Pailesian

See also: Pailesian Dialects The grammar given here is of the Standard Dialect, the language of government. Mentions are made of some of the most common innovations however.

Phonetics

Pailesian is has four places of articulation: labial, dental, velar, and labial-velar; and can express stops, fricatives, nasals, liquids, and a flap. The vowel system is simple and the plosives have a phonemic distinction between long and short quantity.

Obstruents

Pailesian Plosives

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Velar	Labial-velar
Unvoiced
Lax	p	t	k	q
Tense	pp	tt	kk	qq

Pailesian Fricatives and Affricates

	Bilabial	Interdental	Alveolar	Alveo-Palatal	Velar
Affricates and Fricatives
Unvoiced	ɸ <f>	tʃ <c>	s	ʃ <x>	ʁ <r>
Voiced	β <v>		z <z>	ʒ <j>

Alternate Orthography

In many circumstances, the traditional orthography is modified for greater understanding among those new to Pailesian, namely, first-year Pailesian students from English-speaking regions and foreigners. tʃ is written with the digraph <ch>, ʃ with <sh>, and ʒ with <zh>.

Sonorants

There are a number of sonorants as well:

Nasals

• Bilabial: m
• Alveolar: n
• Velar: ŋ <g>

Liquid

• Lateral Alveolar: ʟ

There are also the semivowels /w/ and /y/, corresponding, respectively, to the vowels [u] and [i].

Vowels

Pailesian Vowels

	Front	Back
	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
Close	i, ĩ			u, ũ
Mid	e, ẽ			o, õ
Open	a, ã

[y] is front closed rounded. Vowels with the tilde diacritic are strongly nasalized. All non-nasal vowels have quantitatively longer variants, shown as V:, or with a macron.

There are also several diphthongs resulting from a pure vowel and a glide:

ay (ai), aw (au),

ey (ei), ew (eu),

oy (oi), ow (ou),

uy (ui)

Accent

Accent is tonal, not stress-based, and is determined by the quantity of the vowel. There are two types of accents: acute, and circumflex. Acute accent is a rise of nearly a third tone and a fall back to the base tone in the following syllable. Circumflex is a rise and fall in one long syllable. The rule guiding tone placement are as follows:

• There can be only one tone per word. A tone fall on either the last (ultima), the second-to-last (penult), or the third-to-last syllable (antepenult).
• The accent falls as far back in the word as is possible according to the rules.
• It falls acute on the ultima if it is long and both the antepenult and penult are short.
• It falls circumflex on the penult if the antepenult is long and the ultima is short.
• If neither of the two previous rules apply, it falls acute on the antepenult if it is short, and circumflex when it is long.
• Particles such as determinatives, conjugations, prefixes, and some adverbs do not have any accent.

Syllable Structure

There are several basic rules concerning the structure of syllables:

1. All syllables must begin with a consonant unless it is at the beginning of a word or directly following a syllable ending in a vowel.
2. No syllable may end with two consonants.
3. All syllables have one vowel.

Nominal Morphology

Pailesian is a fusional language with many isolating tendencies. It is in a process of grammatical simplification, and, as such, there are often variation in the descriptive grammar.

Pailesian originally had seven cases, but there are currently only three common ones: the absolutive, genitive, and oblique. The absolutive may mark the agent, patient, or indirect object; only the verbal indexing system can indicate which syntactic function is being utilized. The genitive is used for possession and in the partitive, objective, and subjective genitive senses. The oblique is used when the noun is the object of some sort of preposition. Lately, however, it can be omitted when the preposition is directly proceeding.

The two numbers are singular and plural. There are many cases when the singular is used in what is a plural usage.

There are three persons.

Nouns are inherently masculine, feminine, or neuter.

Declension

Declension

	Singular	Plural
Absolutive	[no ending]	-ta
Genitive	-f	-vē
Oblique	-t	-tte

Determinatives

In all but the most conservative dialects, Pailesian has a special particle somewhat similar to the English definite article but especially like the Ancient Greek article. It does not necessarily make the noun definite, but is instead used to create appositive or subordinate phrases connected to the noun in question.

There is a tendency among many dialects to discard declension endings in favor of the determinatives. That is, the determinative, which is inherently marked for one of the three cases, is placed in the vicinity of the noun in order to convey the syntactic function. These particles do not indicate number, so context must be used instead. The oblique is very rare, and is only used to convey an emphatic or essential prepositional phrase.

Declension

Absolutive	Genitive	Oblique
ax	ku	xe

Pronominal Morphology

There are personal, interrogative, and demonstrative pronouns. In several innovative dialects, the pronouns are declined by combination with the determinatives.

Personal

The third person pronouns are formed by adding [a] before the determinatives; in effect, the singular and plural cannot be distinguished.

First Person

	Singular	Plural
Absolutive	tuj	tex
Genitive	ttu	zē
Oblique	cu	ce

The determinative variants utilize the roots of the pronouns, which are “tu” (singular) and “tte” (plural). They are, respectively, "tuax," "tuku," "tuxe"; "tteax," "tteku," "ttexe."

Second Person

	Singular	Plural
Absolutive	vui	vy
Genitive	pō	pe
Oblique	fe	ve

The roots are fu (singular) and ve (plural). The determinative variants are "fuax," "fuku," "fuxe"; "veax," "veku," "vexe."

Interrogative and Demonstratives

Both sets of pronouns use the declensional endings. The interrogative root is “qa-” and the demonstrative is “wil.”

Verbal Morphology

Verbs are composed of a verbal root and a small set of affixes that refer to the agent, patient, and indirect object. In very formal, archaic registers, the purpose and temporal clauses can be referenced as well.

The general structure is [ROOT][Agent][Patient][Indirect Obj.]{[Purpose][Temporal]} In some dialects, the root is modified by reduplication and/or ablaut to indicate tense and mood. In the dialects tending toward isolation, only reduplication can occur, and particles are used to indicate much of the rest.

Affixes

The verbal affixes indicate the gender, number, and person. Each affix has an initial, medial, and final form. They only vary such that the initial has a CV structure, the medial a C, and the final a VC. They are formed as follows; the form given contains the root consonant (the same across initial, medial, and final) and the vowels included for the respective initial and final.

Verbal Affixes

	M. Singular	M. Plural	F. Sing.	F. Pl.	N. Sing.	N. Pl.
1st Person	e-t-e	e-tt-e	a-d-e	e-c-e	o-z-u	u-s-y
2nd	i-p-e	e-p-i	i-pp-e	e-f-i	y-v-u	u-f-u
3rd	a-k-a	a-kk-a	a-x-a	a-x-a	o-x-u	u-x-o

Voice

The order of the affixes alone indicates the function of the referent. But more than this, the presence or absence of any of the three major slots changes the voice of the verb. The agent slot is always filled by an initial form, the patient slot is always filled with a medial form, and the indirect object slot is always filled with a final form. The archaic endings, when present, use special endings not discussed here.

If there is an initial form alone, then the verb is intransitive. This sense can even be rather stative, especially when applied to adjectival roots. When there is a medial but not a final form, the verb is passive, with the agent being indicated (if necessary) by a prepositional phrase. The final form is less essential, but when alone it creates a kind of clause unlike any in English. For instance, “rymle=kka” means “for them (is) (a) walking.” The root “rymle” means “to walk.” The result is a sort of copular construction that ties a gerund of the verb in question with a recipient. The sense of these constructions is highly impersonal and detached, and it can be used to convey a sense of ambiguity or uncertainty about the terms. In many cases, the indirect object could be the recipient or performer of the action.

Stem Change

The issue of stem changes is somewhat complex. The Pailesian verb has two major tenses: perfective and imperfective. Both concern aspect and not time. The former refers to a completed action and the latter to an ongoing, repeated, or otherwise incomplete action. The simple root is inherently perfective, although there are some cases in which the verb is inherently imperfective. The redoubled root is imperfective. Redoublement involves taking the first consonant of the root and producing a word-initial syllable from it of the form CV, in which the vowel is almost always /e/. For instance, “rymle” becomes “rerymle” in redoubled form. The meaning might change from “I walked/I walk” to “I was/am/will be walking.”

In the case of the velar nasal and all uvulars, the redoublement pattern is different: the consonant is simply doubled (or left intact in the case of tense consonants) and the /e/ is inserted at the front of the word. For instance, “qalje” become “eqqalje.”

Mood can be either indicative or subjunctive. The former produces statements of perceived factual validity and the former makes statements of uncertain validity. The simple root is always indicative. To form the subjunctive, all vowels in the simple root are replaced with /a/. “rymle” becomes “ramla” and “qalje” becomes “qalja.” This immediately indicates that verbs (or words in general) in Pailesian are typified entirely by their consonants; minimal pairs dependent on vowels would lead to ambiguity in the subjunctive. Note that the vowel of redoublement remains /e/ even in the subjunctive.

In certain dialects, subjunctive stem change has mostly ceased; the subjunctive particle “cy” is placed in the vicinity of the verb instead. In some cases, both processes are used to convey extreme uncertainty about a statement.

Participle, Gerunds, and Infinitives

The bare root acts as an active participle. The addition of the “-a” suffix makes it a passive participle. This passive form acts identically to an adjective in most cases. In Pailesian, nearly all adjectives have been derived from verbal roots. In a few cases, the passive suffix is not in use and the form could be called deponent because it lacks an active meaning while possessing an active form.

Comparatives are formed with the particle "sa" while superlatives are formed with the particle "je."

Gerunds and Infinitives are identical in form and fall under the category of “substantive verb.” These are formed by the addition of the “-ji” suffix. This substantive can be the object of verbs and form complementary infinitives or be the subject of a clause of its own.

A more innovative way of deriving a substantive verb is by giving it a determinative.

Syntax

Word Order

Word order is usually SOV. The possessor proceeds the possessed, and prepositions and adjectives follow nouns.

Subjunctive

The subjunctive verb has several independent usages: that is, when it is the main verb of the sentence. Primarily, it can convey the jussive, or “let us” meaning, and the optative, or “o that.” The two interpretations are often ambiguous. “ramla=ett” means “let us be walking,” or “o that we be walking.” “reramla=ett” could be “let us walk,” or “o that we walk.” The 2nd person jussive is equivalent to the imperative.

Subordinate Clauses

There are two major types of subordinate clauses: the adnominal and the adverbial. The former is simply like a large adjective and modifies nouns. The latter conveys a “when, since, although” idea and modified verbs. Any of those interpretations would work: the context usually species the specific sense. The adnominal clauses can be introduced using either determinatives or the somewhat antique subordinating particle “xe.” The subordinating particle simply classifies the subsequent clause as adnominal to some proceeding entity; a new head of the subordinate clause must be introduced.

The adverbial clauses are introduced by an assortment of conjunctions.

Conditional

Conditional clauses always involve the protasis particle “mo” and the apodosis particle “xy.” The latter is usually postpositive and can be omitted when the apodosis is being stressed.

Copula

The copula is expressed by simple juxtaposition of the two components. There is no copular particle or verb. The stative overlap between adjectives and verbs deals with much of this issue.

Coordination

The conjunction “oj” is used to connect both nouns and clauses. “te” can be used freely with “oj” in noun coordination. That is, it can come in any order in respect to the two conjoined nouns. Variants of “oj” include “ojhe” and “oxt.”

Negation

Negative commands (2nd person jussive) can be conveyed with the particle “mẽ.” Negations of indicative verbs or nouns is conveyed with “ug.”

Lexicon

The following is a list of common Pailesian words:

Verbs

• pāfxel  : to know
• cēlõ: to thank
• rōjõ: to eat
• kanu: to write
• silyn: to ask/question
• gesttā: to think
• agēlmnã: to prosper
• tero: to see
• paizttã : to cherish
• mēnin: to name
• peto: to say
• kērtonõ: to certify/ratify

Stative Verbs

• ceco: to be angry
• ceyan: to be good, strong
• eakkrem: to be young
• sysã: to be hot
• pēstõ: to be evil, malignant
• ālga: to be intelligent
• tevpēme: to be cold
• tēgane: to be old

Nouns

• palã: house, neuter
• re: law, n.
• ttistõ: food, masculine
• āgõ: god, m.
• ojtõ: citizen, m.
• ōj: man, m.
• jevã: woman, feminine
• mētt: language, f.
• kanīn: nation, n.

Conjunctions

• oj: and
• tett: or
• mat: but

Prepositions

• ekk: in
• xẽ: to
• fe: from