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Fiat Lingua Title: An Introduction to the Tirazdak Language Author: Timothy L. Smith MS Date: 11-11-2020 FL Date: 12-01-2020 FL Number: FL-00006F-00 Citation: Smith, Timothy L. 2020. "An Introduction to the Tirazdak Language." FL-00006F-00, Fiat Lingua, <http://fiatlingua.org>. Web. 01 December 2020. Copyright: © 2020 Timothy L. Smith. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Fiat Lingua is produced and maintained by the Language Creation Society (LCS). For more information about the LCS, visit http://www.conlang.org/ An Introduction to the Tirazdak Language by Timothy L. Smith Version 2.2 – October 2020 Table of Contents 0 Symbols and Abbreviations 0.1 Note on Phonetic, Phonemic and Graphemic Symbols 0.2 Note on Interlinear Glosses 0.3 Abbreviations Used in Interlinear Glosses 0.4 Other Abbreviations 1 Introduction 1.1 Historical Background 1.2 Genetic Classification and Typology 1.3 About This Paper 2 Phonology and Orthography 2.1 Note on the Writing System 2.2 Overview of Pronunciation 2.3 Consonant Phonemes 2.4 Vowel and Diphthong Phonemes 2.5 Syllabification, Stress and Timing 2.6 Phonotactics and Morphophonemics 3 Morphology 3.1 Word Classes 3.2 Inflectional Morphology 3.2.1 Nouns 3.2.2 Pronouns 3.2.3 Determiners 3.2.4 Quantifiers 3.2.5 Units of Measure 3.2.6 Verbs 3.3 Derivational Morphology 3.3.1 Deriving Nouns from Nouns 3.3.2 Deriving Verbs from Nouns 3.3.3 Deriving Nouns from Verbs 3.3.4 Deriving Verbs from Verbs 4 Syntax 4.1 Clauses and Sentences 4.2 Simplex Sentences 4.2.1 Predicates and Arguments 4.2.1.1 Intransitive Sentences 4.2.1.2 Monotransitive Sentences 4.2.1.3 Ditransitive Sentences 4.2.1.4 Ambitransitive Verbs 4.2.1.5 Existential Sentences 4.2.1.6 Predicate Nominals 4.2.1.7 Unstressed Pronouns as Arguments 4.2.1.8 Demonstrative Pronouns as Subjects 4.2.2 Adjuncts 4.2.2.1 Prepositions and Prepositional Phrases 4.2.2.1.1 Prepositions as Case Markers 4.2.2.1.2 Prepositional Phrases as Adjuncts 4.2.2.1.3 Prepositional Phrases as Predicates 4.2.2.1.4 Prepositions as Adverbs 4.2.2.1.5 Semantics of Prepositions 4.2.2.2 Adverbs 4.2.3 Other Constituents 4.2.3.1 Vocatives 4.2.3.2 Interjections 4.2.4 Tense, Aspect and Mood Marking 4.2.4.1 Primary Tense/Aspect Particles 4.2.4.2 Composite Tenses 4.2.4.3 The Progressive Construction 4.2.4.4 Secondary Aspect Particles 4.2.4.5 Mood Particles 4.2.4.6 Imperatives 4.2.5 Negation 4.2.6 Questions 4.2.6.1 Yes-No Questions 4.2.6.1.1 Neutral Yes-No Questions 4.2.6.1.2 Affirmatively Biased Yes-No Questions 4.2.6.1.3 Negatively Biased Yes-No Questions 4.3.6.2 Disjunctive Questions 4.2.6.3 WH-Questions 4.2.7 The Passive Voice 4.2.8 Locative Verbs 4.3 Compound and Complex Sentences 4.3.1 Parataxis 4.3.2 Hypotaxis 4.3.2.1 Noun Clauses 4.3.2.1.1 Reported Speech 4.3.2.1.1.1 Indirect Statements 4.3.2.1.1.2 Indirect Questions 4.3.2.1.1.3 Indirect Requests 4.3.2.1.1.4 The Logophoric Pronoun 4.3.2.1.2 Modal and Semi-Modal Verbs 4.3.2.1.2.1 Modal Verbs 4.3.2.1.2.2 Semi-Modal Verbs 4.3.2.1.2.3 Modal and Semi-Modal Verbs with Pronominal Arguments 4.3.2.1.3 Complements of Non-Modal Verbs 4.3.2.1.4 Other Noun Clauses 4.3.2.3 Relative Clauses 4.3.2.4 Adverbial Clauses 4.3.2.4.1 Clauses Introduced by Subordinating Conjunctions 4.3.2.4.2 Subordinating Conjunctions and Prepositions 4.3.2.4.3 Conditional Sentences 4.4 The Noun Phrase: Nouns and Their Modifiers 4.4.1 Noun + Attributive Adjective 4.4.2 Noun + Genitive 4.4.3 Noun + Relative Clause 4.4.4 Noun + Determiner 4.4.5 Noun + Quantifier 4.4.6. Ordering and Co-occurrence Rules for Nominal Modifiers 4.5 Counting and Measuring 4.5.1 Cardinal Numbers 4.5.2 Ordinal Numbers 4.5.3. Fractions 4.5.4 Units of Measure 4.6 Word Order, Contrast and Emphasis 4.6.1 Topic and Focus 4.6.2 Clause-Level Variation 4.6.3 Phrase-Level Variation 4.6.4 Restrictions on Variation 4.7 Summary of Clitic Slots 4.7.1 Verbal Proclitics 4.7.2 Nominal Proclitics 4.7.3 Enclitics 5 Formulaic Utterances 5.1 Greetings and Partings 5.2 Forms of Address 5.3 Polite Requests 5.4 Apologies 6 Sample Texts and Translations 6.1 Na Wara Kyeldi (poem) 6.2 Excerpt from Xunyevandag i Fach (liturgical text) 6.3 Chorémat Hayá (song) 7 Tirazdak-English Glossary Appendix A The New Atlantean Kinship Structure A.1 Overview A.2 Names A.3 Kinship Terms A.4 The Incest Taboo Appendix B The New Atlantean Religion B.1 Theology B.2 The Clergy and Its Role in Society Appendix C Government and Law in New Atlantis C.1 The Political System C.2 The Legal System C.3 Individual Freedom and the Law: Some Test Cases Appendix D The New Atlantean Calendar D.1 Description D.2 Sample Calendars Appendix E The New Atlantean Economy Appendix F Liturgical Music in New Atlantis F.1 Overview F.2 The System of Melodic Modes F.2.1. Modes, Scales, and Half-Scales F.2.2. The Metascale F.2.3. Static and Dynamic Modes F.3 The Tuning System F.3.1. Pitches and Intervals F.3.2. Human and Divine Music Tables 2.1 Consonant Phoneme Inventory 2.2 Phonetic Realization of Vowel Phonemes 3.1 Gender-Number Suffixes 3.2 Pronouns 3.3 Non-Numeric Quantifiers 4.1 Non-Numeric Quantifiers (repeated) A.1 Lexical Stems of Kinship Terms D.1 Calendars for New Atlantean Years 130-144 F.1 “Divine Pitch” vs. “Human Pitch” 0. Symbols, Abbreviations and Typographical Conventions 0.1. Note on Phonetic, Phonemic and Graphemic Symbols In this description of the Tirazdak language, I will follow the usual convention that phonetic symbols and phonetic transcriptions are enclosed in square brackets, that phonemic symbols and phonemic transcriptions are placed between slashes, and that graphemes of the Tirazdak orthography are placed between angle brackets. For example, when referring to the alveolar nasal (the sound that is represented in English by the letter “n”), [n] represents a phone, /n/ represents a phoneme in Tirazdak, and <n> represents the letter that stands for that phoneme in the standard Tirazdak orthography. Phonetic and phonemic symbols are those of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).1 0.2. Note on Interlinear Glosses For interlinear glosses, I have followed the conventions described in the Leipzig Glossing Rules, which are specified in detail at <http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php>. To summarize, the glosses are organized as follows: 1. Line 1: the unmodified Tirazdak text; 2. Line 2: the Tirazdak text with words divided into morphemes, and with some phonotactic changes neutralized for greater clarity; 3. Line 3: a literal morpheme-by-morpheme gloss of Line 2; 4. Line 4: a more or less idiomatic English translation. Line 1 and/or Line 4 may be omitted if given in the immediately surrounding text, or if sufficiently obvious from the context. In Lines 2 and 3, affixes are separated from stems and from each other by hyphens, while clitics are separated from stems, from affixes, and from each other by equals signs, except where morphemes are not readily segmentable (that is, where two or more morphemes are “squished” into a single “portmanteau morph”), in which case the unsegmentable morph is given as a single unit in Line 2, while the glosses of its component morphemes in Line 3 are separated by periods. Words (but not morphemes within a word) are separated by whitespace, adjusted so that each word in Line 2 is aligned with its gloss in Line 3. (By “word” here I mean a phonological word – that is, an orthographic word plus any attached clitics.) The glosses of lexical morphemes are words in ordinary lower-case letters, while the glosses of grammatical morphemes are abbreviations in small capitals. A list of such abbreviations used in this paper is given below. Certain morphemes have more than one gloss; for example, the preposition na, which has allative, locative, dative, and accusative meanings, is glossed as “to”, “at”, “DAT”, or “ACC”, depending on the context. 1In order for IPA symbols to be displayed and/or printed correctly on a personal computer, it is necessary to use both a font that includes the IPA character set (e.g., Doulos SIL) and a word-processing program that is Unicode- aware. 1 0.3. Abbreviations Used in Interlinear Glosses 1 first person IMP imperative 2 second person INCH inchoative 3 third person INCL inclusive ACC accusative INFER inferential AFF affirmative INTER interrogative ATEL atelic IPFV imperfective CAUS causative ITER iterative COL collective gender LOG logophoric COM common gender M masculine gender COMP complementizer NEG negative COND conditional NN non-nominative CONJ conjunction OPT optative CONTR contrafactual ORD ordinal COP copula PASS passive EMPH emphatic PAST past EXCL exclusive PERF perfect EXIST existential PFV perfective EXP experiential PL plural DAT dative PLACE “place” class (neuter II gender) DU dual Q question EXCL exclusive REL relative pronoun F feminine gender RT relative tense FOC focus SEMEL semelfactive FRAC fraction SG singular FUT future STUFF “stuff” class (neuter IV gender) GEN genitive THING “thing” class (neuter I gender) HYP hypothetical TIME “time” class (neuter III gender) 0.4.