#Protolanguage

[yuk-tepat]

Proto-Swiric

More work on Proto-Swiric, the protolanguage of the Swira and their language family, Macro-Swiric.

The Swira mentioned before here occasionally, are nomadic herder "barbarians" living north of Tepat.

In order to develop them more, the protolanguage had to be developed more, and because I didn't do that first, it requires changes to the Swira language. For a very general view, see this skeleton history of the Swira in flowchart form. Also, more examples of them here: https://www.tumblr.com/yuk-tepat/tagged/swira.

The language family ranges over a large part of northern Tiptum (the continent on which Tepat is). (The yellow part of this (old) map: https://www.tumblr.com/yuk-tepat/123295676038/linguistic-map-of-tiptum-at-the-height-of-the)

Anyway, about the protolanguage:

The speakers lived at or near the junction of the Eastern Cordillera and the interior plains, and perhaps spanned across it. They were nomadic, at least some of them migrating seasonally between mountains and plains - similar to many of their descendants. But at this point, herding had not been adopted; that would come later, and so many words for things like horses, riding, etc. cannot be reconstructed this far back, only to subfamilies. Instead, they hunted, including some large grazers that are now extinct.

Consonants:

Fortis: p t k kʷ q qʷ ʔ

Lenis: b d g gʷ (q qʷ ʔ)*

Fricative: s x xʷ χ χʷ h

Nasal: m n ŋ ŋʷ

Approximant: l

Stops distinguish 'fortis' and 'lenis.' *Fortis/lenis distinction erased in q qʷ ʔ. Also, at the end of syllables. Alternation between them is forced in some environments; all stop clusters are Lenis-Fortis. Dorsal consonants can be front (velar) or back (uvular), and distinguish rounded or unrounded; Labials are always rounded, coronals and glottals are neutral.

Vowels:

Short: a i u ɯ ǝ

Long: e: o: (a:)

Seven, possibly 8, though some linguists reconstruct as few as three. /a/ alternates with schwa in some forms, less commonly /e o/ alternate with /i u/.

The vowels form a hierarchy from "strong"  to "weak" like so:

e, o > a > i u ɯ > ǝ

This is relevant for a number of processes, from stress to how morphemes combine. Stress usually falls on the strongest vowel in the stem. Strong vowels displace weaker vowels when they collide. Weaker vowels disappear or coalesce to form stronger vowels. Schwa is never stressed.

[tepat-side]

Proto-Swiric (Swira Protolanguage)

Lots of work on Proto-(Macro-)Swiric, the protolanguage of the Swira and their language family.

The Swira people are nomadic herding "barbarians" living north of Tepat, mentioned before a number of times. For more information on the general history of these people, see this skeleton history of the Swira in flowchart form. Also, more examples of their language / culture: stuff.

They belong to a larger language family, the Macro-Swiric language family, spread across much of the north of the continent. Developing Swira necessitated more work on the protolanguage, which was underdeveloped, which will require more changes to Swira.

Anyway, an overview of the protolanguage:

The speakers lived in Northern Tiptum (the continent on which Tepat sits). The large Taknic language family also originated nearby. They lived at or near the junction of the Eastern Cordillera and the interior plains, and perhaps spanned across it. They were nomadic, at least some of them migrating seasonally between mountains and plains - similar to many of their descendants. But at this point, herding had not been adopted; that would come later, and so many words for things like horses, riding, etc. cannot be reconstructed this far back, only to subfamilies. Instead, they hunted, including some large grazers that are now extinct.

[nonprojectspecific]

Tumblr Created Conlang - Phonology and Phonotatics of the Protolanguage

Phonology

The protolanguage distinguishes four places of articulation and four manners of articulation. Resulting in the following consonantal phones:

As the speakers of TumblrCreatedConlang live in a mountainous region, inspiration was taken from the Caucasian languages, which results in the uneven nasal distribution and the ejective plosives and approximants.

The protolanguage uses a classic five vowel system.

Phonotactics

The protolanguage allows for a maximum of a three syllables per word and stress falls on the central or final syllable.

The maximal onset is CA and maximal coda is C. The protolanguage allows vowels and syllabic nasals in the nucleus, this results in the following maximal syllables:

CAVC

(S/F)N̩C

[max1461]

Is it fair to say that none of the protolanguages of the primary Indo-European branches are as thoroughly reconstructed as Proto-Germanic? Maybe Italic or Indo-Aryan are close?

[48lexr]

Ok, so, when reconstructing natural proto-languages, those protolanguages are almost never attested. Historical Linguists are basically making educated guesses and throwing darts against a wall when making the Proto-Indo-European hypothesis, it was just that the evidence was so compelling that linguists (and, most humans) believe it. For all intents and purposes, it's a really good guess.

The issue with my conworld? Classical Zispoel and Proto-Ytosi-Itaush are still fully attested languages with exactly 2 and 1 native speakers each, all still technically living.

To make matters worse, Lozerief is kind-of a scientific genius, and Pagjom is the literal Hero of Language. Together, they could reconstruct Proto-Zispoel and see what a god-awful, horrifying shit-show it was.

The idea that my characters could derive my god-awful, good-for-nothing protolanguage is, somehow, deeply disturbing to me. I think they would realize they were in a simulation if they did that.

[reijnders]

inspired by @reyneluvirith skyrim and fire emblem maps sent to me by my friend, maps depicting the sub and regional dialects of the northeast of the country Yaence.

Also featuring lakes and rivers too small to be included on my past world maps(but not the big interactive QGIS one ive been doing forever), major highway-type guys(though these are primarily used by forms of public transit), the borders of prefectures, and some major-ish cities in the area.

Some info about the cities pictured, and the dialect fuckery going on as well below the cut!

LANGUAGE AND DIALECT

Pictured in this map are two major languages that fall under the Tewenic language family, and are sister languages. Called Twac̊in̊(left) and Seșǔ(right), they linguistically are more akin to niece and aunt respectively, with the latter diverging from the Tewes protolanguage at the same time as the common ancestor of Twac̊in̊ and minority language Hetema. Due to this, the writing used by Seșǔ is closely related to that of Twac̊in̊ , but retains archaic artifacts of the abjad that was once used by Twac̊in̊ , and remains still in Hetema. Examples of these archaic letters include the use of the cluster t-w(fig. 1) instead of the single glyph tw(fig. 2), and the original m(fig. 3) glyph that fell out of use in Twac̊in̊ due to the sound being dropped altogether as a phoneme. Despite being the most widespread in the language family, Twac̊in̊ is the only member to have lost the /m/ sound.

The organization of the different subsections of language can get a little rough, especially since I've had this project since forever, but he's a basic chart to get you by:

Basically, language describes what I call all forms of the language, comparable to English as an entire language. Macrodialect refers to massive regions that all share similar overall differences. So English : American English = Twac̊in̊ : South H̊lanuel. From there, dialect or subdialect, used interchangeably, is across comparatively smaller areas, but still pretty big. Where macrodialects may cover an entire section of a continent, a dialect may only cover a country or two. Then down into regional dialects, which are within a country at their largest. Comparing to real life again, USA southern English : Atlanta area dialect = Suyal : Na Hel.

TWAC̊IN̊

The official language of the nation, and technically has a lot of overlap and overshadowing in the areas marked in the Seșǔ map, but that's not what I wanted to highlight with these maps. It is the language of majority across all three species that reside in the country: yotavuș, the native species, making up about 79% of the population of Yaence; humans, making up about 13%; and Keleŵu making up the rest. Yaence is a bit of an outlier in terms of human population outside of Earthspace :).

Featured in particular are the three of the four subdialects of macrodialect South H̊lanuel spoken in Yaence: Aeleh, Suyal, and N̊anec̊. Not pictured are Luatwed, found in the furthest western corner of the nation, and the In̊seh subdialects Lusus and Siyue to the south. The nation's most populated city, Ludu, as of the 2372 census, is often considered as the place with the "most correct" dialect in the country, and the word <Duyacin̊> implies a sense of being the everyman, "normal", and most importantly, Not Poor. One of my main characters born and mostly raised in the city actually has an accent in direct opposition to this, due to his parents raising him around people with accents from central parts of the country, areas considered to be less well-off.

SEȘǓ

Something extremely important, which you may have noticed in the maps themselves, is that the nation's capital is surrounded by one of the Seșǔ subdialects. More importantly, one of three subdialects that is native to Yaence, traditionally a non-Seșǔ country. This lends to a very... interesting accent in the people of Yasnae, which includes a muddling of the Twac̊in̊ /ʃ/, and the contrasting in Seșǔ of /ʃ/ and /s/ as the biggest offender noticed by other people in the country. Plenty of folks, in particular those in the western, less diverse regions of Yaence, look down on this accent as a degradation of the Twac̊in̊ language, and some extremist groups have put this fact forth as definitive proof that somewhere with an accent that better represents the majority of people(a touchy subject to the other people in the south and central regions that the westerners also look down on), namely, somewhere like Ludu or Nen̊in̊(not pictured).

EXTRA

See below for a chart with these places and language parts written in the native writing system. Also, keep in mind that while Twac̊in̊ and Seșǔ use the same base alphabet, there are diacritics and the aforementioned archaic letters in play. Think of it like how both English and Spanish use the Latin alphabet, but similar letters may represent different sounds, and some variations may exist in one language but not the other(ñ and rr in Spanish, /ʒ/ for the most part in English). If anyone has specific questions about the language-y side of stuff, feel free to DM or send an ask!

[japhugmafia]

Conlang Diaries, Respianan Languages Typology.

Hey, it's been a while, so I've been thinking of making a typology paper* for my conlang family, the Respianan languages. This langfam includes my most developed conlang so far, Ekavathian, alongside more fragmentary projects such as Anindira and Hyragnon.

Part 1:

Proto-language.

I didn't wanna make the proto-language that detailed just yet, but I'm outlining my plans for the protolanguage.

Historical Respianan languages:

This is still WIP. I still haven't written much about these dead languages yet, but there will be more in the future (expect grammar sketches!) But these are mostly preliminary and just so I can develop them later.

Synchronic Typology

Well, this is a small part of typology that I'm still working on, but here's some sneak peek.

[mosquito-queen]

yelena knows the formation of fist and fight to break kate in half. she knows the weight required to snap bone, to rupture vital organs, she knows how to take the kill shot. but kate’s hands are on her in a way that she doesn’t know how to reciprocate: soft, wanting, asking… no, begging. it makes her want to run. intimacy isn’t in the vocabulary of her body. but the way kate stares up through thick lashes makes her want to learn a new language. what’s one more anyways?

except this script is in the same language family as violence - just a different font. because kate is dragging her nails down yelena’s back, tacking into her shoulder, whining. but yelena’s brain is stuttering danger, is confused how she can flex her fingers over kate’s throat in a way that makes her arch towards yelena instead of away. because how can the way kate’s hands twist up in her hair, the way kate sinks teeth to bruise her shoulder, the way their bodies tear into the other not warrant suffering? does it even matter the protolanguage when kate soothes every wound with a soft mouth? hurt written in cursive.

yelena knows the formation of fist and fight to break kate in half. she knows the weight required to snap bone, to rupture vital organs, she knows how to take the kill shot. her resolve has never wavered. she knows her hands are capable of a 8.7 magnitude earthquake, knows they can rearrange the topography of a body like some unholy apocalypse. her hands have never wavered. except now. except when kate says please.

and she buckles. because no one has ever waited for her answer. because she’s a weapon, a tool, a means to an end. never a person. never anything more. always nothing. just the weaker version of a machine. kate does something, something she’ll never have words for. something that escapes russian, and hungarian, and english, and everything else drilled into her. instead, she finds an outlet in something older, something ancestral and forgotten: she cries. tastes salt instead of the familiar metallic of blood. and kate. oh god, and kate. she goes to hold yelena. but learning a new language is hard and yelena uses her first word for comfort. 

hostility wraps snug, familiar, fits perfect between tongue and teeth. she shoves back from kate, away from the girl that knows adoration, and comfort, and belonging. the girl that wants her to be something. she pushes away from the potential of kate saying: none of this was real. because yelena has tried to learn care before. and it turned out to be a synonym of agony. she’s standing now, backing away. kate is slowly mirroring, hands up like yelena is something feral, something that needs a soft tone and soothing and, and and what is love but another word for cage?

she goes out the window.

[datasoong47]

If we had access to time travel and could study the history of a language going back far beyond what the comparative method could ever hope to reconstruct, tens or even hundreds of thousands of years, it occurs to me that we'd eventually hit a point where we get a Ship of Theseus situation, a point where not a single morpheme survives, the syntax has been completely replaced, grammatical categories have been thoroughly changed, the phonology has no recognizable relationship to the present form, etc.

And perhaps that ancestral language would actually be the protolanguage of a whole "family" (although that term would be rather inadequate for such a deep relationship), with branches that have been equally completely restructured. In short, a mega-family whose members don't retain any inherited features, and whose branches are functionally indistinguishable from being unrelated families

[aardappel-van-mijn-oog]

So I have two a priori conlangs that I'm working on right now, they're two related languages spoken by arctic hunter-gatherers on a small peninsular subcontinent in the conworld I'm making.

Anyway, I absolutely love how weird the cognates ended up being, like they're so fun. If I have a word in the protolanguage I have literally no clue whether it's gonna turn out super similar or nothing alike in the two daughter languages. Okay examples, let's take the word for 'berry'. Protolanguage *nhathan'ngha [nˤaˈtˤan.ŋˤa] Léna: nátángá [ná.tá.ŋá] Kkeṛhaqom: naṭannga [nä.ʈ͡ʂäŋ.ŋä]

Like okay that's relatively similar, fair enough. How about the word for 'wind'?

Protolanguage *ğharwxodh [ˈɣˤarʷ.xodˤ] Léna: árwxǝt [áɾʷ.xǝt] Kkeṛhaqom: harxuṭ [ˈhär.xʊʈ͡ʂ]

Fair enough, that's not too bad. Hmm... how about the word for 'a hunter'?

Protolanguage *ałhasocw [aˈʎˤa.socʷ] Léna: ǝlyásotw [ǝ.ʎá.sotʷ] Kkeṛhaqom: aghass [ˈä.ɣäsː]

PARDON ME SIR?

[yuk-tepat]

Proto-Taknic

Revising Proto-Swiric led me to take another look at another protolanguage, Proto-Taknic, which has no narrative role in the current Tepatic storyline, so it’s a bit of a distraction …

…but since its lexicon is smaller and simpler, it’s a nice guinea pig to try out new ways of keeping a dictionary (SIL FLEX).

Anyway, a summary:

Taknic is the northernmost major language family of Tiptum, the landmass where Tepat resides. Spread out across the northern half, but originated in the boreal region around the Great Lake, presumably spreading out along waterways.

Long history of interaction with Swiric speakers - sometimes violent. Most of the tribes of north Tiptum speak one or the other family. Proto-languages likely spoken nearby, with evidence of lexical borrowings between them. Also, some similar features - polysynthetic, similar phonological inventories.

Phonology: The most striking difference between Taknic and other languages is the number of labialized sounds, but lack of actual simple bilabial consonants. Dorsal consonants are distinguished as front (velar), back (uvular), rounded, and unrounded.

Consonants:

Dorsal

front dorsal (velar): k g ŋ x ɰ kʷ gʷ ŋʷ xʷ w back (uvular): q χ qʷ χʷ unrounded: k g ŋ x ɰ q χ rounded: kʷ gʷ ŋʷ xʷ w qʷ χʷ

Neutral: t d n s ɬ y ʔ h

Vowels: i ɨ u a

Vowel-initial words / roots have a glottal stop prefixed to them, initial consonants clusters have [ɨ] and then glottal stop added. Thus syllables all (phonetically) begin with consonants and the maximum syllable is CVC.

Nouns: can be bare roots. Cases are nominative (unmarked) and oblique (which includes the patient argument in ditransitive clauses). Nouns are optionally marked for possession with the same personal markers as verbs. Some nouns must be possessed, others can’t. Derivational suffixes can be used to derive one kind from the other and vice versa.

Adjectives: none, use stative verbs.

Verbs: are long (or can be).

Tentative verb template:

subject marker - stem prefix - VERB ROOT - NOUN ROOT - direction - mood - tense - double object - patient - converb

Syntax: at some level, probably VO, but nobody really cares, you can move stuff around wherever.

Lexicon: Most things have a gimmick, and in Taknic the gimmick is ground-conflating path verbs. To understand, you can check out Leonard Talmy, who developed a typology of motion events. To explain in the shortest way possible:

Some languages have motion verbs that primarily express the “path” (direction of motion - go in, go out, go up), some like English have verbs that express the manner (how something moves - walk, fly, swim). A sadly extinct North American language Atsugewi has motion verbs that primarily express the “figure” (the form of the thing that moves). No known languages build their motion-expressing system on the “ground” (the place with respect to which something moves). Taknic motion verbs primarily express the ground - e.g., they express the place or thing with respect to which something moves, the frame of reference for the motion. The direction is expressed in prefixes, rather than the root itself.

[tanadrin]

my dream job--and i mean “job” loosely, i would do this for no pay--would be reconstructing protolanguages for families that are pretty well established, but who still need somebody to obsessively crawl through their lexicons and grammars to work out the exact sound correspondences

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Det sted man er fra er alltid pent, det er fedrelandsfølelsen i det små, hjemmefølelsen.*

- Knut Hamsun

*The place you're from is always beautiful, it's the sense of country in a small way, the feeling of home.

Most of us have heard of Lapland, but we’re not supposed to call it that anymore. The correct term these days is Sápmi - i.e. the land inhabited by the Lapps (or, rather, the Sami - as they very much prefer to be known). And, fair enough: they’ve got every right to assert their own identity, especially after centuries of domination by their southern neighbours.

Some of those neighbours are now keen to make amends for past injustices. For instance, the Swedish government made a point of using its presidency of the EU Council of Ministers to celebrate Sami National Day.

I can only imagine that it was worded with the best intentions, but if you read any of the Scandinavian press and media, it’s clear that it hasn’t gone down well with everyone. The problematic claim is that the Sami are “the EU’s only indigenous people” (my italics).

For a start, what is meant here by ‘indigenous’? According to most dictionaries, it’s the property of being original to, or characteristic of, a particular part of the world. In which case, there are all sorts of European peoples who could claim to be indigenous to Europe. For instance, the geneticist Razib Khan points out that the ancestors of today’s majority-Swedish population have been in Scandinavia for at least as long as the ancestors of today’s Sami.

The Norwegians and Swedes originated from the Norse people. The Norse people in turn originated from the Proto-Germanic peoples who migrated to the area of northern Germany, Denmark, southern Scandinavia. The Proto-Germanic peoples in turn originated from the Proto-Indo-European people whose homeland lies in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, the area around Ukraine and southern Russia.

Likewise, the Sami are not quite indigenous to the area either. The Sami originated from the Proto-Uralic people, whose homeland was around the Ural mountains (and was therefore close to the Proto-Indo-Europeans and resulted in interactions between their protolanguages, resulting in lexical borrowings). The Proto-Uralic peoples, just like the Proto-Indo-Europeans, slowly expanded and migrated, but in their case they expanded to the northwest and the northeast (with the notable exception of the Hungarians who ended up in Hungary). The Proto-Samic people, a subgroup of the Proto-Uralic peoples that gave rise to the modern Sami, were said to have displaced or merged with a much earlier indigenous Paleo-European group that was already in northern Scandinavia. This is evidenced by substrate words present in the Sami languages that derive neither from Proto-Uralic nor from Proto-Indo-European.

In any case, if Europeans are going to have a competition as to who was in Europe first, then it might be won by those with the most Neanderthal ancestry - because, as genomic testing has revealed, millions of us carry Neanderthal genes.

But perhaps the Swedish government is using indigenous to mean something more specific. According to Merriam-Webster the word relates to “the earliest known inhabitants of a place and especially of a place that was colonised by a now-dominant group”. This extra element of oppression by outsiders sharpens up the definition. However, while it applies to the Sami people and their history, it doesn’t do so uniquely. There are many ethnic groups in Europe that have been around for ages and which have been maltreated by foreign overlords. Just ask the Welsh, for instance, or the Basques.

It could be argued that the Sami are in a special category because of where they live (i.e. the most northerly reaches of Europe) and how they lived there (e.g. by reindeer herding). To have maintained a traditional culture for so long into the modern era surely sets them apart. But, again, this is debatable. While there’s no doubting the distinctiveness of the Sami, other Europeans can also lay claim to ancient traditions that have survived against the odds. To take a topical example, the Ukrainians are literally sacrificing their lives for a distinctive culture, language and history that Putin wants to erase.

Progressives ought to think twice before making an issue about who is and isn’t indigenous in Europe. While the label might play into the victim/oppressor narratives of the woke Left, it can also be exploited by the far-Right.

At a time when populism is a constant threat, telling people that they’re not indigenous to a place where they and their ancestors have lived for “time immemorial” is less than helpful. I’m sure that the Swedish government meant well, but it’s pulling on a dangerous thread.  

When language is allowed to become dissociated from meaning or the map from the territory, then fractional strife and chaos awaits. Orwell understood it perfectly from his observations of Stalinists: control language and you control expression; control expression, you control dialogue, and eventually the political narrative.

[outofangband]

(another) Early Quenya board!

x x  x x  x x 

Early Quenya was one of the first stages of development that the language went through, prior to 1930. At this stage, it was spoken only by the elves who would become the Vanyar as the Noldor spoke Gnomish, a protolanguage to Noldorin which is more related to Sindarin than later Noldorin Quenya.

[max1461]

When you want to write a longpost about some interesting aspect of your conworld, like the Hhotakotí revolution, wherein a charismatic young military leader united the Hhotabain for the first time, abolishing the clan system and replacing the traditional positions of clan representatives on local councils with guild representatives, creating an industrial-oligarchic state which would rapidly become a major regional power. But you can't write a longpost about that yet because in order to do that you need to have a good picture of the rhetoric and the writings of the movement, and for that you need to have the details of the traditional clan system and the pitfalls pointed to by its discontents worked out. And the clan system grew naturally as the Hhotakotí spread across the archipelago so you need to have all the early population movements mapped out (for which you need your map, but we'll get to that) and in order to do that you need to decide on a branching for the different dialects of Hhotakotí. Now obviously if you're going to be making decisions about dialect branching you need the basic structure of the grammar down, and the grammar of the protolanguage. But a major part of the grammar that you've been using for years evidently runs up against putative syntactic universal FOFC, which places limits on mixed head-direction structures related to center embedding. And now you've found a possible counterexample in Sumerian, so you want to base your structure on this example, and there's various strange embedding depth constraints you have to account for as a result, but also you have no idea about the diachronics of the Sumerian case obviously. So you have to look into the grammar of some other proposed counterexamples, which mostly come from Australia. Now this is promising because case stacking is an areal feature in both Australia and the Caucasus region, which is probably why these weird center embedding phenomena show up in Sumerian, so you hope that the relevant syntactic structures might be similar enough to be useful. But combing through grammars like this is a lot of work and you have homework all the time so you can't do it right now. And also to place the protolanguage geographically you need your fucking map, which has been lost for 8 years now even though you KNOW it's in a box in your parents' basement somewhere. So you can't write the longpost yet. Anyone else have experience with this?

[48lexr]

Introducing: Néndisfas

Consider this post a very brief introduction to my in-progress conlang, Néndisfas.

In summary, Néndisfsho is a fusional language with phonemic pitch-accent, personal agreement in verbs, and split-ergative based on animacy.

Phonology

Consonants

/p/, /b/, /m/, /t/, /d/, /n/, /k/, /g/, /ŋ/, /kʷ/, /gʷ/

/f/, /v/, /s/, /ʃ/, /z/, /xʷ/, /h/

/w/, /j/, /ɾ/, /l/, /ʎ/, /ʟ/

Not much to say here but for the three way /l/, /ʎ/, /ʟ/ distinction held-on from the protolanguage.

Vowels

Five-vowel system with length distinction, making 10 vowels. Not interesting at all here.

Phonotactics

Max syllable: CV(C)(C)(C) / CV(C)#

Indeed, this means that the maximum size of a consonant cluster could be 4-consonants long,

Morphology / Syntax: Grammar

Verbs

Verbs (and predicative adjectives) are simple, comparatively, to the syntactic nonsense going down with nouns.

Verbs take a prefix for perfective and passive, and a suffix for past or present and to agree with the subject in gender (animate, inanimate).

Due to sound changes, verbs fall into one of six categories, but classes II, III, and IV all have alternate forms.

Nouns

Néndisfsho nouns take on one of two genders: Common or Neuter. Common nouns were derived from old animate nouns, and neuter nouns were derived from old mass nouns. The nouns which didn't fit with either were grandfathered in.

Due to sound changes, nouns take on one of six endings depending on their class. Classes I, III, and V have alternate forms.

Nouns also inflect for one of 5 cases: Nominative, Genitive, Accusative, Allative, and Commitative. The Allative, though, is beginning to be used like an Ergative, marking an animate subject of an intransitive verb, and an animate object of a transitive verb.

Take, for instance, the following sentences:

Yés-e váw-i ve-kát-ur-o.

Yessei.C-NOM car.N-ACC PRV.drive.PST.ANIM

"Yessei had driven the car."

Since the car is not animate, Yessei is rendered in the nominative, and the car is rendered in the accusative. In the following sentence, however:

Yés-ivā búm-pe kéht-us

Yessei.C-ALL dark.N-NOM hate.PRES.INAN

"The dark hates Yessei."

Here, the nominative case is reanalyzed as an absolutive, and the allative as an ergative.

This structure could be rewritten with a passive, like

Yés-ivā (búp-ko) ver-kéht-o

Yessei.C-ALL (dark.N-GEN) PASS.hate.PRES.ANIM

"Yessei is hated (by the darkness)."

Here, the genitive marks the agent, and the allative (ergative) marks the subject. Yessei, in this context, is treated as the object of a transitive verb, rather than the subject of an intransitive verb.

The reason this is so messy right now is because the language is in the middle of evolving the ergativity.

Other Notes

Néndisfas has no "true" 2nd or 3rd person pronouns, because pronouns are a completely open class in Néndisfas. The general 1st person pronoun is "gémse, géra, gésho" (I, me, my).

This is probably a language I'll wind up using as a meme language throughout my writing. It originally started as a language used in the deserts of Southern Atepsi, but now it's Yessei's first language, so I decided it can be both. In the context of Meiste, though, this is a long-dead language.

Paging the usual suspects: @quillswriting @oldfashionedidiot @ominous-feychild

Also if y'all have translation suggestions don't hesitate to drop them in my asks or as a reply/reblog to this post lol.