Siră Kăntânări: one of my conlangs

Siră Kăntânări is one of the several conlangs (constructed languages) I created. This I started as a college student, when I was not aware even of Tolkien himself.

Overview

Siră Kăntânări boasts a strikingly abundant phonological inventory. It contains the vast majority of all the phonemes existing in most different languages of the Earth including German, Thai, Hungarian, Vietnamese, Kazakhs, Mohawk, Beothuk, among others.

Moreover, it features a surprisingly sharp contrast between the nouns formed by luxuriant, “clumsy” consonant clusters combined with a vast array of difficult-to-articulate vowels, diphthongs and triphthongs, and the verb and adjective stems made by a combination of a limited set of single consonants and a most extensive range of open, simple vowels. The relatively fixed sentence structure of Siră Kăntânări, namely, SOV, makes this difference all the more remarkable. 

Another most striking peculiarities in Siră Kăntânări is the strict classification of its nouns into a large number of noun classes, each of these using a totally different set of verb stems and adjective stems dedicated solely for it. The noun classes in Siră Kăntânări can be compared to those of Swahili, only their number is larger and the rules with which they are classified are much more flexible and complicated. That is, the same noun can belong to several different classes depending on context or indeed on the speaker’s personal choice to best express his/her idea, thus taking completely different sets of verb/adjective stems to express slightly different verbal/adjectival meanings which are normally translated to our languages using the same word.

The third peculiarity of Siră Kăntânări is closely linked to the previous one. In Siră Kăntânări, a large part of grammatical information (“tense”, mood, aspect, number, etc.) are encoded onto nouns rather than verbs or adjectives as in most of our languages. In this respect it does bear some similarity with languages as remote as Old Tupi or Wolof. See the section, Siră Kăntânări: Nouns for further information about this and the previous peculiarity.

On the other hand, many pieces of information are conveyed through the verbs as well, however by means of swapping the positions of the syllables within the verb rather than adding affixes to the verb or inflecting the verb itself. See the section, Siră Kăntânări: Verbs for details.

A fourth peculiarity of Siră Kăntânări is the prevailing use of triliteral and/or quadriliteral, a root containing a sequence of three and four consonants, respectively. Such consonantal roots are used in the derivation of actual words, by adding vowels and non-root consonants around the root consonants which go with a particular morphological category.

It may seem at first that Siră Kăntânări shares this feature with Arabic or many other Semitic languages, however a deeper exploration into Siră Kăntânări will reveal a great number of differences that sets Siră Kăntânări apart from those famous Earth's “triliteral” languages.

The fifth peculiarity of Siră Kăntânări is the use of the unique so-called “nominal-verbal conjugations”, each of these can be created exclusively for each individual noun-verb combination. That is, any combination of a particular noun and a particular verb form can theoretically entail a unique nominal-verbal conjugation element attached. While the rules with which these elements can be created are rather complicated, they are not unlearnable. In fact, these elements are not absolutely necessary and thus often omitted in conversational speech. However, a certain knowledge of these elements is still essential, for a number of these nominal-verbal conjugations plays a role in creating quite a large array of other actual nouns that, in their turn, are widely used in daily conversations as well as stylistic discourses and literary works. On the other hand, use of these nominal-verbal conjugations is mandatory in official texts, ceremonial and public events, and academic discussions.

The basic structure of Siră Kăntânări, like that of Japanese, is topic-comment. It is notable, however, that Siră Kăntânări does not show a similarly strict adherence to the topic-prominent structure. In other words, unlike Japanese, it does not have a prevailing tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject; while the majority of Siră Kăntânări normal sentences do reflect a typical topic-prominent structure, many other ones, equally grammatically correct, do not.

Word Order

Main article: Siră Kăntânări - Word Order.

(to be developed)

Negation

Main article: Siră Kăntânări - Negation.

Negation in Siră Kăntânări is expressed using a large variety of ways, the 
most popular and, perhaps, neutral one being the particle -ri- that is infixed between the 1^st and the 2^nd syllables of the verb.

For examples:

Arrobauth tosülbăyâtür-jég okăjâkăth.

Arrobauth is going towards the royal palace.

Arrobauth tosülbăyâtür-jég oríkăjâkăth.

Arrobauth is not going towards the royal palace.

Another widely used way to negate a sentence is to add a negative affix to the subject instead of the verb. The negation in this case, however, carries more or less different connotations. 

Verbs

Main article: Siră Kăntânări Verbs.

A peculiarity of Siră Kantânări is the prevailing use of triliteral and/or quadriliteral, a root containing a sequence of three and four consonants, respectively.

Such consonantal roots are used in the derivation of actual words, by adding vowels and non-root consonants around the root consonants which go with a particular morphological category.

While quadriliterals exclusively consist of verb stems or verb derivation patterns, triliterals mainly contain adjective stems or adjective derivation patterns, perhaps also a limited number of verb stems or verb derivation patterns.

While a large portion of grammatical information such as gender, number, and a large variety of moods and aspects is encoded in the nouns, many pieces of information are conveyed by way of inflecting the verbs. In fact, Siră Kăntânări has a highly unusual strategy to convey tense, aspect, and mood information by ways of swapping the positions of the syllables within the verb stem.

… Although dependent pronouns do exist and it is required that these dependent pronouns be attached to verb stems to form grammatically correct clauses/sentences, Siră Kăntânări verbs in fact are the third, singular person, male/female gender form of the verb.

Adjectives

Main article: Siră Kăntânări Adjectives.

Siră Kăntânări has no “adjectives” per se, but rather “special” verbs which function like verbs. In other words, notions which in English are expressed by means of “pure” adjectives are generally expressed in Siră Kăntânări using some kind of stative verbs or adjectival affixes.

Adjectives take different positions depending on how many syllables there are in a noun and, in other cases, depending on the noun class that the noun belongs to.

When serving as predicate, adjectives agree with the subject in the similar way as verbs do, i.e. by taking the last syllable or consonant of the noun subject.  

Nouns

Main article:  Siră Kăntânări Nouns.

One of the most striking peculiarities in Siră Kăntânări is the strict classification of its nouns into a large number of noun classes, each of these uses a totally different set of verb stems and adjective stems dedicated solely for it.

The noun classes in Siră Kăntânări can be compared to those of Swahili, only their number is larger and the rules with which they are classified are much more flexible and complicated. That is, the same noun can belong to several different classes depending on context or indeed on the speaker’s personal choice to best express his/her idea, thus taking completely different sets of verb/adjective stems to express slightly different verbal/adjectival meanings which are normally translated to our languages using the same word.

In a couple of words, a simple Siră Kăntânări sentence can convey deeper layers of meaning that can only be translated into our major languages such as English using a larger number of morphological, lexical and/or syntactical measures. For example:

Êksiv ăbsimăv. It rains. (Literally: "The rain goes").

In this sentence the speaker simply wants to convey a “neutral” information about a going-on natural fact without any personal comment, remark or emotion whatsoever attached. Thus, she/he chooses to use the noun “rain” as classified under the class “Natural elements”, hence the corresponding verb stem is used accordingly.

Another peculiarity of Siră Kăntânări noun systems is the use of the unique so-called “nominal-verbal conjugations”, each of these can be created exclusively for each individual noun-verb combination. That is, any combination of a particular noun and a particular verb form can theoretically entail a unique nominal-verbal conjugation element attached.

In Siră Kăntânări, nouns are inflected intensively to express different tenses, moods, and aspects of the action. Although verbs do sometimes act in the same manner, the extent to which nouns are inflected is so strikingly large and the significance of the grammatical information encoded in this manner so weighty that the language is notoriously dubbed "noun-centered language" by some linguists. See Siră Kăntânări Nouns for further information.

Pronouns

Main article:  Siră Kăntânări Pronouns.

Each of Siră Kăntânări pronouns consists of a pair of two particles that “wrap” around the verb stem much like two parts of a pronominal circumfix. In other words, they “surround” the verbal/adjectival stems rather than just coming before or after them.

For example:

-ojaménă-        to read

sen-…-l           I                   sen’ojaménăl            “I read”

kon-…-m         he                 kon’ojaménăm           “he reads”

san-…-ti          she               san’ojaménăti           “she reads”

In colloquial speech, the first part, i.e. the pronominal "prefixes" can be omitted, leaving only the pronominal endings (-l, -m, -ti, etc.)

On the other hand, a topic-prominent language, Siră Kăntânări tends to put the first part of the pronouns at the beginning of the sentence coupled with the -sti particle to mark them as the topic, whereas the second part of the pronouns are attached to the end of the verbs which, true to the grammatical rules, more often than not stand at the end of the sentence.

There are also what might be called “independent pronouns”, i.e. certain pronominal morphemes that can be used independently from any other part of speech. The majority of pronominal morphemes in Siră Kăntânări, however, take the form of circumfixes in the same way as the few pronouns mentioned above.

On the other hand, another peculiarity of Siră Kăntânări pronouns is that a great deal of grammatical information including potential/abilitative mood, jussive mood, speculative mood, etc. is encoded within the pronouns, by means of infixes, instead of the verbs. This is much the same case as with Siră Kăntânări nouns. See Siră Kăntânări: Pronouns for further information.

Articles

Siră Kăntânări does not require articles in the pure sense as does English. When necessary, however, several definite articles are used to refer to the particular object the conversation is going about. As a rule, these articles are postposed, i.e. they always come after the noun.

For example:

tāikan-er “the man”

zplŏdni-rîn “the spring”

Much in the same way as in Arabic, when a noun is modified by an adjective, both the noun and the adjective modifying it will be supplied with the article, maybe with some sound changes according to sound harmony rules.

For example:

gōsbär tāikan-er “the/this tall man”

(Note that the article “er” has been fused with the last vowel “a” of the adjective gōsba, forming the umlaut “är”)

gülsérym-în zplŏdni-rîn “the/this spring abounding with eels”

(Note that the article “rîm” loses its initial consonant when coming after gülsérym because this adjective already contains a consonant “r” which prevents the addition of any further “r”).

Demonstratives

Demonstratives in Siră Kăntânări like “this” and “that” are postposed, i.e. placed after the noun.

For examples:

tāikan-tir “this person”

zplŏdni-tür “that spring”

spŏypülă-dgur “which coward”

ŏntýl-sdiyîr “no sword”

Possessive constructions

Much like demonstratives, possessive constructions in Siră Kăntânări are mainly postposed, i.e. placed after the nouns they modify rather than coming before them, as in the case of English and most European languages.

For examples:

sdimá-séd “my (elder) sister”

thāigă-stid “his country”

It should be noted that possessive markers in Siră Kăntânări do not agree with nouns in gender and number. For this reason, they are best classified as possessive suffixes rather than possessive adjectives.

In case of plural nouns, however, the possessive marker is often inserted between the end of the noun and the second part of the plural marker, which is a circumfix.

For examples:

tmurdyn-séd “my elder brother”

(the possessive marker “séd” does not change in accordance with the masculine noun).

idzindnŏrön-théd “your daggers”

(the possessive marker “théd” does not change in accordance with the plural noun).

ansdimasédli “my elder sisters”

(the possessive marker “séd” does not change in accordance with the plural noun, but is inserted between the noun “sdimá” and the second part of the plural marker, an-…-li).

Plural formation

Main article: Siră Kăntânări Nouns

Plural forms in Siră Kăntânări are created mainly by ways of plural affixes. These affixes often appear in the form of circumfixes, i.e. a pair of affixal particles “wrapping” around the nouns they modify.

There is numerous sets of plural affixes, the choice to use which one of them depends on the noun class the noun belongs to and the gender of the noun.

On the other hand, there also exists a couple of sets of plural prefixes and plural suffixes used for a smaller group of nouns.

For example, is-…-si is a plural suffix mainly used with masculine, animate nouns. Take the noun taikan “man”, we have ístaikansi, “men” (the acute mark above the first i vowel marks the stress of the word).

Similarly:

shārkur “leader”         ->        isshākursi “leaders”   

ūlam “soldier”            ->        is’ūlamsi “soldiers”

rōwăn “old man”        ->        isrōwănsi “old men”

Interrogatives

Main article: Siră Kăntânări Interrogatives

One of the syntactic features of Siră Kăntânări is postposed wh words (i.e. “who”, “when”, “why”, “where”, etc. are placed at the end of the sentence, as opposed to being preposed, i.e. moved to the front of the sentence, as in English).

There are the following interrogatives, which correspond exactly to English ones:

âkú                  where

âtü                   when

âmâ                 how (to refer to a state)

âhon                how (to refer to a process, an action)

âgăn                what (subj.)

âhé                  what (obj.)

âjún                 who

âkî                   whom

ădgöin             why

and also

tsé/jú               for yes/no questions

For examples:

Sennogămâjil gâman-ü.

I read a book.

Sennogămâjil âhé?

What do I read? (lit. I read what?)

Yūwâri njăkrâi-kăn okâjéküpprâli.

The girls sits/is sitting in the garden.

Yūwâri okâjéküpprâli âkú?

Where does the girl sit? (lit. The girl sits where?)

Bărtâhauli idhékéznyn odridágyi.

Bărtauli brought (a lot of) arrows.

Bărtâhauli odridágyi âhé?

What did Bărtauli bring? (lit. Bărtauli brought what?)

(to be continued)