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.