Elphis

From KneeQuickie

Contents 1 Elphis (AKA "Hyosti") 2 Phonology 2.1 Phoneme Inventory and Transliteration 2.2 Syllable Structure 2.3 Allophones 2.4 Sandhi Processes 2.4.1 Weakening 2.4.2 Assimilation 2.4.3 Linking 3 Writing System 4 Personal & Possessive Pronouns 5 Determiners (articles & demonstratives) 6 Numbers (cardinal and ordinal) 7 Morphology 7.1 Nouns 7.1.1 Gender 7.1.2 Number 7.1.3 Case 7.2 Adjectives 7.3 Verbs 7.3.1 Tense & Aspect 8 Syntax 9 Word list

Elphis (AKA "Hyosti")

NOTE: Work in progress!

"Elphis" is the conlang (constructed language) I am currently developing. It is (or rather will be) a synthetic inflecting language, comparable to something inbetween Old English and Latin in terms of the morphology and syntax. It will have two genders, between 4 and 12 cases and between four and six distinct aspects and tenses, and three numbers.

The name "Elphis" is a translation of the word "Elfish" into the phonology of this language (Elphis lacks an /f/ and a /ʃ/ (IPA) or /S/ (X-Sampa). Altho' IPA /ɸ/, Sampa /p\/ is transliterated as "f" hereafter, the natural name of this language would therefore be "Elfis", which might be interpretted as a typing error of "Elfish". "Ph" was chosen to represent /ɸ/, for the title, as the greek letter phi is used in the IPA to represent that sound.

Elphis is so-called as it is spoken by an elf-like race (think more Tolkien than The Brothers Grimm). The geography and culture I am ever working on. A page will eventually be placed online.

Elphis, also known as "Hyosti", is a language whose primary design goals feature creating a sweet-sounding and sonorous language, both in phonology and grammar. It is also designed to be realistic and naturalistic.

Phonology

The phonology is designed to be both like, and unlike English. Elphis is meant to have a vague familiarity or homeliness, but yet still be quite different. The phonology is also designed to be sweet-sounding, relatively sonorous, and naturalistic. I am not attempting to find any "scientific" basis for sweet-soundingness; instead I am following my own aesthetic tastes and inclinations.

The fricatives ("f", "s", "hy", "hl") have voiced allophonic variants in voiced environments.

Phoneme Inventory and Transliteration

The "y" following a consonant represents either a palatalisation of the previous consonant, except in the cases below, where it forms part of a digraph for a palatal sound. The only exception to this rule is the digraph "yw", where the "y" foregoes the letter whose sound is being made int oa palatal form.

The first symbol is the Roman transliteration, the second is IPA, and the third is X-Sampa.

Consonants
p /p/ /p/
b /b/ /b/
t /t/ /t/
d /d/ /d/
ky /c/ /c/ Like English cute
gy /ɟ/ /J\/ As in Montague
k /k/ /k/
g /g/ /g/ Always pronounced as in English get
m /m/ /m/
n /n/ /n/
ny /ɲ/ /J/ Like English onion
ng /ŋ/ /N/ Always as in English thing, never as in finger
r, rr /r/ /r/ Spanish "trilled" r
hr, hrr /r ̥/ /r_0/ Spanish trilled r with lots of air
f /ɸ/ /p\/ English f, but without the teeth touching the lips
s /s/ /s/
hy /ç/ /C/ Like English huge
h /h/ /h/
hl /ɬ/ /K/ As in Welsh llewelyn; like pronouncing "h" and "l" at the same time
y /j/ /j/
l /l/ /l/
ly /ʎ/ /L/ Some pronounciations of million
w /w/ /w/
yw /ɥ/ /H/ French huit

Vowels

There are seven simple vowels:
i, ee /i/ Like English see
ue /y/ Like English see, but with rounded lips
e /ɛ/ Like English bed
oe /œ/ Like English bed, but with lips rounded
a /a/ Like English hat
o /ɔ/ Like English caught
u, oo /u/ Like English threw

All of these vowels have long and short versions ('long' being held for twice the length of 'short'). All of these lengths can change the meaning of any given word or morpheme. "Long" vowels are represented by way of a colon (:) following them. Thus the word fu:s "fire".

There are six diphthongs:
ei /ei/ /ei/ Like English pay
ai /ai/ /ai/ Like English eye
oi /ɔi/ /Oi/ Like English boy
au /au/ /au/ Like English out
eu /eu/ /eu/ Like Cockney English hell
ey /œy/ "Like English pay, but with the lips rounded"</br>

Syllable Structure

The syllable structure is (C)(w, y, yw)V(C). "V" stands for "Vowel", "C" stands for consonant, and all letters within a bracket are not required in any syllable.

The INITIAL syllable consonant clusters can only be C+ either w, y, or yw. C+yw combinations are much more marginalised than the first two, however, most commonly occuring in the combination cyw.

The MEDIAL word consonant groups or clusters must be either: all those clusters which are legal initially, andsounds occuring at the same place of articulation. The other restriction is that these clusters must have the first consonant higher up on the sonorant hierachy than the following consonant. That is (from highest to least high), trills --> laterals --> nasals --> fricatives --> plosives. Thus, -ld-, -ln-, -mf-, -srr-, -st-, -mb-, but NOT -nl-, -fm-, -rrs-, -pf- &c. This means that clusters of three sounds can be found medially. For instance, "ngkw", as in the word 'engkwe' Horse.

NOTE: Trills are actually roughly half way along in the sonorant order, but this is where Elphis breaks with the sonorant order.

FINALLY, only plosives and nasals are allowed finally (excluding palatals); also, all phonemes at the alveolar place of articulation, barring the lateral fricatives, are allowed finally.

Elphis is quite notable in having a very low number of syllables per morpheme (that is, most units of meaning within a word or sentence consists of one syllable, instead of multiple).

A list of all legal initial clusters: pw, bw, tw, dw, kyw, gyw, kw, gw, mw, nw, nyw, ngw, hrw, rw, sw, lw, lyw, py, by, ty, dy, my, sy, syw

A list of all legal medial clusters: pw, bw, tw, dw, kyw, gyw, kw, gw, mw, nw, nyw, ngw, hrw, rw, sw, lw, lyw, py, by, ty, dy, my, sy, syw & rt, hrt, rtw, hrtw, rty, hrty, rd, rdw, rdy, rs, hrs, rsw, hrsw, rsj, hrsy, rn, hrn, rnw, hrnw, rl, rlw, hrl, hrlw, ...

Allophones

Allophones are the particular realisations of basic phones. That is ,the "varieties" or "types" of an individual sound based on the context or surroundings of the phoneme (sound). An English example would be how "l" sounds different in the words "all" and "love".

Elphis has several allophones, both for vowels and for consonants.

Consonant Allophones

• All fricatives, excepting "h", have voiced allophones inbetween vowels, or when placed next to certain other voiced consonants.

Vowel Allophones

• "a" becomes a back vowel before velar sounds (k, g, ng, w) /ɑ/

Sandhi Processes

Weakening

Assimilation

Word internal

Word External
Word-final "n" becomes an m before labials, an ng before velars, and an ny before palatals. This is shown in the spelling.

Word-finally fricatives (s, hl) and trills (hr, r) assimilate in voicing to the following sound.

If a word pegins with a plosive, and happens to follow a word which end in a plosive, this initial plosive is lost. A macron (or apostrophe) is placed over the now first letter of the second word to signify this fact. E.g. ag pain --> ag āin

If the two plosives agree in place, but not voice, then the latter assimilates to the voicing of the former. E.g. ag kain --> ag gain.

Linking

Writing System

Elphis uses a syllabic alphabetic system of writing. Each consonant has an inherent vowel- /a/- which can be muted, or changed to another vowel, by the addition of certain diacritical marks. Other diacritics are used to show stress and length. There are several special "conjunct" characters for the consonant clusters and diphthongs. The basic sounds plus some commoner clusters have names with meaning; the character standing for /f/ is known as "fu:s", which means "fire". Some grammatical words, such as "and", "that" and "or" have special short-hand symbols of their own. There are no capital letter forms. Some letters have special positional variants. The language is written from left to right.

Personal & Possessive Pronouns

Determiners (articles & demonstratives)

There are three main demonstratives which correspond roughly to English "this", "that" and "yon". Each of these three demonstratives have dual and plural forms, as well as inanimate and animate forms. There are no articles.

Numbers (cardinal and ordinal)

Ordinal numbers are formed by affixing -ab to the number. The first three numbers are declined, altho' slitely irregularly.
The number system was originally base 8, but evolve into base 12.

"One" = Hyi's
"Two" = Kjal
"Three" = Hlei
"Four" = Nal
"Five" = Nya:s
"Six" = Fo
"Seven" = Su
"Eight" = Nyaun
"Nine" = Alsem
"Ten" = Kjanti
"Eleven" = Swarr
"Twelve" = Kwe:k

Morphology

Morphology is the structure and forms of the words themselves (as opposed to sentences and clauses aso.) Elphis is an inflecting synthetic language, and so changes the forms of words based on their case and so forth.

Nouns

Nouns are inflected by case, number and gender.

Gender

There are two genders: animate and inanimate. Inanimate gender nouns do not have distinctive nominative and accusative inflections. In/animacy tends to match the semantics or meaning, too. Namely, anything which is animate is generally of the animate gender.

Number

There are three numbers: singular (one cat), dual (two cats) and, plural (three + cats). The singular form is default and unmarked. In Elphis, the dual and plural numbers are shown by affixation and vowel change. Most plurals are formed from ablaut and/or affixation. Almost all dual nouns are formed by affixation.

Case

Elphis is a nominative-accusative synthetic inflecting language, and features 9 noun cases. The 9 cases are: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, locative, allative, ablative, possessive.

Adjectives

Ajectives follow the nouns which they refer to. They are inflected so as to agree in case, number and gender with the nouns.

Verbs

Verbs inflect for number, gender and tense and aspect.

Tense & Aspect

There are two main tenses: past, and non-past (present and future). There are two main aspects: Aorist (completed) and Imperfect (incomplete). The Aorist aspect is often marked by ablaut (vowel-change)

Syntax

Elphis is a VSO language (Verb, Subject, Object). It is head left (so the head in compounds is the first element).

Word list

Here follows a selection of words from Elphis.

Eot = "Stone"
Fol = "Person"
Kwein = "Noble"
Mal = "Enemy"
Myal = "Friend"
Ngol = "Pig"
Nyaun = "Hand"
Sar = "Beauty"
Son = "Yes"
Fu:s = "Fire"
Engkwe = "Horse"