Classical Saarvian Scratchpad

[KathTheDragon]

I've done a whole ton of work on the verbal system, and I'll type something up later. I can promise a bunch of aspectual clitics, however _{can you tell I really like clitics?}

[mèþru]

I like clitics too!
Nice stuff (but it's really hard for me to read the tiny size)

[KathTheDragon]

The tiny font is tiny because it's me joking around. Alternatively you can just copy and paste it somewhere else.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I just used "CTRL + +" to magnify it till I could, though when being facetious, I find strikethrough more effective, since it's more imminently readable; I'm guessing the tiny text may have come from a time when strikethrough wasn't available (or else it's simply a quirk of the board culture).

[KathTheDragon]

For me there's a difference between tiny text (where it's even doable) and strikethrough. Strikethrough is more explicitly a sarcastic or facetious joke, tiny text is by-and-large tangential. Hence why it's tiny.

[KathTheDragon]

So, verbs. Verbs show exactly the same allomorphy and inflection classes as nouns, so juaw "bite" ~ jafuod "bit" like sieg "water" ~ sehiel "water-ᴇʀɢ". Synthetic verbal inflection is somewhat more simple than nouns', with (currently) only two categories expressed: non-past vs past, and active vs passive. Moreover, the contrasts between inflection classes are only visible in the active past, with the passive showing the same suffixes in all classes.


Complementing this is a rich system of polypersonal agreement clitics and aspectual clitics. Verbs (and also non-verbal predicates) always have a single agreement clitic, while there can be (in theory) any number of aspectual clitics present. The aspectual clitics always come before the verb, while the agreement clitics vary their location based on the presence or absence of other clitics. When the agreement clitic is the only clitic present, it is placed after the verb, e.g. laa-kä "I'm walking". Otherwise, it is placed immediately before the verb, and after any other clitics, e.g. älgo kos-koo-lät "I've seen a deer".

As mentioned, the agreement clitics are polypersonal, marking both the nominative and accusative/ergative argument. There are also clitics for intransitive agreement, and for reflexive agreement.

When glossing, the transitive clitics are given as NOM>ACC and NOM<ERG, while the intransitive clitics are NOM and the reflexive clitics are NOM.REFL.

The aspectual system currently contains 5 clitics: hua "imperfective", ro "perfective", mef "habitual", roog "completative", and kos "resultative". There's additionally the unmarked aspect, which is lexically determined as imperfective or perfective for eventive verbs, while stative verbs are neutral. Imperfective and perfective verbs naturally cannot take clitics of the same perfectivity (so far only roog is marked as a perfective clitic, mef and kos are neutral), but if a clitic of the other perfectivity is applied first, then the clitic can be used after all. This is better explained through an example:

nobuad-koo "I ate something" (perfective)
*roog-koo-nobuad "I finished eating something" (noob "eat" is already perfective, so roog cannot be applied)
roog-hua-koo-nobuad "I finished eating something" (hua-noob "be eating" is imperfective, so roog now can be applied)

Currently, ro and hua are restricted from appearing together, since I don't know what the resulting verb should mean. Also, a clitic cannot appear twice on the same verb. As mentioned, stative verbs are neutral to aspect, so can have any clitic applied.

[KathTheDragon]

The language now has a name, se-Saarbiej loskin "the Saarvian language".

[KathTheDragon]

I'm actually going to rename this to Classical Saarvian, as at some point I want to derive the language a bit further so I can do things like learned reborrowing, and the like.

[Vardelm]

Hello, (Classical) Saarvian! Nice to meet you!

[Ares Land]

There's additionally the unmarked aspect, which is lexically determined as imperfective or perfective for eventive verbs, while stative verbs are neutral.

All of this looks good, but that bit is particularly clever!

[KathTheDragon]

You think so? I'm glad you like it, cos I thought it was a pretty straightforward choice.

[KathTheDragon]

I've made a bunch of tweaks to the clitics so the system's a bit more in line with the phonological developments of the non-clitics. Specifically:
-käll "genitive" → -kell
hua- "imperfective" → haa-
kos- "perfect" → kes-
käjo "1sg reflexive" → kejo
näjo "2sg reflexive" → nejo
säjo "3sg reflexive" → sejo

I've also narrowed se- "definite" to being animate-only, adding je- for inanimates. Other additions to the clitic system: maa- "and", liw- "or", sabaa- "this (animate)", sätis- "that (animate)", jabaa- "this (inanimate)", jätis- "that (inanimate)". The demonstratives also have independent nominal forms: sabaa ~ sabaa-^u "this person", sätis ~ säds-^e "that person", jabaa ~ jabaa-^u "this thing", jätis ~ jäds-^e "that thing".