Revision as of 14:58, 21 March 2014

Taðýric is my ongoing effort - one that's been scrapped and reworked a good number of times - to create the most beautiful language possible to my sensibilities. I have developed a keyboard layout for typing the characters used in the written language.

Phonology

Consonants

• /r/ has many possible realizations, including a trill (in a complex onset), rhoticization of the previous vowel (in coda position), or a uvular approximant (in onset position).

Vowels

• All vowels can be lax and tense (RTR and non-RTR) apart from /ɔ/ (written ‹o›). Long vowels are realized as the vowel with a schwa offglide (ie /iː/ > [iə]). Short vowels are lax versions of long vowels (RTR).
• Length and tenseness is represented by an acute accent over the vowel.

Diphthongs

Diphthongs are frequently formed in agglutination. The language has a large and relatively unrestricted vowel inventory for a highly agglutinating language, and diphthong formation is complex:

• Marked combinations are disyllabic and not true diphthongs.

Phonotactics

Possible consonantal onset structures include:

• [null]
• any consonant
• any consonant followed by an approximant

Possible coda structures include:

• [null]
• a fricative
• a nasal
• a rhotic (Where /r/ is realized as a rhoticization of the previous vowel.)
• a geminate (disyllabic) plosive

• /t/ is realized as [ts] before high vowels.
• /k/ is lenited to a fricative [x] in coda position.
• a vowel between two other vowels will strengthen to an approximant (j or v).
• l in a complex onset with t, s, or š is palatalized to j.
• s and š regressively assimilate when in contact.
• Nasals in contact with another nasal or plosive regressively assimilate place.

Morphology

Nouns

Nouns are declined according to two numbers (singular and plural), two genders (animate and inanimate), five or seven cases (a total of eight), and three possessive persons (as well as singular and plural for each possessor).

Many adjectives may also be attached to nouns in a clitic form, as a prefix closest to the root.

Animate Paradigm

• The vocative is a postposed particle.

Inanimate Paradigm

Person

Singular possessive markers are prefixes. Plural markers are suffixes paired with the appropriate singular marker.

Inanimate nouns cannot take direct possession. Instead, root compounding is used (ie "the tree's branch" = tíðorcrác)

Verbs

Verbs take different roots depending on the animacy of their object. Crucially, this means that verbs must be used appropriately for their paradigm: for instance, the root for throwing an inanimate noun such as a ball is cílo, while throwing an animate object (whether actually alive or not) is arowé.

Verbs are obligatorily inflected for person and number. Transitive verbs are obligatorily inflected for the person and number of the object (in a single suffix). They may also be inflected for tense, aspect, and voice as individual agglutinations.

The verb to be does not exist; a noun may be derived as a verb with the suffix ov immediately following the stem.  In a similar fashion, to possess takes the form of the suffix et.

Person

Subject prefix is always furthest from the root. The plural suffix is paired with the singular prefix, before the object suffix.

Object

Object suffixes are always furthest from the root.

The object suffix placement is also that of the passive suffix -toc.

Tense

Aspect

Mood

Other Affixes

Example:

"We did not really want to stop loving them."
simalǿcelsarínjacpyvéloðer
si-mal-ǿc-elsarín-i-ac-py-vél-oðer
1-neg-int-LOVE-1p-pst-ces-des-3p.an

Lexicon

Demonstratives

Demonstratives precede the noun.

Particles

Numbers

Base-12 system. Numbers are prefixes or particles (cardinal). Ordinals are prefixes immediately before the stem.

Open Class

The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11: 1-9)

1. Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
2. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3. And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.
4. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth."
5. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.
6. And the Lord said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
7. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.
8. So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
9. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.