Tlavehmak: An Underground Artlang by Abigail Hodge

Castle Veh has been under siege for hundreds of years. In that time, a sprawling city has developed below the ground. The inhabitants of this city have a complicated relationship with the outside world—government propaganda casts the surface-dwellers as monsters; a group of mages devotes their lives to spinning together dreams of what the sun might look like; and knowledge smugglers drag back scraps of information from the heavily-warded battlefield.

1 1 Background and Motivation

People create languages to achieve a wide variety of goals: from uniting speakers of multiple languages, aiming for a language of pure logic, or making an artistic or aesthetic statement. The last goal is fulfilled by a category of constructed languages known as artistic languages, or artlangs. One of the driving motivators behind many artlangs is for use in a fictional setting.

Tlavehmak, the focus of this paper, is one such language. I created it for a story set in the fictional city of Castle Veh, an underground and isolated place, which has had no contact with the outside world for several centuries.

The main purpose of this artlang was to enhance the setting and characterization of my story. While I reject the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, I do believe that language and culture are linked together, in such a way that by enhancing the language, I can enhance the culture, and vice-versa. This results in a more believable world, and a more developed story, which is more enjoyable to write and read.

I therefore decided to focus on the language’s lexicon, semantics, and morphosyntax more so than the phonology. I was especially interested in noun classes, which tend to have interesting metaphorical extensions that I thought would tie in well with a fantasy setting. In

Fula, for example, the class for long and winding things is extended to stories, dreams, and fragrances. I believed that utilizing these metaphorical extensions would be helpful and illuminating while worldbuilding Veh’s culture.

As the speakers of Tlavehmak are human, another goal was to make the language typologically reasonable. I wanted all features to make sense and maintain an internal consistency. I also wanted to make Tlavehmak distinct enough from English that it would feel

“foreign” to English-speaking readers, but not so distinct that it would seem completely alien.

2 Therefore, my goals when designing Tlavehmak were threefold: to flesh out the culture

of Castle Veh, to examine how magic and isolation would affect Tlavehmak’s lexicon, and to

make the language realistic but interesting.

2 Phonology

There are three major motivations behind the Tlavehmak sound system. One: I wanted to make a

language that I could pronounce. Two: I wanted the language to sound suitably foreign to an

English-speaking audience. Three: I wanted the phonology to be typologically plausible.

One of the more noticeable aesthetic qualities of the Tlavehmak sound system is how airy

it sounds, with several affricates, as well as aspirated stops and breathy vowels. Languages with

both aspiration and breathiness are rare, but not unattested—Wa and Jalapa Mazatec have both

distinctions, as presented in Esposito and Khan 2012.

The tables below show the consonants and vowels of Tlavehmak.

Bilabial Labiodental Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal Plain vless stop p t c k ʔ

Aspirated vless pʰ tʰ cʰ kʰ stop Affricate ts Vless fricative f θ s ç x h

Vcd fricative v z ʝ Nasal m n Liquid l Glide w j Table 1: The consonants of Tlavehmak

3 Front Back High i, i̤ u, ṳ Mid e, e̤ o, o̤ Low a, a̤ Table 2: The vowels of Tlavehmak

In addition to the monophthongs listed in table 2, the language also has four diphthongs: aj, a̤ j, oj, and o̤ j. I selected the Italian vowels because, as a choral singer, I strongly associate them with music. I wanted the language to have a musical quality when it is used in the story to cast magic. I originally considered limiting the modal-breathy contrast to just two or three vowels. However, inventories performed by Panfili (2017) suggest that most languages that make this distinction make it across all vowels.

Wa, which has both a breathiness and aspiration contrast, does not appear to allow aspirated consonants to immediately precede breathy vowels. Tlavehmak follows this rule, and aspirated consonants are realized as plain before a breathy vowel. This results in a neutralization of aspirated and plain stops in this environment. For example, /tʰ - i̤ wel/ ‘an emotion grows’ is realized as [ti̤ wel].

The word-medial and word-final syllable shape in Tlavehmak is (C)CV(C), with onsets required, 2-consonant onset clusters and codas allowed, and coda clusters banned. This shape is typologically plausible, falling into the “moderately complex syllable structure” that describes

274 of the 486 languages surveyed in Maddieson 2013. This shape holds for all syllables in a word except the first, which has a shape of (C)(C)V(C), therefore allowing words to start with a vowel.

There are two classes of sounds never found in coda position, glides and voiced fricatives. Glides are disallowed due to my principle that I want the language to be easily pronounceable—I find it very difficult to pronounce [j] and [w] after a vowel, without turning

4 the vowel-glide pair into a diphthong. Voiced fricatives are disallowed due to their historical status in Tlavehmak. These sounds began as pre-vowel allophones to the voiceless fricatives, but eventually became distinctive. This will be discussed further in section 4 of this paper.

The inventory of onset clusters is relatively small, and is summarized in the table below, with the first sounds in the cluster on top, and the second sounds on the side.

p/pʰ t/tʰ k/kʰ f x s n no no no yes no yes l yes yes yes yes yes yes w yes yes yes no no no Table 3: Onset clusters in Tlavehmak

These clusters maintain a strict increase in sonority hierarchy, thus eliminating any fricative-stop pairings, such as [sp] or [st]. All first sounds are voiceless, and all second sounds are voiced, which follows the interpretation of the sonority hierarchy in which voiced sounds are more sonorous than voiceless sounds.

Tlavehmak utilizes phonological rules to ensure syllable well-formedness. Namely, the rules ensure that no illicit clusters are formed, no illicit codas are added, and no syllables are onsetless except possibly in word-initial position.

The first two issues, clusters and codas, are both handled with a-epenthesis. This rule is straightforward and procedural. If a first pass at word-syllabification results in an illicit onset or coda, remove as many sounds as needed from the onset/coda to make it licit, working from left to right in onsets (i.e. remove the first sound, check if the remaining onset is licit, if not, remove the second sound, etc.) and right to left in codas. Then syllabify the removed sounds, inserting

[a] as needed to act as nuclei. Follow the maximal onset principle in this syllabification. That is, if possible, onset clusters should be formed. Codas will not be formed, resulting in a series of

5 open syllables. Vowel epenthesis to maintain syllable well-formedness is well-attested, and is found in English in processes such as plural formation (/mæs.z/ à [mæs.əz], for example).

Table 4 demonstrates a-epenthesis in Tlavehmak

UR /tlve̤ mak/ /mnulos/ /plitokʰp/ First pass syllabification *[tlve̤ ][mak] *[mnu][los] [pli]*[tokʰp] Onset/Coda break tl[ve̤ ][mak] m[nu][los] [pli][tokʰ]p Onset/Coda [tla][ve̤ ][mak] [ma][nu][los] [pli][tokʰ][pa] Syllabification SR [tla.ve̤ .mak] [ma.nu.los] [pli.tokʰ.pa] Meaning ‘Tlavehmak’ ‘he/she sleeps’ ‘sad’ Table 4: a-epenthesis in Tlavehmak

The issue of onsetless syllables can be resolved through ʔ-epenthesis. Whenever a syllable is onsetless, and that syllable is not word-initial, insert a glottal stop to act as an onset.

For example, /kalwaamak/ ‘runner’ is realized as [kal.wa.ʔa.mak].

Tlavehmak does not utilize grammatical tone or length, although both are used at the sentence level. Lexical stress is present, and functions similarly to that of English, but in a broader scope. In English, lexical stress is only used to distinguish a few noun-verb pairs. In

Tlavehmak, it appears much more frequently, and is used across several parts of speech. It can also be used to distinguish words that are the same part of speech, for example /‘xim.xlo/

‘yellow’ and /xim.‘xlo/ ‘bright’.

Tlavehmak does not display quantity sensitivity. The most common position for stress is the penultimate syllable. This is the most common fixed stress position across the world’s languages—out of 502 surveyed by Goedemans and Hulst (2013), 110 displayed penultimate fixed stress.

6 3 Morphosyntax

The defining feature of Tlavehmak morphosyntax is its noun-class system. Noun-class systems

are present in many natlangs, and inspiration was drawn from these natlangs when creating the

grammatical properties of Tlavehmak. The largest influence was Swahili.

The most salient feature of noun-class systems is affixation used to categorize nouns.

However, this categorization seeps into other aspects of grammar. Every part of speech can be,

and often is, affected by noun class agreement. The table below demonstrates how various parts

of speech work with the noun classes of Tlavehmak.

CLASS SUFFIX/PRONOUN DEFINITE INDEFINITE VERB POSSESSED ARTICLE ARTICLE PREFIX PEOPLE SG mak mu mok m mi* PEOPLE PL tef toʔa ti̤ f t mi* LOCATIONS SG çip çu çop ç çi LOCATIONS PL hal hoʔa hi̤ l h çi DANGEROUS/FORBIDDEN zol zu zol z zi THINGS SG DANGEROUS/FORBIDDEN vana voʔa vi̤ ni̤ va zi THINGS PL MAGIC SG sa̤ mi su somo s si MAGIC PL ʝi ʝoʔa ʝi̤ ʝ si DEITIES/RELIGIOUS klu klu klo k ki THINGS SG DEITIES/RELIGIOUS vo̤ ja vo̤ ʔa vi̤ ji̤ vo ki THINGS PL EMOTIONS SG tʰokʰ tu tokʰ tʰ tʰi EMOTIONS PL cʰe cʰoʔa cʰi̤ cʰ tʰi ANIMALS SG tlem tlu tlom tl tli ANIMALS PL fnoj fnoʔa fni̤ fn tli OTHER SG xup xu xop x xi OTHER PL θoθ θoʔa θi̤ θ θ xi Table 5: Noun classes in Tlavehmak * Irregular

7 Inflectional morphology in Tlavehmak is concerned primarily with noun class agreement.

An adjective agrees with the noun it modifies by taking on that noun’s class suffix. Since noun classes encode singular/plural information, this also inflects both nouns and adjectives for number. This process is demonstrated in (1).

(1) a. lo - mak mojo - mak male - PER.SG old - PER.SG ‘old man’ b. pok - xup mojo - xup book - OTHER.SG old - OTHER.SG ‘old book’ c. lo - tef mojo - tef male - PER.PL old - PER.SG ‘old men’ d. pok - θoθ mojo - θoθ book - OTHER.PL old - OTHER.SG ‘old books’

Possessed nouns inflect based on the noun class of their possessor, via the ‘possessed’ suffix in table 1. Singular and plural noun classes are collapsed into a single suffix in possessed nouns. Swahili does this with its person classes, but in Tlavehmak, the pattern is expanded to all classes. Below, (2) illustrates two examples of possession inflection:

(2) a. xu fnaj - klu tsiʝi - xup - ki OTHER.SG.DEF priestess - RELIGIOUS.SG dress - OTHER.SG - RELIGIOUS. POSS ‘The priestess’s dress.’ b. θoʔa lokas - fnoj jo - θoθ - tli OTHER.PL.INDEF dog - ANIMAL.PL shoe - OTHER.PL - ANIM.POSS ‘The dogs’ shoes’

(2) demonstrates an important fact about article inflection: articles inflect based on the head of the phrase (i.e. the dress and the shoe, not the priestess and the dog).

The two classes with irregular possessed suffixes are the person classes. Nouns possessed by people inflect based on the table below (note that the person/plurality/etc. indicates the traits of the possessor not the possessed).

8

st nd rd we̤ 1 SG tlo 2 SG mi 3 SG st st rd wawi 1 PL INCL kul 1 PL EXCL teftef 3 PL nd nd tlotlo 2 PL tlatli 2 PL DISTRIBUTED COLLECTIVE Table 6: Person possessed suffixes

Some example phrases are:

(3) a. xu we̤ - mak tsiʝi - xup - we̤ OTHER.SG.DEF 1.SG - PERSON.SG dress - OTHER.SG - 1.SG. POSS ‘My dress.’ b. θoʔa tef tsiʝi - θoθ - tlotlo OTHER.PL.DEF 3.PL dress - OTHER.PL - 2.PL.DIST ‘The dresses that they each own separately.’ c. hoʔa tef mak - çip - tlatli LOC.PL.DEF 3.PL person - LOC.PL - 2.PL.COL ‘The house that they own together.’

Moving into derivational morphology, nouns can also be made into adjectives by adding the suffix -p at their end. This suffix is realized as [pa] if the noun ends with a consonant, due to the syllable well-formedness rules. Note that the noun class is not dropped, since dropping the noun class could obscure the meaning of the noun, and therefore the adjective. This is demonstrated in (4).

(4) a. zol - zol - pa danger - DANGER.SG - ADJ ‘dangerous’ b. zol - tlem - pa danger - ANIMAL.SG - ADJ ‘mosquito-like’

As evidenced above, the -p suffix is quite productive, much like the English -like suffix, and can be used to turn any noun into its corresponding adjective.

Tlavehmak’s verbal morphology is much simpler than its nominal morphology. Verbs only directly inflect for two things: negation and the noun class of the sentence’s subject.

9 Inflecting the verb for noun class agreement is done in both Swahili and Shona (see Contini-

Morava 1994, Teubl 2014).

Verb agreement prefixes are outlined in table five. Note that many are single consonants, and several would cause poorly formed syllables when combined with a consonant-initial verb.

Both Swahili and Shona had some allophonic alternation in their affixes to account for this problem (ibid). Tlavehmak relies instead on its syllable well-formedness rule (a-epenthesis, as discussed in the phonology section). For example, combining m- ‘PERSON.SG’ and necʰ ‘walk’ results in the surface form [manecʰ], not *[mnecʰ]. In (5), two simple sentences illustrate noun- verb agreement.

(5) a. xop xapli - xup x - lesa INDEF.OTHER.SG pen - OTHER.SG OTHER.SG - fall ‘A pen falls’ b. klu fnaj - klu ka - jomsa DEF.RELIGIOUS.SG priestess - RELIGIOUS.SG RELIGIOUS.SG - pray ‘The priestess prays’

Verbs are negated with the single morpheme prefix θu, as shown in (6).

(6) we̤ - mak vin θu - ma - kalwa I - PERSON.SG HAB NEG - PERSON.SG - run ‘I don’t run’

As evidenced by (6), tense, mood, and aspect are all handled by monomorphemic words directly proceeding the verb. Present simple tense is indicated by leaving this word out. Some words are illustrated in the table below, and I have left room for this section of the language to grow as needed

10 sa simple past fni̤ simple future uso past perfect tam past progressive ki present progressive ço̤ future perfect waj future progressive vin habitual xel imperative Table 7: Tense/aspect/mood words

While inflectional morphology on verbs is sparse, derivational morphology is more robust. To turn a verb into an agent of that verb, one simply adds an -a suffix, followed by the appropriate noun class. This is illustrated in (7a). Turning a verb into a patient is similar, but -o is added instead, as in (7b). Note that the glottal stop is added due to syllable well-formedness rules.

(7) a. kalwa - ʔa - mak run - AGENT - PERSON.SG ‘runner’ b. tsoʔi - ʔo - tlem speak - PATIENT - ANIMAL.SG ‘animal being spoken to’

Verbal augmentation is also present, and is done through reduplication of the first syllable. While this sometimes just acts to intensify the verb, as shown in (8a), it can also result in a completely new sense of the word, as shown in (8b).

(8) a. mek - mek AUG - sing ‘to sing loudly and/or dramatically’ b. tso - tsoʔi AUG - speak ‘to chant’

A diminutive form of the verb is made by adding θu, the negation particle, to the beginning of the augmented form, as demonstrated in (9).

11 (9) a. θu - mek - mek NEG - AUG - sing ‘to sing softly’ b. θu - kal - kalwa NEG - AUG - run ‘to run slowly’

Next, we move on to word order. Tlavehmak is a head-final language with basic SOV word order. The word order is fixed when the subject and direct object of the sentence are of the same noun class, and free when they are of different classes. This is because the verb carries information of the subject’s noun class, allowing the subject and object to move around without confusing meaning. However, this won’t work if the two are of the same class, as it becomes impossible to decipher which NP is the subject and which NP is the object based on subject-verb agreement alone.

Free word order is used pragmatically; when the speaker wishes to place emphasis on the object, it can be placed first, and likewise with the verb. Similarly, if the speaker wishes to deemphasize the subject’s role in the sentence, they can place it last, and so on.

Most implicational headedness rules are followed in Tlavehmak. The language has postpositions, and the OV/postposition combination is the most common word order/adposition pair in surveys performed by Dryer (2013a). Possessor also proceeds possessed, and adverbs proceed verbs. The only headedness rule broken is that adjectives follow nouns, but as documented by Dryer (2013b), NAdj order is more common than AdjN in OV languages.

The word order rules discussed in this section are demonstrated by the following sentence:

(10) xu sa̤ mi - mak pok - xup - mi mojo - xup DEF.OTHER.SG magic - PERSON.SG book - OTHER.SG - 3.SG. POSS old - OTHER.SG çu two̤ - çip zocʰ lapili sa x - lesa DEF.LOC.SG floor - LOC.SG on loudly PAST OTHER.SG - fall ‘The magician’s old book fell loudly on the floor.

12

4 Language change

One goal in developing Tlavehmak was creating a separate language system for magic usage.

I decided to combine this goal with the development of the language’s historical linguistics, resulting in a form of proto-Tlavehmak that is still spoken in the modern day alongside the modern language. Known to its users as Tlasahmimak ‘mage speak,’ this version of the language is used when spellcasting, in certain religious ceremonies, and for poetic effect in plays and literature.

Tlasahmimak is more synthetic than Tlavehmak, both in nominal and verbal morphosyntax. While Tlavehmak uses separate words to mark for tense/aspect/mood on verbs,

Tlasahmimak uses prefixation and apophony, with the prefix indicating the tense and the vowel change indicating the aspect. Over time, the tense prefix separated out as a separate word for the simple forms of the verbs, the vowel change was dropped, and new prefixes developed to mark non-simple aspects. (11) demonstrates how this change affected four forms of the verb ‘to dream.’

(11) a. *[fni̤ kalwi] > [fni̤ kalwa] ‘will dream’ b. *[fni̤ kalwo] > [ço̤ kalwa] ‘will have dreamt’ c. *[sakalwi] > [sa kalwa] ‘dreamt’ d. *[sakalwo] > [uso kalwa] ‘have dreamt’

Mood is also done through prefixes in Tlasahmimak, and these too separated out into separate words in Tlavehmak. Tlasahmimak has four moods that are especially important to its spellcasting system: ta, jil, kʰa, and lem. These moods will make a spell into a blessing, curse, control, or transformation, respectively. Every spell must have one of these prefixes before the verb, or it won’t be cast correctly, or at all.

13 There are five cases in Tlasahmimak: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and locative. Cases are added as suffixes to their nouns. They allow for Tlasahmimak to have a completely free word order, although its word order is by default SOV. This is also important for spellcasting, as the first word in a sentence is always the focus of the spell. While word order in

Tlavehmak is still relatively free, it has become more fixed in exchange for removing the case system.

There are a few key sound changes that occurred between Tlasahmimak and Tlavehmak.

The first is the sound change described by Grassmann’s law, which states that if a syllable contains two aspirated consonants, the first will be de-aspirated. No syllables in Tlavehmak contain more than one aspirated consonant, but these syllables are observed in the older version of the language, for example:

(12) a. *[atʰmu / cʰatʰmi] > [atʰmu / catʰmu] ‘to spread / an emotion spreads’ b. *[amek / cʰamik] > [amek / cʰamek] ‘to boil / an emotion boils’

The second sound change is the introduction of voiced fricatives. In Tlasahmimak, all voiceless fricatives have a voiced allophone which is produced word-initially, and voiced fricatives do not exist phonemically. However, in Tlavehmak, certain voiced fricatives (dental, velar, glottal) were dropped for ease of articulation and the rest are present in the language’s phonemic inventory. This is a multi-sound version of what happened to [ŋ] in English and similarly to the case of [ŋ], this sound-change explains why voiced fricatives are never found in codas (although they can be found in word-medial onsets). (13a) demonstrates the addition of /z/ to Tlavehmak’s phonemic inventory, and (13b) demonstrates the dropping of [ɣ] as an allophone of /x/.

(13) a. */sokit/ à *[zokit] > /zokit/ à [zokit] ‘to dream’ b. */xomi/ à *[ɣomi] > /xomi/ à [xomi] ‘to vanish’

14 Finally, we can look at a few common processes of semantic change, which have created several new meanings in the history of Tlavehmak, and will continue to create new meanings in the future. The first has already been discussed in the morphosyntax section—the narrowing of augmented verbs. Many augmented verbs were used so frequently in a specific context, that they eventually came to be used only for that context. (14) demonstrates three such verbs.

(14) a. */tsotsoʔi/ ‘to talk loudly’ > /tsotsoʔi/ ‘to chant’ b. */nunulos/ ‘to sleep deeply’ > /nunulos/ ‘to be in a coma’ c. */jomjomsa/ ‘to pray earnestly’ > /jomjomsa/ ‘to beg’

The second type of semantic change occurs when the root of a noun that belongs to one noun class is taken and placed in another class. In a normal situation, a speaker would interpret this as being ‘a [root]-like [noun class]’ For example, pokxup means ‘book’ but placing the root pok- in the ‘person’ noun class results in the word pokmak. Taken literally, this means ‘a book- like person’ and can be interpreted any number of ways: a bookworm, a writer, a librarian, etc.

But in this and other examples, one meaning will be chosen and stuck with, in another instance of semantic narrowing. For example, pokmak came to mean ‘writer,’ and it would be odd if a speaker attempted to use pokmak to say ‘bookworm.’ This process is by far the biggest source of new words in Tlavehmak, and a sampling of these words are listed in (15).

(15) a. /kla̤ θtlem/ ‘sheep (sg)’ à / kla̤ θmak/ ‘shepherd’ b. /çṳfzol/ ‘dagger’ à /çṳfxup/ ‘knife’ c. /zolzol/ ‘danger’ à /zoltlem/ ‘mosquito’ d. /ekexup/ ‘mouth’ à /ekesa̤ mi/ ‘language’

5 Sample passage

In developing a sample passage for Tlavehmak, I wanted to create something that I could use in- story. One of the major conflicts centers around whether the people of Veh should remain

15 underground, or attempt to escape. The city’s government heavily pushes isolationism, as it allows them to remain in power, and punishes those who argue for escape.

In-universe, the following passage was found in the diary of a prominent anti- government, pro-escape activist, describing her dream of the outside world. It was promptly circulated throughout Veh to disparage the ‘childish fantasies’ of the movement. Years from now, when the people of Veh finally make it to the outside world, it will be printed in nearly every book of the castle’s history, and most grade schoolers in the Veh region will be required to memorize and recite it.

(16) we̤ - tef lokas - fnoj fni̤ t - avlo 1ST.INCL-PERSON.PL dog - ANIMAL.PL FUTURE PERSON.PL - have ‘We will have dogs’ çu tlo̤ s - klu ke fni̤ fna - mek DEF.LOC.SG moon – RELIGIOUS.SG to FUTURE ANIMAL.PL - sing ‘They will sing to the moon’ pli - tokʰ fni̤ ta - θu - tokme sadness - EMOTION.SG FUTURE PERSON.PL - NEG - feel ‘We will feel no sadness’ vo̤ ʔa o - voja çu tlo̤ s - klu RELIGIOUS.PL.DEF seven queens - RELIGIOUS.PL DEF.LOC.SG moon - RELIGIOUS.SG som fni̤ ta - kelji under FUTURE PERSON.PL - thank ‘We will thank the Seven Queens under the moon’ ko we̤ - tef zu çip - zol ke for 1ST.INCL-PERSON.PL DANGER.SG.DEF place - DANGER.SG to ço̤ vo - ve̤ ne̤ ma FUTURE.PERFECT RELIGIOUS.SG - lead ‘For they will have lead us to the outside’

6 Critique

I believe that, broadly, I achieved my goals. I fleshed out Veh’s culture by a significant amount, locked down the magic system, and created an early draft of the religion. These aspects of my work weren’t discussed much in this paper, as they were not directly relevant to my language-

16 building, but creating the language—especially the lexicon, which is in the appendix below— helped me think about these aspects of Veh in a unique way. Overall, the worldbuilding/conlanging feedback loop was an amazing creative experience, and I will be coming up with any possible excuse to add conlanging into my future writing endeavors.

I also forayed into historical linguistics with my creation of Tlasahmimak, which is something that I was excited about and interested in from the start of the project. The historical version of the language is still alive and well, and this was an aspect of the culture that I had fun developing. I am still experimenting with various lexical shifts and how a spellcasting language would work beyond word order and mood. One feature that I unfortunately did not get to look at is the historical linguistics of isolated natlangs, to make my own historical linguistics more typologically believable. This is an area that I want to improve in the future. I’d like to examine the historical changes in Icelandic and see how they relate to some of my changes, and how they don’t.

I need to do some more typological work with my language in general. While I consulted

WALS extensively to make my word order typologically reasonable, I want to examine in greater depth how aspiration works in natlangs to create a more reasonable system in that regard.

The section of the language that needs the most improvement is phonology, which doesn’t have a lot of allophony or interesting suprasegmental features. However, I’m confident about my syllable structure, which fits the “foreign but believable” criteria that I established. On the other hand, the breathy vowels might be removed in the future—they were hard to remember to consistently use when creating words, and didn’t add a lot to the language.

Finally, I need to figure out how more complicated syntax works in Tlavehmak. I realized as I was writing my sample passage that I didn’t know how embedded clauses worked, and this

17 is important to know if I want to be able to write something complex. Tlavehmak has room to grow and change, and this is part of the beauty of the conlanging creative process.

7 Appendix: Lexicon

My word-coining was unsystematic; I wanted to keep with natlangs and make the association between sound and meaning arbitrary. I did, however, do my best to use all Tlavehmak’s phonemes multiple times. There were admittedly some sounds I was more drawn to, such as nasals and liquids, but I referred to my IPA chart throughout the process to ensure that I didn’t leave any sounds out.

I have divided the noun portion of Tlavehmak’s lexicon into eight parts, with each part containing two noun classes (singular and plural of the same semantic domain). The words are transcribed singularly except when the singular form of the noun doesn’t exist in the language, i.e. for mass nouns. There is a separate section for verbs.

I didn’t use the Swadesh word list much for this. I cared more about words that I would be using frequently in the story (character’s occupations, locations, deities, spell words, cultural ideas) more than the most common words. There are worldbuilding notes scattered throughout this section, explaining some culture-specific words.

Tlavehmak English Tlavehmak English Tlavehmak English a̤ ca̤ mak child makmak person ‘a̤ ca̤ mak laborer tlajmak boy lomak man zokita̤ mak dreamweaver zilomak girl cʰunmak woman lijamak soldier tukmak magicless kʰepfnamak smuggler θṳtomak healer person sa̤ mimak mage xṳxmak fighter kofomak farmer we̤ mak I tlomak you mak he/she we̤ tef we (incl) kultef we (excl) tlotef you all tef they PERSON nouns

18

A ‘dreamweaver’ is a type of mage who can create dreams by weaving together fabric out of a fine, silver thread. These dreams make up a good amount of Castle Veh’s economy (and black market).

Tlavehmak English Tlavehmak English Tlavehmak English ve̤ çip Veh kloçip battlefield tsoçip government building xiçip Upcastle tʰulçip Castle Proper makçip house jomçip Midcastle pwekçip school pʰoçip left cʰolçip Downcastle tli̤ çip arena atʰçip right ekeçip cave sliçip roof nakçip stage LOCATION nouns

Upcastle, Midcastle, Downcastle, and Castle Proper are all locations within Veh.

Tlavehmak English Tlavehmak English juklozol treason sakʰsokzol murder flṳzakzol enemy xlaxlamzol sun çṳfzol dagger çufzol poison lele̤ tzol weapon makzol outsider zolzol danger çipzol outside DANGER/FORBIDDEN nouns

Tlavehmak English Tlavehmak English ipwisa̤ mi fire θa̤ sa̤ mi beauty amtsusa̤ mi electricity tʰlosa̤ mi love flesa̤ mi dragon ixi̤ msa̤ mi darkness asnosa̤ mi dragon egg ximxlosa̤ mi light ekesa̤ mi language slinsa̤ mi water MAGIC nouns

Tlavehmak English Tlavehmak English Tlavehmak English tekʰliklu Dawncatcher akaçoklu Fourth Queen fnajklu priestess θiθosapklu First Queen ixi̤ mklu Fifth Queen cʰunklu goddess (Darkness) tsepklu Second ximxloklu Sixth Queen loklu god Queen (Light) je̤ kmoliklu Third Queen aklu Seventh ovoja The Seven Queen Queens RELIGIOUS nouns

19 The Seven Queens make up the oldest pantheon of deities in Vehmak religion, and are still heavily worshipped by a large portion of the population. The terms in the lexicon are the names of the goddesses, not ‘first queen,’ ‘second queen,’ etc. There are no direct translations for their names, so I’ve ranked them from oldest (θiθosapklu) to youngest (aklu).

Dawncatcher is a newer god, believed by many to be responsible for “protecting” Veh by sealing the castle when the siege began. Both the Seven Queens and Dawncatcher are referred to several times in-story, mostly in prayers or oaths.

Tlavehmak English Tlavehmak English Tlavehmak English plitokʰ sadness maktokʰ affection soltokʰ apathy ʝaza̤ tokʰ happiness xo̤ litokʰ skysickness cʰimitokʰ pain zoltokʰ anger ‘ʝaza̤ tokʰ panic tokʰtokʰ emotion EMOTION nouns

‘Skysickness’ refers to an extremely intense cabin fever caused by being cooped up underground, or a yearning to escape to the wider world.

Tlavehmak English Tlavehmak English Tlavehmak English lokastlem dog maktlem rude, slobby fnotlem pig person mimutlem cat ʝṳmtlem sparrow kla̤ θtlem sheep θaxtlem fly ‘mimutlem canary oxtlem bird kla̤ θtlem sheep kiletlem insect fletlem lizard ANIMAL nouns

There are a decent number of animals in Veh. Some are descendants of the castle animals brought below when Veh first fell under siege. Others are conjurings of particularly powerful mages.

Tlavehmak English Tlavehmak English Tlavehmak English joxup shoe xaplixup pen ipwiθoθ ash leveθoθ wheat sno̤ θoθ paper kʰaʔaθoθ grease pokxup book tsiʝixup dress pwenθoθ corn ekexup mouth kla̤ θxup wool kolθoθ dust OTHER nouns

20 Corn and wheat are both grown in the upper part of the city, close to the surface. A combination of magic and sunlight seeping through shielded holes in the cavern ceiling allows for agriculture

(and therefore life) to exist.

Tlavehmak English Tlavehmak English Tlavehmak English mixak to be jeje to play tsoʔi to speak hacʰi to go jomsa to pray vezu to realize avlo to have lesa to fall tsa̤ n to think nulos to sleep çi̤ m to wander sasaf to cast a spell kalwa to run mek to sing xilo to dance tesak to kill lolono to miss ʝoza̤ to believe zokit to dream lekem to buy vof to turn Verbs

8 References

Contini-Morava, Ellen. 1994. Noun Classification in Swahili. In: Publications of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, Research Reports, Second Series. Charlottesville, VA. University of Virginia.

Dryer, Matthew. 2013a. Relationship Between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase. In: The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, ed. by Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath

Dryer, Matthew. 2013b. Relationship Between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun. In: The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, ed. by Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath

Esposito, Christina M. and Sameer ud Dowla Khan. 2012. Contrastive breathiness across consonants and vowels: A comparative study of Gujarati and White Hmong. Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 42:123-143.

Goedemans, Rob and Harry van der Hulst. 2013. Fixed Stress Locations. In: The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, ed. by Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath

Maddieson, Ian. 2013. Syllable Structure. In: The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, ed. by Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath

Panfili, Laura M. 2017. Inventories of Languages with Contrastive Creaky Vowels. Ms., University of Washington. Available at http://students.washington.edu/lpanfili/panfili- inventories.pdf

21 Watkins, Justin. 1999. CQ of laryngeal gestures and settings in Wa. In: 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. ed. by John J. Ohala, Yoko Hasegawa, Manjari Ohala, Daniel Granville, and Ashlee C. Bailey. San Francisco, CA. University of California.

Teubl, Grace. 2014. Adjectives, be verbs, and determiners in Manyika Shona. Ms., University of Albany, State University of New York. Available at https://www.albany.edu/honorscollege/files/Teubl_thesis.pdf

I can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]

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