Last update: 31 January 2006

Machren

Machren is fairly homogenous across all its communities; the dialects differ from each other mainly in vocabulary items and occasionally in grammar. Some Dekavurian influence is noticeable in the southern dialects.

Phonology

Stress

The most noticeable variations in Machren phonology are in the intonation; southern dialects tend to be more syllable-timed, while northern dialects retain the stress-timed rhythm of Liotan. The rhythms of Liotan poetry are retained in the more recitative registers of Machren, but not in more relaxed speech.

Vowels

In phonetic terms, of course, /E/ and /1/ are front and central vowels respectively; however, in Machren phonology they belong with the back vowels. /Ø ø/ are used in preference to X-SAMPA /9 2/, by analogy with /O o/ and the IPA.

North Liotic did not diphthongise any of the Sunovian long vowels; thus original /E: O:/ did not become /ia ua/, and the other long vowels of Liotan have similarly remained pure. The main innovation in the vowel sytstem is the loss of phonemic vowel length; older short /e o/ had close pronunciations [e o] and thus fell together with long /e: o:/ rather than /E: O:/. An innovation peculiar to Machren is the further merger /æ E e/ in /e/.

At this point there were seven phonemic vowels /i e A O o u 1/. Each vowel originally had a pair of allophones which were conditioned by the following consonant; thus the four back vowels /A O o u/ had front counterparts /a Ø ø y/ before slender consonants, while before broad consonants /i/ backed to /1/ and /e/ lowered to /E/. Older /1/ became /e/ and thus /E/ before broad consonants, and merged with /i/ before slender consonants. The distinctions between broad and slender were eventually lost in labial and velar consonants, causing these allophonic distinctions to become phonologised.

Vowel alternations

Final vowels, and vowels before a final consonant in many grammatical endings, alternate freely in backness. Under the influence of nearby dialects of Dekavurian, the alternation is regularised in southern forms of Machren, where the vowel in the ending correlated in backness with the vowel in the stem so that, for example, caela "dog" is /kala/, by comparison with douca /docA/. For simplicity's sake, the vowel in such endings is always referred to as /a e i O o u/ here.

The other type of alternation is raising, a relic of the similar alternation in Liotan, and is largely confined to nominal morphology. It is most consistent in the descendants of the Liotan back vowels, where /Ø O/ alternate with /ø o/, and /ø o/ with /y u/; for example, the /O/ in doc raises to /o/ in the nominative plural doucan and the genitive singular douca. In the other vowels, /E e/ raise to /i I/, although the alternations are less consistent due to the more varied origins of these vowels.

Here's a diagram of the vowel system, showing raising with blue lines and fronting with red lines. The dotted blue lines indicate that the raising of /a A/ to /Ø O/ is sporadic and not very common.

Consonants

The labials, dentals, and /g/ are transcribed as you would hope; /k x G N/ are transcribed C CH GH NG, and /Ng/ is thus represented by NGG. The palatals are transcribed as the corresponding dental after a front vowel (e.g. feine "horse", where the N represents palatal /J/), or with a following J (e.g. asnje "than them"). This spelling convention reflects the fact that dentals are never found immediately after front vowels, and palatals similarly never occurr following back vowels; this in turn results from the retention of the broad-slender distinction in dental consonants.

The palatal fricatives are represented as /S Z/ to preserve the correspondence with /s z/, but their proper pronunciations (i.e. those used by native speakers) are palatal [C j\] rather than the palato-alveolar [S Z] used by Dekavurians. Native Machren speakers are sensitive to this distinction and often use it as a kind of shibboleth.

In the grammatical endings in which the vowel can alternate freely in backness, the following consonant varies between dental and palatal as appropriate. This is most obvious in the plurals of nouns; for example docan "crabs" almost always has final /-An/, whereas feinen "horses" has /-En/ or /-eJ/. Similarly, the final consonant in maeryr "I give" may be either /r/ or /r_j/, while bezar "to work, toil" typically has just /r/.

Mutations

As in Liotan, lenition is indicated with H after the lenited consonant and eclipsis with the eclipsed consonant written before the unmutated one; thus TH represents /s/ from lenited /t/, and ZSJ represents /Z/ from eclipsed /S/. The lenited liquids could just as well be transcribed LJ RJ, but LH RH is used here for consistency.

Phonotactics

An /a/ was added to words ending in two consonants or in one of the former "heavy" consonants (unlenited liquids and lenited nasals); these consonants later merged with ordinary /l L r r_j m n J/. For example gall "man" > gala, deimh "deep" > djeime.

Grammar

Nouns

The presence or absence of a final vowel in the nominative singulars of many nouns of all declensions is without grammatical significance; northern dialects tend to drop these final vowels. The nominative plural endings are /-An -aJ/ (first declension) and /-yn -iJ/ (second declension) for masculine nouns, /-En -eJ/ for feminines, and /-On -ØJ/ for neuters; the dative plural is always the same as the nominative plural with /s/ instead of the final /n/. The vocative case, which will not be discussed further, is formed with a- plus lenition; thus a-ghala "O man!".

Masculine nouns exhibit the most complicated patterns of vowel alternation in their stem vowels, while feminine nouns all have front vowels in the root syllable in the nominative singular and back vowels in the genitive plural. The only vowel alternation in neuter nouns is the raising of the stem vowel in the nominative singular of monosyllabic stems of the first declension.

Articles and demonstratives

The dative forms are shown in brackets because they only appear in compounds with prepositions and are never used alone.

The demonstratives are formed by infixing the Liotan demonstrative particles between the initial /k/ of the article and the following vowel. In the nominative singular of the masculine, they are thus cema-* "this", cacha-* "that" and cora-* "yonder"; the feminines are ceme-H cache-H core-H, and the neuters are cemo-N cacho-N coro-N. The forms for the other cases and numbers are formed accordingly, thus the feminine genitive plurals are ceme-N cache-N core-N.

Adjectives

Adjectives with a front vowel in the masculine nominative singular have front vowels throughout the masculine and feminine and back vowels throughout the neuter. For example, the nominative singular of "yellow" is masculine foes, feminine feuse and neuter fous, and the neuter genitive singular is fosa.

Putting this all together, here is the full declension of "this large crab".

Adverbial meanings are expressed with la "with" and the dative of the appropriate abstract noun, for example la-fhela "quickly".

Comparisons

In northern dialects the as combines with a following article or demonstrative, and in southern dialects it is joined onto the adjective, so that "larger than the crab" is more usually djourama ascan docha or djouramas can docha.

Pronouns

• The dual was lost altogether, as with nouns and also in West and South Liotic.
• Each pronoun had a fully declineable possessive form, which originated in a compound of the genitive and the indefinite pronoun camh.
• The nominative, genitive, and partitive cases of each pronoun had special forms which were used when the pronoun was being emphasised.

The unstressed nominative, genitive, and partitive, the stressed nominative, and the possessive pronouns, are shown below, together with the pronominal endings which were used with prepositions.

The stressed genitives are the same as the stressed nominatives with lenition of the following noun: sama chaela "my dog", compared to sa-gcaela "my dog". The stressed partitive consists of the stressed nominative with the final consonant of the unstressed partitive suffixed: samach denach and so on. The /g/ in certain possessive pronouns is often changed to /x/ by analogy, thus sacha for "mine".

In all dialects, the comparitive as combines with the third-person pronouns to make asna aslje asro asla asnje and with ca tu to give asca astu; thus djourama asro "larger than it". The final vowel of the adjective is dropped in speech.

The demonstrative pronouns are compounds with ca: cama "this one", camcha "that one", camra "yonder one".

Prepositions

The stem vowels in the locative and ablative compounds are always the same, but that of the allative form frequently differs, as above.

All forms of the prepositions form further compounds with the articles and with pronouns, thus with fera were formed fercha-H "into the" (masculine singular), ferchem(a)-H "into this", feras "into me". In many northern dialects, the final vowels of the compounds with the third person feminine, neuter, and plural pronouns are often changed to the vowels of the pronouns, for example fereil feror ferin for ferael ferar feraen.

A preposition, whether compounded with the article or not, lenites a following singular noun and eclipsed a plural noun, which is always in the dative case (this differs from Liotan): fera thura "into a town", mechemi vfuines "from these knives".

As in Liotan, the combination of a preposition and a genitive pronoun is realised as the prepositional pronoun followed by the appropriate mutation: mesa vfuine "from my knife".

Similar compounds are formed with the reflexes of the Liotan demonstrative particles: eimra "hither", eimno "here", eime "hence"; achra "thither", ora "to yonder".

Verbs

A Machren verbal phrase consists of a preverbal particle plus the continuation of the Liotan inflected present tense of the verb; this in turn is formed from the verb stem followed by the thematic vowel and the personal ending; there is no personal ending if the subject was a noun. The personal endings are shown below, with maerych "gives" as the sample verb.

Note also maeri ce njheile "the woman is giving".

There are ten preverbal particles, all derived from older Liotan forms of "to be". they are shown below, with maeryr "I give".

The final /n/ of the past tense particles eclipses the initial consonant of the inflected verb where possible: e dterar "I saw", le dterar "I did not see", etc. The e-H of the present positive is often omitted in speech, but never in writing.

Thematic vowels

The alternation in the vowel preceding the final consonant of the stem in the mixed conjugation continues the Liotan original alternation between broad and slender in the consonant, as the pair beizis and bezas above show.

Participles

The participles are used where dependent clauses would be used in English; "I want to eat the apple" is e-iner buinelta ca tec or e-iner buinelta can tecas depending respectively on whether the eating is intended to be completed or not. Similarly, with modal verbs, are formed constructions like e-phesar buinelta "I can eat".

"To be"

The past tenses of eich and deuch are enach and sjech, which conjugate regularly in the /a/ and /e/ conjugations respectively.

The negative of all forms of eich is formed by prefixing lj-. The negatives of deuch and sjech are ljezoch ljeizech, which belong respectively to the /o:/ and /e/ conjugations; their reduced forms are ljes ljeis.

The reduced forms of the two "to be" verbs are e do in the present tense and en sje in the past. The syntax and semantics of phrases with these two verbs follows the Liotan: e ser feuncha theca or do ser feuncha theca "the apple is red".

Numbers

The ordinal suffix -ta is added to all cardinal numbers, thus certa "twentieth", and in southern dialects it is also added to "first" and "second" to give sjylta sovda. It is extracted from sechta, which formerly meant "nine" as well as "ninth", but acquired its ordinal meaning when the cardinal number was shortened to sech.

"400" and "8000" were sjim reing, and their ordinals are sjimta reingta.

Phrases with number words are constructed on the same patterns as in Liotan, thus:

• mel gala cid "eleven men"
• cer ghalas mel "21 men"
• cer ghalas mel cid "31 men"
• njuger ghalas poer chid "158 men"

Conjunctions

• as "and (consecutive)"
• di-H or dy-H "and (simultaneous)"
• so-N "but"
• oes "or (inclusive)", doubled for "either .. or"
• laes "or (exclusive)", doubled for "either .. or"
• loes ... loes "neither ... nor"
• och-H "if (realisable)"
• da-N "if (unrealisable)"

Further conjunctions developed from older prepositions, for example bi "while, during", njov "before", dor "after", dje "except". All of these trigger eclipsis of the following word: bi mbuiner "while I eat", dor ne-dterar "after I saw" (where ne- is the eclipsed form of the past particle e-N).

Derivation

Syntax

Word order

Relative clauses and emphasis

The principal question words are grasa "what", gris "who", djuira "how much", groch "what kind", gyz "when", gragh "why", gaes "how", and gout "where". As in Liotan, the last four of these require prepositions: grasa a bhuiner tu? "what am I eating?", gyz a bhuiner feunosta "when am I eating?", gout a bhuiner nosta "where am I eating?"

Interrogatives and indefinites