Grammar

I. Parts of Speech

i) Nouns
Vērvānje nouns can be divided into three categories: Animates, Things, Phenomena.

Animates are living beings with agency, environments, biota, qualities and emotions; Morphologcally they are verb roots or lexical compounds that end in -ī / j).
Two subcategories of these nouns are masculins (ending inand -y) and feminines (ending in -u and ).
Things are objects, specific materials, concepts, tools, symbols; They end in -e.
Phenomena are physical and mental, abstractions like directions, and processes; they end in .
To indicate plurality, an -n is suffixed to the end of the noun (which triggers a nasalisation for -ā, -e and -ī). For example: bötwike (SG) > bötwiken (PL).

ii) Pronouns
Personal pronouns will appear in the same place as the nouns they stand in for (see the chapter on syntax) when these nouns are the subject of the clause. In the case of possessive determiners used with a proclitic, they will appear after the noun they modify:
zosābī söp thī lānggibe.
"The bottle is for her child." or litterally "For child her the bottle" which also happens to nicely illustrate nominal sentence structures in vērvānje.

Personal Pronouns

**1st person2nd person3rd person
**SubjectObjectSubject/ObjectSubjectObject
Singular Neuterdīdwīxīnīnɥī
Feminine żö
Masculine hākā
Plural Neuterdīnduwīnxīnninnɥin
Feminineżönsön
Masculinehānkān


Possessive Pronouns

**1st person2nd person3rd person
Singular Neuterpadwīpaxīpanɥī
Feminine pasö
Masculine pakā
Plural Neuterpaduwīnpaxīnpanɥin


Possessive Determiners

**1st person2nd person3rd person
Singular Neuterdipxipnip
Feminine söp
Masculine kāp
Plural Neuterdipīnxisīnnipīn

Relative pronounsare, like in many languages, used to introduce relative clauses. They are:


Demonstrative pronouns which are taken from the demonstrative determiners (see setion on determiners). They are:

iii) Verbs
Verbs are separated into two groups (open syllable and closed syllable groups) which are detailed in the chapter on Conjugation.

iv) Adjectives
Vērvānje adjectives can be created by adding a suffix to either a noun or a verb. The choice of suffix is determined by the last syllable of the word:

▶ if the syllable is open, then the suffix is -t
e.g. dżustut: enjoyable

▶ if the syllable is closed, then the suffix is -ɥa
e.g. gegɥa: folded

However, certain roots will be closed syllable and have a -t ending (as in kest: allowed); This phenomenon is triggered by the proximity of the [s] and [t] sounds (both unvoiced and dental).

v) Adverbs
Adverbs are created by adding the suffix -kip to a verb, verb root, adjective or even certain prefixes;
e.g. verb  hyx > hyxkip: frequent-ly
adjective  shāt > shātkip: fluid-ly
prefix  vēr > vērkip: completely



II. Morphology

Vērvānje is an agglutinative language and possesses a number of different affixes (prefixes, suffixes, circumfixes) both lexical and grammatical.
The core of a proposition is the root, an unmarked verb, around which other morphemes are organised.

Roots are lexical units, usually made up of a single syllable (two maximum), which can be either used alone as an infintive verb, inflected, or derived to form nouns and adjectives.
Let's take a root and go through the possibilities: nīv a root meaning "to weave", "to spin" can be derived to form the animate noun nīvī "a weaver", the thing nīve "a string", the adjective nīvɥa "woven", the compound verb tāvnīv "entwine", the prefixed verb njonīv "stitch" and more. Further explanations on compounding is discussed in chapter III.

Proclitics function as grammatical case markers and will appear linked to the modifier noun. There are six kinds of proclitics, known as bövērtīn:

Here is an example of a glossed sentence (see Leipzig glossing rules for a better parsing of the grammatical structure of the sentence) in vērvānje which exhibits its linguistic features such as word order, pronoun dropping, affixes, clitics and conjugation:

posonī bufīn māfod

po=sonī             bufī-n     māf-od

GEN=farmer     dog-PL     see-PST.PRF.1SG

I saw the farmer's dog.

Vērvānje also has a number of free morphemes; some function as adverbs or adverbials that introduce adverbial clauses and are called kemīn, others as conjunctions, others as comparatives and superlatives. The kemīn are divided into three classes: time, place and manner.


Conjunctions, or omjelonnwen, are the following:

Comparatives ḡīlekemīn and superlatives żekmötɥekemīn :

There are also determiners and negation words/affixes in vērvānje. Determiners can be articles dzanīn, quantifiers bötwikīn or demonstratives tātīn.

Negations or danten:


III. Compounds

Word compounding can take on many forms: Some can be endocentric (where the head comes immediately after its modifier) as in oretkīmele (litterally "public-park") which can be translated as a "public park".
Others are exocentric (where neither of its constituants is a head) as in njirmātje (litterally "bite-ground") which can be translated as "a tumble" or "a fall".
Others still are copulative (the meaning of the compound is the sum of its two individual parts) as in exebexe "half-and-half" or spīmul "sit-and-wait", which can lead to goofy words like spīmulpsine "waiting room".
Finally, there are appositional compounds (two different words that taken together denote a single thing) like vutsnīvī meaning "spider" (litterally "hunter-weaver").

The wikipedia article on compounding is very clear and exhaustive; the part on semantic classification is of particular interest.



IV.Conjugation

Open Syllable Group (OS)

* Indicative
Present PerfectImperfect Future
1SG -dē-do-du-dā
2SG -xē-xo-xu-xā
3GS -lē-lo-lu-lā
1PL -did-dod-dud-dād
2PL -xis-xos-xus-xās
3PL -rit-rot-rut-rāt
Conditional
All Pers. menthu-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF/IMPF)
ImperativeHortative
1SG N/Aju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF)
2SGpān-RAC-xju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF)
3SGpān-RAC-lju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF)
1PLpān-RAC-dju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF)
2PLpān-RAC-sju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF)
3PLpān-RAC-raju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF)

Closed Syllable Group (CS)

* Indicative
Present PerfectImperfect Future
1SG -id-od-ud-ād
2SG -ix-ox-ux-āx
3GS -il-ol-ul-āl
1PL -idē-odo-udu-ādā
2PL -ixis-oxos-uxus-āxās
3PL -irit-orot-urut-ārāt
Conditional
All Pers. menthu-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF/IMPF)
ImperativeHortative
1SG N/Aju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF)
2SGpān-RAC-ixju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF)
3SGpān-RAC-ilju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF)
1PLpān-RAC-idju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF)
2PLpān-RAC-isju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF)
3PLpān-RAC-iraju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF)



V.Syntax

Vērvānje word order follows certain rules depending on the clauses presen in a sentence.
Dependant clauses such as relative clauses or adverbial clauses, but also syntagmas introduced by proclitics will systematiclly be placed at the beginning of the sentence as in:

tīżotikil thī usummɥamje kurix āpkip vyd nīvjegemāve.

tīż=otikil                 usummɥamje      kur-ix                āp-kip                   vyd         nīvjegemāve

INSTR=clicking        hyperlink                 can-PRS.2SG    immediate-ADV    access    website

You can access the website directly by clicking on the hyperlink.


Vērvānje is a prodrop language: in situations where the pronoun doesn't need specifying because of the existing verb ending, it disappears.
Determiners are used for deixis, which means that unless it's absolutely necessary, speakers do not need to use them. They can be useful when disambiguation is needed.
More information on word order in complex sentences will come as I develop the lexicon.