48lexr - Lex’s Notebook

Introducing: Néndisfas

Consider this post a very brief introduction to my in-progress conlang, Néndisfas.

In summary, Néndisfsho is a fusional language with phonemic pitch-accent, personal agreement in verbs, and split-ergative based on animacy.

Phonology

Consonants

/p/, /b/, /m/, /t/, /d/, /n/, /k/, /g/, /ŋ/, /kʷ/, /gʷ/

/f/, /v/, /s/, /ʃ/, /z/, /xʷ/, /h/

/w/, /j/, /ɾ/, /l/, /ʎ/, /ʟ/

Not much to say here but for the three way /l/, /ʎ/, /ʟ/ distinction held-on from the protolanguage.

Vowels

Five-vowel system with length distinction, making 10 vowels. Not interesting at all here.

Phonotactics

Max syllable: CV(C)(C)(C) / CV(C)#

Indeed, this means that the maximum size of a consonant cluster could be 4-consonants long,

Morphology / Syntax: Grammar

Verbs

Verbs (and predicative adjectives) are simple, comparatively, to the syntactic nonsense going down with nouns.

Verbs take a prefix for perfective and passive, and a suffix for past or present and to agree with the subject in gender (animate, inanimate).

Due to sound changes, verbs fall into one of six categories, but classes II, III, and IV all have alternate forms.

Nouns

Néndisfsho nouns take on one of two genders: Common or Neuter. Common nouns were derived from old animate nouns, and neuter nouns were derived from old mass nouns. The nouns which didn't fit with either were grandfathered in.

Due to sound changes, nouns take on one of six endings depending on their class. Classes I, III, and V have alternate forms.

Nouns also inflect for one of 5 cases: Nominative, Genitive, Accusative, Allative, and Commitative. The Allative, though, is beginning to be used like an Ergative, marking an animate subject of an intransitive verb, and an animate object of a transitive verb.

Take, for instance, the following sentences:

Yés-e váw-i ve-kát-ur-o.

Yessei.C-NOM car.N-ACC PRV.drive.PST.ANIM

"Yessei had driven the car."

Since the car is not animate, Yessei is rendered in the nominative, and the car is rendered in the accusative. In the following sentence, however:

Yés-ivā búm-pe kéht-us

Yessei.C-ALL dark.N-NOM hate.PRES.INAN

"The dark hates Yessei."

Here, the nominative case is reanalyzed as an absolutive, and the allative as an ergative.

This structure could be rewritten with a passive, like

Yés-ivā (búp-ko) ver-kéht-o

Yessei.C-ALL (dark.N-GEN) PASS.hate.PRES.ANIM

"Yessei is hated (by the darkness)."

Here, the genitive marks the agent, and the allative (ergative) marks the subject. Yessei, in this context, is treated as the object of a transitive verb, rather than the subject of an intransitive verb.

The reason this is so messy right now is because the language is in the middle of evolving the ergativity.

Other Notes

Néndisfas has no "true" 2nd or 3rd person pronouns, because pronouns are a completely open class in Néndisfas. The general 1st person pronoun is "gémse, géra, gésho" (I, me, my).

This is probably a language I'll wind up using as a meme language throughout my writing. It originally started as a language used in the deserts of Southern Atepsi, but now it's Yessei's first language, so I decided it can be both. In the context of Meiste, though, this is a long-dead language.

Paging the usual suspects: @quillswriting @oldfashionedidiot @ominous-feychild

Also if y'all have translation suggestions don't hesitate to drop them in my asks or as a reply/reblog to this post lol.

Nah that’s a changeling that’s trying to steal your car. I’d say either let the poor thing have it, take them to a Burger King and buy them an order of fries to try and get them to be your friend, or dump them on the street.

You’re driving home alone in the dead of night, and you see a child in the middle of the night. Feeling sympathetic, you offer to drive them to the police station to find their parents, only you find out that thing that you picked up isn’t just a child…

Day 44 (1:20) of rewriting my novel

Today I didn't log many words, but that's ok.

Today I continued my journey in writing Part Three in reverse. Instead of writing the long, boring car scene, I skip to the good part-making the plan to convince Governor Bunthun to help, only to have the plan ripped away violently from underneath the New Heroes. Classic storytelling, but interesting nonetheless.

I don't know why, but the idea of post-novel canon has been living in my head rent-free. Like, I think I know how I want the rest of the novel to go:

the Coalition grows in number,

they take Ir Nouzonif only to find that President Sluwfa has run off with the remaining two Old Heroes' magics,

Izi and Tagif go and stop President Sluwfa while Hota and Lozef remain to keep the remains of Ir Nouzonif stable,

and Izi and Tagif return and restore the Old Heroes, balancing Magic and bringing Meiste back to having a physical representation when They want it (don't ask.)

The outcome of all this is a couple things:

A bunch of power-hungry warlords control most of the Old Confederacy

The situation in Odapir is particularly dire, considering the country will have been in full-blown civil war for several weeks.

But, as of right now, I'm not sold on writing a sequel.

Writing process taglist: @oldfashionedidiot

If you'd like to be added to any of my taglists, respond to this taglist post, or DM me and I can add you that way.

Day 15 (21 in base 7) of rewriting my novel.

I hit 20,000 words today! I'm so excited. This also means that I am just over 9,000 words on Part Two, which also makes me proud.

Today I also really focused on fleshing out Odapir as a conlang, and I have a little ways to go before I finish deriving Modern Odapir from Middle Odapir.

Fun fact, by the way, Odapir is an exonym, since Odeineikō is the endonym in Middle Odapir.

As a treat for reading this far into my blog, have a description of Middle Odapir phonology:

Middle Odapir Phonology

Stops: p, b, t, d, k, g

Nasal Stops: m, n

Affricates: pf, ts, c (palatal affricate)

Fricatives: f, s, sh (palatal fricative), h

Liquids: w, j (palatal approximant)

Tap: r (alveolar tap)

Vowels

High: ī, u, ū

Mid-high: o, ō

Mid-low: e, ɜ

Low: a, ā

Diphthongs: əi, ei, əu, au, ou

That's all for now. Stay tuned for tomorrow's update!

Sunslammer is just too badass! All of these are amazing, but sunslammer takes possession of my body and makes me feel uplifted whenever I think about it.

Dear Conlangers making A Priori, Naturalistic Languages...

Specifically those that use a protolanguage... please write down your sound changes before you copy-paste them! I've been struggling for several months to remember which sound changes happened from Old Ipol -> Modern Ipol and I cannot, for the life of me, find the file where I saved them. Please write them down I'm begging you.