Brik Scratchpad
Anthologica Universe Atlas / Forums / Department of Creativity / Brik Scratchpad

? dhok posts: 235
, Alkali Metal, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
message
Taking a break from polysynthesis for a while to work on a language family which will, hopefully, be easier to work with. The tentative name for the proto-language is semet ja brik, or 'language (brik) of the tribe (semet)'.

Phonology

Brik (as it'll be called from now on) has a presyllable structure: all morphemes ('word' is for various reasons not the most helpful label) consist of either one or two syllables. In two-syllable morphemes, there is a very strong stress on the second syllable, which may have a coda; the first syllable cannot have a coda and is constructed from a reduced inventory compared to the second syllable. All syllables must have onsets, so that the minimal morpheme is CV, and the maximum is CVCCVC.

Initial clusters are allowed in main syllables only and are restricted to SR, where S is a stop and R is a liquid /w r l j/. Additionally, *l and *j are disallowed after dental stops, and *w after labials.

Voiceless stops: /p t c k/ <p t c k>
Voiced stops: /b d ɟ g/ <b d j g>
Aspirated stops: /pʰ tʰ cʰ kʰ/ <ph th ch kh>
Voiceless fricatives: /s ħ h/ <s ħ h>
Voiced fricatives: /z ɣ ʕ/ <z ĝ x>
Nasals: /m n ɲ ŋ/ <m n ñ ŋ>
Semivowels/liquids: /w r l j/ <w r l y>

Vowels: /i ɨ u e a o/ <i ə u e a o>

Codas in main syllables are limited to /p t c k b d ɟ g m n ɲ ŋ r/. The onsets of presyllables are limited to /p t k b d g m n ŋ s ħ h z ɣ ʕ m n ŋ w r l j/.

Morphology

There is no inflectional morphology, but there is a system of derivational morphology, relying mostly on ablaut, consonant mutation and prefixation.

Raising a vowel in verbs creates a causative: dwaŋ 'fall', dwəŋ 'drop'.

A mediopassive-like formation can be formed from transitive verbs by prefixing xV-, where V is a copy of the root vowel: chij 'boil something', xichij 'boil'.

Voicing an initial consonant can be used as a general nominalizer: prik 'speaks', brik 'speech, language'.

Collectives can be formed with se-: 'crow', semə 'murder of crows'.

Reduplication, neglecting codas and with appropriate mergers to account for segments disallowed in presyllables, can indicate lexicalized habituality or intensity: yanh 'to plant', yayanh 'to be a farmer'; ħeŋ '(be) green', ħeħeŋ 'be very green'.

rI- (where -I- represents a high vowel agreeing with the root in roundedness and position) can be used to indicate human agents: riprik 'speaker', rəyanh 'farmer'.

we-, on the other hand, creates an instrument from a verb: wechij 'pot'.

Syntax

Bik is mostly head-final. Since I don't have to worry about inflectional paradigms, I'm just going to write some example sentences and let the syntax develop organically as I work with it.

tuk manh
tree grow
'The tree is growing.' (SV order in intransitive sentences.)

tuk ħet
tree green
'The tree(s) is green.' (No copula with adjectives/stative verbs in predicate position. Also, plurals aren't explicitly marked.)

jra tuk kheb
woman tree see
'The woman sees the tree.' (SOV order in transitive sentences.)

jra manh ĝo tuk kheb
woman grow REL tree see
'The woman sees the tree that's growing.' (Relative clauses precede their nouns, with the relativizer ĝo marking the relative clause.)

ħet ĝo tuk manh
green REL tree grow
'The green tree is growing.' (Attributive adjectives are treated as the stative verbs they are.)

ŋə tuk kheb
3F tree see
'She sees the tree.'

de manh
3N grow
'It grows.'

jra de kheb ĝo tuk manh
woman 3N see REL tree grow
'The tree that the woman sees is growing.' (Resumptive pronouns are required unless the head noun is acting as a subject in the relative clause.)

tuk ŋe manh
tree fast grow
'The tree grows quickly.' (ŋe is an adjective, but acts as an adverbial here. As we'll see, this is also the structure used in serial verb constructions.)

kle rəħa sot
man meat cut
'The man cuts the meat.'

kle phyu sosot
man wood chop
'The man chops wood.' (sosot here is an intensive reduplication of sot.)

kle tuk sosot dwaŋ
man tree chop fall
'The man chops the tree down.' (This is a serial verb construction.)

nho ja jra
1s POSS woman
'my wife'

nho kla də
1s man COP
'I am a man.' (The copula is only used when linking a subject with another noun or a postpositional phrase.)

setuk sa thar
forest in house
'a house in the forest' (Postpositional phrases precede their head nouns.)

nho setuk ced
1s forest go
'I went to the forest'. (No distinction is made between destinations and objects. Also, tense marking isn't obligatory.)

nho setuk ced tuk sosot dwaŋ
1s forest go tree chop fall
'I went to the forest to chop down the tree.' (Clause chaining. Here the distinction between purpose and result is not made- it's not relevant to this isolated sentence whether the speaker intended to chop down a tree (but didn't), or did but wasn't intending to, or intended to and succeeded.)

nho setuk ced tuk sosot dwaŋ nob
1s forest go tree chop fall intend
'I went to the forest in order to chop down the tree.' (Clause chaining, with nob 'intend to' expressly used to indicate purpose.)

nho setuk ced ka tuk sosot dwaŋ
1s forest go later tree chop fall
'I went to the forest and later chopped down a tree.' (Here the narrative particle ka clarifies that the tree chopping was a result, with intention shoved aside.)

nho gyon nakhu wəwa ter
1s girl copulate babby form
'I knocked a girl up.' (Serial verb constructions and clause chaining can get out of hand.)

nho grət (ca) ŋejak sosot dwaŋ
1s oak (and) maple chop fall
'I chopped down an oak and a maple.' (You can have more than one object, if you like. Explicit conjunction is optional.)

pan dyo wəwa
three CL baby
'three babies' (Numerals must be accompanied by classifiers.)

nho de kheb ħa
1s 3s see not
'I don't see it.' (The negator ħa follows the verb. Since Brik is strongly head-final, it's arguably an auxiliary.)

nho yakwi dəħa.
1s dog be.not
'I am not a dog.' (The negated form of the copula smushes it together with the negator, so that they're now a two-syllable word where is a presyllable.)

yakwi no thar sa dâ
dog that house in COP
'That dog is in the house.' (Demonstratives follow their nouns.)

cheña setuk sa jib ĝa?
wolf forest in live Q
'Do wolves live in the forest?' (Questions are formed with the particle ĝa.)

cheña met yem ħaĝa?
wolf person eat Q.NEG
'Wolves don't eat people, do they?' (ĝa and ħa will coalesce into a standard disyllable.)

ze cheña dəħa ĝa?
2s wolf be.not Q
'You're not a wolf, are you?' (But takes precedence over ĝa when combining with ħa.)

yabya nho pəlar ñe jib, tabya lañ pha yem
when 1s river near live then much fish eat
'When I lived near the river, I ate a lot of fish.' (Constructions such as 'when,' 'why,' etc., must use pairs of related conjunctions.)

(To be continued...)