The Dekavurian Language

Last update: 7 September 2007

Contents

Introduction

Internal (pretend) history

Dekavurian is an East Germanic language closely related to Gothic - the language spoken by the most powerful of the various Germanic tribes who contributed to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, not this type of Gothic! It is thus a kind of second cousin once removed from English, or a first cousin of Old English and Old Norse; many words will thus seem familiar to speakers of modern Germanic languages, if a little mangled.

External (real) history

The Gotish Tongue Website contains some more information about Gothic; the "wordcraft" link takes you to a reference grammar of Gothic upon which I based older forms of this file, and you may be able to detect some similarities. Here's a list of elements in Gothic names and a list of links to names in other languages. David Salo's Gothic lessons are recommended for those wishing to investigate Gothic more thoroughly. Another Gothic-derived conlang is Damien Erwan Perrotin's Gutiske Radje.

Phonology

Stress

Consonants

• /kw xw/ became clusters of two consonants rather than remaining single consonants: aihwo "horse" was /Ex.wo/, not /Ex_wo/.
• Nasals were lost before fricatives, as in Old English (more generally, as in Ingvaeonic): /fimfa/ "five" > fifa.
• /z/ merged with /s/.
• /j/ and /w/ were lost before /u/ and /i/ respectively.
• Initial /s/ was lost before /m/, as in /smala/ > mala "small".
• An epenthetic /k/ was inserted between /s/ and /l/, thus sklewa "slow".
• Initial /sn/ became /sr/ and, with epenthetic /t/, /str/, as in straiwa "snow".

The resulting consonant system thus contained six stops /p t k/ and /b d g/, four fricatives /f T s x/, and the resonants /m n l r w j/. These are all transcribed with the corresponding letter from the Roman alphabet except for /T/, which is transcribed with the runic letter <ž> (known as "thorn"), and /x/, which is transcribed <h>.

Vowels

The result was a system containing the same seven vowel sounds /i e E a O o u/ as Vulgar Latin or Italian. /E O/ are transcribed <ai au>; the others are transcribed <i e a o u> as you'd hope. /E O/ merged with /e o/ word-finally in polysyllables.

Phonotactics

Grammar

Nouns

Dekavurian retained the older Germanic distinction between strong and weak nouns, of each of which there were four declensions. The inflectional endings gradually simplified and regularised over time, with the final /a e/ of the disyllabic endings being regularly dropped in speech; the endings shown in the tables below are the oldest. Masculine, feminine, and neuter gender are colour-coded as blue, red, and green respectively in the table headings.

The first declension was the commonest and contained masculine and neuter /a/-stem nouns. There were three subtypes of masculine nouns, representing Primitive Germanic /-a/, /-ja/, and /-r/ stems; the first two of these had equivalents in the neuters.

The third subtype contained only the kinship terms fadra and brodra, and the masculine forms of the pronoun ažra "the other one". Aside from the nominative singular, the inflectional endings of these nouns later assimilated to those of the first subtype, thus brodros for "brothers".

The vowels in the genitive and dative plural endings often assimilated to the /o/ or /a/ of the nominative plural, with /jime/ becoming /ime/. These changes, as with similar changes in other declensions, were also reflected in adjectives, articles, demonstratives, and anywhere else appropriate.

The second, third and fourth declensions continued Germanic /i/, /o:/, and /u/ stem nouns respectively. Nouns of the third declension were all feminine; those of the second and fourth could be of all three genders, although /u/-stem neuters were very rare. Second declension neuter nouns declined the same as masculines.

In the second declension, the genitive plural ending later became /-jin/ and eventually /-in/; in the third, the dative plural ending later became /-jume/. The exceptional nominative and genitive plural endings /-awe/ and /-iwun/ of the fourth declension persisted long enough to spread to other declensions in some dialects; in others they became /-us/ and /-jun/.

The weak declensions were characterised by /n/ in all endings except the nominative singular and dative plural. Nouns of declensions 5 through 7 were masculine, feminine and neuter respectively; declension 8 contained feminine nouns, including many abstracts in /-i-/.

Adjectives

Most adjectives declined like hwita "white", as shown below:

As usual, /j/ disappeared before /i/, so the strong masculine and neuter genitive singulars of midja "middle" were midis.

Some adjectives had strong nominative singulars in /i/ or /u/, such as skirin skiri skirit "clear" and angun angu angut "narrow". These vowels appeared as /i/ and /u/ in place of /a/ in the appropriate plural endings.

Attributive adjectives always preceded their nouns. The weak endings were used with attributive adjectives which were accompanied by a demonstrative adjective, the strong endings otherwise. Thus:

• hwitan lamba "a/the white sheep" (strong)
• lamba hwitan ist "a/the sheep is white" (strong)
• but heran hwite lamba "this white sheep" (weak)

Comparisons

Some adjectives had irregular comparitives and superlatives. The commonest, some of which had cognates in English, were:

The superlative suffix also appeared in, among others, fruma "first" and hinduma "last".

Demonstratives and articles

There were three types of demonstrative adjective. "This", referring to something near to the speaker, was based on the stem her-; "that", which referred to something near the listener, used the stem žas-; and "yonder", which referred to something near to neither, was based on jain- respectively. All of these took the strong adjective endings; thus hero mave "this girl", žasan staina "that stone", jainat swina "yonder pig".

The demonstrative pronouns were second declension nouns derived from the demonstrative articles, such as heri heris "this one, these ones". Their neuter singulars ended in -at.

Pronouns

The genitive pronouns could precede or follow the noun, and took the strong or weak adjectival endings respectively; any associated adjective took the strong adjective endings. Thus "my old pig" was either alžat swina minu or minat alžat swina.

There was also a reflexive pronoun, corresponing to "-self", which had neither plural nor nominative case; its forms were accusative sih, genitive sina, and dative sis. Sina always referred to the subject of the clause; compare sinat boka lasat "he read his (own) book" with inat boka lasat "he read his (someone else's) book".

The possessive pronouns were derived from the genitives. Most were declined according to the first (masculine and neuter) or third (feminine) declensions, except for inku and usu which declined like the fourth: mina "mine (masculine singular)", usus "ours (feminine plural)".

The relative pronoun agreed with its antecedent and was a combination of the stem sw- and the strong endings: mawi swo lisaž "the girl who is reading". The masculine nominative singular was swe.

Pre- and post-positions

In earlier Germanic, the words known as prepositions could be placed both before and after their objects. In Dekavurian, the position afterwards was preferred in writing, somewhat less so in speech; for example traiwi fora "in front of a/the tree". Accordingly, the term postposition is used here. All postpositions originally governed the accusative and dative cases, but as the accusative became identical to the nominative, the dative case became used exclusively as a postpositional case.

The postpositions were remodelled on a three-term system specifying motion towards, rest, and motion away from. The first of these was unmarked, the other two were formed with suffixes -a and -(ž)ro; for example for fora foržro "to in front of, in front of, from in front of". Some postpositions had only two terms, for example uta utro "outside, out of", and some only one, such as mit "with" and unda "until, as far as".

Interrogative, negative, and indefinite words

• alla "each, every"
• suma "some, a certain"
• aiha "any"
• ni aiha, often contracted to niha "no, none"

hwa "who?" declined like a first declension noun in the singular only; the neuter hwat, of course, was used for "what?".

"Which?" was hwažra when used of two and hwari when used of more than two; these declined like hwita and skiri respectively. Note also hwilka "what sort of", which declined ilke hwita.

"Whither?, where?, whence?" were hwar hware hwažro, by analogy with the prepositions. hwe hwan hwi were respectively "how, when, why", and were indeclinable.

Verbs

All finite verb forms consisted of endings for person suffixed to the verbal stem. The stem in the present tense consisted of the verbal root plus, except in the first person singular indicative, a thematic vowel. The formation of the past tense divided verbs, as elsewhere in Germanic, into weak and strong: the past stem of weak verbs suffixed /-id-/ to the present stem, that of strong verbs changed the vowel.

Endings

The -že in the second person plural was a Dekavurian innovation by analogy with the first and third persons. In addition, the endings for the infinitive and present participle were -n -nda added to the present stem; the ending of the past participle was -ta in weak verbs and -na in strong verbs. Verbs will be cited hereafter in the infinitive.

The imperative was the same as the present indicative in the first and second persons plural; in the second person singular it was formed by dropping the final /-s/ of the present indicative. Dekavurian also had a third person imperative, which was like the first person plural with the -ma replaced by -do in the singular and -ndo in the plural.

Dekavurian verbs fell naturally into four regular conjugations, a handful of preterite-present verbs, and the irregular "to be".

First conjugation

Some first conjugation verbs had stems which ended in a vowel. The /j/ of these verbs changed to /w/ before the endings which began with /i/, i.e. all past endings, the 2 3 sing and 2 plural present indicative, and the past participle; /E O/ before the /j/ became /a/, and /i/ before it became /E/.

In speech, the vowel of the weak past tense suffix was often dropped after single /m n l r s z w/, and sometimes after other single consonants and some clusters; the /d/ devoiced to /t/ after the voiceless /p t k f s x/, and /Tt/ became /tt/. The clusters /nkt/, /ngt/, and /nxt/ all became /nxt/ and later /xt/, changing the preceding vowel. For example dailida drausida brangida tawida "I shared, I threw, I brought, I did" > dailda drausta braxta tawda.

Second and third conjugations

The second conjugation principally consisted of denominative verbs, such as fiskon "to fish" from fiska "fish" and luston "to desire" from lustus "desire". The thematic vowel was /e/ in the present subjunctive and /o/ elsewhere.

The third conjugation largely contained stative verbs like bauwen "to dwell" and haben "to have". The thematic vowel was /je/ in the present subjunctive, a Dekavurian innovation by analogy with the first conjugation, and /e/ elsewhere.

Fourth conjugation (strong verbs)

The seven classes (Ablautreihen) of Germanic strong verbs were increased to ten in Dekavurian by the change of older short /i u/ to /e o/ before /l r w x/. The classes were distinguished by the of vowels in the verbal stem, of which there could be up to four:

1. infinitive, present infinitive and subjunctive, present participle
2. past singular indicative and subjunctive
3. past plural indicative and subjunctive
4. past participle

The vowels in each class were as shown below, with the infinitive, first person singular and plural of the past tense, and the past participle. The forms should be compared with their cognates elsewhere in Germanic.

The stem vowel in the 7th class could be any of /e E a O o/, although verbs with /E/ tended to join classes 3b or 4b; thus the past of fraisa "I tempt" was usually frasa rather than fraisa.

In the second class, the /j/ in the present spread to the other forms by analogy, for example the first person past indicatives of kjusan were regularised to kjausa and kjusuma. The same, of course, also happened in English, where the initial /tS/ of choose was generalised to chose.

As an example, niman "to take" is conjugated in full below.

As with the first conjugation, strong verbs whose stems ended in a vowel plus /j/ changed the /j/ to /w/ before /i/, with /E O/ becoming /a/: waijan "to blow" had waijo "I blow" but wawis "you blow", and past indicative weja but past subjunctive wewi and past participle wewin.

Pretrite-presents

"To be"

Adverbs

Negation was expressed by ni, which was also the word for "no", preceding the verb: ni kanna "I do not know". Its opposite, the word for "yes", was je, which could be used as an emphatic particle: je kanna "I do know".

Other adverbs were the temporal ju "already", nu "now", and žan "then", and ga-samo "together".

Adverbs of place and motion

Conjunctions

Additionally, there were conjunctive varants of interrogative pronouns, which changed the initial /h/ to /s/: swa "who", swat "what", swe "how", swilka "which", swar "whither", and so on.

Numbers

fruma, ažra, and žridja were always declined strong; the other ordinals were always declined weak. "7th" and "8th" had more colloquial forms siunta and ahta; the ambiguity of ahta was very seldom pernicious. "Both" was baiž plus the strong adjective endings.

Only aina twai žrisa were inflected; aina was, of course, also used as the indefinite article, and took the strong adjective endings as shown above. twai žris were declined as follows:

Higher numbers up to 99 were formed with the unit plus ja "and" and the ten; thus "twenty-one" was ain-ja-twai-tigju. "200" and "1000" were twa hunda and žusunda.

The final /a/ of the cardinals was usually dropped in speech, except when counting.

Derivation

Prefixes

• faur-standan "to stand before", "to present oneself to"
• undra-meljan "to write under", "to sign"
• twis-brikan "to break apart"
• afra-daga "the next day", "tomorrow"

Sometimes, a prefix added a perfective sense to verbs; for example af-wairpan "to throw away" implied a finality not present in mere wairpan "to throw".

The following prefixes were all unstressed.

fra- and ga-, when used with verbs, had exclusively perfective meanings; fra-drinkan meant "to drink up" compared with drinkan "to drink", and ga-drusan meant "to fall down" whereas drusan was closer to "to be falling".

ga- with nouns formed collectives, as with ga-bairga "mountain range".

id- corresponds to the Latin re-: id-gangan "to return", id-sagan "to reply".

un-, as in English, negates, often pejoratively: un-froda "unwise, stupid". Similar is missa-, which has connotations of "wrongly": missa-fražjan "to misunderstand".

in(a)- formed inchoatives, such as in-brikan "to start to break", in-brinnan "to catch fire".

Suffixes forming nouns

-inga (m1), feminine -ingo (m3), denoted association, and was usually added to names; thus wairžinga "a follower of Wairža".

Feminine nouns could also be derived with -ino and -esso: wardino or wardesso "female guard", rikesso "queen, female ruler".

-andi (m2 and f2) formed names of people from verbs:frijon "to love" > frindi "friend", saijan "to sow" > saijandi "sower".

There were several suffixes which created abstract nouns from adjectives. The commonest were -duži (f2), -ižo (f3), and -(in)assu (m4): manga "many" > mangaduži "abundance", djupa "deep" > djupižo "depth", ibna "level, even" > ibnassu "evenness" (contracted from ibninassu). Less common was -žwo (f3), as in frižwo "love, friendship".

Abstract nouns and result nouns were derived from weak verbs with -ini -oni -aini (f2) according to conjugation: laisjan "to teach" > laisini "doctrine", lažon "to invite" > lažoni "invitation", riren "to tremble" > riraini "tremor".

Two further suffixes creating result nouns were -unnja (n1), also found as -unja, and -jo (n7): witan "to know" > witunja "knowledge", aiskon "ask" > aiskjo "question, request".

Instrument nouns were created from verbs with -(ai)lu (n7): skjuban "to shove" > skjublu "shovel".

Diminutives were formed with -ila and -ika, coincidentally identical to the Liotan diminutive suffixes: hundila "little dog", fuglika "little bird".

Suffixes forming adjectives

Adjectives of quality were derived from nouns with -iska and -lika: fugla "bird" > fugliska or fuglalika, both meaning "bird-like".

Adjectives of material were derived from nouns denoting substances with -ina: gaulža "gold" > gauldina "golden".

-faulla added to a noun was equivalent to English "-full", and -losja was its reverse: age "fear" > agifaulla "fearful, scared", namu "name" > namulosja "nameless". These had corresponding abstract noun suffixes -faulsa and -losta.

Adjectives could be derived from the past tenses of strong verbs with -ra and -la, although these suffixes had ceased to be productive: bitra "bitter" from bitan "to bite" and flaugla "swift" from fljugan "to fly".

Two suffixes formed adjectives from verbs. -sama, related to sama "same", expressed a tendency: rodjan "to speak" > rodisama "talkative, garrulous". Passive ability was expressed with -bara: drinkibara "drinkable".

Suffixes forming verbs

A common denominal suffix was -inon (w2): skalka "servant" > skalkinon "to be a servant", "to serve".

Circumfixes

The prefixes were always unstressed. Some examples of verbs formed with circumfixes are shown below; note that many of them had figurative meanings.

• bi-wast-jan "to clothe, cover"
• bi-raud-jan "to make red"
• in-ag-jan "to frighten"
• us-wat(u)-jan "to remove the water from, to wring"
• um-denkw-jan "to surround with darkness, to confuse"

bi- and in- in this context both had the meaning of "to provide with". in- was preferred before vowels, and was often combined with bi- to give bin-.

Syntax

Uses of the cases

The genitive was the case of possession, ownership, dependency, and so on; as in English, the dependent noun followed the independent noun: lambis habda "the sheep's head", airžus ludje "the surface of the earth". Prepositions and postpositions derived from nouns governed the genitive, such as stažain "instead of, in place of".

The dative was used with most prepositions and postpositions, and as the indirect object of verbs of telling, saying, teaching, and so on: mangos waurdas im soga "I said many words to him", i braton mosti im soga "I told him that he had to go".

Word order

Subject pronouns were not required, except for emphasis. A nominal subject required the third person singular or plural as appropriate: skipa sinkwaž "the ship is sinking", skipas sinkwande "the ships are sinking".

Passives

Subordination

The subjunctive mood was used for a finite verb following the final conjunctions i, ži "that", swaswe "so that", ibe "lest, that not", and temporal conjunctions such as faurži "before" and aftri "after": alže ni wisti isim aiskoda "I asked them because I did not know", swaswe skipas gaumidi žar bratoda "I went there so that I would see ships". Very commonly, these conjunctions were used in dependent clauses following verbs of reporting, wishing, hoping, and so on: i si ljužaiž bjudo "I ask her to sing".

The subjunctive mood was also used in the dependent clause following the conditional conjunctions jabe "if", jaži "and if", and nibe "unless": ljužaiž jabe isai bjudo "if I ask her to, she will sing".

Relative clauses

Omission of pronouns

Questions

Texts

1. Ja jainem hwilon inna airžo aino rasdo ja fawas waurdas habede.
2. Ja mižan gumane kwaildo ustro kwemun, flatan gawi Shinar inna funduna, ja žara at bauwen frumodun.
3. Ja alle ažrame rodide, "manwjama waddjustainos ja bakkama [ijes] faulluba. Ja waddjustainos stažain stainun ja žaho stažain maurtris habedun.
4. Ja rodidune, "timrjama baurgo ja halwa mit [itim] habdo hinnom inna, ja gibama namu sis du, ibe airžus ludje anna strautes wairžema".
5. Ja Guža swes gumane timridun baurgo ja halwa at gaumjan dalaž bratode.
6. Ja Guža soge, "gaumi! ainga aino žjudo sinde, ja herat žases swa wailjun ainga fruma ist, ja swat gairnjande nihat un-mahtigat ist".
7. "Bratome dalaž, ja um-wagjama [isro] rasdo, swaswe alle ažres ni fražjež".
8. Swa Guža žaržro airžus ludje anna straude, ja halwa at timrjan af-letun.
9. Ja swa itat namu Babel waurde, alli žara Guža žjudus rasdo um-wagide, ja žara [ijes] airžus ludje anna straude.

This construes as follows:

1. And yonder(dat) time(dat) in earth one language and few words had.
2. And while men east(dat) out-of came, flat region Shimar in found-they, and there to dwell began-they.
3. And each others(dat) said, "prepare-we(imp) bricks and bake-we(imp) [them] fully". And bricks instead-of stone(gen) and clay instead-of mortar(gen) had-they.
4. And said-they, "build-we(imp) city and tower with [its(masc dat)] head(dat) heavens(dat) in, and give-we(imp) name self(dat) to, lest earth(gen) face(dat) on scattered become-we(subj)".
5. And God which men built city and tower to see down went.
6. And God said, "behold! only one people are-they, and this of-that which want-they only start is, and which want-they nothing impossible is".
7. "Go-we(imp) down, and confuse [their] language, so that each others not understand(subj)."
8. So God from-there earth(gen) face(dat) on scattered, and tower to build forsook-they.
9. And so its name Babel became, because there God people(gen) language confused, and there [them] earth(gen) face(dat) on scattered.

Glossary

• Guža God (m1)
• af-letan to forsake (s1)
• ainga only
• airžo earth, region (f3)
• bakkan to bake (s6)
• baurgo city, town (f3)
• bauwen to live, dwell (w3)
• braton to go, travel (w2)
• faulla full
• fawa few
• findan (fand-, fund-) to find (s3)
• flata flat
• fražjan to understand (w1)
• frumon to begin (w2)
• gairnjan to desire, wish for (w1)
• gaumjan to see, observe (w1)
• gawi region (m2)
• gume man (m5)
• haben to have, possess (w3)
• habda head (n1)
• halwa tower (m1)
• hinna heaven (m1)
• hwailo time, season (f6)
• ja and
• kwailda east (m1)
• kwiman (kwam-, kwem-) to come (s4)
• ludjo face, surface (f3)
• manwjan to prepare (w1)
• maurtra mortar (n1)
• mit with
• namu name (n7)
• rasdo speech, language (f3)
• rodjan to speak (w1)
• sagan (sog-) to say (s6)
• stažain instead of (+ genitive)
• straujan to scatter, spread (w1)
• taujan to do (w1)
• timrjan to build (w1)
• um-wagjan to confuse (w1) (um "around" + wagjan "to shake")
• un-mahtigaž impossible
• waddjustaina brick (m1) (from waddju "wall" + staina "stone")
• waurda word (n1)
• žaho clay (f3)
• žjudo people (f3)