palatalizations (I don't really like Romance/Slavic style k~t͡ɕ alternations, but I don't know what else could explain that many affricates.), but they are not phonetic.

Example vocabulary
pr̠ạlū [pʀʌ'l̰u:] 'language'
jōri ['jɔ:ri] 'friend'
sịc [sɪʔt͡s] ' house'
kjũvi ['kjũ:ʋi] 'girl'
pjēcạ ['pjɛ:t͡sʌʔ] 'family'
mēsuk [mɛ:'sʊk] 'ground'
miprãš [mɪ'prɑ̃:ʃ] 'event'
kạrā [kʌ'r̰ɑ:] 'boy'
prēv [prɛ:v] 'house', 'home'
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Re: Ulion

Post by Omzinesý »

Genders

Ulion has four genders, though the status of the two latter ones may be argued.

Masculine (males, other random nouns)
Feminine (females, diminutives ending in -i, other random nouns)
Collective (Plurals of all nouns belong to this gender. Also collective nouns, like 'family', belong to it.)
Abstract (Adjectives agreeing this gender are identical with adverbs. Nearly all nouns in the gender are denominal or deadjectival 'X-ness' or deverbal 'X-ing'.)

Distributive plurals ('Everybody raised their hand(s).') are expressed by Singular or the noun repeated (full deduplication).


Noun cases

ATM, Ulion has six cases.

Direct
- most subjects
- definite objects

Ergative
- subjects when not word-initial (i.e. in an atypical position)
- inanimate transitive subjects (atypical semantics)
- stimulus arguments (I see you. I love you.)
- agents of nonfinite verbs

Genitive
- indefinite objects
- "possessors" (I don't like the term because it contains part-whole relations etc.)
- appears with postpositions

Edit: Ergative and Genitive might be combined á la Greenlandic, at least in most declensions. Indefinite objects would thus not be expressed with that case.


Locative
- adjuncts (place, time)
- I don't how how ditransitive verbs work but their recipient or theme argument will probably be coded by Locative.
- instruments

Essive (my favorite case that I put to all my langs)
- primary predicatives (X is an actor.)
- secondary predicatives (It made me happy.)

Sosiative
- conjuncts two nouns (Bill and Mary ~ Bill with Mary) (Verbs and adjectives may agree them in plural.)
- comitative (Bill comes with Mary.)
- what one has (I have a hat. => I am with a hat.)

Adding an objects is quite easy in Ulion. In the clause 'I will go to the town.', 'to the town' can be just be expressed as a direct object in Direct case.
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Re: Ulion

Post by eldin raigmore »

Highly intriguing so far!
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Re: Ulion

Post by Omzinesý »

First attempts for the declensions

"Consonantal" declension

- Stems ending in a consonant
- Stems ending in a liquid
- Stems ending in a short i.

Singular
Direct -Ø
Ergative ?
Genitive -e
Locative -u
Essive -r
Sosiative - ?

Plural
Direct -a.
Ergative ?
Genitive -ã
Locative -uju
Essive -r
Sosiative - ?


sịc
sịc ?
sịce
sịcu
sịcr
sịc ?

Singular
jōri
?
jōrje
jōrju
jōrir
?


DIR pr̠ạlū
ERG pr̠ạlõ
GEN pr̠ạlõ
LOC pr̠ạlū
ESS pr̠ạlur
SOS pr̠ạlū
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Re: Ulion

Post by DV82LECM »

I'm curious, why did you decide against /ʋ/ being in a co-articulated consonant cluster? Of any which that could be, THAT would have definitely given off an Indian vibe. 😀
𖥑𖧨𖣫𖦺𖣦𖢋𖤼𖥃𖣔𖣋𖢅𖡹𖡨𖡶𖡦𖡧𖡚𖠨
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Re: Ulion

Post by Omzinesý »

DV82LECM wrote: 22 Oct 2020 17:43 I'm curious, why did you decide against /ʋ/ being in a co-articulated consonant cluster? Of any which that could be, THAT would have definitely given off an Indian vibe. 😀
I'm not trying to be especially Indian. I just feel this lang has some indian vibe. Probably it is just my personal feeling.
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Re: Ulion

Post by Omzinesý »

Vocalic declensions

This should be done through a proto-language but I still don't have one.

They have stress on the last syllable.

Nom -ū, -ī, -ā
Erg -ūk, -īk, -āk
Gen -o, -ē, -ē
Loc -o, -ē, -o
Ess -or, -er, -ar
Sos -õ, -ê, -ã
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Re: Ulion

Post by Omzinesý »

Verb

Three aspects: Habitual, Progressive, Perfective (of which Perfective is synthetic and the other two periphrastic.
I always fail epistemic categories, but I think there will still be Egophoric, Reportative etc. forms

Periphrastic forms:

participle + copula

prịkr ụ 'He plays.'
prịkre ụ 'She plays.'
prịkrạ ụč 'They play.'

prịk-r-e
play(ing)-ESS-FEM
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Re: Ulion

Post by Omzinesý »

Syntax

I'm not sure if I one Ulion to be topic-prominent, i.e. if the syntactic topic is 'part of the clause' or something external. That also affects if Topics, which appear clause-initially, can be inflected in cases or not.

The most common word-order is SOV, where the verb is often periphrastic, a participle + a copula.

Kjũvi sećēkōse kōsir jiq.
kjũvi sećē-kōs-e kōsā-ir jiq
girl.NOM morning-food-GEN eat.PTCP-FEM.ESS COP.PROG.SG3
'The girl is eating breakfast.


Adpositions (usually) follow their noun. They are however somewhat rare and cases are used more often.
prēve tã 'in the house'
prēvu 'at home'[s\]
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Re: Ulion

Post by Omzinesý »

The copula

Three tenses: Present, Past, Future
Two aspects: Habitual(-Iterative), Progressive
Five epistemics: Direct, Opinion, Fact, Reportative

Subject agreement in person and number

That is 115 verb forms, some of them are though morphologically complex.

Number is not a real category in Ulion. Verbs don't kind of agree number but just person. "Nīn" means 'You are' both in singular and plural. If one wants to emphasize that there are several objects/persons, one can use word "pịrũ" 'and/with (an)other(s)'.

Direct epistemic, Habitual

nī 'I am'
nin 'You are'
ụ 'He/She/It is, They are'
nīn 'We (inclusive) are'

tlā 'I will be '
tlan 'You will be'
tla 'He/She/It will be'
tlān 'We (inclusive) will be '

čē 'I was'
čan 'You were'
qa 'He/She/it was, They were'
čēn 'We (inclusive) are'

Progressive

jir̄ī 'I am being'
jir̄in 'You are being'
jiq 'is/are being'
jir̄īn 'we (inclusive) are being'

...
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Re: Ulion

Post by Omzinesý »

Participle

Ulion will have very many participles that are mainly used in subordinate clauses. This post concerns "Active present participle" (It may have another label later), which is used as the complement of copula in main clauses.

There are three groups of Adjectives.
The first one has "short", unstressed suffixes. They are easily segmentable (stem-Essive marker - gender)

In Nominative
nũś 'sleaping (one) M'
nũśe 'sleaping (one) F'
nũśạ 'sleaping (one) PL'

In Essive (that appears with Copula)
nũśr
nũśre
nũśrạ

The second group has "long", stressed suffixes. Those participles are often derived from nouns. "kōs" means 'food' and "kōsā" means 'eating (one)'. They are segmented: (Stem - gender - Essive), but segmenting them is a bit more difficult because the gender marker also codes the fact that the word is a particle instead of a noun.

Nominative
kōsā 'eating (one) M'
kōs 'eating (one) F'
kōs 'eating (one) PL'

Essive
kōsar
kōsir
kōsạr

I think object pronouns will be attached to the participle, like in Spanish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_o ... oclitic. , but I don't know yet, how. I would like them not to move stress, with is difficult because Ulion has a phonetic stress.
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Re: Ulion

Post by Omzinesý »

It seems I'm, once again, struck in synthetic morphology.
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Re: Ulion

Post by Omzinesý »

Omzinesý wrote: 07 Nov 2020 17:54 Verb

Three aspects: Habitual, Progressive, Perfective (of which Perfective is synthetic and the other two periphrastic.
I always fail epistemic categories, but I think there will still be Egophoric, Reportative etc. forms

Periphrastic forms:

participle + copula

prịkr ụ 'He plays.'
prịkre ụ 'She plays.'
prịkrạ ụč 'They play.'

prịk-r-e
play(ing)-ESS-FEM
I'm changing the verb radically.
- There is a limited number of frequent verbs (and many infrequent ones used in literary registers). Thus verbs can be very irregular. Maybe something resembling Navaho TAM system.
- inchoative and cessative and their causatives can be formed of every verb, but their synthetic forms are always telic.
- negated cessative => progressive (doesn't stop doing)
- agreement with many arguments (indirect objects are common if there are light verbs)
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Re: Ulion

Post by Omzinesý »

I'll add Dative case. If light verbs are frequent, it appears as the (semantically transitive) patient of them. 'I made reparations to/for my house.'

Its marker is -q but it is often fused with the stem in consonant declension.

---------------
The stem often changes before the ending.

If the stem ends in an affricate, the affricate becomes a sibilant before the ending.
t͡s t͡ʂ t͡ɕ => s ʂ ɕ

Velars become uvulars before the ending
k => q

---------------
The ending -q often assimilates with the stem.

It fully assimilates with /p/, /t/, (and of course /q/), creating a geminate.
It assimilates in POA with s ɕ m n (and of course /ɴ/).


After /v/ or /j/, the ending takes form /qe/.
In plural the ending is always /ge/.



pr̠ạlū [pʀʌ'l̰u:] 'language' => pr̠ạlūq
jōri ['jɔ:ri] 'friend' => jōri
sịc [sɪʔt͡s] ' house' => sist
kjũvi ['kjũ:ʋi] 'girl' => kjũviq
pjēcạ ['pjɛ:t͡sʌʔ] 'family' => pjēcạge
mēsuk [mɛ:'sʊk] 'ground' => mēsuqq
miprãš [mɪ'prɑ̃:ʃ] 'event' => miprãšq
kạrā [kʌ'r̰ɑ:] 'boy' => kạrāq
prēv [prɛ:v] 'house', 'home' => prēvqe [s\]
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Re: Ulion

Post by Omzinesý »

The pattern of the synthetic verb. (I first thought the synthetic verbs are always perfective but now its just semantically unmarked Simple Aspect. )

Slot -1 - optional
i) zero
ii) Causative
iii) "cange" (i.e. inchoative/cessative)

Slot 0 Stem - alternates with:
i) Present
ii) Past
iii) Subjective Mood ("I think", EGO)
iv) Volitional (might have synthetic consequences as an antipassive)
stems

Slot 1 (probably several of them)
Cross-referencing (There could be several third persons: impersonal, proximal, distal)


Ideas
- Could personal deixis also encode tense?
- Could Inchoative and Cessative be distinguished by tense of the stem?
- How do tenses and moods encoded in the stem coappear?[s\]
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Re: Ulion

Post by Omzinesý »

Semantics of the light verbs

Be (have, be in)
Make/do
Give/say
Eat (make eat 'maintain ')
Know/can (can be (with Essive))
Use
Take
Put
Hit
...
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Re: Ulion

Post by Omzinesý »

I'm updating the case system. As a list, it is more boring but syntactically, it is more interesting.

Direct (subject, direct object)

Locative (location, instrument)
Dative (recipient, goal, some genitive functions)
Ablative (source, badly defined complements 'concerning', some genitive functions)

Essive (primary and secondary predicatives)
Sosiative (comitative, 'and', the possessed in the habeo construction)
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Re: Ulion

Post by Omzinesý »

Consonant declension

DIR prēv 'the house'

LOC prēvu 'in the house'
DAT prēvụ 'to the house'
ABL prēve 'from the house'

ESS prēvr 'as the house'
SOS prēvlu 'with the house'

Plural

DIR prēvạ 'houses'

LOC prēvạve
DAT prēvạq
ABL prēvạe

ESS prēvr ~ prēvrạ
SOS prēvlu ~ prēvlạ

The consonantal i-declension has ends in i in singular Direct
jōri 'the friend'

and in ị in plural Direct.
jōrị 'the friends'

Singular LOC DAT ABL ESS SOS and plural ES SOS are formed from singular direct and plural LOC DAT ABL are formed from plural Direct.
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Re: Ulion

Post by Omzinesý »

There are two morphological types of verbs: Light verbs and Derived verbs. Derived verbs are just a stem + verbal person suffixes. They are mostly used in formal speech.

sg1-il
sg2 -ic
sg1+sg2 -icl
sg3.M -iš
gs3.F -iś
pl1-ila'
pl2 -ica'
pl1+sg2 -icla'
pl3 -isa'

Past participle -i'.

Mūcil 'I walk about'
Mūcic 'You walk about'
...

The past tense is formed periphrastically [copula + past participle].

Nī mūci' 'I was walking about.'
...
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Re: Ulion

Post by Omzinesý »

Mitēlr caj ćēl.
'I love you.'

mitēl 'darling, beloved'
-r 'Essive'

caj 'you'

ćē 'consider (positive), like'
-l 'sg1'

The clause thus literally means: 'I consider you [my] darling.'
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