Mosici

This page describes Cairniasial standard Mosici, with brief mentions about other close varieties such as Sialmoséce standard Mosici

I. Sound ⁊ Letters

I.A. Phonology

Mosici has the following phonemes

All vowels can also all be long,

There is also the following allophony rules:

• The dorsal approximant is realised as a [ẅ] off-glide in coda positions.
• The dorsal fricative is realised as a [ɐ̯] off-glide in coda positions.
• The dorsal fricative is realised as a true fricative [ʁ] in consonant clusters.
• /n/ nasalises a preceding vowel.
• /n/ itself is not pronounced in coda positions.¹
• Nasalised close vowels are realised as mid-centralised: /ĩ ĩː ỹ ỹː ũ ũː/ [ɪ̃ ɪ̃ː ʏ̃ ʏ̃ː ʊ̃ ʊ̃ː]
• The dorsal plosive ⁊ approximant are realised as palatal before /i y e j/² ,
• The dorsal plosive ⁊ approximant are realised as uvular before /u o w/²
• The dorsal plosive ⁊ approximant are realised as palatal after /e i j/² or in the coda of a syllable with /e i/² as the nucleus.
• The dorsal plosive ⁊ approximant are realised as velar otherwise
• Plosives are realised as voiced next to other phonemically voiced consonants.
• Plosives are realised as non-sibilant fricatives of the same place of articulation word finally.

I.B. Coalescence

Mosici doesn’t allow consecutive vowels inside of words. To resolve would-be hiatuses, a coalescence process is used. This process is historic for all native words, but it still current to resolve diphthongs in loan words and is necessary to understand to read the written language, as the spelling was fixed before that sound change occurred.

The process goes thusly (before applying the allophony):

1. Group all consecutive vowels by pairs, starting at near the start of the word
2. Combine all pairs of vowels according to the table below (the first vowel indexes the row, and the second vowel indexes the column)
3. If any vowel is long, the resulting vowel is long;
4. Repeat from step 1 until all hiatus has been resolved.

I.C. The Nahan Script

Mosici is written in the Nahan Script (also named the Polia(h)r alphabet), which is am alphabet which in Mosici is considered to have the following letters, digraphs and diacritic’d letters. The sole diacritic is called the  〈sitrapaóha〉.

I.C.1. Numbering with the Poliahr order

The letters can be used to number things in the manner most alphabets are used elsewhere. for those purpose the order is as used above but  isn’t used.

I.C.2. Note for Mosici as used on Nguhcraft

Mosici can also be found on the Nguhcraft world. That “Sialmoséce standard” version of the language is nearly identical to the Cairniasial standard described in this document, but has experienced a minor spelling reform affecting the spelling of voiced fricatives. it introduces two new modified letters, inserted after their plain versions in the order. They aren’t used in Poliahr order numbering either.

the following sequences are thus respelled

I.D. Examples

 ⟨tráihéinss⟩ “fox”

• */tʀɔiːɛins/
• → */tʀøːins/ Coalescence 1
• → /tʀyːns/ Coalescence 2
• → [dʁʏ̃ːs] Allophony

 ⟨mosséceec⟩ “of islands”

• */mosikɛɛk/
• → /mosikik/ Coalescence
• → [mosiciç/ Allophony

 ⟨an·nielvc⟩ “of Nyelaf”

• */annjɛʟvk/
• → /anjɛʟvk/ Particle shenanigans
• → [ãnjɛẅvɣ] Allophony

II. Words

II.A. Nouns

II.A.1. Number

Number is marked by reduplicating the last orthographic vowel of the root without the sitrapaóha (see following table). In most cases the pronunciation of the plural isn’t directly derivable from the pronunciation of the singular.

II.A.2. Cases

Nouns are also marked for case. There are 5 simple cases — agent, patient, genitive, dative and ablative — and 2 compound cases — spatial and temporal locative.

They are 7 patterns for the simple cases based on the the coda consonant(s) of the agent form: the concatenative pattern, and the 6 substitutive patterns (, , , , , )

II.A.2.a. Agent

The Agent case age indicates the agent of a transitive clause, or the subject of an active intransitive clause.

II.A.2.b. Patient

The Patient case pat indicates the patient of a transitive clause, or the subject of a stative intransitive clause.

II.A.2.c. Genitive

The genitive case gen indicates possession or qualification. Note that in the case of qualification, the formation of a compound is also possible. Note: Compounding is not subject to coalescence.

II.A.2.d. Dative

The dative case dat indicates the beneficiary of a ditransitive verbs, as well as indicating a direction faced. Note hover that it isn’t used with verbs of movement towards something, for those use the patient case (see Section II.A.2.b) instead, the dative instead indicates the means of displacement.

II.A.2.e. Ablative

The ablative case abl indicates the provenance of the action. It is also used as an instrumental, indicating the means by which the action is done. For verbs of movement away from something, it only has it’s instrumental meaning, the source is indicated by the patient case (see Section II.A.2.b). For verbs of movement towards something, the ablative doesn’t have the instrumental meaning, for that role use the dative instead.

II.A.2.f. Spatial Locative

The spatial locative cases sploc is used to indicate a spacial location. it is marked by expressing the noun in the genitive case, followed by the  ⟨la⟩ particle.

II.A.2.g. Temporal Locative

There are four temporal locatives: past, present, future and gnomic tmploc.pst, tmploc.prs, tmploc.fut and 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) are indicated by expressing the noun in the oblique followed by the particle  ⟨anip⟩ (resp  ⟨anep⟩,  ⟨anop⟩ and  ⟨anap⟩) However the present case is rarely used outside of set phrases like   “today” or   “now”

II.A.3. Proper noun enclitic 

Proper nouns that aren’t personal names always take the proper noun enclitic ppn  ⟨an·⟩

The affix  ⟨ni-⟩ — which on proper nouns forms demonyms — attaches to the front of the proper noun enclitic:  gives  and not * or *. Demonyms formed this way also mark plural on the proper noun enclitic:  pluralises to  and not *.

II.B. Pronouns

Mosici has a full set of personal, demonstrative and interrogative pronouns (see table at the end of this section). However, the use of personal pronouns is limited to situations where they are necessary.

The Agent and patient forms especially are often dropped in non-participial clauses. Indeed, a speaker would more often use the passive marking and avoid a pronoun altogether than use an patient form: Use   (Loarne.age pass.eat.prs.3si) rather than ?   ?(Loarne.age 3si.pat eat.prs.3sa) for “Loarne eats it.”

II.C. Verbs

Verbs are mainly conjugated according to their tense and the grammatical person of the agent.

Orthographically the pattern is completely regular, however the vowel coalescence (see Section I.B) causes the pronunciation to be quite chaotic. The plural forms of past and present tense are always identical when spoken but distinguished in writing.

Verbs are typically listed in their gnomic infinitive form. to derive the stem, remove the final . Here is a conjugation table for an hypothetical null-stemmed verb as a way to list the affixes⁶

II.C.1. Aspect, mood ⁊ related nonsense

If you need other moods or aspects than an unaspected indicative, there is a plethora of affixes you can stack on verbs to specify them further, they all are interpreted as nested, coming away from the verb, and can be combined and stacked for more specific meanings

Here is a (eventually but not yet) exhaustive list of such affixes: (all of them are prefixes)

II.C.1.a. Conditionals, irrealis

II.C.1.b. Imperfective, durative, iterative

II.C.1.c. Perfective, terminative

II.C.1.d. Desiderative, Optative, Hortative

II.C.1.e. Imperative

II.C.1.f. Causatives

Mosici has two causatives: the purposeful and the accendental.

The purposeful causative  ⟨siehí-⟩ indicates that the described state is caused by the agent intentionally.

The accidental causative  ⟨sní-⟩ indicates that the described state is cased by the agent in unintentionally or accidentally.

Both change the valency of the verb. the cause is expressed as the agent, what would the agent of the root verb is expressed as the patient, and what would have been the patient of the root verb is expressed in the dative, the verb agrees with it’s new agent (unless further modified). ==== Passive The passive affix  ⟨na-⟩ makes a transitive verb agree with its patient instead of its agent. ==== Negation The negation prefix is  ⟨ta-⟩. It negates whatever component of the verb is immediately following it.

II.C.1.g. Also on other parts of speech

While frowned upon in more formal texts, all of the above mood and aspect affixes can be added to nouns to great effect in less formal or more poetic registers. Exception is of the negation affix which is considered perfectly acceptable in all registers.

II.D. Numerals

III. Syntax