I'm trying to prepare a text for the schlaugh Faire of Short-Stories. I have the thought to write a hymn in Archaic Vyâ (
yes I changed the romanization again), the "Hymn of the Doorway". To do that I actually need sufficient language to pen a few idiotic verses and maybe a meter to sync it to.
And, of course, a musical tradition…because it's a hymn, supposed to be sung, yeah? I'm thinking basically tonic-fourth-fifth-octave, maybe with a second of some sort added.
I may be overthinking this. But the costume went over well, why not see if lightning strikes twice?
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It has long been known to Vyâ grammarians that verbs in
sará become
gsra in the irrealis—that is, it loses its first vowel and its accent. This is a general pattern. Vyâ grammarians separated verbs into archetypes based on their phonetic shape; these tended to be named for a verb with the given phonological attributes.
phsrá 'do, act, take action' :
phkhsra stood for all verbs of Csrá- form.
skyấra 'eat' :
ksyấra stood for all verbs of sK(R)ấCa- form.
vấg 'duplicate, multiply' :
gvấg stood in for verbs in vấC.
I had somewhere I was going with this but I lost it.
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The nominalizer
*-ygi- in Proto-Vyâ denoted some sort of tool or object associated with or characterized by that action.
*khukhsâ >
khukhsấ 'swing' +
*-ygi >
khsấig 'door'.
In older compounds, the accent appears to have retracted to the accented syllable in the compound or to have been omitted entirely if the second element lacked one.
Khsâghbhấtj, the mystic doorway between the material and the ethereal, is a bit of an archaism—it directly preserves the PV dual, which was literally just
*kukhsâ-ygi-bhấtji swing-
TOOL-two.
This would then imply that the case endings came around later and messed things up but in an entirely different direction. I think I can work with this. What I
can't work with is having made four different plural endings and then forgetting what the class system was set up like.
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Right, so I have this archaic plural *
kukhsâ-ygi-bhấtji and I haven't messed it up enough yet. In short order;
- Thanks to that pesky *
-y- in the suffix, the high-vowel deletion rule applies. This leaves a cluster *
khkhs-, which resolves by deleting the first consonant.
- The rule then strikes twice: The *
-ygi- drops the *
-y-.
- It's really,
really frequent to drop *
-i-s in this specific environment. It might've been some sort of stress rule, analogy, simple simplification in multisyllabic words…and it happened here. *
-g- assimilates to
-gh-.
- The final high vowel, predictably, drops:
Khsâghbhấtj.
Now, to determine to what extent the endings wreck this:
Start simple: The accusative in *
-ki-. *
kukhsâ-ygi-bhấtji-ki gets absolutely mauled by the high-vowel deletions. Impressively, it shows a regular development of
-k.
baqrấni 'to live'. Simple enough...PV regularly deleted the accent.
*
baqrấni- + *
-i =
baqrâni
*
baqrấni-i-aya > *
baqrâníaya > *
baqrânaya >
baqrânya 'out of life'
*
baqrấni-i-dga > *
baqrânidga >
baqrânidga 'into life'
*
utuwaqhi > *
útuwaqhi > *
tuwaqh >
tvaqh 'death' / There's some contention around the actual form of this verb in the first place in PV; by rights, 'to die' should be
táqh. Interestingly,
turaqh (< *
twaaqhi + *
<r>).
*
twaaqhi > *
twaáqhi > *
twaqhi > *
taqh 'to die'. Yes, an asterisk: This verb only really exists for its verbnoun; the irrealis
túraqh is employed for all situations.
*
twaáqhi-i-aya > *
twaqhya >
thqhya 'out of death'
*
twaáqhi-i-dga > *
twaqhidga >
tvaqhidga 'into death'
twaaqhi > târwáaqhi > târaqhya
baqrânya tvaqhidga, tvaqhya baqrânidga 'out of life, into death; out of death, into life'
kgiəfa
*k<K>yâfa =
*ksyấfa >
ksyấva 'to pass'
ksyấfa-irgi >
ksấvarg 'would have passed, will have passed' + verbal augment
-r-…ksâryâfa-irgi > ksấryâfayrgi >
ksryâvarg
ksyấfa
ksyấfa 'to pass' +
-r- verbal augment > *
ks<âr>yâfa >
ksryâfa 'to cross a threshold'
Ksryấfarg tvá: Baqrânya tvaqhidga, tvaqhya baqrânidga ksryấfarg…
- ksyấva
- pass
- <r>
- AUG
- -rg
- EXP
- tvá
- this.way
Shoot. They really all should have the augmentative, shouldn't they?
*baqrânyi +
*<r> >
*bráqranyi >
brqrani '(perma)life'…oh that's awesome. Hold up…add '-aya-' to that and *
brqranyiaya becomes
brqranya…'-dga-', *
brqranyidga >
brqranidga
*twáaqhi +
*<r> > *
târwáaqhi > *
târaqh '(perma)death'. *
târaqhyaya >
târaqhya, *
târaqhidga
…ksryấvargv tvá: brqranya târaqhidga, târaqhya brqranidga…
- ksyấva
- pass
- -rg
- EXP
- -v
- M
- tvá
- this.way
- baqrấni
- live
- <r>
- AUG
- <X>
- DVB
- -ya
- ELATIVE
- taqh
- die
- <r>
- AUG
- <X>
- DVB
- -idga
- ILLATIVE
- taqh
- die
- <r>
- AUG
- <X>
- DVB
- -ya
- ELATIVE
- baqrấni
- live
- <r>
- AUG
- <X>
- DVB
- -idga
- ILLATIVE
'…and so would [I] pass: out of life, into death; out of death, into life…'
