Mosici

Mosici (  [ãmoziciç eʎa]) is a Nielf languages spoken in the confederation of the eastern isles.

This page mostly treats of the Cairneshalese (of  / Cairneshal), the standard variety

A⟩ History

[WIP: Eventually historical and geographical context will go there]

B⟩ Sound ⁊ Letters

B.I⟩ Basis of Phonology and Phonetics

Mosici has the phonemes described in Table 1 and Table 2. Sounds without an explicit romanisation are romanised as in the IPA.

The following pronounciation rules apply:

1. The dorsal approximant is delateralised and fronted (compared to what would imply rules 7-11) in coda position;
2. The dorsal trill is realised as the semivowel [ɐ̯] in coda position;
3. The dorsal trill is realised as the fricative [ʁ] in consonant clusters;
4. Nasal consonats nasalise immediately preceeding vowels;
5. Nasal consonants aren’t pronounced in coda positions — but nasalisation still happens;
6. Close nasalised vowels *[ĩ ỹ ũ] are realised as near-close [ɪ̃ ʏ̃ ʊ̃];
7. The dorsal plosive and approximant are realised as palatal before /i y e j/;
8. The dorsal plosive and approximant are realised as uvular before /o u w/;
9. The dorsal plosive and approximant are realised as palatal after /e i j/;
10. The dorsal plosive and approximant are realised as palatal in the codas of syllables with /e/ or /i/ as nuclei;
11. Otherwise the dorsal plosive and approximant are realised as velar;
12. Plosives are voiced when adjacent to phonemically voiced consonants;
13. Plosives are realised as non-sibilant fricatives of same place of articulation word finaly, at the exception of /p/ which is realised as [h~ɦ] in those same environments;
14. A word-initial nasal-plosive or nasal-fricative cluster is realised as the prenasalised version of the plosive or fricative.

B.II⟩ Coalescence

Vowel coalescence is a historical sound change of mosici, the understanding of which is required to read the written standard of the language.

It affects vowels in hiatus, reducing them to single monophtongs, sometimes separated by approximants.

Given that Late Classical Nielf — in particular the insular varieties that give rise to Mosici — had many such instances of hiatus, mosici spelling, can be at first glance irregular and unpredictable.

This sound change occured in Late Old Mosici, that is after the transition from distinctions in vowel length to distinctions in vowel quality (/a aː e eː i iː o oː/ → /a ɔ ɛ i e i o u/), and after the deletion of the central vowel /ə/ and the unvoiced dorsal fricative /x/ → /h/, but before the nasalisation of vowels before nasal consonants.

At this point in Mosici’s evolution, the primary stress was located on the penultimate vowel of the word, with secondary stress on every other vowel from there.

The sound change proceeds in 4 steps:

1. For each vowel pair in hiatus /ˈV₁.V₂/, merge them as per Table 3
2. Recompute the positions of the stress according to the same pattern as above
3. Repeat from (1) 2 more times;
4. Merge any remaining /V₁.V₂/ pairs as per Table 3.

B.III⟩ The Naran Alphabet

Mosici is written in the Naran alphabet (sometimes also called “Poliah alphabet”, from the first few letters), which, in Mosici, is considered to have the letters defined in Table 4

Apfe ⟨⟩ is completely silent, and is transparent to vowel coalescence and nasalisation, but acts as a consonant for all other aspects targetting adjacent vowels.

Vazteźec apfe ⟨⟩ is an Early Middle Mosici innovation to indicate velar fricative that had voiced in old Mosici and thus were still pronounced (then ɣ, now ʀ in Standard Modern Mosici) and distinguish them from the now-silent hapffe. A similar reform was proposed for ssipal and fasoh, with the letters vazteźec śpal ⟨⟩ and vazteźec vazo ⟨⟩, but didn’t encounter as wide a success and didn’t persist to the modern language. In the modern language, unvoiced /s/ and /f/ are written with a doubling of śpal and vazo respectively.

The Naran alphabet as it is used in Mosici also has a singular diacritic, the źtrapawa ( [ʒdʀapawa]), that changes the quality of vowels. Historically it used to indicate the long vowels of Classical Nielf. It is commonly transcribed with an acute in latin:  ó /u/,  í /i/,  á /ɔ/ et  é /i/.

There are also multigraph to write the palatal fricatives:  ssi /ʃ/,  si /ʒ/.

Finally Mosici uses a small set of punctuation marks: the short pause ⟨⟩ the sentence break ⟨⟩, the joiner ⟨⟩ and the brevity mark ⟨⟩. They are usually transliterated with a comma, a period, an interpunct or a hyphen, and an apostrophe respectively.

C⟩ Morphology

C.I⟩ Nouns

C.I.1⟩ Number

The plural was, in Old Mosici, marked by the reduplication of the last vowel of the noun, without length contrast. Orthographically, that is still the case, where the plural is marked by reduplicating the last orthographic vowel of the noun. However, it is generally not possible to derive the pronounciation of the plural of a noun, solely from it’s singular form, nor is the reverse.

C.I.2⟩ Cases

Nouns are declined according to 7 gramatical cases: 5 simple cases — agent, patient, genitive, dative, ablative — and 2 compound cases — spatial and temporal locatives. There are 7 declension patterns based on the coda of the agent form: a concatentative pattern (∅) and 6 substitutive patterns, (, , , , , and ).

Mosici inflects according to a split-active morpho-syntactic system: transitive agents are inflected like agent-like intransitive subjects, and transitive patients are inflected like patient-like intransitive subjects. Whether an intransitive clause takes an agent form or a patient form depends on the verb, divided along somewhat semantic lines

C.I.2.a⟩ Agent

The agent case AGE indicates the agent of a transitive clause, or the agent-like subject of an intransitive clause.

C.I.2.b⟩ Patient

The patient case PAT indicates the patient of a transitive clause, or the patient-like subject of an intransitive clause. If the root word is from one of the voiced substitutive patterns, the affix is pronounced as voiced, even if no other voiced consonant is adjacent:  nréz [ⁿʀez] gives  nrét [ⁿʀeð], not [*ⁿʀeθ].

C.I.2.c⟩ Genitive

The genitive case indicates that the marked noun qualifies, or is inalienably the possesor of, an other noun. Note that in a qualifying use, the creation of a compound noun is also possible. The two parts of a compound noun are usually not subject to vowel coalescence. If the root word is from one of the voiced substitutive patterns, the affix is pronounced as voiced, even if no other voiced consonant is adjacent:  nréz [ⁿʀez] gives  nréc [ⁿʀeɣ], not [*ⁿʀex].

C.I.2.d⟩ Dative

The dative DAT indicates the beneficiary of a ditransitive verb, as well as the direction of an action. Note however that it is not used as the destination of the verbs of movements towards somewhere, which use the patient case for that role. For said verbs, the dative indicates the means of the movement.

C.I.2.e⟩ Ablative

The ablative ABL indicates a source or a provenence. It is also used as an instrumental, indicating the means by which the action is realised. For verbs of movement from somewhere it only ever has that instrumental meaning, as the source is expressed in the patient case.

C.I.2.f⟩ Spatial Locative

The spatial locative SPLOC is used to indicate a position in space. It is marked by expressing the noun in the genitive, followed by the particle  ⟨la⟩. It is however pronounced as if the particle was part of the word itself: it blocks the lenition of, and voices, the final  of the genitive marking.

C.I.2.g⟩ Temporal Locative

There are four temporal locatives: past, present, future and gnomic TMPLOC.PST, TMPLOC.PRS, TMPLOC.FUT, TMPLOC.GNO. The past case (resp. present and future) is used, as its name indicates, to locate events that happened in the past (resp. present and future). The gnomic case locates events that are either generally happening, happening at an unknown point in time, or happening repeatedly.

The past case (resp. present, future, gnomic) is indicated by expressing the noun in the patient case followed by the particle  anép (resp  anep,  anop and  anap). However those are pronounced as there was no word boundary between the word and the particle. In particular it doesn’t cause the lenition of the final  of the patient marking.

Note that the present spatial locative is rarely used outside of set phrases like   véntanep “today” or   mpatanep “now”. Another common phrase using the gnomic temporal locative is   aintanap “at some point”.

C.I.3⟩ Proper noun clitic

Proper nouns that aren’t personal names are always marked with the proper noun clitic . It is pronounced as expected [ã] in front of consonants, but is pronounced [ãt] in front of vowels (instead of the expected [ãn]).

The  prefix — which on proper nouns forms demonyms — is attached before the proper noun clitic:  gives  not * or *. The plural of thus-formed demonyms is also marked on the anclitic: the plural form of  is  and not *.

C.II⟩ Pronouns

Mosici has personal pronouns for all persons distinguishing in number, and in animacy for the 3rd person (see Table 7)

The demonstrative does not, by itself, distinguish between distal and proximal. Those are instead, generally, marked with periphrastic phrases such as “ ” (at us) or “ ” (at it) respectively.

The interrogatives take the place of the noun phrase that would answer the question, with no other change to the structure, it is unmarked for number.

C.III⟩ Verbs

C.III.1⟩ Tense, person and number

Mosici verb stems conjugate by person, number and tense according with the affixes shown in Table 8. Note that those affixes are applied prior to coalescence and that the romanisation is given purely indicatively, and is only correct for consonantal stem verbs. That said, in the oral languages, in the plural, the present and the past tense are always indistinguishable, and verbs function in effect as a future/non-future system. The past-present distinction is still, of course, kept in writing. The nominalised form is used in relative clauses, as the head of the clause (see Section D.III), as well as to form the action noun (especially in the gnomic):  cért “to write” →  cérta “the act of writing”.

C.III.2⟩ Aspect, mood ⁊ related nonsense

In addition to the tense, person and number marking, Mosici verbs can take a plethora of prefixes marking a large variety of aspects, moods and other verb functions. They can be stacked arbitrarily to get extremely specific meanings, or occasionally act as derivational morphology. In those derivational cases, the derived words are also defined in the dictionary. All the romanisations are given as an indication, as all of them are subject to vowel coalescence.

C.III.2.a⟩ Imperfective Aspects

The progressive  (ztá-) is used to mark that an action is treated as ongoing over time.

The iterative  (atjo-) is used to mark that an action happens again, or repeatedly.

The habitual  (asy-) is used to mark that an action is common place, a habit or a norm.

C.III.2.b⟩ Perfective Aspects

The aorist  (ntov-) is used to mark that an action is considered as a single discrete event.

The incohative  (mare-) is used to mark that an action is begining.

The cessative  (ofa-) is used to mark that an action is complete.

C.III.2.c⟩ Moods: Irrealis

The conditional  (fwé-) is used to mark the condition of if-then structures.

The irrealis  (lyn-) is used to mark irreal or hypothetical situations. It is also used to mark the consequence of if-then structures.

C.III.2.d⟩ Moods: Wants and needs

The desiderative  (fatz-) is used to mark that the agent wishes that the patient act the verb over the beneficiary. This in effects bumps the valancy by one.

The moral necessitative  (rjan-) is used to mark that the patient effectuing the action over the beneficiary is a moral need to the agent. This in effects bumps the valency by one.

The physical necessitative  (prél-) is used to mark that the patient effectuing the action over the beneficiary is a physical need to the agent, that is required for surivival or, especially when used in the gnomic with a 1^st person inclusive implied agent, by physical laws laws of the universe. This in effect bumps the valency by one

C.III.2.e⟩ Moods: Cause

The voluntary causative  (śi-) is used to mark that the agent wittingly caused the patient to enact the verb on the object.

The involuntary causative  (sni-) is used to mark that the agent accidentally or unexpectedly caused the patient to enact the verb on the object.

C.III.2.f⟩ Moods: Wishes and orders

The optative  (aré-) is used to mark that that the speaker wishes for the action to take place. It is distinct from the desiderative in that it marks general wishes from actual wants.

The hortative  (cofa-) is used to marke that the speaker encourages the action to take place. It is often used as a more polite (read: indirect) form of imperative in intstructional (giving directions, recipes, ⁊c.) and very formal settings.

C.III.2.g⟩ Imperative

As opposed to all other mood markers, the imperative is marked with a separate particle  (o) immediately following the conjugated verb.

C.III.2.h⟩ Passive

The “passive” marker  (na-) makes an active verb conjugate according to its patient instead of it’s agent. Most importantly this doesn’t change the valancy or the argument marking in anyway. It’s mainly used to avoid pronoun usage when there is an explicitely named agent but a pronominal patient.

C.III.2.i⟩ Negation

The negation marker is  (ta-) inverts the meaning of the immediately following modifier. It also negates the meaning of the verb root when applied directly to it.

C.III.2.j⟩ Also on other parts of speech

Because of how Mosici lacks a copula and forms it’s copulaic constructions, all of those affixes (except)  may also be found on noun phrases, in which case they attach to the head of a patient noun phrase. This goes doubly so for the negation, which can also be used to negate nouns.

C.IV⟩ Numerals

Mosici uses base 6 numbers, with two common shorthands, usually called “literary” and “scientific” respectively, based on the numeral values of the poliahr, as described in Table 9. They are declined that nouns and agree in case with the noun they qualify.

C.IV.1⟩ Units

Units are treated like the head noun of the phrase, they however usually do not decline with number.

D⟩ Syntax

D.I⟩ Basic sentence structure

Due to extensive case marking, the word order is mostly free, leaning towards Agent-Patient-Verb. The only constraint are that noun phrases not be split by other sentence constituants, and that if valancy changing moods are used in a way that demotes multiple objects to the dative, those indirect objects appear in from most least deeply obviated to most deeply obviated:

D.II⟩ Copulaic phrases

Mosici lacks a proper separate adjective class, instead most copulaic circumstances are either stative verbs that are conjugated normally, and noun comparison, in which case a simple juxtaposition of two patients is used.

D.III⟩ Relative clauses

True relative clauses don’t actually exist, instead one would express a full clause with the verb at the end congugated in the nominalised person, the internal word order of the clause is free so long as all the components are adjacents, and that the verb (which takes appropriate marking as if it were a qualifiying noun phrase) comes last.

D.IV⟩ Polar questions

Polar questions are expressed by expressing an affirmative statement followed by the particle  tźa, They are usually answered with either  jé “yes, it is”,  “no”, or  fár “yes, it isn’t”

D.V⟩ Non polar questions

Non polar questions are expressed by replacing the object of the question with the appropriately declined form of the interrogative pronouns (see Table 7). They are generally answered stating the answer using the same case.

E⟩ Dictionary

This dictionary is sorted according to the Poliah (see the section on orthography). Entries are formatted as follows:

The romanisation used is the phonemic version as described in the phonology section.

•  poln
  

  1. n. start, begining
  2. v. to start, to begin

•  pél
  

  1. n. (Irr. plural ) element, item, part
  2. n. (Out of World, Ŋəcraft, Not marked for number) slab shaving, a currency

•  pélt
  v. to cut, split, divide

•  pélti
  →  pél
  

•  o
  cl. imperative marker

•  yrta
  v. to enjoy, appreciate

•  ós
  →  uztja
  

•  uztja
  n. Nahan unit of mass, worth about 2.6819 kg

•  lésara
  v. to put, to deposit

•  léve
  n. bowl, plate, dish you eat out off

•  lev
  

  1. n. bottom, underside
  2. v. to be low, below

•  laratzin
  

  1. n. term, mandate
  2. n. mandate, role
  3. v. to be appointed, mandated, elected

•  lr’ós
  →  tepreluzdia
  

•  épleza
  n. person, individual, sapient being

•  yl
  

  1. n. type, category, kind
  2. v. to be sorted, ordered, classified

•  éla
  

  1. n. language, speech
  2. n. (Legal) the exact wording of a document, the letter of the law, the rules as written
  3. v. (Archaic) to speak, say

•  élapél
  n. (Irr. plural ) word

•  élapélti
  →  élapél
  

•  élál
  v. to speak, say

•  jazpol
  

  1. n. safety, protection
  2. v. to ensure the safety, to protect

•  al
  

  1. v. (Archaic) to do, perform, act
  2. n. action

•  alélapél
  n. (Irr. plural ) action verb

•  alélapélti
  →  alélapél
  

•  en
  

  1. pron. 3rd person singluar inanimate agent pronoun
  2. n. thing, object

•  enélapél
  n. (Irr. plural ) noun, substantive

•  enélapélti
  →  enélapél
  

•  evaź
  v. (+PAT destination) to travel, to journey

•  an·, ant·
  cl. proper noun clitic

•  aźnorymen
  v. to fry

•  aźnos
  n. fat, grease

•  avir
  v. to remove, extract

•  atjo-
  aff. iterative marker

•  atjopélt
  v. to dice, to cut in small chunks

•  ýven
  n. pen, quill

•  ir
  n. skin, leather

•  rymen
  v. to cook (use heat to transform food)

•  ren
  

  1. n. house, residence, home
  2. aff. derivational affix forming organisation name

•  cuźan
  n. quest, mission, task

•  cért
  v. to write

•  cértz
  

  1. n. writing, script, alphabet
  2. n. text, document, book
  3. n. (Legal) act, decree

•  cison
  n. soul, spirit

•  cizonap
  n. psychology

•  co-
  aff. augmentative

•  car
  aff. (Archaic) derivational affix forming organisation names

•  camare
  n. fish

•  catźa
  v. to be close, nearby

•  cetźu
  n. illness, disease

•  nap
  n. science

•  napcar
  n. university, research institution

•  erlen
  

  1. n. meal, dish
  2. v. to cook, prepare food

•  esný
  n. water

•  zyn
  n. cooking pot, saucepan

•  śý
  n. (Out of World, Ŋəcraft) rice

•  ztola
  v. to be interesting

•  volner
  v. to know, have understanding on an intuitive level

•  ven
  n. day

•  varny
  

  1. num. one thousand and ninety six (1 296 = 6⁴)
  2. num. a lot, a large number

•  vazteźe
  

  1. n. sound, noise
  2. n. (Lingustics) voicing

•  mpy
  v. to touch, make physical contact with

•  myly
  

  1. n. guts, viscera, internal organs
  2. n. the metaphysical centre of emotional intelligence

•  mapyn
  v. to be large

•  mare-
  aff. inchoative marker

•  marevolner
  v. to learn, obtain understanding on an intuitive level

•  masle
  

  1. n. head
  2. n. the metaphysical centre of scholarly intelligence

•  tazrec
  v. to know by physical stimuli, to be aware

•  tepreluzdia
  n. Nahan sub-unit of mass, worth 6⁻³ , or about 12.4 g

•  tvary
  v. to catch