verten

I originally started writing this post on the plane-ride home from Walden, but didn't quite finish it. Now, having just returned from Ireland, I've decided that I need a day or two before I start telling the stories of my trip. Thus, I'm going to put up this post, now completed, in more or less its original form. Thus, the apparent time lapse.

So, I could post about Walden. I could post about homecoming. I could post about numbers, or about in-between places, or about music, or about integrity. There are a lot of things I could talk about right now, and be able to do so meaningfully. But I've decided that the best thing, for me and for the continuity and posterity of this blog, is to display a little of the work that I did this summer.

Again, there's a lot that I could be displaying. I've been busy: I could be posting about any number of interesting musical projects. I could also be posting more on Quay history, which I've done a fair amount of good work on. I could post some Toquay translations, which I've put in a lot of work on this summer and gotten farther than ever before. I could post more about Quayaln itself, because there's always more to describe about that homeland... But I'm not going to do those things, because I did so, so much of all that right before I left, and I'd like to let it all sit and gestate for a while.

So what am I going to do? I'm going to post some of my conlanging work, in specific a little bit of work that falls into the "other" category, separate and distinct from my work on the Quay. This is a little bit of my "pure" conlanging, in the sense that I have no idea what kind of culture or world goes with this language: It's just a language.

I'm going to try to describe the language in a way that will be accessible to non-linguists, and hopefully will guide you, the non-conlanger, through some of the linguistic/artistic choices I made as I drew up this sketch. (And I must note here that it truly is no more than a sketch, and most likely will never grow too far past its current state.)

So here goes. I'll spend a section on basic premises and pronunciation, then a section on grammar basics, and finally a section on phrase structure and more syntactic issues.

Premises and Pronunciation

For a little over a year now, I've had a growing need: I've been falling slowly in love with the sounds and structures of the Germanic languages (English included, but particularly German, Dutch, and the Scandinavian languages) and more and more have wanted to create a language in that style. This represents a very significant change in my linguistic tastes, as I've spent most of my conlanging career so far trying to get as far away from Indo-European linguistics as possible. This growing need finally came to a head not long ago when I found myself reading up on the Scandinavian languages. In specific, I read a very, very fascinating fact: Modern Scandinavian (primarily Norwegian) is becoming tonal. Recently the difference between what they call Accent One (a rising tone, as in Chinese) and Accent Two (a falling tone) has come to be the only distinguishing characteristics between words which are otherwise homonyms. I was blown away by this idea: Tonal languages primarily are a hallmark of Asia and Africa, but here they were, developing (in a documented, studied fashion!) in a modern European language! Suddenly, not only did I want to create a Germanic language, but also a tonal one (another first for me), and quickly set out to do so.

I worked for roughly a week to create what you see now, and for all of that time, the language remained nameless. Now, I give it a name: Vertèn. And having given it that name, and written that name for you, I must now explain how to pronounce it.

First, let it be said that the orthography (written form) for Vertèn is by no means final: At the moment, it is written completely phonetically, meaning that it has exactly one character per sound used, and the spelling of a word is never irregular. If this language ever makes it past sketch form, that will change. Irregularities are a very large part of what make a language seem natural. Now, phonology: Most of this is borrowed directly from Dutch, with a few interesting additions of my own.

Consonants:
P -- as English ("pour")
B -- as English ("boy")
T -- as English ("tape")
D -- as English ("dog")
Ť/ť -- retroflex "t"... turn the tongue towards the back of the mouth (similar to Mandarin Pinyin "shu")
Ď/ď -- retroflex "d"... same as above, but voiced (similar to Mandarin Pinyin "zhu")
K -- as English ("king")
F -- as English ("factory")
V -- as English ("vain")
S -- as English ("sparkle")
Z -- as English ("zoo")
Š/š -- retroflex "s"... see above (as Mandarin Pinyin "shu")
Ž/ž -- retroflex "z"... see above (as Mandarin Pinyin "zhu")
M -- as English ("move")
N -- as English ("Normans")
Ŋ/ŋ -- as English "ng" sound ("ping-pong")
L -- as English ("lotus")
R -- as French (pick a word, any word...)
W -- as English ("whelp")
J -- as German ("ja!")
H -- as English ("help")
Ç/ç -- as English "st" ("start")
Þ/þ -- English "k" plus German "ch" ("____")

Vowels:
I -- as English "ee" ("meet")
Ü -- as German, Mandarin Pinyin (Mandarin "nü")
U -- as English "oo" ("good")
E -- as English ("enter")
Ö -- as German (pick a word, again)
Ė/ė -- schwa sound (as the first "a" in "American")
O -- as English, but less rounded (er...)
A -- as English ("all")
AI -- as English (the sound in the word "I")
OI -- as English ("oi!")
AU -- as English... but I can't think of any examples. Think "aw"...

Tones:
All tones appear on the stressed syllable of the word, which is usually the first syllable but is generally unpredictable. They are marked with the following symbols:
ã -- Tone 1, flat tone
à -- Tone 2, falling tone
á -- Tone 3, rising tone
In cases where there's already an accent of some sort on the primary vowel, I'll just put the tone accent right after the vowel. (I'll do the same in the case of Tone 1 "e," which is not a supported character in ASCII.)

And onwards! Only one thing remains to be said about the phonology, and this is an explanation of ablaut, or regular vowel change. Ablaut is a concept very familiar to speakers of any Germanic language, and indeed one which used to be central to all Indo-European langauges. It is the change of the vowel within a word to indicate different grammatical functions. To understand this, simply think of the difference between the word "mouse" and the word "mice". Despite the spelling, the only real difference between those words is that the "o" sound (spelled as "ou") becomes the "i" sound, which indicates plurality in this case. Any time you accidentally pluralize the word "moose" to "meese," you're simply following an ingrained pattern of ablaut which tells you that the "o" or "oo" sound in singular nouns should become an "i" sound for the plural. The same thing marks the difference between "speak" and "spoke": Verbs like this follow a different pattern of ablaut to indicate different grammatical functions. Vertèn follows the Germanic tradition in this, but with a set of ablaut rules all of its own. I'm going to just provide all of these ablaut rules here, without explaining very much... In all cases, the first vowel is the base, the next the first ablaut form, and the next the second ablaut form (Proto-Indo-European similarly had three levels of ablaut). In some cases a vowel will ablaut away to nothing (indicated by a 0) or to a consonant (generally a nasal like m or n, which in these cases are known as "syllabic nasals" because they act like vowels and form syllables).

Ablaut rules:
i ~ ö ~ ė
a ~ o ~ 0
ö ~ ü ~ o
o ~ ü ~ 0/ė
ė/e ~ i ~ i
ė ~ i ~ a
u ~ m ~ 0
u ~ oi ~ i

Basic Grammar and Word Forms

In all languages, there are basic functions which apply to the various word types (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) to create gradations in meaning. These are typically known as morphological processes, and the study of them is morphology. Here, I will discuss some of the basic morphology of Vertèn.

First, nouns. Nouns come on two categories, which we will for convenience call "genders." However, gender in Vertèn harks back to the early forms of Indo-European, in that the two categories were "animate" and "general" rather than "masculine" and "feminine." These genders are relatively straight forwards, usually predictable from the meaning of the word, although there are exceptions. Gender plays a rather important role in Vertèn syntax, but I'll talk about that later. For the moment, just know that all nouns come in two categories, and that some morphological processes differ between the genders.

Nouns also come in two numbers, as with most modern European languages. In Vertèn, plurality is indicated by suffixing an -n, which becomes syllabic when following a consonant. (As a side note, this is a major linguistic step for me: I used to have strong reservations about using syllabic nasals, but quickly realized as I worked on this project that I rather liked them, and also liked the way this tied Vertèn more closely to Proto-Indo-European, which was riddled with syllabic nasals.) This suffix undergoes assimilation in terms of point of contact, meaning that it actually becomes a different sound depending on what consonant it follows. This is a lot simpler than it seems: If it follows a sound that you make with the lips, like "b" or "p," it becomes an "m," which you also make with the lips. Similarly, if it follows a sound which you make in the back of the mouth, like "k" or "g," it becomes an "ŋ." Try speaking nonsense like this for a bit: You'll find pretty quickly that its easier to follow this rule than it is to break it, which is exactly why I put it in. Assimilation like this is one of the forces which causes languages to change over time.

Nouns also take the genitive case (better known in English as the "possessive") by adding a trailing -a. This follows the plural suffix, if there is one. This works almost exactly like English -'s, so don't get confused by the fancy name.

The last bit of morphology that I'll cover with nouns is the distinction between the two other cases, known as the oblique and the agentive. Again, don't be confused with the names, as this is really a very simple idea: Nouns take one form when they're the subject of a verb, and another form (their basic form) when they're anything else. The agentive is formed by changing the stressed vowel (the one with the tone on it) according to the rules of ablaut. The primary form of the vowel is the form for the oblique case (the one that goes anywhere), while the first ablaut form is used for the agentive of an animate noun, and the second ablaut form for the agentive of a genitive noun.

I'll end the section on nouns with an example:
tö-l -- tree, oblique (a general noun, rather than an animate one.. the - indicates first tone)
tö-ln -- trees, oblique (note that the n is syllabic, so this is actually a two-syllable word in formal speech)
tö-la -- of the tree, oblique (as in, belonging to the tree)
tö-lna -- of the trees, oblique
tü-l -- tree, agentive (the form used for the subject of a sentence)
tü-ln -- trees, agentive
tü-la -- of the tree, agentive
tü-lna -- of the trees, agentive

There! Now, onto a simple but interesting bit of morphology which is closely related to nouns: Articles.

Articles in Vertèn work a little differently than in English. First off, their is no indefinite article, meaning that there is no equivalent to "a, an." Words without an article are presumed to be indefinite in meaning. The definite article, however, is actually a prefix rather than a separate word. It is the prefix es-, but it also affects the way the rest of the word is pronounced. The most important distinction is that the article is always stressed, which means that the tone of the noun actually changes position and moves onto the article itself. Second, the tones switch: Tone 2 becomes Tone 3, and vice versa. Thus:
nàz -- dog
ésnaz -- the dog

On to verbs! These are a little bit more complicated, The infinitive form of regular verbs ends always in either -en or -ai, although not all words that end in these sounds are verbs. I'll be using the example "çrónen," which means "to see." The finitive forms of verbs (which means all forms except the infinitive... wow!) fall into three main categories, the singular conjugated forms, the plural forms, and the participle. This makes a total of seven forms for every verb, which, although it is two more than we're used to in English, is actually quite a small number for Indo-European languages in general, as I'm sure most of you know. These forms, for çrónen, are:
çrónen -- to see
çrónes -- I see
çrón -- you/thou see (conjugated for the second person singular)
çróvė -- he/she/it sees
çrü´n -- plural (paucal) form
çrü´na -- plural (distributive) form
çrèvė -- participle (notice the tone change!)

The difference between paucal and distributive is one that needs explaining (but happens to be a favorite conlanging trick of mine, a device that I just think is really gorgeous). Verbs in Vertèn, unlike nouns, make a distinction between two types of plurality, the paucal type and the distributive type. The distributive type is the one that we're used to in English, in that it generally means that a bunch of something-or-others did something, each of them separately. The paucal form, on the other hand, indicates that the something-or-others are part of a group, and that that group is acting as a unit. An example of this would be the difference in meaning between the phrases "the teachers each made a lesson plan" and "the teachers made a lesson plan together." In Vertèn, this distinction is part of the verb itself.

Beyond that, the verbal conjugations should be pretty straight forward. All verbs which end in -en follow this same pattern, and I have yet to devise the pattern for verbs ending -ai. The participle form is similar to the verb forms "seen" and "seeing" in English (the first of which is called the past participle, and the second the present participle), and is used in adjectival phrases and in expressing different tenses.

Closely related to verbs are the auxiliaries hàs ("to be") and lãv ("to do"). I won't go into detail about the conjugation of these words, because its much more complicated than that of normal verbs. Think about the verb "to be" in English: It takes a great many more than the standard five forms of English verbs (be, am, is, are, was, were... to name just a few). The auxiliaries in Vertèn are the same way. They're used in a similar manner, too: When ever the participle form of the main verb is called for, you put some form of the auxiliary in front of it. Think of the difference between "I work" and "I am working" in English: In the second phrase, the auxiliary is used, even though it has very little actual meaning. This is a very, very common feature of Indo-European languages in general, and as such I decided to utilize it here.

I'm going to just gloss over the rest of the morphology I have worked out. Pronouns take one of four forms: The agentive (used for the subject of a sentence), the patient (used for the direct object, which attaches to the front of a verb like some verbs in French), the dative (for any other time when a pronoun is needed) and the genitive (the possessive form, like "yours" or "mine"). There are six pronouns, one for each of the three persons in two numbers. I won't list these here.

Adjectives agree with there head nouns, moving to the first ablaut form when attached to an animate noun and suffixing -n when attached to a plural noun. The second ablaut form indicates nominalization... The easiest example to give his is the difference between saying "my cat" and "the cat is mine." Basically, whenever an adjective would be the object of a sentence, it takes this form. (Ok, so linguists would quibble as to whether this is technically nominalization, but I'm going to use that term anyway.)

Syntax

The last thing that needs to be covered is also, in the case of Vertèn, also the simplest. This is how words are actually put together to form a sentence. Because this is relatively similar to English, not so much needs to be said.

The biggest difference is that Vertèn is a strictly verb-final language, which means exactly what it says: In all cases, the verb will be the very final constituent in any sentence. Take, for instance, the sentence "The women see trees." In English, we put the verb in the middle, with the subject before and the object after. In Vertèn, the most basic word order would be "èsþaďousn tô-ln çrü´n," litterally "the-women trees see." The first two constituents, namely the subject and object, can actually go in any order, as you can always tell which is which by the cases they are in. The one which you wish to emphasize more goes first.

As a quick note, adjectives generally follow their nouns: "his dog" is "nàz ísė," litterally "dog his."

The most complex bit of syntax deals with subjects in the general gender. Vertèn displays a system that linguists call "topic worthiness," meaning that the language itself considers certain nouns to be less likely to be the subject of a sentence (less likely to be the actor of a verb) and thus forces you to do syntactic gymnastics to say what you want to say, in certain cases. Well, ok, so it's not as bad as all that. Whenever you have a subject which is in the general gender (that is to say, is likely to be inanimate), you can't just conjugate the verb for the proper person. Instead, you're forced to use an auxiliary. Let me give an example:

"e-skėta nàz kö´s mèvė" -- "the rock hits a dog"

Because "e-skėta" (from "köta," "rock") is in the general gender rather than the animate, Vertèn considers it unlikely to actually do anything. Thus, instead of "*e-skėta nàz mòvė," which uses the standard third person form of verb "mòsen" ("to hit"), you use the participial form "mèvė" and a special form of the auxiliary verb "to be" which is reserved expressly for this purpose.

And, really, that's all for Vertèn!

After working on Vertèn, I decided that I really, really enjoyed this type of project. Not only was it nice to get away from the perfectionism I feel towards Toquay, my primary conlang, and just experiment, but the idea of living in the linguistic world of some real-world language family for a period of time and creating my own impressionistic rendition of its landscape really appeals to me. It was very fun for me to watch this language develop, and I think it helped me to better understand what makes the Germanic languages distinctly Germanic, and how I can achieve similar effects in my own work. To this aim, I've decided that I'm going to keep doing this. Every month, in addition to my Toquay work, I'm going to pick a language style and build a conlang in it. It's going to be a no-pressure exercise: However far I get at the end of a month is however far the language gets developed, and if I manage to develop as far as Vertèn, that's more than good enough. Not only will I learn more about natural languages through these monthly imitation projects, but my own conlanging skill should benefit from the practice... I'll probably post outlines like this each month, although they may begin to get significantly less detailed as I get busier.

Next up, the Celtic languages!

-lelandpaul