Shonkasika Updates I

It’s been a long time since a post. I will try to update more frequently so I can keep up with changes via the blog. Here’s what I worked on today:

I've work on both grammar and vocabulary today, so far!
I changed the suffixes that form the middle and reciprocal voices to -da and -du respectively. They join the passive formant -te, the causative -gi and the causative-passive -gite.

grodage v. to name
grodadage v. middle to be called/named (lit. "to name oneself")
grodatege v. passive to be named

Grodatege more emphasizes that someone has been given a particular name by parents, guardians or someone else, but in practical use, grodadage and grodatege are interchangeable:

Jonos grodates/grodadas His name is John. / He is called John. / His name is John.

I also changed how the definite suffix on nouns work. Nouns are marked for definiteness. Previously, the suffix only partially agreeded for gender, using -je for common and neuter nouns, -jo for masculine and celestial ones and -ja for feminine and terrestrial ones. I decided to make different stems for animacy, using -l- for the animate genders and -n- for inanimate genders. Below are examples of each gender in the singular indefinite and definite forms:

huzes, huzeles common twin, the twin
deros, derolos masculine man, the man
lapnas, lapnalas feminine woman, the woman
aindi, aindine neuter light, the light
nudo, nudono celestial sound, the sound
thada, thadana terrestrial mouth, the mouth

Besides all that, I've added several words to the lexicon. In particular, I've used gender change to create a word related to an existing word. I think this is the first time I've done this for a noun not referring to people nor animals. From the existing shimtha chest I derived shimtho breast.

Shonkasika nouns

Wow! It’s been almost a year! I’ve still be working on Shonkasika (formerly Shonkasikas). I have made extensive changes to the morphology and syntax and have been slowly working on the lexicon.

For the first time, I have a conlang with 6 noun genders. They are classified by final stem vowel and the noun’s animacy (animacy distinction is an idea I have carried over from Rayanese). The genders are common, masculine, feminine, neuter, celestial and terrestrial.

Also, for the first time, I decided to do away with separate definite and indefinite articles. There are no indefinite articles and nouns are marked as definite not by a separate word, but a special declension pattern. Below are example declensions of an animate noun, dero (masculine) – man and an inanimate noun, rida (terrestial) – potato.

Declensions of other genders are very similar to those above. Inanimate e-stems (neuter nouns) have an indefinite nominative plural in –i, and definite nominative plural in –is. i-stems (both neuter and common nouns) have their nominative singulars in –ie and –ies.

Reorganization of noun genders/classes

In all of my conlangs with noun gender or class, I’ve used stem vowel (or lack thereof) to indicate gender.  I am considering using some other ending not including the stem vowel to indicate noun class.  My latest language, called Shonkasikas (“Mountain Speech”), has various patterns for noun declension patterns based on the ‘full stem’ ending, but gender based on the stem vowel.

For example, nouns ending in –us, –u, and –ur in the nominative singular would have different declension paradigms, but would likely all be masculine.

What I am considering is having –s mark, for example, masculine, –r common, –n neuter and nothing mark feminine.

I am still tweaking this. We shall see.

New Conlang

So Rayanese is on the back burner as I develop a new conlang based on new whims.  I haven’t gotten rid of Rayanese; it still lives in digital suspension with other conlangs of mine.
Like Rayanese, this new language, so far, it looking to be very European-ish in its grammar.  This language will also be highly inflectional.  With reference to its phonology, its consonant inventory is similar to Rayanese, but its vowel are reduced to the five basic vowels of Spanish: /a e i o u/.
I borrowed ideas from my other conlangs and decided I wanted more variety and diversity in my inflectional morphology.  I developed 7 noun declensions (with 8 cases) and 3 verb conjugations (compared to Rayanese’s 2 noun declensions and 1 verb conjugation).
I have decided on the present and past indicative forms of verbs, but I am not set on what my synthetic verb forms will be.  Should I have a imperfective vs. perfective verb system, like Latin?
I am thinking of having 7 tense/aspect combinations: present, aorist (simple past), past imperfect, (present) perfect, future, past anterior and future anterior.  I believe the last four of those tense will use some sort of affixation (probably suffixes).  I still need to set up what sort of system of stems I will use to form these tenses.
In some of my other conlangs, I have gone a bit crazy in creating too many affixes for too many aspects.  I am going to stick to the aforementioned tense/aspect combinations and express other shades of meanings with periphrastic constructions and adverbs.
For verb moods, there will be indicative, subjunctive and imperative.  The indicative will have all tense/aspect combinations, and the other moods will probably be missing at least the aorist.  There may be an optative mood.  I am inclined to use some sort of affixation for the non-indicative moods.
More later!

The -al declension

I have decided to add even more variation to the noun/adjective declension system.  For nouns whose nominative singular form ends in –r, the plural morpheme changes to –al instead of –ar.  We’ll use the noun ayndir light, to demonstrate it.

Case	Singular	Plural
nominative	ayndir	ayndiral
accusative	ayndirïk	ayndiralga
genitive	ayndirïs	ayndirazla
dative	ayndirïc	ayndiralja
instrumental	ayndirïv	ayndiravla
allative	ayndirïp	ayndiralba
ablative	ayndirïd	ayndiralda
locative	ayndirïks	ayndiralksa

We can thus demonstrate the different plural nominative forms with the nouns for cars, days, lights (all masculine inanimate nouns): ashabun, bözar, ayndiral

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.