My conlang so far: Halvian

[Mentilliath]

Léthai sucks lol. It's one of my most irregular verbs, although it's still pretty regular as far as "to be" verbs go.

I'll put together a full table after I introduce verbs, but here's a sample of it conjugated in the present indicative:

Sg.: lēmi, lēs(i)**, lat*
Du.: léwes, léthos, látes
Pl.: lémes, léthe, lánti

The ablaut is fairly arbitrary; that is part of why it is irregular.

*"lat" was originally "láti", but the <i> dropped out over time. Probably went through an intermediate stage where it was pronounced /latʲ/. "Láti" is as archaic as "ye" and "thou" are in English.

**"lēsi" has an alternate form "lēs". The two are interchangeable and just a sign of a vowel that will probably drop out. "lēsi" is more formal and more common in writing.

(Na) lēs vistóro! "You're cool!"
Na lēsi zóntros. "You are a fool"

[Mentilliath]

MISSING PAGE

[Koko]

Not gonna lie, I like this declension better than the first. I actually don't like -a for feminine declensions (or well, any paradigm). Even though -o is just as common as it.

Do many of the declensions share similarities?

[Mentilliath]

Ha, I actually love -a and the first declension is a huge class, forming many deverbal nouns

The 1st and 2nd declensions are where the Latin influence really shows. In some cases, these case endings are the reconstructed "Old Latin" endings.

And yes, the declensions all share similarities. The thematic endings are basically the athematic endings plus thematic vowel (with some changes). While they do all have similarities, they can't exactly be "calculated" knowing this, since each declension has some irregularities. The sixth declension for example, to avoid certain odd vowel sequences like <ee>, makes some changes to the expected pattern.

[Koko]

Well, in any case, a lot of work has been put into the case endings.

[Mentilliath]

Thanks for noticin'

[Mentilliath]

Gonna take a little break from nouns to talk about verbs and personal endings.

Personal Endings

There are many sets of personal endings in Halvian and they get confusing. There are separate active, middle, passive, and perfect personal endings (though many of them are similar). For now, I am going to talk about the active endings.

The active endings are based directly on PIE. Like PIE, there are primary and secondary endings. Primary endings are used in the present and future tenses of most moods, secondary endings are used everywhere else. The secondary endings, despite their name, are essentially the default.

There are separate endings for singular, dual, and plural with no syncretism.

Primary Endings

The primary endings are based on PIE and Sanskrit. They contain an -i in the singular, which is a "here and now" particle.

The singular primary endings are:

1st person: -mi
2nd person: -si
3rd person: -ti

The primary endings in the present tense active:

mélami - I love
mélasi - you love
mélati - he/she/it loves

The dual primary endings are:

1st person: -ues
2nd person: -thos
3rd person: -tes

Unlike the singular, the dual forms do not show the -i particle. The -i particle was probably only originally in the singular, but it has spread to the third plural as you will see.

mélaues - we [both] love
mélathos - you [both] love
mélates - they [both] love

The plural primary endings are:

1st person: -mes
2nd person: -the
3rd person: -nti

I realize some information I gave above on léthai is wrong, and I will fix it. Even I get the endings confused sometimes.

Notice how the accent remains fixed throughout the whole present paradigm:

mélames - we love
mélathe - you [all] love
mélanti - they love

Secondary Endings

The secondary endings are used in the past tenses. They are the default endings and often lack an -s or -i where the primary endings have them. The primary endings are derived from the secondary endings.

The singular secondary endings:

1st person: -m or -i
2nd person: -s
3rd person: -th

The -d ending is based on that of Oscan and archaic Latin. I prefer -d anyway because -t would be too similar to Classical Latin.

I will use the imperfect here. Note that the past tenses have a prefix, a-, the augment. Note also the accent shift:

amélam - I was loving, would love
amélas - you were loving, would love
amélath - he/she/it was loving, would love

The augment is usually not accented. However, if the root does not contain a vowel (such as in the zero grade), then the augment is accented by default.

The dual secondary endings:

1st person: -we
2nd person: -ton
3rd person: -tān

The imperfect active in the dual:

amélawe - we [both] were loving, would love
amélaton - you [both] were loving, would love
amélatān - they [both] were loving, would love

The plural secondary endings:

1st person: -me
2nd person: -te
3rd person: -n

amélame - we were loving, would love
amélate - you [all] were loving, would love
amélan - they were loving, would love



Well, there you the primary and secondary active endings Should help verbal forms make more sense in the future

[Koko]

What was the error on léthai?

Also I can see how regular it is . Natie is fairly regular! In fact it's the most regular: the -t- is just missing in the second singular and the plurals and Iis optional on the third singular. "To come from" is the most irregular .

[Mentilliath]

Oh I fixed it. I had "léte" instead of "léthe" for the 2nd plural present. "Léte" would be an injunctive form, but it'll be a while before I get to those

I wish I could write Halvian with the Greek alphabet, but I have to be able to differentiate between /v/, /b/, and /w/ and that might be a problem. Although, come to think of it, I've done away with /f/ as a phoneme in Halvian. I was never using it and all instances of /f/ I've changed to /v/. Maybe I could use phi to represent /v/ and use digamma for /w/. It's an idea...

[Koko]

/v/ is by far better than /f/. I have it the most common of the two: I have so much trouble deciding where best it should go in Isyan, that I'm just plopping it anywhere I think nice in Celdovin.

Is the injunctive formed by an augmentless aorist? As in Sanskrit?

If you want to use the Greek alphabet, you could use the psi for letter without an equivalent, unless <ps> is as required as in Greek.

[Mentilliath]

I agree /v/ is better than /f/. Although in Galsaic, /f/ is very common, more common than /s/ even.

Halvian "na lēs zóntros", Galsaic "Nu lief žõtruf".

/v/ has a very limited environment in Halvian, same with /z/. Both are almost always word-initial or intervocalic, however /v/ can appear following /r/, /l/, or less commonly, /n/.

Injunctives in Halvian are formed from augmentless imperfects. Since many aorists are zero-grade forms, that would make for some weird initial clusters. For "mélase", the injunctive 2nd sing. would be "mélas", from the imperfect, but if it were from the aorist, it would be "mlas" and Halvian doesn't usually allow for initial clusters that wacky :p

And well /ps/ does occur in Halvian, but I don't know if it's common enough to have its own letter; in my conscript, I didn't create one for /ps/ or /ks/, even though they both occur.

[Koko]

"Nu" ?

What would best suit ψ? If you don't really need it it could be /w/, since it too has labial articulation and looks like it too. Or <ϋ>? Then you could keep the Greek transliterations the same (but, you know, romanized ϋ is <w>).

[Mentilliath]

"Nu" is the Galsaic 2nd person singular pronoun, yeah. Unstressed /a/ in Halvian often corresponds to /u/ or /ə/ (written <â> in Galsaic.

Maybe I could use psi for that...I really like the idea of using digamma for /w/ though, even if it is an archaic letter. I would also use qoppa to represent Halvian /kʷ/.

[Koko]

I meant that nu is even more similar to nua than na is ^^ Also now I am certain an intermediate development from *nə̆wa could be *noa to account for the Galsaic nu.

[Mentilliath]

Heh, so it is :p I swear I came up with that before I saw the Isyan one =) It does make for a cool reconstruction.

[Koko]

It does . I'm finding this proto-langing a lot of fun .

[Mentilliath]

I'm sort of realizing I don't really like Halvian verbs ending in -m. It seems too Sanskrit and too Latin.

And since I've already replaced some of the PIE final <m> with <n> (such as the accusative singular), I might decide to replace them all with <n>.

Thus "amélam" would now be "amélan".

Just thinking out loud...not sure if I'll change anything...

[Koko]

I approve ^^

Yay for changing morphemes!

[Mentilliath]

Just wanted to mention some miscellaneous items here:

Verbal Prefixes

Verbs of feelings and emotions in Halvian can take adverbial prefixes that modify the degree of that feeling or emotion. They can be translated into English as "really" or "sorta" essentially. One is strengthening and one is weakening. This is an old idea I came up with in high school.

The first prefix is mesa-. It weakens the strength of the verb and means essentially "sort of, kind of". It's a way of softening the blow of what you're saying.

For example, the verb tábnemi means "I hate".

mesatábnemi - I sort of hate, I kind of hate, I dislike

The second one is vo-. It strengthens the verb and means essentially "really".

votábnemi - I really hate, I loathe

They are treated as separate verbs and more frequently used ones would appear in a dictionary.

Confidence Particle

The so-called "confidence" particle expresses your confidence that the statement you are making is true. It is similar to the Japanese particle "yo".

The particle in Halvian is lein.

"lein" is always placed at the end of a sentence, after the verb. It is rarely used outside of speech. It can sometimes be translated as "surely" or "certainly", but these translations do not always work. Overuse of "lein" is seen as rude, as it implies you don't think your hearer believes you.

A: Ve lánti Ansíllī?
B: Lánti lein.

A: Are they in Ansillos (Halvian city)?
B: They are (I know it).

It has somewhat of an evidential factor to it. It implies that you have first-hand knowledge of the situation. If your knowledge was second-hand, "lein" would be misleading.

"Lein" is a clitic and affects the accent of the word it comes after.

Tóteti. "He's coming"
Totéti lein. "[I'm sure] he's coming].

Question Particle

I've showed this one before, but never explained it. The particle "ve" turns a non-question word into a question word. It functions similarly to "ne" in Latin.

"Ve" can be placed at the beginning of a sentence for more emphasis. Otherwise it is enclitic on the first word of the sentence.

Lántive hénnans lándans gosónthes?

"Are they the ones wearing yellow dresses?"

"Ven" expects a negative answer:

Ven ze tábnesi?

or

Ze tabnésiven?

"You don't hate me, do you?"

*Notice the accent shift in "tabnésiven". Accents cannot occur further back than the antepenultimate.

Fronting "to be"

Forms of léthai can be fronted to form "existence" sentences, translated into English with the dummy word "there". For the most part, Halvian has strict SOV order (much stricter than Latin). However, placing a form of "to be" first can get the "there exists" sense across. It's purely a stylistic choice.

Lat duéna xílala véquai!

"There is a strange girl in the house!"

This is really only done with forms of léthai. I have yet to front any other verb in this way.

[Koko]

How is <x> pronounced? In your first post no phoneme suggests what it signifies.

[flag=]it[/flag] Come si pronuncia la <x>? Nella tua prima posta non c'è nessuna fonema che implica cosa la lettera significa.

Speaking of the first post, you still have /f/