Rayanese Determiners and Animacy

I am considering having some of Rayanese determiners differentiate for animacy, as the 3rd person pronouns already do:

	singular	plural
3p animate	ko*	jo
3p inanimate	so	ho

I have already decided to change the 3p animate singular pronoun from lo to ko.  I think it would be neat to have these pronouns double as the definite article, hence they would indicate animacy as well as gender, number and case.  In general, Rayanese nouns are ‘animate’ if they refer to a sentient being or an animal, or a fantastic/supernatural being.

The current basic list of other determiners are listed below:

	determiner
indefinite article	ziki
proximate “this”	co
medial “that”	do
distal “yon(der)”	duyo
“other”	moto
partitive article	yo

I have added a partitive article, yo.  Now, how to make these determiners, as well as the relative and interrogative pronouns po and tho reflect animacy?  How about a suffix, –ino?

	inanimate	animate
indefinite article	ziki	zikino/kino**
definite article***	so, ho	ko, jo
partitive article	yo	yino
proximate det. “this”	co	cino
medial det. “that”	do	dino
distal det. “yon(der)”	duyo	duyino
“other”	moto	motino
relative pronoun	po	pino
interrogative pronoun	tho	thino

**kino being a short form for zikino.

***For the definite articles, the first article listed is singular, the second is plural.  All other forms decline normally for gender, number and case.

A couple of quick examples:

su ashabu- the car ; ku deru – the man

cu ashabu – this car ; cinu deru – this man

Rayanese Vowel Inventory

Since I have been revising so much of Rayanese lately, I’ve been thinking about revising part of the phonology, specifically the vowel inventory.

Previously, these were the vowels:

Spelling	X-Sampa
a	a
e	e
i	i
o	o
u	u
ä	{ (American English cat)
ö	2
ü	y
ï	I
ë	E

I want to get rid of the front rounded vowels, [2] and [y].  I will replace them with [O] and [U] but keep spelling the same.  I am undecided about a possible schwa [@].  I will also update my phonology page with some more information on diphthongs.

Possession

Rayanese possession isn’t anything special.  Rayanese uses possessive determiners and pronouns derived from the genitive standard personal pronouns.  I did change the personal pronouns mainly to have distinct plural stems for the 3rd person forms.  Here is the new set of personal pronouns (leaving out the reflexive and reciprocal forms):

	singular	plural
1st	mo	wo
2nd	to	vo
3rd animate	lo	jo
3rd inanimate	so	ho

These pronouns can change gender to agree with their antecedent, like –o adjectives. For example, to you (neuter.), tu you (masc.), ta you (fem.).

From these we derive the possessive determiners and pronouns:

	singular	plural
1st	mosi	wosi
2nd	tosi	vosi
3rd animate	losi	josi
3rd inanimate	sosi	hosi

These decline like -i adjectives.

mos huz – my male twin ; mosen huzen – my female twins.

With all these updates, I should update my main conlang site!

Still working on morphology

I wonder if working on morphology is my favorite part of conlanging – I seem to spend a lot of time on it!  Anyway, I worked a bit on Rayanese verb and noun morphology.

For verbs, I decided to add several aspects, to give more information on a singular verb form.  This is what my verb aspect suffix table looks like now:

neutral	-
perfect	-ke
recent perfect (“just” completed action)	-kay
progressive	-ga
habitual	-yo
prospective (“about to”)	-ya
inchoative/inceptive (“start to”)	-fu
cessative/terminative (“stop”)	-hi
completive (“finish”)	-ha

Verbs aspects are in the second suffix slot, after the optional causative suffix.  I can give an example of these aspects using the verb skat to eat in the 1sg present indicative form:

skaf	I eat
skakef	I have eaten
skakayf	I just ate / I have just eaten
skagaf	I am eating
skayof	I usually eat
skayaf	I am about to eat
skafuf	I start to eat / I am starting to eat
skahif	I stop eating
skahaf	I finish eating

For noun morphology, I decided to introduce some metathesis to liven up the noun declensions just a little.  The metathesis occurs in the genitive and instrumental plural forms.  Here I’ll use the plurals of huz male twin and deru man as examples":

nominative	huzar	derun
accusative	huzarga	derungu
genitive	huzazra	deruznu
dative	huzarja	derunju
instrumental	huzavra	deruvnu
allative	huzarba	derumbu
ablative	huzarda	derundu
locative	huzarksa	derunksu

Coming up soon, how to deal with possession!

Still working on Rayanese Noun Plurals

I’m continuing to work on Rayanese noun plurals.  I have gotten to having two main noun (and adjective) declensions, one with plurals in –ar (basically nouns whose nominative singular form ends in a consonant) and one with plurals in –n (nominative singulars end in a vowel). I’ll use the nouns huz male twin and deru man to illustrate where I’ve gotten to:

Current plural forms (-ar and –n declinations respectively):

nominative	huzara	derunu
accusative	huzarka	derunku
genitive	huzarsa	derunsu
dative	huzarca	deruncu
instrumental	huzarva	derunvu
allative	huzartsa	deruntsu
ablative	huzarda	derundu
locative	huzarksa	derunksu

The consonantal suffixes that represent the non-nominative cases are unchanged from the singular forms.  I am considering voicing some of them to differentiate them a bit more from the singular form:

huz (-ar declension)

	singular	plural
nominative	huz	huzara
accusative	huzïk	huzarga
genitive	huzïs	huzarza
dative	huzïc	huzarja
instrumental	huzïv	huzarva
allative	huzïts	huzardza
ablative	huzïd	huzarda
locative	huzïks	huzarksa

deru (-n declension)

	singular	plural
nominative	deru	derunu
accusative	deruk	derungu
genitive	derus	derunzu
dative	deruc	derunju
instrumental	deruv	derunvu
allative	deruts	derundzu
ablative	derud	derundu
locative	deruks	derunksu

I am still not sure if I want to voice those consonants. In the future, I may also have more declensions just make the language appear less regular.

Noun Plurals–Revised II

I posted thoughts on possible revisions to the plural forms of nouns (and adjectives) that end in vowels.  In this post, I will take a look at those that end in consonants.  I will use the masculine noun huz male twin in these examples. (Excuse the formatting.  This post is copied from another page).

Here is the current declension chart:

Case	Singular	Plural
nominative	huz	huzï
accusative	huzïk	huzïkum
genitive	huzïs	huzïsum
dative	huzïc	huzïcum
instrumental	huzïv	huzïvum
allative	huzïts	huzïtsum
ablative	huzïd	huzïdum
locative	huzïks	huzïksum

The current system has an epenthetic vowel -ï between the noun stem and the case endings, and then a special plural marker -um after the case marker in non-nominative cases.  I think that if I follow the pattern of the vowel declension, I should put a plural marker before the case marker and see what happens.  I think I will use a different plural marker: -ar.  For the time being, I will leave the singular declension the same.

case	with -ar pl marker
nominative	huzar
accusative	huzark
genitive	huzars
dative	huzarc*
instrumental	huzarv
allative	huzarts*
ablative	huzard
locative	huzarks*

*These versions end in illegal consonant clusters according to current phonotactics.  I can solve that problem by reduplicating the vowel of the plural marker, -a.

case	with -ar pl marker
nominative	huzar
accusative	huzark
genitive	huzars**
dative	huzarca
instrumental	huzarv**
allative	huzartsa
ablative	huzard
locative	huzarksa

**These consonant clusters are technically legal in syllable codas in Rayanese, but seeing them here, I am not sure that I care for them.  I may have to revise my phonotactics!  Or perhaps, I can let them remain legal, but rare, and have all plural forms in this declension adopt the reduplicative -a by analogy:

case	with -ar pl marker
nominative	huzara
accusative	huzarka
genitive	huzarsa
dative	huzarca
instrumental	huzarva
allative	huzartsa
ablative	huzarda
locative	huzarksa

More decisions must be made!

Plural Noun Revisions?

After receiving some feedback and doing some thinking, I am considering changing how my nouns form their plurals, mainly in non-nominative cases.  I am going to use the masculine noun deru, man, to illustrate the current declension of nouns that end in a vowel.

Case	Singular	Plural
nominative	deru	derun
accusative	deruk	derukum
genitive	derus	derusum
dative	deruc	derucum
instrumental	deruv	deruvum
allative	deruts	derutsum
ablative	derud	derudum
locative	deruks	deruksum

I may nix the -um and place the case marker after a plural marker -n. =>

case	plural
nominative	derun
accusative	derunk
genitive	deruns*
dative	derunc*
instrumental	derunv*
allative	derunts*
ablative	derund
locative	derunks*

With my current phonotactics, the genitive, dative, instrumental, allative and locative plurals would end in illegal consonant clusters.  This could be solved with an epenthetic -ï [I] or by reduplicating the last vowel:

case	pl option 1 - epenthetic vowel	pl option 2 - reduplication
nominative	derun	derun
accusative	derunk	derunk
genitive	derunsï	derunsu
dative	deruncï	deruncu
instrumental	derunvï	derunvu
allative	deruntsï	deruntsu
ablative	derund	derund
locative	derunksï	derunksu

The second option would keep all plurals from appearing identical, at least in their surface form, although the underlying form would be -n(case ending)R where R is a reduplicated vowel.  Whichever manner I choose, I would need to decide to the leave the other forms ending in a consonant or if I would add the same vowel by analogy:

case	pl option 2	pl option 2 w/ regularity by analogy
nominative	derun	derunu
accusative	derunk	derunku
genitive	derunsu	derunsu
dative	deruncu	deruncu
instrumental	derunvu	derunvu
allative	deruntsu	deruntsu
ablative	derund	derundu
locative	derunksu	derunksu

Even with this change, this wouldn't preclude the inclusion of other irregularities, like nouns that have some other plural marker, or nouns that use a different stem altogether in the the plural forms.  Decisions, decisions...