Malaszec language

This page is about the Malaszec language and its grammar. For its vocabulary, see Malaszec vocabulary

The Malaszec language is primarily spoken by the people living in Malaszec and Malaszec communities overseas. The Malaszec Industrial Standards Board regulates and promotes the usage of Industrial Standard Malaszec (often simply called “Malaszec”), which is the official language of Malaszec. Malaszec is a part of the Northern Malaszec branch of the Malaszec family of languages, and is influenced by Andeijan, a Southern Malaszec language spoken primarily by faeries. The political history of the country of Malaszec has affected various language features. One such feature is the personal pronouns that were dropped from Old Malaszec, replaced by dozens of nouns that marked person during the feudalistic Malaszec Empires, and reduced considerably during the Communist era. In modern times, Malaszec is the dominant language in the country for all demographics, human or otherwise, and is needed for doing business and conversing with others.

Phonology

Consonants

Malaszec consonant phonemes

Vowels

Malaszec monophthong phonemes

Only /ɒ, ɛ, i, o/ are allowed as the first vowel of a word. The minimal set of distinctive features needed to target each phoneme in Malaszec consists of front, low, and high.

Vowel harmony

All vowels except the first vowel and the open back vowel ⫽ɒ⫽ in a word are underspecified for Advanced Tongue Root (ATR). When phonemically realised, the underspecified vowels agree in ATR with the first vowel of the word, meaning that the entire word has +ATR vowel harmony (traditionally known as “light” harmony) and -ATR harmony (“dark” harmony). Underspecified vowels are typically represented by capital letters in the underlying representation, with the featural specifications in the following table. As the first vowel in a word, /ɒ/ is considered -ATR for dark harmony.

Phonological rules

The phonological rules of Malaszec are presented in order of application:

1. Harmony resolution

Underspecified vowels agree in ATR with the first vowel of the word

2. Glide formation

In a sequence of two vowels V₁V₂, V₁ becomes a glide if it is high.

3. Diphthong formation

In a sequence of two vowels V₁V₂, V₁ forms a diphthong with V₂ if V₁ has higher sonority.

4. V₂ deletion

In a sequence of two vowels V₁V₂, V₂ is deleted.

5. Strident cluster reduction

Stridents are deleted before stridents

6. Strident voicing

Stridents are voiced before voiced consonants

7. Intervocalic voicing of obstruents

Obstruents are voiced intervocalically

8. Oral+nasal stop cluster reduction

Oral stops before nasal stops are deleted if they have the same place of articulation

9. Degemination

Geminate consonants are degeminated

10. Final devoicing of obstruents

Obstruents word finally are devoiced

Orthography

Nouns

A number of postpositional clitics can be attached to a noun phrase (NP) which marks the head noun’s syntactic role, spatial or temporal relations, and person. These clitics are divided into four types: core case clitics (marking mandatory arguments of verbs), peripheral case clitics (consisting mainly of locative cases), the genitive clitics, and the person clitics. The core and peripheral case clitics are together known as “case clitics,” which never co-occur with the genitive clitics.

Gender

Nouns have an inherent gender, either mundane or arcane, which the noun phrase (NP) clitics agree in. NP clitics attached to coordinated NPs with both mundane and arcane coordinands are always mundane. The following examples use the mundane (MND) noun Serszec and the arcane (ARC) nouns Andeija and Dovreija. In both (1) and (2) Serszec and Andeija are part of the same NP coordinated by sta “and”, but (2) is ungrammatical because it uses the arcane form of the genitive clitic when the NP has a mundane coordinand. On the other hand, (3) also uses the arcane genitive clitic, but is grammatical because all coordinands are arcane.

(1) "Serszec sta Andeijanos"
    Serszec      sta Andeija=nos
    Serszec(MND) and Andeija(ARC)=GEN.MND
    "of Serszec and Andeija"

(2) *"Serszec sta Andeijasejr"
    Serszec      sta Andeija=sejr
    Serszec(MND) and Andeija(ARC)=GEN.ARC
    *"of Serszec and Andeija"

(3) "Dovreija sta Andeijasejr"
    Dovreija      sta Andeija=nos
    Dovreija(ARC) sta Andeija(ARC)=GEN.ARC
    "of Dovreija and Andeija"

Arcane gender nouns are typically words borrowed from Andeijan at various points in Malaszec’s history, and the arcane gender forms of clitics are also the result of borrowing. Since the social status of Andeijan during the centuries-long Areman Malaszec Empire and early Communist Malaszec was quite low, lexical borrowing from Andeijan declined and as a result, mundane nouns greatly outnumber arcane nouns. Words formed through compounding take the same gender as their head word.

The arcane gender is so named because most of the borrowed words describe magical phenomena or faeries, and in reality many words for magical phenomena and items are mundane gender. For example, sela “magic” is mundane. There also exists synonym pairs whose main difference is their gender, although the use of one or the other usually has a specific connotation. For example, there are two words for “faerie,” kasja (mundane) and ritja (arcane), with ritja deriving from Andeijan.

Core case clitics

The core case clitics express the mandatory subject/object verb arguments. Malaszec is a fluid-S active-stative language, where the subject of intransitive verbs are either agentive or patientive depending on volition. The patientive is unmarked, and implies ambivalence or unintentionality, which the agentive is marked and implies intentionality. Contrast helos “person” in the following examples: in (1), helos is unmarked and therefore patientive (PAT) while in (2), helosmir is marked agentive (AGT).

(1) "helos tek"
    helos=∅    tek
    person=PAT go
    "The person went (unintentionally or ambivalently)"

(2) "helosmir tek"
    helos=mir  tek
    person=AGT go
    "The person went (intentionally)"

The core case clitics may co-occur with the peripheral case clitics. The core case clitic will lose its syntactic meaning, but will affect the peripheral case in volition. See the peripheral case clitics section for details.

Peripheral case clitics

Peripheral case clitics may follow a core case clitic. When this happens, the core case clitic no longer expresses its syntactic relation, and instead expresses whether or not the head noun is willing to be in the situation expressed by the peripheral clitic. For example, in (1), helos “person” has both the patientive (PAT) core clitic and the illative (ILL) peripheral clitic which implies the person has different volition compared to (2), where person has the agentive (AGT) and illative clitics.

If the noun is inanimate but it has the agentive clitic, indicating positive volition, then it is generally assumed that the volition refers to someone whose relation to the noun is most salient since inanimate objects have no volition. Example of this is in (3): tals “house” has the agentive and illative clitics, but is inanimate, so the volition belongs to the owner of the house, who would be most affected by their own house. It is thus assumed that the owner of the house invited the person to the house.

(1) "viszkmir helososz let"
    viszk=mir helos=∅=osz   let
    dog=AGT   person=PAT=ILL bite
    "The dog bit into the person (and the person did not want it)"

(2) "viszkmir helosmirosz let"
    viszk=mir helos=mir=osz  let
    dog=AGT   person=AGT=ILL bite
    "The dog bit into the person (and the person wanted it)"

(3) "helos talsmirosz tek"
    helos=AGT  tals=mir=osz  tek
    person=AGT house=AGT=ILL go
    "The person went into the house (invited)"

There are three clitics that can express syntactic relations, which unlike the other peripheral case clitics, have a mundane and an arcane form. These clitics also have special meanings when attached to a nominalized verb phrase (VP).

Genitive clitics

The genitive clitics mark an NP as the possessor of another NP that follows it.

Person clitics

Nouns are third person by default, but adding a person suffix can make it first or second person. A person clitic cannot be added if the head of the noun phrase is a nominalized verb phrase.

Using these clitics with names, which have a fixed referent, is usually not allowed. One exception is during a self-introduction, when it is appropriate to use the first person clitic with one’s own name. Another exception is when it is being used to disambiguate between two entities of the same name. For example, if there are two people named Asalij, one of whom is a collocutor and another is elsewhere in the room, then using Asalijsze to refer only to the collocutor is permissible.

When an inanimate noun is marked first or second person, the meaning is metaphorical. For example, viszk “dog” plus the second person clitic sze literally means “dog (who you are),” but is generally taken to be an insult.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

Common personal pronoun formations

All Malaszec pronouns in common use are derived from nouns with first or second person clitics that have been grammaticalised, losing its original semantic meaning. For example, jokal itself means “a person who is one’s senior or superior,” while jokalsze with the second person sze clitic is simply the formal second person pronoun. These pronouns come from Malaszec spoken during the Areman Empire, when society was highly stratified and individuals of different classes or occupations were expected to address each other accordingly. Most of these forms address fell out of common usage after the Malaszec Communist Revolution, leaving only a subset of pronouns which differ mainly in formality regardless of class or occupation.

Verbs

Aspect

Aspect suffixes

Aspect indicates the duration of an action within time. Malaszec has several types of aspect: perfective, continuous, frequentive, momentane, and gnomic.

• The perfective aspect is unmarked, and indicates a completed action. When speaking of the present, an action in the perfective may have present relevance.

  For example,votnikcan mean “you should have stopped (and possibly be continuing to stop)”

• The continuous aspect suffix is -val, and indicates an ongoing action.
• The momentane aspect suffix is -ran, and indicates an action that happened momentarily or suddenly. It has a connotation of involuntariness.
• The frequentive aspect suffix is -kep, and indicates actions which are performed over and over again. It is also used for habitual actions.
• The gnomic aspect suffix is -rej, and indicates general truths or facts. It can also be used as an intense form of the frequentive aspect, usually to indicate stubbornness and has a negative or curious connotation when used this way.

Tense

Tense suffixes

There are only two tenses: past and non-past. The unmarked tense is non-past, which by default indicates present time, while past tense is marked with -er. For all tenses, more specific time is determined by time words and phrases that appear in the sentence, like “yesterday”, “tomorrow”, or “at noon”.

Mood

Mood suffixes

Mood indicates the reality of an action. Malaszec has three moods: indicative (unmarked), subjunctive (-rijr), and optative (-nik). The indicative mood indicates actions which are believed to be real or have happened and the subjunctive mood indicates actions which are imagined, possible, or uncertain. The optative mood indicates actions which are hoped for or desired, and is also used for commands.

Negation

Verb phrase negation is expressed using the adverb ajl. If the verb phrase is a part of a subordinate clause marked by a complementiser, then the negative complementiser sjal is used instead.

Nominalisation

Verb phrases can be nominalised with the jan suffix on the main verb.

Coordination

Nouns, noun phrases, verb phrases, and sentences are coordinated using a monosyndetic conjunction before the final coordinand. Conjunctive coordination of adjectives, adverbs, adjective phrases, and adverb phrases are always done through juxtaposition, but other types of coordination are monosyndetic. The conjunctive conjunction for all syntactic categories is sta “and.”

Question forming

Questions are asked with a rising intonation at the end.

Yes-no questions

Yes-no questions are formed using the verb hlos “to wonder, to question” followed by a subjunctive VP and the complementiser dlaj.

Wh-questions

Wh-questions are formed using a subjunctive VP and interrogative pronouns.

Category:Malaszec Category:Languages