Ifs, Ands, & Buts

Here's some useful words and how they work (and why some work differently than in English).

If X, Then Y.

Elessic Verbs have no distinct conditional or subjunctive forms, instead relying on words like ŝu ("if"), aid ("then"), and yed ("whether") to form conditional statements. Because of this, these words cannot be left off. "Wish" statements are marked as conditional because the Verb forces them to be conditional, no extra marking necessary.

And(s)

English has only one way of saying "and,"  but Elessic has several. The basic form is i, which functions as in English. If the preceding word ends in consonant, the form hi is used instead to prevent confusion with the Genitive Case.

There are two other "ands," which don't have corresponding uses in English. One is the "disassociative and," it. it is used to indicate that (unless restated for the second noun/verb phrase) modifiers of the first noun/verb phrase do not apply to the second. Take the example phrase "They sell red mushrooms and candy." In English, it is ambiguous as to whether both the Mushrooms and the Candy are red, or if only the Mushrooms are red. If translated using i, then both are red. If translated using it, then only the Mushrooms are red. This is more useful in complex statements, or with certain verbs, but I'm not going to do examples for that right now.

There's also the "causative and," if, which links two verb phrases to indicate that the first phrase causes the second phrase. "I got hungry and hit my head" is ambiguous as to whether or not the hunger caused me to hit my head. In Elessic, the two are unrelated unless if is used.

But

"But" is expressed by the word had, which functions as in English.

A quick note on Orthography and Phonology

Elessic has no double letters, ever. In a case where combining two words (or adding a Suffix) would result in a double letter, the produced word still only has one letter.

Sometimes, when something would result in two adjacent /s/ sounds, a /z/ may be used instead. This is simply for how it sounds, and is rarely Phonemic.

More on this later.

Cases - 1

Elessic has 5 Cases: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative 1, and Dative 2; which will be explained here. Excluding the Nominative, cases are "marked" in some way (that is, there is some feature that indicates the case). Different cases require different marking.

Note: Possessive Pronouns and Articles always reflect their Noun's Case, even if the Case is indicated elsewhere.

Nominative

Nominative is the default Case, and has no markings.

Accusative

The Accusative Case indicates the Direct Object of a Transitive Verb, and can be marked by Syntax (second or third position, depending on S-O-V or S-V-O syntax). If non-marking Syntax is used (Object-First Syntax), then the Noun requires either an Accusative Possessive Pronoun, or an Accusative Article.

Genitive

The Genitive Case indicates either possession, or attribution between two nouns (as in English formations using -'s or the Preposition "of"). It is marked either by the use of a Genitive Article, or the Genitive Suffix -(s)i (Suffixes with parentheses indicate that the parenthetical sound can be left off, this is mostly in the case of consonants used to buffer the following vowel when attaching to vowel-final words). 

Syntax affects the meaning of the phrase. Take the example phrases "X Y" and "Y X," where in both examples X is marked as Genitive. With the Syntax "X Y," the meaning is "X's Y," and with the Syntax "Y X" (again, the X is Genitive), the meaning is "Y of X." In both cases, the non-Genitive word is subordinate to the Genitive, but the nuance is different.

Dative 1

Dative 1 is a Case which indicates the destination of a Verb's action, where the action takes place, or marks the Object of a Preposition. It is marked either by the use of a Dative 1 Possessive Pronoun, Article, Syntax (being located directly behind the Preposition), or the Suffix -t. If the Dative 1 Noun is not the Object of a Preposition, and the Verb indicates movement, then the Dative 1 Noun indicates the destination of the action. If there is no movement implied, then it indicates the location of the action.

Dative 2

Dative 2 is a Case which indicates the direction of the Verb's action. It is marked in the same manner as the Dative 1 (Possessive Pronoun, Article, Syntax, or Suffix). The Dative 2 Suffix is -st.

Nouns - 1

Nouns are, possibly, the most important class of words in any given language.

Elessic has no complex rules for Nouns, no genders or declensions. The most difficult thing is pluralization, but I'll get to that.

Nouns can display the following cases: Genetive, Dative 1, Dative 2.
I'll cover Cases once I have Nouns to use in examples and such.

Glossary:

anan - Sun

bek - Bear

ĉira - Magnolia

dal - Person

del - Water

dava - Elf

gwɪl - Cloud

ɪksɪl - Silk

lim - Tree

men - Place

sɪma - Flower

yon - Salt

Plurals:

By default, a Noun becomes plural by receiving an -r- between its last Consonant-Noun pair. For example: dal becomes dral, bek becomes brek, sɪma becomes sɪmra. Not all words can support this method, going through the following options in order:

A word like lim, which would become difficult/impossible to pronounce (lrim can't be said as a single syllable), instead takes -R-. Therefore, "Trees" is lRim.

A word which can't support an -R-, like gwɪl, instead receives a word-final -a.

A word which cannot take a word-final -a (due to already ending in a vowel), such as ĉira, take a word-final -n.

Obviously, some words have no need for a plural form in the traditional sense (these being non-count nouns, most often), but in some cases a plural form might be used for extra meaning (such as multiple groups of the noun, similar to as in English). This may also be used for contextual detailing, such as with del, which often is used as a suffix in naming bodies of water. del is used for stationary waters (lakes, ponds), and drel is used for moving water (rivers, the ocean).

Phonology

Phonology is the basis of any spoken language, and so it seems a fair place to start in introducing someone to Elessic.

Sounds:

æ -  apple Near-Open Front Unrounded
b/p    * Bilabial Stop
ĉ - chapter Voiceless Palato-Alveolar Affricate
d/t * Alveolar Stop
e - bet Open-mid Front Unrounded
v/f * Labiodental Fricative
g/k * Velar Stop
h Voiceless Glottal Fricative
i - beat Close Front Unrounded
ɪ - pit Near-Close Near-Front Unrounded
l Alveolar Lateral Approximant
m Bilabial Nasal
n Alveolar Nasal
a - hot Open Back Unrounded
o - tote Close-mid Back Rounded
r Alveolar Approximant
z/s * Alveolar Sibilant
ŝ - sheet Voiceless Palato-Alveolar Sibilant
ð - lathe/þ - bath * Dental Fricative
u - hoot Close Back Rounded
ʌ - hut Open-Mid Back Unrounded
w Labio-Velar Approximant
y   Palatal Approximant
‘ Syllable Spacer
*indicates a voicing pair

Obviously, this isn't totally IPA, and the examples are subjective based on your own accent. For this purpose, I speak a generalized American dialect, with a degree of south-eastern influence.

Also, I should point out that there are processes like assimilation in the language. "o" before "r" still forms that funny "or" thing like it does in English. These are not accounted for in my orthographical systems, Latin or Elvish.

The glyphs in the left column are how I represent the different sounds of the language in Latin text.

When written in Latin characters, they are all lowercase and italicized, like this.

Additionally, Elessic utilizes what I refer to as Syllabic Consonants, but are functionally more like consonants preceded by a schwa (honestly, I can't distinguish the two). Syllabic Consonants are indicated by capital letters, as in the word arK (pronounced "ah-rək"). Syllabic Consonants are uncommon, and mostly used in pluralizing nouns which can't take the normal pluralization process.

The Bare Bones

So, what is Elessic? What kind of language is it? What themes and features are important in its creation? I'll talk about this and more here.

Ideology

Elessic is meant to be the language of a race of Elves, and these Elves have a very different world-view than humans do. The most important things in the language are (in no particular order) Clarity, Simplicity, and Beauty.

Clarity

Elessic is meant to be inambiguous (though not to the degree of, say, Lojban). 

Verbs have obvious transitivity and only a few possible definitions, so the meaning is clear.

Words formed from other words use specific suffixes to indicate their relationship to the original. For example, the word "Bird" in the phrase "Bird House" would have a suffix to indicate that it is an adjective describing what uses the thing the adjective describes. A different suffix could be used to indicate that the house looks like a bird, if you wanted to.

As of right now, I am not allowing any homophones.

Simplicity

The rules of the language have no exceptions when it comes to things like pluralization and verbs function. A word is defined by its form, and to change its meaning one must change its form.

Verbs do not conjugate for person, only tense and plurality of the subject noun.

Beauty

The language must sound nice when spoken, and must look nice when written. If I don't like a word I've created when I begin to use it in the context of phrases, then I'll change it. If the language does not sound pretty or magical, then it is useless to me.

Structure

Elessic is a S-V-O language, primarily, but S-O-V is also acceptable, and is required in certain formal speech forms. The cases are as follows: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative 1, Dative 2. Cases are always expressed in some manner, though some have multiple ways they can be indicated.
Adjectives and Verbs reflect the plurality of their primary nouns.
Articles and Possessive-Pronouns reflect the plurality and case of their primary nouns.

In cases where a piece of the sentence (article, subject, verb, object) would be obvious, such a piece can be left off (this is mostly used to leave out articles).

Nouns are genderless.

Gender-specific nouns (such as "brother" and "mother") are formed by adding gendered suffixes to neuter bases.

Correlatives are formed by adding correlative prefixes to "noun category" bases. When used beside a noun, the prefix attaches directly to the noun, and the category base is left out. (This will all be explained later)

Double-negatives are improper and are to be avoided.

There's plenty more to say, but I'll get to that stuff when it comes up.

My Qualifications

Can one really be qualified for language-making?

If you ask me what I majored in, I say "Linguistics," but this isn't 100% true. Technically, my degree is a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies. For my degree, I had to choose two foci, and my were Linguistics (of which I took 24 hours) and Writing (of which I took 16 hours).

I took a lot of Linguistics classes, and boy do I not remember much.

I mean, I remember a lot of the basic stuff, and how to do certain things, and certain concepts, but a lot of terminology is completely lost to me. Used to, I would try to look things up to see if there was a word for what I need, but now I've kind of just started coming up with my own terminology for things.

Especially when dealing with language features that don't exist in English.

Basically: Linguistics is an enormous field of study and I can't know it all. Instead, I have to come up with terms for things to save time. Maybe I'll make a glossary for this kind of thing.

Why Blogger?

I'm on various social media sites, including Tumblr.

So you might ask, "Ves, why are you doing this on Blogger and not Tumblr, where you already have a blog about writing?"

The answer isn't super easy to explain, though it's very obvious to me.

See, I'm a very partitioned person, and I have my own way of organizing things. Putting this on Blogger instead of Tumblr fits my need for division and organization. Additionally, Tumblr's infrastructure is cesspool and its formatting is a labyrinth of bad decisions. 

I fully expect Yahoo to close Tumblr before too much longer, and I don't want to lose what I write. Blogger is backed by Google, has fantastic formatting tools, and a nifty feature that lets me download all my posts if I want.

Blogger may not have the same sort of sharing community that Tumblr does, but I don't think I need that for this. For me, it's more important to have my own little space.

An Introduction to this Blog

This is a conlang blog, which is a new thing for me!

I've never actually been involved in the conlang community because I generally avoid other people, especially in respect to my interests. The closest I've come is my involvement with the Esperanto (the only "functional" conlang that I'm interested in) community.

I've decided to make this blog to chronicle the production my own conlang, Elessic.

I'm a fantasy writer, and it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a fantasy writer in possession of too much imagination, must be in want of a conlang.

Therefore, I'm making an Elvish conlang (and, to some degree, conculture), for use in my writing, and as an outlet for my personal linguistic energy.

This language is known (in English) as Elessic, which comes from the mistranslation of the phrase eles tres davrasi, which means "[the] language of the Elves." Autymically, the languages is known simply as davrasi, and comes in two dialects (which I will not be devoting time to distinguishing at the present), alodavrasi ("High Elvish"), which is the prestige dialect, and the one that I consider "default" in my writings, and kyardavrasi ("Wood Elvish"), which has more relaxed rules.

Whether or not this blog receives traffic, it will at least serve as an outlet for my thoughts and a record of my ideas.