Last update: 18 September 2007

Genistien

Dialectal variations are not great. The most divergent dialects are those of the two largest cities in south-western Dekavur: Tur Kurpen, three-quarters of whose population speak Genistien, and the smaller and more Dekavurian city of Tullerin to the north.

Phonology

Vowels

The older diphthongs /ei ai oi/ and /eu au ou/ became long mid vowels /e: E: E:/ and /o: O: O:/ respectively, thus shòkah "thinks, considers" from séacach continues /eu/, while róho "type, sort" from rreóch continues /ou/. Older /i: u:/ remains in Genistien, while /iu ui/ became /iu wi/: cuinh "carrot" > kuinzhe, íth "oil" > íshe.

In non-compound words, the long vowels were originally restricted to initial syllables, but later developed in certain open penultimate syllables. In final syllables, /e/ merges with /i/ and /o/ with /u/; the qualities of the resulting vowels vary between open [E O] and much closer [e_r o_r].

One characteristic of urban speech is the weakening of all original final vowels to [@] and, in more divergent dialects, their eventual loss. This process is most noticeable in Tur Kurpen; in Tullerin it is restricted to words with heavy syllables (i.e. those not containing of a short vowel followed by a single consonant). Thus róho is /ro:x/ in both dialects, but turo "city, town" is /tur/ in Tur Kurpen and /turo/ in Tullerin. Final /i@ u@/ became /i u/.

Vowel sandhi

• /e/ + /i/ and /o/ + /u/ > /e: o:/
• /e o/ before any other vowel > /j w/
• /a/ + /i e a o u/ > /E: E: a: O: O:/

Consonants

plus nasals /m n/, liquids /l r/, and glides /w j/. /T D S Z G/ are transcribed TH DH SH ZH GH; /x/ is simply H; and the glides, which appear only before vowels, are transcribed W Y. /S Z/ are actually palato-alveolars [S Z], not palatals.

The developments in the consonant-system of Genistien were idiosyncratic. Among the more notable are the following.

• The development of voiced fricatives, as in Ivrien and Kadhrein, from intervocalic voiced stops (e.g. sova "second", older soba) and nasals next to liquids (e.g. élghah "turns" from aoileangach).
• The results of the palatalisation of /t d k g/. These are /S Z xj j/ initially and /St Zd Sk Zg/ medially before vowels; for example téir "eye" > shére, geora "clay, dough" > yora, neiteach "falls" > neshtah, uid "hard, difficult" > uzhde.
• Initially before /l r/, palatalised /t d k g/ became /st zd St Zd/, thus greamh "loud" > zhdròmva; despite its rather forbidding appearance, this is merely pronounced /ZdrO:mva/.
• The development of many glides from certain vocalised consonants. Initial broad /f b/ became /hw w/, intervocalic broad /f v/ became /uh uv/, and intervocalic slender /C j\/ became /ih iZ/: baic "tap, click" > washke, foid "pale" > hwozhde, aich "animal" > èhe, obhach "understands" > óvah, seigh "each other" > shézhe.
• /N/ became /n/, as generally in South and East Liotic, remaining [N] only before velar consonants.
• /x/ merged with /h/.

Stress

• If the penult contains a long vowel, it is stressed: sÒhta "nine", turÁno "in the city".
• Otherwise, if the antipenult contains a long vowel, it is stressed: dÉthesta "birds (partitive plural)".
• Otherwise, if the word ends in a consonant, the final syllable is stressed: turOn "city (genitive singular)".
• Otherwise, the penultimate syllable is stressed: tUro "city", turOsta "cities (partitive plural)".

The intonation of Genistien is similarly distinctive. The length of each syllable is governed by the number of moras it contains; long vowels and diphthongs contains two moras and short vowels contain only one; sòhta is effectively /sOOxta/, and sounds longer than turo /turo/ and the same length as turosta /turosta/.

Phonotactics

Grammar

Nouns

The characteristic -st- in the partitive plural derived from the original /s/ plus the /n/ of eclipsis before vowels; as elsewhere in Liotic, /sn/ subsequently became /st/. The directive endings, of course, originated in the prepositions ra no me, and were created under Dekavurian influence.

The final vowel of the noun was formerly one of /i e a o u/, and the case-endings followed straightforwardly (as still in Chastuvien). When final /i u/ merged with /e o/, the distinctions became obscured, and the endings came to be used indiscriminately. The endings with -i- -í- in the feminine and -u- -ú- in the neuter are typical of Tullerin; Tur Kurpen prefers those with -e- and -o- -wé-, and created new analogic partitive plural endings -yesta -westa for the feminine and neuter.

As mentioned above, the nominative plural endings -ye and -we became /-i@ -u@/ and eventually /-i -u/ in urban speech.

Adjectives

As usual in Liotic, the comparand is in the partitive: nasuvo turos "larger than a town".

Adverbs are formed from adjectives by suffixing -she, which is derived from Liotan ais "way, manner", and lengthening the preceding vowel: feléshe "quickly", zhdròmváshe "loudly".

Articles

The masculine plural, and sometimes all of the feminine, have initial /k/ in southern dialects, most commonly in Tur Kurpen. As with nouns and adjectives, there are variants in the stressed vowels; thus Tullerin has feminine and neuter directive plurals in -í- -ú-, and Tur Kurpen has the variant feminine and neuter partitive plurals kyesta kwesta.

The long vowels in the directive cases are often shortened in speech. Except in Tur Kurpen, the directive suffixes are not added to a noun or adjective if they are present on the article: kóra naso turo "to the large town", Tur Kurpen kór nasór turór.

Demonstratives

Pronouns

In Tur Kurpen, the initial n- of the third person generic plural has been lost - thus the genitive is yen and the allative yéra - and the other 3 plural nominatives are ne le re.

The partitive replaces the final -n of the genitive with -s in the singular and -sta in the plural. The locative and ablative cases are formed in the same way as the allative, with the same variations in the plurals as in nouns and adjectives.

Most of the possessive pronouns, which distinguished gender, are formed by suffixing -ka -ke -ko to the genitive as appropriate. The exception is the third person plural, which is always based on in- (Tur Kurpen yen-) regardless of the gender of the possessor.

Prepositions

The Liotan conjugated prepositions (prepositional pronouns) were replaced by the directive cases of the pronouns: sáme "from me", fo ròno "inside it". Similarly, the adverbs of location and direction are formed from the stems yemve "here", aha "there", and orha "yonder", for example orhára "to yonder", yemvéme "hence", zhe aháno "outside there".

Verbs

The past tense (more correctly the perfective aspect) is formed with a prefix en-, which derives from Liotan aonh. The /n/ assimilates to /m/ before labials and /D/ before liquids, and is lost before nasals:

• en-ínzher "I wanted"
• en-déshker "I listened"
• em-fèshker "I scattered"
• edh-lostar "I waited"
• e-marer "I gave"

Verbs are negated by prefixing the- in the present and then- in the past: the-ínzher "I do not want" (more usually thénzher in speech), thedh-lostar "I did not wait".

Thematic vowels

Further changes are found in Tur Kurpen and Tullerin, where all /e o/ were analogically raised to /i u/ before the plural endings; the effects were to reduce the number of conjugations to four.

Aside from these variations, the participles are straightforwardly formed with suffixes, with the same thematic vowel as in the 1 plural. The participles of mareh and bazah are shown below.

Verbal compounds

1. State verbs are compounds of an adjective and doh, and are the usual way of expressing "to be" in Genistien (aside from the past prefix, there are no relics of eich). The past tenses of these verbs use sheh in place of doh, except in Tur Kurpen, which prefixes en- in the usual way. The initial /t S/ assimilates to the preceding consonant, with /t/ disappearing after other dental obstruents, and the adjective makes no distinctions of gender or number. For example:

2. In a similar way, verbs of transformation are compounds with déneh. These verbs express "to become" and "to make", and have a slightly unusual syntax with directive cases which is recognisable as the descendant of the Liotan idiom.

• óra sòrdéneh "it is becoming red", literally "red is being placed to it".
• óra sòrdéner "I am making it red".
• óme sòrdéner "I am making it less red".
• sára sòrdéner "I am becoming red" (intentionally).
• sára sòrdéneh "I am becoming red" (unintentionally).

3. Verbs of causing motion are compounds of déneh and prepositions; prepositions ending in a vowel cause the initial /d/ to become /D/. "I put the apple on top of the table" is ka tòka kára zhònta shedhéner, literally "the apple the-to table on-put-I ", with the allative case of ka zhònta "the table".

4. Ordinary verbs of motion are similar compounds of prepositions and sònzah (thematic vowel /u/); the Genistien for "I am leaving the town" is thus kóme turo zhesònor, where zhesònzar is je "out of" plus sònzar. In Tur Kurpen, the initial /s/ voices to /z/ after a vowel, yielding zhezònzar.

Closely related are verbs of location, which are compounds of prepositions and wénzheh (stem vowel /i/): he sòmvel káno fanda dorwénzhen "the girl is behind the tree".

5. Some compound tenses, which can be identified with similar verbal forms in Ivrien, are formed from the participles and doh. The active forms with mareh are the following:

• mariltor "I am giving", the present progressive, transparently marilta + dor. Note that, unlike in English, this is a habitual; marer is the simple present tense "I give".
• marishtor "I have given", the present perfect.
• marilsher "I was giving", the past progressive, or past imperfect.
• marisher "I had given". This theoretically pluperfect form is often used interchangeably with marilsher as the past progressive.

The past prefix is not usually used with these tenses, since, for example, e-mariltor is just as well expressed by marilsher.

The corresponding passive forms, which were very seldom used, are marishker marisker and marishkor mariskor. The more typical Liotic construction with the indefinite form of the verb is preferred, for example or mareh "it is given".

6. Causatives are combinations of the participles and déneh, and are a distinctively Genistien innovation. The transformation rule is:

S1 O1 V1 >> S1(all) O1 V1(act part)-S2
an ka tòka unen >> nára ka tòka unilténer
"he eats the apple" >> "I make him eat the apple"

The construction with the past active participle, i.e. nára ka tòka unishténer, imparts a perfective meaning, more or less "I make him eat all of the apple". There are no corresponding forms with the passive participles.

Numbers

The tens, except for kesh itself, all require the partitive plural of the noun: sanke déthesta "twenty birds".

"Eleven" to "nineteen" are formed with di "and", according to Dekavurian practice: maldikesh "eleven", sandikesh "twelve", nwidikesh "seventeen", pozhdikesh (with /Sd/ > /Zd/); and similarly with the ordinals, thus nòdikézhda "sixteenth". "Twenty-one" is maldisanke, and the remaining numbers up to 99 are analogous.

"101" is shime mal.

Conjunctions

Derivation

Diminutive suffixes are frequent in Genistien, and as in Ivrien carry particular connotations. The most strongly affectionate are -ish- and -ishk-, the second of which is commonly used with personal names. -il- is neutral, and -ilk- is pejorative.

The main augmentative suffix is -adh-.

Personal nouns

• gyèthe "old" > gyèthan "old man", gyèthel "old woman", gyèthin "old people"
• kanzah "sings" > kanzan kanzel "singer"
• kònza "fish" > kònzan "fisherman"
• nasa "large" > nasor "large thing"

Especially common are sòmvan, sòmvel "boy, girl" and sòmven "children"; the Liotan parr and guaine survive in parha "son" and gwene "daughter". Personal nouns decline as shown below.

The partitive plural adds -ta to the partitive singular, which is like the genitive singular but with final -s. The ablative and locative are similarly like the allative. The primary stress is on the penultimate syllable throughout the declension.

Personal nouns may be formed from any part of speech. Note, however, the difference between kanzal "singer" and kanzaltal "someone who is singing": the first refers to someone who sings habitually, while the second refers to someone who is singing at the time of speaking, equivalent to al a kanzas "he/she who is singing".

Occasionally, and more frequently in older forms of the language, the pronoun suffix is preceded by a glide. In the contemporary suffix such nouns are used only as titles (gyèthyel "Wise Woman") and personal names.

The names of most of the Liotic languages are the genitive plurals of generic nouns; thus Chastuvien is the genitive of Chastuven "the people of Chastu", with epenthetic /v/.

Syntax

Word order and emphasis

Dependent clauses and modal verbs

• ínzher unelta "I want to eat" (ínzher "I want").
• ínzher nan unelta "I want him to eat", i.e. "I want his eating".
• ínzher unelta nára also "I want him to eat", lit. "I want an eating to him". This is a characteristically Tullerin idiom.
• tòrhar nan unelta "I see him eating".

Relative clauses

Interrogatives

• grish káno fanda dorwénzhes "who is under the tree?".
• gradha túno el dorwénzhes "what is she standing behind?", with túno, the locative case of the relative pronoun.
• zhdròxa fandas túno el dorwénzhes "what sort of tree...?", with the partitive after zhdróxa.
• yóth túno el wénzhes "where is she?"

grish is often extended to a personal noun, especially if the gender of the antecedent is known: grishan (masculine singular), grishin (generic plural).

Indefinites