Geoff's homepage -> Artificial Languages -> Liotic -> Ivrien

Last update: 18 September 2007

Ivrien

Along with Kadhrein, Ivrien is the other main representative of the Western branch of Liotic. Its half-million or so speakers inhabit the grasslands in the eastern part of the Kadhrein-speaking area, which is bounded on the east by the Western Mountains of Dekavur. Ivrien is more conservative than Kadhrein, and is often regarded as the most melodious and pleasing of the Liotic languages.

Phonology

The older stages of Ivrien phonology had much in common with those of Kadhrein, and indeed it is possible to read samples of older Kadhrein as if they were Ivrien.

Stress

Ivrien is the most faithful of the Liotic languages to the intonation of Liotan; indeed, it has the most marked differences between stressed and unstressed syllables of contemporary Liotic. Ivrien stresse the first syllable after any prefixes, and was stress-timed, with stressed syllables generally occurring at regular intervals.

Vowels

Ivrien has five vowels /i e a o u/ and six diphthongs /ei ai oi eu au ou/.

The diphthongs continue the late Liotan diphthongs; /iu io/ and /ui ue/ fell together with /eu/ and /oi/ respectively, while /ia ie/ and /ua uo/ merged with /e/ and /o/. The /oi/ in koishe "ill", boizha "hollow", and goinye "girl" thus derive respectively from /oi ui ue/ (in Liotan, cóis búigh guaine). The diphthongs only appear in stressed syllables; when unstressed, /ei ai oi/ are reduced to /e/ and /eu au ou/ become /o/.

/a/ in isolation is usually central, halfway between [a] and [A]; in the vicinity of front vowels it is closer to [a], and near back vowels it is closer to [A]. Thus kathe "dog" is approximately [ka:Te], while thoura "small" is /TourA/.

The distinction between /e o/ and /i u/ in unstressed syllables is neutralised to varying degrees in Ivrien; all varieties complete the merger word-finally, and the resulting vowels are transcribed E O here.

In stressed open syllables, i.e. those followed by a single consonant or a stop followed by a liquid, simple vowels are noticeably lengthened, often with a closer articulation. For example, the stressed /e/ in fela "quick" is lengthened and closed to [e:], by comparison with the unaltered [E] in fenda "tree". A consequence of this is that a stressed syllable may not contain an unchecked short vowel.

Consonants

The consonant-system of Ivrien is the largest of the Liotic languages, consisting of the following twenty-eight consonants and /h/:

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Voiceless stops	p	t		c	k
Voiced stops	b	d		J\	g
Voiceless fricatives	f	T	s	C	x
Voiced fricatives	v	D	z	j\	G
Nasals	m	n		J	N
Laterals		l	l_0	L
Trills		r	r_0	r_j

The consonants are transcribed in the same way as those of Kadhrein, with the addition of TH DH RY LH RH for /T D r_j l_0 r_0/. As the transcription indicates, /l_0 r_0/ are voiceless variants of /l r/, with the same place of articulation despite their place in the table.

As in Kadhrein, voiced stops became voiced fricatives between vowels, and /s/ was weakened to /h/ before a stop. The consonants referred to as "voiceless stop" above are thus actually strongly preaspirated intervocalically, continuing older clusters of /s/ + stop, while intervocalic "voiced stops" are always voiceless. The velar consonants in faka "friend", doga "crab", and pagha "bow", the Ivrien reflexes of fasg doc pag, thus represent /hk k G/ respectively, whereas the G in gushe "long" is simply /g/.

The liquids are devoiced before voiceless consonants; /lt/ is this [l_0t], compared with /ld/ which is [lt]; and also word-initially, as with lheuda "wood" and rhithe "half".

Mutations

In contrast to Kadhrein, the Liotan consonant mutations are still very productive in Ivrien, and have been extended to incorporate the devoicing of initial /l r/. As with Machren, the denasalisation of the nasal fricatives altered the system slightly; note also that lenited /d/ is /D/ rather than /z/ in parallel with its development between vowels. The results of the two mutations are shown below.

Labial

Dental

Alveolar

Palatal

Velar

Liquid

Normal

l_0

r_0

Lenited

r_j

Eclipsed

Phonotactics

The only consonants found word-finally are the voiceless fricatives /f T s C x/, the nasals /m n N/ (the last being very rare), and the liquids /l r/.

The permitted consonant clusters are the same as in Kadhrein.

Grammar

Many aspects of Ivrien grammar are similar to those of Machren and unlike those of Kadhrein, although this is more likely due to Ivrien and Machren retaining archaisms than any actual influence.

Nouns

Ivrien nouns decline for case and number and retain the three genders of Liotan. Gender is usually correlated with the final vowel of the word; thus gaula "man" is masculine, eitye "house" feminine, and rhoukho "thing" neuter. The neuter gender also includes collective nouns formed with -o which derive from the Liotan collective plural -alla, as with onkho "flock of animals" from onachalla "a collection of sheep".

The cases are the nominative, partitive, genitive, and vocative; the older dative case had fallen together with the nominative. The vocative, as in Liotan and Machren, prefixes a-H: a-ghaula "O man!". The nominative and partitive are formed with suffixes as follows:

	Masculine		Feminine		Neuter
Case	Sing	Plur	Sing	Plur	Sing	Plur
Nominative	gaula	gaulan	eitye	eityen	roukho	roukhon
Partitive	gaulas	gaulanyas	eityes	eityenyas	roukhos	roukhonyas

The genitive case is formed with a mutation, not a suffix. A noun in the genitive case always follows the noun it modified, and lenites its initial consonant if the dependant is singular and eclipses it if it is plural: eitye ghaula "man's house", eitye ngaula "man's houses".

Aberrant nouns

A few subclasses of nouns which do not fit into the patterns described above may be summarised as:

Masculine nouns in -e, partitive plural -inyas: tyeirye "eye", partitive plural tyeiryinyas.
Masculine nouns in -a and plurals in -en -inyas: goula goulyen "ear, ears", sona, sonyen "father, fathers".
Feminine nouns in -e, partitive plural -inyas, typically nominae agentis: kanze kanzinyas "woman singer".
Neuter nouns in -o, partitive plural -unyas, typically result and instrument nouns: keulo keulunyas "missile, thing thrown".

Doublets

In older Ivrien, many nouns of the second subclass exhibited an alternation in the vowel as well as the consonant; thus the older plural of sona was soinyen. Several doublets were created when the plurals of these nouns were regularised; for example a new singular soinye was back-formed from soinyen with the meaning "leader, elder", while goilye (from the older plural of goulye) took on the meaning "handle of a jug or similar container".

Articles

The Ivrien definite article is similar to that of Machren, and needs no further comment:

Number	Case	Masc	Fem	Neut
Sing	Nom	ka-*	ke-H	ko-N
	Gen	kan-H	ken-H	kon-H
	Part	kan-*	ken-*	kon-*
Plur	Nom	ke-H	ki-H	ke-H
	Gen	ka-N	ke-N	ko-N
	Part	kas-N	kes-N	kos-N

Demonstrative particles, as in Kadhrein, follow the noun. The particles are em "this", akh "that", and or "yonder": ke eitye em "this house", eitye em "one of these houses".

Adjectives

Attributive adjectives in Ivrien are grammatically indistinguishable from nouns. The combination of noun and attributive adjective in Ivrien is very similar to that of a genitive noun and its possessor, except that the endings for case and number are added to the adjective only. For example, the full declension of "small man" (with thoura "small") is:

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	gaula lyoura	gaula dhouran
Partitive	gaula lyouras	gaula dhouranyas
Genitive	ghaula lyoura	ghaula dhouran
Vocative	a-ghaula lyoura	a-ghaula dhouran

Adjectives decline for gender, and retain the original alternation between broad and slender consonants; in general, palatal consonants in the feminine typically alternate with a dental, alveolar, or velar in the neuter, while the masculine may use either. Some examples are shown below.

Meaning	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
"small"	thoura	thourye	thouro
"narrow"	bartha	barthe	barxo
"straight"	foula	foulye	foulo
"old, aged"	geitha	geithe	geilo
"new"	ouga	oudye	ougo

As with the nouns, older vocalic alternations often give rise to doublets, such as geula "sacred, revered" and foilya "true, righteous" from geitha and foula.

Comparisons

The comparitive forms of Ivrien adjectives are similar to their Kadhrein counterparts:

um gheitha kan gaulas "older than the man"
(ka) gaula um gheitha "the smallest man"
kon gheitha kan gaulas "not as old as the man"
rhas gheitha kan gaulas "as old as the man"

Pronouns

Ivrien personal pronouns are similar in structure, and often in form, to those of Machren, complete with special emphatic forms.

	Nom	Gen	Part	Stressed	ending
Singular
1	sa	sa-N	sakh	savra	-s
2 def	de	de-H	dekh	devra	-sh
2 fam	mo	mo-H	mokh	movra	-m
3 masc	an	a-N	anas	anya	-n
3 fem	el	el-H	elyas	ilya	-lye
3 neut	or	or-H	oras	urya	-r
3 gen	al	al-H	alas	alya	-l
Plural
1 exc	dyen	gar-N	dyes	dyevra	-zhe
1 inc	dran	dar-H	dras	dravra	-dha
2 def	fen	fe-N	fes	fevra	-f or -ve
2 fam	men	me-H	mos	mevra	-me
3	in	i-N	inas	inya	-nye
Other
reflexive	bor	bu-H	bokh	buvra	-va
relative	to	tu-H	tokh	tuvra	-th
impersonal	ka	ka-N	kakh	kavra	-kh

The stressed genitives are the same as the stressed nominatives with lenition of the following noun: savra khathe "my dog", compared to sa-gkathe "my dog". The stressed partitive is formed by suffixing the final consonant of the unstressed partitive to the stressed nominative: savras devras and so on.

Possessive pronouns are formed by adding -nka to the genitive, (-ka after a consonant) and decline for case, number, and gender: sanka "mine", anka "his", elka "hers" (all masculine nominative singular), inkenyas "theirs" (feminine partitive plural).

The demonstrative pronouns are compounds of kavra and the demonstrative particles: kavrem "this one", kavrakh "that one", kavror "yonder one".

Prepositions

Prepositions in Ivrien resemble those of Machren and Kadhrein in their expression of the Liotan distinction between motion towards, rest, and motion away from. The distinction is expressed by the final vowel, respectively -e -o -a; for example nyove "to in front of", nyovo "in front of", nyova "from in front of".

fa dya tya, respectively "from inside", "from outside" and "off", have longer and more formal forms fogha dyogha tyogha. rhe "to, towards", nyo "at", me "from, away from", be "through", and she "as far as, up to" were invariable.

The personal endings are added directly to the prepositions, thus nyovos "in front of me", menye "away from them". The genitives of these trigger the appropriate mutation on a following noun: shes vfenda "up to my tree".

The endings with the article are -kh in the singular and -sh in the plural, irrespective of gender. All prepositions trigger lenition in the singular and eclipsis in the plural, whether an article is present or not: nyovokh fhenda "in front of the tree", nyovosh vfendan "in front of the trees", nyovo vfenda "in front of some trees".

The locative forms of "here", "there", and "yonder" are emvo akho orkho, and the allative and ablative forms are similarly formed with -e -a, thus emve "hither" and akha "thence".

Verbs

Ivrien verb phrases derive from the late spoken Liotan constructions with participles and prepositional pronouns, viz. do buinealt ca taoc llas "I am eating the apple". In older Ivrien the prepositional pronoun was placed directly after do and in due course combined with it to make a sense-verb; thus do llas became doulas. In normal declarative sentences, the sense-verb always appears first in the verb-phrase, followed by the subject of the verb and the reduced form of the participle; "I am eating" is therefore doulas bunyel ko seuga.

If the subject is a noun, an accompanying article is reduced to a suffix on the verb (-x in the singular and -c in the plural). However, since the subject in the original Liotan construction was in the dative case, in Ivrien it retaines its initial mutation, leniting in the singular and eclipsing in the plural. The endings on the sense-verb and the mutations on the subject noun are illustrated by the following.

doul hemve kazhel "a duck is swimming"
doul zshemven kazhel "some ducks are swimming"
doulakh hemve kazhel "the duck is swimming"
doulash zshemven kazhel "the ducks are swimming"

Sense-verbs

The commonest sense-verbs are those formed with the reflexes of do and eich and the pronominal forms of la "with". The full set is as follows.

	do		eich
	Present	Past	Present	Past
Positive	doula-	sheila-	eula-	ezla-
Negative	thoula-	theila-	theula-	thezla-

In speech, except in the past forms derived from eich, the -la is often dropped from these sense-verbs, thus dous for doulas.

Participles

The participles have two forms, a full form which is used as a verbal adjective or noun, and a reduced form which is used with a sense-verb. The variations in the thematic vowels of the full forms group verbs into seven conjugations, corresponding to their Liotan ancestors; one verb from each is shown below.

	Present		Past
Meaning	Active	Passive	Active	Passive	Source	Vowels
"eat"	bunyelta	bunyidya	bunyishta	bunyeska	e	e i
"sit down"	mitelta	mitodya	mitoshta	miteska	e:	e o
"bend"	pazholta	pazhedya	pazheshta	pazhoska	o:	o e
"see"	terxalta	terxadya	terxashta	terxaska	a	a a
"do"	bezalta	bezhedya	bezheshta	bezhaska	mixed	a e
"give"	maryolta	maryidya	maryishta	maryoska	i:	o i
"learn"	dyilyulta	dyilyedya	dyilyeshta	dyilyuska	u:	u e

The endings of the reduced forms are -l -sh -th -kh respectively, before which /i u/ become /e o/. Consonant alternations take place in the stem of verbs in the mixed conjugations, for example bezhedya and bezalta in the table.

Tenses and aspects

The nearest English equivalents of the possible combinations with the positive sense-verbs and the active participles are:

construction	tense	equivalent	notes
dou[la]s bunyel	unmarked present	"I am eating"	used when no special attention was drawn to the verb
dou[la]s bunyeth	present perfect	"I have eaten"	completed action with present relevance
shei[la]s bunyel	imperfect	"I was eating"	continuous action in the past
shei[la]s bunyeth	preterite	"I ate"	completed action in the past; theoretically a pluperfect, but never used as such
eu[la]s bunyel	habitual present	"I eat, I tend to eat"	also used for actions unbounded by time
ezlas bunyel	habitual past	"I used to eat, I tended to eat"	habitual actions in the past

The passive participles are very rarely used with sense-verbs, and only when no verbal agent is present; dou[la]r bunyesh "it is being eaten" is more usually dou[la]kh bunyel or, with the impersonal form of the verb.

The past active participles (the ones in -th) are rarely used with the eich-derived sense-verbs, i.e. eu[la]s bunyeth and ezlas bunyeth are seldom heard.

Refinements

Meanings of modality and temporality may be expressed with particles which derive from uncompounded forms of prepositions. There are two constructions, equivalent in meaning; the first inserts the particle between the subject of the sense-verb and the reduced participle, leniting the initial letter of the participle if it is a consonant; the second incorporates the particle into the sense-verb itself with no lenition. Both possibilities are shown in the examples below.

dou[la]s fo khanzel, douvos kanzel "I can sing, am able to sing".
dou[la]s nyo khanzel, dounyos kanzel "I am about to sing".
dou[la]s dor khanzel, doudhras kanzel "I have just sung".

The second construct is not used if the sense-verb derives from the past of eich.

"To be"

As in Kadhrein, "to be" is the same for all persons and numbers:

Present		Past
Positive	Negative	Positive	Negative
ei, e	the	enza	thenza
do	theza	ce	thezhe

Numbers

The numbers from one to ten, and their corresponding ordinals and twenties, are:

	Number	Ordinal	Twenty
1	mel	cela	tyera
2	sang-H	sova	sagra
3	sheth-H	shethe	shelkra
4	dying-N	dyinga	dyidhra
5	dar-N	darye	dara
6	nau-N	nave	nabra
7	nyoukh-N	nyouga	nyougra
8	por-H	porye	pora
9	seuth	seuda	seutra
10	keis	keize	keigra

The idiosyncratic nau, rather than the expected naf, was originally a dialectal pronunciation. mel "one" is a proper adjective, and triggers the appropriate mutation: mel teuga "one apple", mel ghoinye "one girl", mel ndyeuzo "one lie".

Other numbers follow the Liotan pattern:

mel teuga keis "eleven apples"
mel teuga tyera "21 apples"
mel teuga keis tyera "31 apples"

The twenties all require the partitive plural of the noun, which is lenited: ko bpora ryoukhonyas "160 things". Their ordinals have the same form, but take the nominative and the article: ko ryoukho foro "the 160th thing". "400" and "8000" were shime rhenye, and operate similarly.

Conjunctions

These are little changed from Liotan: a-* and di-H "and", so-N "but", osh and lash "or", okh-H and da-N "if".

Derivation

Suffix	to	gave	meaning	examples
-ato -eto	adj	noun	abstracts	thoura "small" > thourato "smallness", nyeitye "sweet" > nyeityeto "sweetness"
-ova	noun	adj	resembling, like	kenza "fish" > kenzova "fishy", teuga "apple" > teugova "apple-like"
-ola	noun	adj	lacking	thirxa "hair" > thirxola "hairless", filye "leaf" > filyola "leafless"
-ivra	noun	adj	having, full of	fenda "tree" > fendivra "covered in trees", thirkha "hair" > thirkhivra "hairy"
-oda	verb, noun, adj	noun	place	koishe "ill" > koishoda "sick-house, hospital", kathe "dog" > kathoda "kennel"

Diminutives are formed with several suffixes, which often carry emotional or judgemental connotations. When added to nouns the gender of the original noun is preserved. For example:

-il- is typically neutral: kath-il-e "little dog", seur-il-a "reddish".
-ic- is affectionate or endearing: goinyishe "sweet girl", rhoukhisho "cute little thing".
-ildy- is more contemptuous: rhoukhildyo "thing of no consequence", teugildya "nasty little apple"

Augmentative suffixes are fewer in number. The commonest is -oz-, for example etyoze "mansion, palace".

Syntax

Word order

Word order in Ivrien is consistently VSO; more correctly, the verb-phrase comes first in the sentence. As in Liotan, pronominal objects usually come last.

Adverbs

As in Machren and Kadhrein, adverbs are formed from adjectives with lha, which lenites the initial consonant of the adjective: dous bunyel lha fhelye "I eat quickly". Alternatively, and distinctively Ivrien, is the use of the partitive of the adjective: dous bunyel felyes, with the absence of mutation indicating that the adjective is not modifying a noun.

Relative clauses

If the noun to which the relative clause refers is the subject of the verb in the relative clause, Ivrien uses an adjectival phrase with a participle instead of the standard Liotan relative construct; thus "the girl who sings" becomes "the singing girl". Considered as a transformation, the rule is:

V1 S1 P1, V1 S1 P2 >> V1 S1 P1(pres act) P2
doukh ghoinye kanzal, doukh ghoinye benol nyovokh fhenda >> doukh ghoinye khanzalta benol nyovokh fhenda
"The girl sings, the girl is in front of the tree" >> "the singing girl is in front of the tree"

In this example, the tenses of the sense-verbs of the two clauses are the same. If the sense-verb of the first clause is in the past tense ("the girl who sang"), the sentence uses the past participle khanzicta in place of khanzalta. Note that the participle is lenited because it is effectively an adjective modifying a singular noun; if many girls are referred to, ke ghoinye khanzalta becomes ki ghoinye gkanzalta, with eclipsis.

In the same example, if the relative clause is the longer of the two (i.e. "the girl who is in front of the tree is singing"), the result becomes doukh ghoinye venzulta nyovokh fhenda kanzal.

This construct is not used if the relative clause refers to a noun which was not the subject of the relative verb. Instead, the standard Liotan construct is used, with the conjunction a-H and the relative pronoun to or its inflection -th: douth benol nyovokh fhenda ke ghoinye a dhoulas terkhel to (with terkhel from "to see").

The combination of a with the basic sense-verbs is often reduced in speech to the following:

	do		eich
	Present	Past	Present	Past
Positive	adha-	ashla-	aula-	azla-
Negative	ala-	aila-	a theula-	a thezla-

Dependent clauses, emphasis, and interrogatives

Here, as in Machren, there is little difference from the Liotan:

doulas terkhel kanzalta ken ghoinye "I see the girl singing"
ei ke ghoinye adhath khanzel "It is the *girl" who is singing
gi ashlath khanzel "Who sang?"

Indefinites

These are much as in Kadhrein, aside from differences caused by sound change:

peizhresh "everybody"
tyithras "anything", from tyina + rhaza
theinkoth "nowhere", from theinye + koda