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 in -ā and -y) and feminines (ending in -u and -ö).
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 -ü.
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 person | 2nd person | 3rd person | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| * | * | Subject | Object | Subject/Object | Subject | Object |
| Singular | Neuter | dī | dwī | xī | nī | nɥī |
| Feminine | żö | sö | ||||
| Masculine | hā | kā | ||||
| Plural | Neuter | dīn | duwīn | xīn | nin | nɥin |
| Feminine | żön | sön | ||||
| Masculine | hān | kān | ||||
Possessive Pronouns
| * | * | 1st person | 2nd person | 3rd person |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Neuter | padwī | paxī | panɥī |
| Feminine | pasö | |||
| Masculine | pakā | |||
| Plural | Neuter | paduwīn | paxīn | panɥin |
Possessive Determiners
| * | * | 1st person | 2nd person | 3rd person |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Neuter | dip | xip | nip |
| Feminine | söp | |||
| Masculine | kāp | |||
| Plural | Neuter | dipīn | xisīn | nipīn |
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
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:
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.
Open Syllable Group (OS)
| * | Indicative | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Present | Perfect | Imperfect | 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) | ||
| Imperative | Hortative | |||
| 1SG | N/A | ju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF) | ||
| 2SG | pān-RAC-x | ju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF) | ||
| 3SG | pān-RAC-l | ju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF) | ||
| 1PL | pān-RAC-d | ju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF) | ||
| 2PL | pān-RAC-s | ju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF) | ||
| 3PL | pān-RAC-ra | ju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF) | ||
Closed Syllable Group (CS)
| * | Indicative | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Present | Perfect | Imperfect | 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) | ||
| Imperative | Hortative | |||
| 1SG | N/A | ju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF) | ||
| 2SG | pān-RAC-ix | ju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF) | ||
| 3SG | pān-RAC-il | ju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF) | ||
| 1PL | pān-RAC-id | ju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF) | ||
| 2PL | pān-RAC-is | ju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF) | ||
| 3PL | pān-RAC-ira | ju-RAC-ending (PRS/PERF) | ||
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.