Feb 7, 2006 10:17 am
Geek Stuff | Linguistics
If you happen to be taking part in the Conlang relay, look away now. This reveals my text, and the relay is not over, so it’s cheating if you peek!
I’m currently participating in the 13th Conlang Relay. “What’s a Conlang relay?” you ask. The link explains it all, but in short: a game of Conlang telephone, in which a text is translated repeatedly from language to language, each translator aided only by a vocab and a rudimentary grammar that explains only what’s necessary to understand the text.
Since some of my readers (or at least one of them) may be interested in the text, I’m posting my Yivrian translation together with the grammar and vocab exactly as I sent them on to the ring. You may try your hand at translating it, if you’d like. I’ll post the “answer” in the comments in a few days.
THE TEXT
Niul eyi pelíra ela lastam kathona nasakavva osro a’ilo:
Loraon anarvessa osro’il pirsedam onyal osind keth noyaa el. Nyel senyala da yarono so raun na lavus.Po tapílona kírith lassimil ta ikil ta dakil dosavvala. Nokepyal em seyya nakírith na tapun da kénessonor té kírith fal sotayyala tarsayéos osind fainen apirsan. Naosind ku fainyaa tabohyol pirsedam. Kéhaila kéhoyal ren, té voethrayala. Pirsedam pudahyol ta kírith nayal no ditoilona ela gevi. Até nasaron afainyé osind apirsan, pirsedam daroyal da badomon na kanda.
Hear me read the text.
VOCAB
a- (prefix) — of, genitive
até — despite, nonetheless, however
badom — rest, remainder
da — in
dakil — fat
daroya — to be happy, to make merry
dito — sack, bag
dosya — to stand, to sit
el — he (3sg masc)
ela — with; about, concerning; full of
em — subordinating conjunction; introduces a subordinate clause expressing intent or desire
ethraya — to be cold
eyi — to be
fainya — to come here, to approach, to draw near
fal — there (adverb)
gev — book (u-declension)
ikil — black
ilo — sadness
kanda — day
katha — which (see note)
keth — which/that (relative; see note)
ku — when, while
ké- (prefix) — all, every
kéha — hand
kéhoya — to touch
kírith — raven
lassimil — small
lastam — young person, youth
lavus — snow
loran — middle
na- (prefix) — that one
na — from; made of; out of, (part) of
narvessa — month
nasakya — to cast aside, to throw away, to discard
nasaron — afterwards, following (nasaron a+infinitive)
naya — to crawl, to slither
nesso — power
niul — this (thing)
no — to, towards; into
nokepya — to attempt, to try
noya — to go to, to approach
nyel — this one (3sg masc)
onya — to see
osind — sleigh, sledge; any unwheeled transport dragged after a horse, esp. in winter
osro — winter
pelíra — story, tale
pirsan — teacher
pirsedam — student
po — upon, on
pudya — to be still, to be quiet
ren — wall (u-declension)
senya — to stand, to stay, to remain
seyya — to put
so — near, next to
sotayya — to cling, to be attached
ta — and
taboya — to be worried
tarsaya — to look in the face; to examine, to look at closely; to confront
top — shoulder (u-declension)
té — but
té — raven
yaro — garden
GRAMMAR
NOUN MORPHOLOGY
There are five cases in Yivrian, of which four occur in the text. They are expressed with the following affixes:
NOMINATIVE — (citation form): used for subject of verbs and object of prepositions when the prepositional phrase modifies a noun
GENITIVE a-: used for direct possession and in some constructions
DATIVE -os: meaning “for, for the sake of, to”
ABLATIVE -on: meaning “by means of, with, at such a time, in that place”, and used for the object of prepositions when the prepositional phrase modifies a verb
The genitive affix is always prefixed and is invariable. The dative and ablative affixes are infixed before a final vowel if there is any, e.g. NOM kenda “king” => ABL kendona “by the king”. In other cases it is simply attached to the end of the noun.
U-DECLENSION
There is a large class of nouns that have a change in the stem vowel in every form except the nominative. Rather than go into the details, I’ll simply list the alternate stems of all of the u-declension nouns in this text:
Primary stem/Secondary stem:
ren/ran-
gev/gav-
top/tap-
U-declension nouns also take the dative ending -us and ablative ending -un. (The fact that these nouns have -u- instead of -o- in these endings is what gives them their name.)
POSSESSION
Possession in Yivrian is indicated by infixing -i- into the final syllable (after the nuclear vowel), then adding one of several suffixes. The only suffix that occurs in this text is -la, the 3sg possessive suffix. E.g. kenda “king” => kendaila “his king”.
U-declension nouns form the possessive from the secondary stem given above, inserting the vowel -í- between the stem and the possessive suffix.
PLURAL
Plurals are formed by adding -r to the end of the word following a vowel, and -i following a consonant.
VERB MORPHOLOGY
ASPECT
All verbs in their citation form end in -ya. This indicates the “base” form of the verb. Other aspects of the verb are formed by changing this base ending:
-ya — base
-hya — causative
-vva — habitual
There are others (and there are subtleties even within these three), but they don’t concern the text so I’ve left them out.
The ending -ya is attached directly to the stem of the verb, while before -hya and -vva an epenthetic -a- is added.
VOICE
The first vowel of the verbal ending alternates to indicate voice.
-ya — active
-yo — passive
-yu — reflexive (not used, I think)
TENSE AND PHASE
After the first vowel of the verbal ending follows a consonant which indicates tense:
- (null) — present
-l — past
-n — future
Following this consonant, additional suffixes may occur to indicate “phase” (which is really another kind of aspect). In this text, only the suffix -a occurs, indicating progressive aspect.
Thus:
-ya — present simple active
-yaa — present progressive active
-yal — past simple
-yala — past progressive
VERBAL INFINITIVES
Verbs may form an infinitive by replacing the first vowel of the verbal ending with -é.
Infinitives are treated as nouns, and so may take nominal prefixes and suffixes. In particular, an infinitive with the dative ending -os indicates “in order to + INF”.
PARTICIPLES
Participles are formed by adding a special set of adjectival endings to a verbal stem which has had its final -ya (if any) removed. The participial endings are:
-en — active
-es — passive
MODAL PREFIXES
A verb may be prefixed with any of a set of seven prefixes to indicate mood, along with some other categories. The only modal prefix in this text is vo-, which is a general intensifier indicating “very” or “much so”.
MISCELLANEOUS
Adjectives can be derived from nouns by simple addition of the suffix -il. (Those words that only occur as adjectives in this text are simply listed in their adjectival form as such.)
Sequences of -nVn- are often reduced to -Vn- (i.e. the first /n/ is dropped. This also happens with other consonants, though I believe only with /n/ in this relay).
SYNTAX
WORD ORDER AND CASES
Yivrian syntax is SVO. Adjectives follow nouns, and prepositions precede their object. Generally both the subject and the object of a sentence are expressed in the “nominative” case above, as are objects of prepositions. However, following prepositions that are adverbal (i.e. modifying a sentence, not an NP) nouns must be in the ablative case.
Word order is somewhat flexible, so SOV and intransitive VS patterns also exist.
RELATIVE CLAUSES
Within a relative clause, the relative pronoun is NOT necessarily fronted. Rather, it retains whatever position it would normally have in the clause.
Furthermore, Yivrian distinguishes between “adjectival relative clauses”, which modify some other noun in the phrase, and “nominal relative clauses”, which occupy by themselves the place of some noun in the clause. This is an English example of an “adjectival relative”: “The person *who sings* is here.” And this is an example of a nominal relative: “*Whosoever might sing* is welcome.” Hopefully you know what I’m talking about.
The relative pronoun in adjectival relative clauses is *keth*, while the relative pronoun in nominal relative clauses is *katha*.
TENSE IN SUBORDINATE CLAUSES
Tense in subordinate clauses is relative to the tense of the main clause, i.e., if the main clause is in the past tense and the subordinate clause is simultaneous with the main clause, the verb of the subordinate clause must be expressed in the *present* tense. This applies to all subordinate clauses, included relative clauses.
I *hope* that’s all. Happy translating!
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