The Mossian Language

Last update: 22 July 2008

Contents

Introduction

Mossian in these areas of Dekavur was eventually replaced by Dekavurian. Related varieties survived in the areas to the east which eventually became incoprorated into Dekavur as the north-eastern provinces; these varieties are the ones described here, and their contemporary descendants are described here.

Mossian was written with two scripts. Generally speaking, Liotic was used for the varieties closer to Dekavur, and Alexa for the others.

Phonology

Consonants

/k_w g_w/ continued both Sunovian /k_w g_w/ and clusters of /k g/ + /w/. They have been given phonemic status because clusters of consonant + /w/ were not otherwise found initially.

The consonants are transcribed as in some varieties of mediaeval Latin; /k k_w g_w/ are thus transcribed <c qu gu>, and /j w/ are <j v> between vowels and <i u> after consonants.

Vowels

There were two true diphthongs /ai au/, which are transcribed <ai au>; these appeared only in initial open syllables. Mossian grammarians also counted the combinations /ea eo/, which some dialects realised as /ja jo/, among the diphthongs, although strictly speaking they were actually disyllabic combinations of two vowels in hiatus.

Phonotactics

1. Geminates: all consonants except /kw gw w j h/ could be geminated, although /ff/ was rare.
2. Voiceless stop + /s/, i.e. /ps ts ks/. These were common enough to have separate letters in the Alexa orthography; in an attempt to reflect this, /ts ks/ are transcribed <z x>. It would be nice to have a separate letter for /ps/, too.
3. Nasal + stop (+ /s/): /mp mb nt nd nk ng nk_w ng_w/ and /mps nts nks/. /n/ was pronounced [N] before /k g k_w g_w/.
4. Obstruent + liquid: /p b t d k g f/ + /r/ and /p b k g f/ + /l/.
5. /s/ + stop ( + liquid): /sp st sk sk_w/ and /spl spr str skl skr/. /sk_w/ was rare.
6. Liquid + stop or fricative: /l r/ + /p b t k g k_w g_w s f/. Older /l r/ + /d n l r/ had become /ll rr/.
7. Nasal + stop + liquid, i.e. /mpl ndr/ and so on.

Clusters of types 2 4 5 were also found initially. The only consonants permitted at the ends of words were /t s m n/ and the clusters /(m)ps (n)ts (N)ks/. A pan-dialectal survey of Mossian would recognise a further series of aspirated voiceless stops /p_h t_h k_h/; in most dialects, including the one described here, these merged with /ps ts ks/.

/k_w g_w/ became /k g/ before another consonant, for example claque "I walk" versus claxe "I walked", where /k_w + s/ gave /ks/.

Stress

Grammar

A very important fact about Mossian was that the grammar was ergative, which in technical terms means that the grouping of verbal arguments was different from that of most European languages. For example, in the two sentences "the dog sleeps" and "the boy sees the girl", the verbal arguments "boy", "dog", and "girl" are respectively considered to be the verbal agent, experiencer, and patient, and are grouped in the two systems as follows:

Thus, in Latin, the two sentences were canis dormit and puer puellam vidit, in which puer "boy" and canis "dog" were in the same case; whereas in Mossian they were cala malen and cáras cáre tairen, where cala "dog" was in the same case as cáre "girl". In terms of the systems described in this more detailed explanation of the topic, English and Latin are of type D, Mossian is of type E, and Liotan is of type F.

A consequence of ergativity is that, rather than thinking of Mossian verbs as indicating that X performs an action on Y, it is usually more appropriate to consider them as indicating that Y has something performed to him/her/it by X. This is why the English glosses for transitive verbs are mostly given in the passive voice, thus "to be given" rather than "to give".

Nouns

Gender

Generally speaking, nouns denoting human beings, and many denoting animals (typically mammals and birds), could be either masculine or feminine as appropriate; nouns denoting the young of such animals (but not the various words for human children!) were usually neuter. For example:

• cáras "boy", cáres "girl"; note also here cáris "child of either gender";
• caiduas "wolf", caidues "she-wolf", caiduis "wolf cub";
• calas "dog", cales "bitch", calis "pup".

Nouns denoting insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and so on were typically neuter. Names of materials and substances were generally tangible, for example georus "clay", although there were oddities like graz "smoke" (neuter), céros "water" and feros "tree" (both abstract), and scuruas "fire" (masculine).

Nouns were traditionally grouped into six declensions according to the ending of the ergative singular. The first five declensions were strictly correlated with gender; the masculine and feminine declensions, which were highest in the animacy hierarchy, had two subtypes. The sixth declension contained nouns of all five genders; it is here called the consonantal declension after some features of its inflection.

There were no articles in Mossian: cáras could be translated as both "a boy" and "the boy".

Case

Masculine and feminine nouns

Many masculine nouns of the first subtype had /w/ or /j/ before the case endings; the /j/ disappeared before the /i/ of the locative and dative plurals, and the /w/ was lost in the genitive singular. For example lumias "toe", ergative and locative plurals lumién lumino; and cutuas "tooth", genitive singular cutú.

Other nouns

1. the ergative singular was often one syllable shorter than the other cases;
2. the partitive plural lacked the characteristic /r/;
3. the stem underwent consonantal changes in both of these cases, which are sometimes disguised by the orthography, due to the addition of /s/;
4. all cases except the ergative singular underwent vowel changes due to unstressed weakening;
5. many inflectional endings had short vowels.

The /i/ in the locative and dative plural of tangible nouns often became /o:/ by analogy with the abstracts. Other alternations in consonantal nouns may be seen in the following:

• hanox hanige "a kind of jug" (/g/ and /ks/)
• miquez miquite "pole, stick" (/t/ and /ts/)
• fendes fendere "health", with intervocalic /s/ becoming /r/
• saicenz saicine "leash, lead", with /ns/ becoming /nts/

Mass nouns

Another example is libus "grain of rice", from which was derived the ordinary plural libón "grains of rice" and the consonantal declension lips libere "rice", plural liberen. In general, one would eat lips, trade in libus, and argue over the culinary and aesthetic merits of particular types of liberen.

Adjectives

• Consonantal. This was a closed class consisting of some of the commonest adjectives, which declined like consonantal nouns in the masculine; for example quiz "high", feminine quites.
• Vocalic in /-as/., in which the stem ended in a short vowel followed by a single consonant. These took the endings with /j/ in the partitive and genitive of the feminine: cleras "heavy", feminine genitive singular clerio.
• Vocalic in /-eas/. The feminines took the endings in /ea/: raideas "weak", feminine genitive singular raideo.
• Vocalic in /-jas/ and /-was/. As with masculine nouns, /j/ and /w/ were lost before /i/ and /u/ respectively: culuas "white", tangible culus (not *culuus).

Attributive adjectives could either precede or follow the nouns to which they applied. The position following the noun was used with contrastive meaning or to mention something new about the noun; thus cáras mondas "quiet boy" would imply that there was another boy relevant to the discussion who was not quiet, by comparison with mondas cáras which had no such connotations.

The comparitive of superiority and the equative were straightforwardly formed with -um- and -err-, and the comparand was in the partitive: mond-um-as cárás "quieter than the boy", mond-err-as cárás "as quiet as the boy". The comparitive of inferiority was formed with -sid, in which the /s/ combined with the preceding consonant: monz-id-as "not as quiet as, less quiet than".

Pronouns

The third person pronouns were formed from the same /t-/ as their Rachovian equivalents, and declined as follows:

A peculiarity of most varieties of Mossian was that, unlike many other Sunovian languages, the genitives of the pronouns did not decline.

Many other pronouns were declined in the same way:

• The interrogative pronouns began with /g-/, but were used in the singular only; thus gas gé gó gai gam "who, what".
• Initial /kw-/ appeared in quas qué quó quai quam "everyone, everything". These words were also used as adjectives meaning "each, every" in the singular and "all" in the plural, and took the partitive of the dependent noun; thus quas cárás "each boy, every boy", quam cárárin "all the boys".
• The negative similarly used /l-/: las lé ló lai lam "nobody, nothing"; lam cárárin "none of the boys, no boys".
• The indefinite was formed from the stem caud-, thus caudas "someone", caudam "something", caudam cárárin "some (of the) boys".
• The three demonstrative pronouns were formed from the stems hent- "this one", hact- "that one", hurt- "yonder one"; for example hentas "this one" (masc erg sing).
• The demonstrative adjectives were the same as the demonstrative pronouns with /k/ in place of the /t/, thus hincas haccas hurcas "this, that, yonder". haccas had an alternative form haxas.

The relative pronoun originally had initial /j-/, and declined slightly differently:

Some dialects had /ja jo/ for /ea eo/. eai eau ei had two syllables.

The older directive cases of the abstract singulars of most of these pronouns were used used as adverbs of place. The locative in -en continued to express location, while -i and -é indicated motion away from and towards respectively; thus lamen "nowhere", quamé "to everywhere", caudami "from somewhere". "Here, there, yonder" were respectively formed from the stems hem- hac- hor-: hemen "here", haci "thence", horé "to yonder".

Prepositions

Prepositions which governed the genitive and partitive tended to be grammatical in meaning, for example respectively den "without, except" and cuten "in place of". Some grammatical prepositions, such as ux "with, together with, accompanied by", governed the dative, with which the older instrumental had merged.

Prepositions with spatial or locational meanings governed the dative case when indicating motion and the locative case when indicating rest; for example fó and tai meant "in" and "on" when followed by the locative and "into" and "onto" with the dative.

In some dialects, prepositions added -n (-en after consonants) when used in the locative sense, thus tén "on" (with /ai/ becoming /e:/ in a closed syllable), fón "in", nezen "under".

Verbs

• Person: in addition to inflections for the six combinations of person and number, there was a special inflection for the relative. Because Mossian was ergative, the inflections indicated the patient of a transitive verb, not the agent, which means that transitive verbs are glossed here in the passive voice; maren was thus not equivalent to "it gives", but to "it is being given".
• Two aspects: perfective and imperfective. Almost all verbs were paired for these two aspects; the imperfective was the unmarked aspect and thus usually had the simpler stem.
• Four moods: indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and dubitative.
• Two voices. Following the terminology of Lexical Semantics, these are here called inverse (i.e. "inverse relative to standard European usage", although it was the usual one in Mossian) and antipassive.

Note that tense was not a part of the Mossian verbal system; male could mean "I was sleeping", "I am sleeping", or "I will sleep", depending on context. For simplicity, verbs are always glossed here in the present tense.

Mossian verbs had no non-finite forms such as infinitives or participles; various finite verbal forms were used instead (see Syntax).

There were five distinct conjugations, which were identified by the first vowel (the thematic vowel of the conjugation) in the ending of the third person plural in the imperfective indicative:

All of the following verbal forms assume the inverse voice unless otherwise specified.

In general, the structure of a Mossian verbal form was root + thematic vowel [+ perfective marker] [+ mood marker] + personal ending. The verbal stem consisted of the root plus the thematic vowel; the thematic vowel was shortened before the /r s/ of the perfective and the /w/ of the dubitative.

The personal endings were the same across all aspects and moods. There was no ending for the first person singular; the endings for the second and third persons singular were /-t/ and /-n/. The endings for the plural were /-den -sta -na/, and for the relative /-s/.

Imperfective aspect

The imperfective dubitative was characterised by endings in an older /w/, which combined with the thematic vowel in various ways. The imperfective subjunctive was formed by adding -tés- in the relative and -ti- plus the usual personal endings otherwise. The table below shows the complete conjugation of the dubitative and, under "subj", the third person plural subjunctive.

Perfective aspect

Two unproductive formations were nasal infixing and suppletion. The first formation inserted /n/ before a single root-final stop or fricative (very rarely before any other consonant, or a cluster); for example cadóna > candóna. Suppletion, the use of a stem from a different source, was actually not uncommon with some of the more frequent verbs, and was usual if the imperfective was formed from an older reduplicating stem, in which case the perfective used the unreduplicated form. For example the perfect of castina "they are being lifted" was sersina, from an older verb sarina which had the same meaning as castina; and the reduplicated imperfective lelpina "they are being hidden" had the perfective lapina.

Change of conjugation was mainly found with fifth conjugation verbs which indicated a change of state; these took the endings of the first conjugation, creating what looks like an imperfective verb with a perfective meaning. For example daróna "they are being understood" > darína.

The commonest and most productive perfective formation was the addition of /s/ and the third conjugation endings. In the third conjugation this was added directly to the stem, sometimes with a change of the stem vowel and often combining with the final consonant of the stem if it was a nasal or stop; thus marina > mersina, danéna > danzina (with /ns/ > /nts/), gastina "they are hit, struck" > gessina (/sts/ > /ss/), naicina "they think, believe" > níxina (with /i:/ from older /ei/). In the other conjugations, the /s/ was suffixed to the thematic vowel, which remained long in the second conjugation and shortened otherwise; the /s/, now intervocalic, subsequently became /r/, and changed the first conjugation thematic vowel /i/ to /e/. Thus tagína > tagerina, and cadóna > cadorina.

The perfective of tereana added the /s/ directly to the stem, giving térsina.

The perfective dubitative was straightforwardly formed by adding the endings of the imperfective dubitative to the perfective stem; the perfective subjunctive added the subjunctive /t/ to the perfective stem, often generating a characteristic /st/ before which the thematic vowel remained long in conjugations 1 4 5. Some examples of both are shown below.

Many later imperfective forms were created from older perfectives with the suffix -ic and the endings of the fifth conjugation, and new perfectives were correspondingly created from these with suffixed /s/ and the endings of the first conjugation. Thus saurena "they leave, depart" had become obsolete in most dialects, its perfective sórsena giving rise to a new imperfective sórsicóna was formed. In its turn, sórsena was later replaced by an analogous perfective sórsixena.

Similarly, perfective stems of some verbs of all conjugations except the second were formed by adding /ea/, frequently with a change in meaning. For example, róten "it is being drunk" had the derivative rótean, meaning "it has been soaked up". These verbs had corresponding imperfectives in /-aken-/, thus rótacen "it is being soaked up".

Imperative

The antipassive voice (see below) was inherent in the imperative mood, since it is not practical to issue commands to the patient of the verb. "Drink the water" could be translated as either róte céro or rúze céro; the second was closer in meaning to "drink up the water", with the implication that the speaker requested the action to be carried to completion.

The antipassive voice

The passive voice is also used in English to emphasise the patient, with the agent being demoted to a kind of indirect object preceded by "by". The transformation rule looks like this, where A and P represent "agent" and "patient":

A(nom) verb P(acc) >> P(nom) "to be" verb(past part) by A
"I give it" >> "it is given by me"

Conversely, in Mossian, the antipassive could be used to emphasise the agent of a verb over the patient, which was placed in the dative case:

P(abs) A(erg) verb >> A(abs) P(all) verb-osc
eo eas maren >> ea eoné maroscen
"it by-he is-given" >> "he to-it gives"

It is thus possible to translate English to Mossian by using the antipassive voice where the English has the active, although this would sound unnatural, a bit like rendering every possible verb in an English text into the passive voice.

Reflexive verbs

Negative and interrogative

• marule "I am not being given"
• maretule "you (singular) are not being given"
• marenule "he/she/it is not being given"
• maridule "we are not being given"
• maristule "you (plural) are not being given"
• marille "they are not being given"
• marérule "which is not being given"

A sentence could be turned into a question with the interrogative particle gu, which preceded the appropriate word:

• gu céro me rótin "are you drinking the water?"
• céro gu me rótin "are you drinking the water?"
• céro me gu rótin "are you drinking the water?"

Irregular verbs

The monosyllabic forms had longer alternatives in formal language which prepended he-. The complement of this verb was always in the absolutive case: caidu cen "it is a wolf", xeras mona cen "the boy is quiet".

A few of the more common irregular verbs are given below.

Conjunctions

The three main coordinating conjunctions were un "and", min "or", and su "but". un and su had the connotations of "then" or "while", depending on the aspect of the verb which preceded them; compare:

lexu candó un gue daví "I close the door, and then I sit down"
lexu cadó un gue daví "I close the door while I sit down"

Other conjunctions usually required specific combinations of mood and aspect. For example, cami "so, therefore", and camé "in order to" were relic case-forms of the Sunovian indefinite pronoun, and required the subjunctive mood:

lexu té candón, camé gue dauti "she closes the door so that I can sit down"
lexu té candón, cami gue dauti "she closes the door, and so I sit down"

Similarly, nigue "before" required the perfective aspect and subjunctive mood of the following verb:

lexu té candó nigue gue dausti "she shuts the door before I sit down"

Note that /daw-/ became /dau-/ when an ending starting with a consonant was added.

Many other conjunctions were related to or derived from prepositions, and typically ended in /ka/ which became /k/ before a vowel; for example, binca "although, despite" and sorca "because", related to bex "against" and sor "from".

"If" was dan, which required either the subjunctive or dubitative mood in the conditional clause and the subjunctive in the result. The choice of mood in the condition depended on whether the condition was fulfillable or not:

dan lexu té candóti, gue dauti "if she shuts the door, I will sit down" (with subjunctive)
dan lexu té candavo, gue dauti "if she had shut the door, I would have sat down" (with dubitative)

Numbers

fúras "first" was derived from "head", and macas "second" also meant "another, more". gadas singén selén, and all the ordinals, were fully declineable for gender and case.

ringun through séctas were followed by the partitive plural, as were ceras and céctis, both of which were nouns: ringon taicáren "four apples", quores nealearen "eight women", céctis claren "a hundred sons".

Higher numbers were expressed with a modified form of the ten ending in té (from "on") before the unit: cénté gadas cáré "eleven boys", cerasté gades nealín "21 women", cecté lóncénté zeren taicáren "175 apples" (note the partitive after zeren).

Derivation

Nominal

• bugena "they are being fought" -> bugex "soldier, warrior", feminine bugices
• mondex mondices "a quiet person"

Tools were formed with several suffixes, the commonest being -tus, which was often accompanied by a change in the stem:

• mauden "it is scraped" -> muditus "razor"
• saren "it is lifted" -> sartus "a ceremonial stick used to lift things"

Other, less readily classifiable, suffixes denoting things are visible in han-ox miqu-ez saic-enz.

A few abstract nouns were identical in form with abstract forms of the related adjectives, thus mondos "silence", saidos "size". More usually, /-es/ (alternating with /-ir-/) could be used to derive sixth declension abstract nouns from adjectives; a longer form of this suffix, -estos, appeared in the dialects nearer to Liotan.

• fendas "healthy" -> fendes(tos) "health"
• sairas "red" -> saires(tos) "redness"

Deverbal abstracts, which often indicated the result of an action, took -tos, sometimes -itos with third conjugation verbs:

• seléna "they are being started" -> selétos "start, beginning"
• marina "they are being given" -> martos "riches, wealth"
• saquina "they are being told" -> saktos "tale, story"

Collective nouns were formed with -artez (neuter), a combination of the suffixes used in Liotan and Rachovian:

• halses "star" -> halsartez "constellation"
• cainas "fish" -> cainartez "school, shoal"

The main diminutive suffixes retain the gender of the main noun, and were mainly cognate with other Sunovian languages:

• -ell- expresses affection and general niceness: cár-ell-e "cute girl", sonax "mouth" > sonacellus "pretty mouth"
• -ic- is neutral: hestas "wind" > hesticas "breeze", graz "smoke" > graticis "puff of smoke"
• -icul-, a lengthened form of the preceding, is also neutral, and drops the /i/ after ungrouped /m n l r s/: feros "tree" > ferculos "shrub", xarsas "child" > xarsiculas "infant"
• -elc- is pejorative: zecus "house" > zecelcus "hovel", ospos "salt" > ospelcos "trivial amount of salt"

Adjectival

• cáras "boy" > cáramas "boyish", cárenzeas "pertaining to boys"
• halses "star" > halsemas "starry", halsenzeas "astral"
• cabax "flower" > cabacumas flowery", cabacenzeas "floral"

Passive ability was indicated with the consonantal stem -tex. This was added directly to the stem of third conjugation verbs, and to the shortened thematic vowel of the others, with /ea/ becoming /i/:

• quaicena "they are broken" -> quaictex "breakable"
• gimeana "they are eaten" -> gimitex "edible"
• hilína "they are known" -> hilitex "knowable"
• geréna "they are counted" -> geretex "countable"
• setóna "they are made" -> setotex "possible", usually shortened to settex

Passive tendency was formed with -olias:

• quaicena "they are broken" -> quaicolias "fragile" (i.e. "weak, tending to break", rather than "can be broken)
• hendina "they are split" -> hendolias "tending to split"
• malina "they sleep" -> malolias "lazy"

The opposite of an adjective, if there was not already a word for it was created by prefixing le-, thus le-settex "impossible". However, although netuas meant "low", lenetuas for "high" would be perverse since a perfectly good adjective quiz already existed.

-túdas and -énias were the equivalents of "-ful" and "-less":

• céros "water" -> cértúdas "waterlogged"
• róbas "people" -> róptúdas "crowded"
• malses "name" -> malsénias "nameless, orphaned"
• sites "sky" -> siténias "skyless", i.e. "underground"

Verbal

Syntax

Word order

As in Rachovian, elements of a clause were emphasised by moving them to the end: lexu cadó neales and neales cadó lexu emphasise the woman and the door respectively.

Uses of the cases

The partitive and genitive cases both corresponded to possessive genitives in English, but differed in that the partitive expressed inalienable possession, whereas the genitive was used when possession was alienable. For example, in a phrase like "the woman's hands", because there was no question of the hands ever belonging to someone else, the word for "woman" was in the partitive: paiden neales. On the other hand, in taicus cárú "the boy's apple", "boy" was naturally in the genitive, where a phrase like paiden nealeo would have been exceptional. Unlike in Liotan, it was not possible to use a noun in the partitive case as a verbal subject or object.

The partitive case was required after all quantifiers: quas cáráren "all of the boys". lam "nothing" (always in the abstract) plus the partitive was used as the object of a negative verb, thus lam cérós re róten "I am not drinking water" (not *cérós re rótenule).

The locative and dative cases, as might be expected, expressed general location and motion towards when not accompanied by a preposition: zecun "at the house, at home", zecó "to the house, homewards". Motion away from was usually expressed with the dative plus sor "from", although it was implicit with some verbs: sor zecó "away from the house", saure zecó "I leave the house".

ux plus the dative indicated the instrument with which an action was carried out: to ux cebó re quaicen "I break it with a club". The instrumental singular in -é of the abstract gender of the adjective was used as an adverb: lexu neales mondé cadón "the woman closes the door quietly".

Verbs of perception

disceana and tereana will be referred to here as the internal forms of the verbs, and the other two as the external. The internal form was derived from the external by changing both the stem and the conjugation, typically from the third to the second; further examples are holerina and horreana "they are being smelt", and maicina and miceana "they are being tasted".

The pairing was extended to many intransitive verbs which had little or nothing to do with perception; for example leace and licea both corresponded to English "I slide", but the first - with no explicit agent - implied that it was an accident, whereas the second implied that it was intentional.

Uses of the aspects

Uses of the moods in dependent clauses

The same syntax was used with the equivalents of modal verbs; for example: hote melti "I can sleep", hote malavo "I might not be able to sleep"; taire zecu scurtin "I see the house burning", hote taireati zecu scurtin "I can see the house burning".

A dependent clause followed its head clause by default, although they could be inverted for effect or emphasis.

Relative clauses

S1 O1 V1, S1 O2 V2 >> S1, rel O2 V2, O1 V1-REL
cára zecé sauren, cára neales gessen >> cára, ea neales gessés, zecé sauren
"boy-ABS house-ABL leaves, boy-ABS woman-ERG is-hit" >> "boy-ABS rel-ABS woman-ERG is-hit-REL house-ABL leaves"

i.e. "the boy whom the woman hit leaves the house". "The woman who hit the boy leaves the house" would similarly be nealé, ie cáro gessés, zecui daistin.

Mossian used relative clauses in the equivalents of English phrases participles; for example, the Mossian for "closed door" and "burning house" were in the absolutive respectively lexu ei candós and zecu ei scaren, i.e. "door which has-beeen-closed" and "house which is-burning".

Subject deletion

S1 [O1] V1, S1 [O2] V2 >> S1 [O1] V1, [O2] V2
cára neales gessin un cára zecó sauren >> cára neales gessin un zecó sauren
"the woman hits the boy, and the boy leaves the house"

Note how "boy" is the subject of the verb in both clauses; "woman" could not be deleted here, so the equivalent of "the woman hits the boy, and then leaves the house" was cára neales gessin un neales zecó sauren.

Babel text

1. Un gado daugete un hitia soquáren xóton cena.
2. Un galsét sor sété sinzina, faimi neston Shinaren tai maizen, un hacen sélerina sedítina.
3. Un tun mingide sexina, "setóde hampót, un tamo scerside". Un hampót cuten sambú un georu cuten holicó taino cena.
4. Un sexine, "cadéride ruba un quaitu ux teo fóré siten, un merside giané malse, camé tigen xótó failereonule".
5. Un God enté hixen, ruba un quaitu eau claren galsón cadéren, tas tereaten.
6. Un God sexen, "terede! gada róba cena, un gadé gadi daugete taino cen, un hinco gadé seléte eamas tai tamu setón, un lam eamu tai tamu hinén le-settex cen".
7. "hingide enté gina tun daugete sprequésten, camé tun mingét tai dartína hottinule."
8. Un hacen tau God tigen xótó failerina, un quaitu cadéten tai mezina.
9. Un Babel tono malse cen, sorca hacen daugete róbú God sprequeren, un hacen tau tigen xótó tas faileren.

Since Mossian did not recognise tense, all verbs have been rendered into the present tense. "abst" in the glosses indicates abstract gender, to avoid confusion with "abs" indicating the absolutive case.

1. And one(abst abs) language(abs) and few words(part) world(loc) is(imperf). As usually with words denoting quantities in Mossian, hites "few" was a noun, not an adjective. "To be" with the locative was the standard Mossian idiom for "to have".
2. And men(abs pl) from east(dat) come(3pl imperf), plain(abs) land(loc) Shinar(loc) them(erg) find(3s perf), and there start(3pl perf) live(3pl subj). Two or more nouns in apposition all declined in Mossian. The imperfective of "come" and perfective of "find" implied "they find ... while they come". The indicative of "start" and subjunctive of "live", of course, meant "they start to live".
3. And their others(dat) say(3pl perf), "make(1pl imper) bricks(abs) and them(abs) burn(1pl imper perf) completely". And bricks(abs) instead-of stone(gen) and clay(abs) instead-of mortar(gen) them(loc) is(imperf). Another Mossian idiom here: "they said to their others" for "they said to each other". The perfective aspect is used to give "let us burn" the meaning of completeness.
4. And say(3pl perf), "build(1pl imper perf) city(abs) and tower(abs) with its head(dat) clouds(loc), and give(1pl imper perf) us(dat) name(abs), so-that surface(loc) world(gen) scatter(1pl perf dubneg)". The perfective of "build" is used here since the intention is clearly to carry the building through to completion. camé "so that" plus the negative dubitative was equivalent to "lest".
5. And God down go(3s perf) city(abs) and tower(abs), which(abs) sons(erg) men(gen) build(3s perf), he(erg) see(subj). "go ... + subjunctive", i.e. "go to see". Note the use of tereaten, the internal form of "see".
6. And God(erg) say(3s perf), "see(1pl imper)! one(masc abs) people(abs) are-they, and only one(abs) language(abs) them(loc) is(imperf), and this(abst abs) only start(abs) rel(abst part) they(erg) it(abst abs) want(3s), and nothing(abs) they(erg) rel(abs) want(3s) impossible is. gadé "only" is effectively an adverbial form of "one".
7. "Go(1pl imper) down we(erg) their language(abs) confuse(3s subj), so-that their others(abs) they(erg) understand-them(perf subj) be-able(3pl subj neg)." dartína, the perfective subjunctive of darúna, is used here; the imperfective would imply that some understanding was still possible.
8. And there them(abs) God(erg) surface(loc) earth(gen) scatter(3pl perf), and tower(abs) build-it(imperf subj) they forsook(3pl perf). Note the aspects of the verbs here, which imply that only the action of building was left uncompleted.
9. And Babel(abs) its name is, because there(loc) language(abs) people(gen) God(erg) confuse(3s perf), and there(loc) them(abs) surface(loc) world(gen) he(erg) scatter(3plperf). Nothing difficult here, hopefully.

Glossary

• cadéna caderina [v4] they are built
• clas claro [nn6] son
• cuten [prep] instead of (+ gen)
• daróna darína [v5] they are understood
• daugez daugito [nt6] language
• failéna failerina [v4] they are scattered
• faimis faimó [nn3] plain
• fóras fórú [nm1] head
• galsas galsú [nm1] man
• georus georú [nt4] clay
• hampos hampó [na5] brick
• hinéna hinerina [v4] they are wanted
• hitias hitiú [nm1] few (+ partitive; note that this is a
• holicos holicó [na5] mortar
• hotina hezina [v3] they are able
• maitina maizina [v3] they are found
• malses malsio [nf2] name
• marina mersina [v3] they are given
• metóna mezina [v5] they are forgotten, forsaken
• mingas mingú [adj] other, thus mingex "the other"
• nestos nestó [na5] land, region
• quaitus quaitú [nt4] tower
• rubas rubú [nm1] city
• róbas róbó [nm1] people
• sainina sinzina [v3] they come
• sambus sambú [nt4] stone
• saquina sexina [v3] they say
• scarine scersine [v3] they are burned
• sedína sederina [v1] they live
• setóne sentóne [v5] to make, do, create
• sites sitio [nf2] sky
• soquis soquó [nn3] word
• spraquóna sprequerina [v5] they are confused
• séléna selerina [v4] they start
• sétos sétó [na5] east
• tix tico [nt6] surface
• xótos xótó [na5] world noun)