Difference between revisions of "Taiji language"

Latest revision as of 19:28, 12 August 2011

Theory

The Taiji language is based on the eight trigrams of the ba gua. Each of these is assigned a value for when it occurs as a syllable onset and when it occurs as a syllable nucleus. These trigrams can then be paired as the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching, each representing a syllable. Since Taiji is intended to be primarily a written language, assigning phonetic values to each trigram by which to reference them trigrams and hexagrams is primarily a matter of convenience rather than absolute necessity. The values that each trigram is assigned are not arbitrary. Instead, each line of the trigram is interpretted as encoding some information about the consonant or vowel it represents. For the consonants, the first line is taken to indicate voicing and the last place. For the vowels, the first line indicates roundness, the second line indicates closeness and the third line indicates backness.

Phonology

Though each of the eight trigrams available is assigned a value as a syllable onset and as a syllable nucleus, there are only seven consonants and eight vowels in its phonemic inventory. This is because the trigram ☷ indicates no consonant as an onset. The number of possible syllables is restricted to sixty-four, the number of hexagrams in the I Ching. These are all either a consonant followed by a vowel or simple a vowel.

Consonants

Taiji's sum total of seven consonants is very sparse compared to most natural languages. Also notable are its complete lack of sibilants, liquids and semivowels. All of these peculiarities are a necessary result of the restrictions imposed by the underlying theory of the language's design. Neither voicing or length is contrastive, consonants may only appear syllable initially and clusters of them do not occur.

There are few allophonic processes which operate on these consonants. Before the vowel /i/, the velars /k/ and /ŋ/ are fronted to /t͡ʃ/ and /ɲ/ respectively. Between vowels, the consonant /h/ becomes /ɦ/.

Vowels

Where Taiji's consonant inventory is lacking, its vowel inventory is slightly heavy at eight vowels. Not only is this a slightly high number, but three of the eight are either a front rounded vowel or a back unrounded vowel, both of which are uncommon in natural languages. Vowel clusters may occur.

Vowel clusters of identical vowels may occur phonemically. However, there is an allophonic rule which inserts an epethentic [ɦ] between such vowels. This process operates both within a word and across word boundries.

Grammar

Taiji is a highly analytical language, and is almost completely devoid of inflection. Grammatical information is instead conveyed through a robust set of grammatical particles. These particles constitute the core of the language's grammar. They are all monosyllabic, contrasting with content words, which must contain at least two syllables. There are only two such open classes, nouns and verbs.

Nouns

Nouns are modified by grammatical particles indicating one of six cases and by certain pronouns to indicate definiteness. In the marking of definiteness, nouns display a rudimentary, binary system of grammatical gender. Nouns also distinguish the category of number, but this is marked not by other words but by partial reduplication.

Gender

Taiji has a very simple, two-way system of grammatical gender which contrasts anthropic and non-anthropic nouns. Anthropic nouns are those which refer to people, and non-anthropic nouns those that do not. The contrast between the two is neutralized in the plural. Nouns themselves do not bear any systematic, grammatical indication of gender. Instead, it is determined entirely semantically. The scope of this gender system is very limited. It affects only which demonstrative pronouns may be used to reference or modify nouns. In such cases, the demonstrative must agree in gender, as well as number, with the noun.

Number

There are two grammatical numbers in Taiji, the singular and the plural. For countable nouns, the singular is used for once instance of the noun and the plural for multiple. Uncountable mass nouns always use the singular form. The singular is unmarked. The plural is indicated by partial reduplication in which the first syllable of the noun is appended to its front. For nouns whose first two syllables are identical, the appended syllable's consonant is also modified. Nasals become stop consonants and vice-versa, while /h/ and empty onsets alternate in the same manner.

Definiteness

All nouns are either indefinite or definite. The indefinite is simply left unmarked. Definiteness is meanwhile marked using the proximal demonstrative pronouns as determiners. The demonstrative used must agree with noun. Singular nouns referring to people must take an anthropic determiner, other singular nouns a non-anthropic one and plural nouns a plural one.

Case

There are six cases, marked using a set of grammatical particles. These particles follow the noun phrases they modify. The alignment of case marking is active-stative.

The most basic case is the absolutive case, one of the three core cases. No particle is used to mark it, and it is used as the citation form for all nouns. Its compliment is the ergative case, the second core case, marked by the particle /a/. For intransitive verbs, either may be used to mark the clause's subject. The choice is conditioned by the semantics of the verb. For verbs which describe involuntary actions or states, the absolutive is used while the ergative is used for verbs whose subject has volition. For most verbs the choice is lexically fixed, but for some either case may be appropriate depending on circumstances.

The third core case is the dative, marked by the particle /u/. It is primarily used to mark the recipient for verbs of giving and sending. Likewise, it is used with some intransitive verbs to mark a "recipient", usually an of emotion or perception. The dative is also used outside of a clause's core arguments with verbs describing places or times. In these constructions it is interpretted as allative, indicating movement towards the marked noun.

There are two separate genitive cases, both used to mark possession. The two are distinguished by the alienability of the possession in question. In cases where the possession is somehow fundamental and not subject to trivial changes, the inalienable genitive particle /to/ is used. This includes all descriptions of an object's composition. If a possession can be trivially lost,then the particle /tu/ is used instead. Nouns with either genitive particle always precede the noun they modify. The alienable genitive is also used as an ablative with nouns of place and time, indicating movement away from. Similarly, it is used in comparisons to mark the object being compared to.

The final case is the instrumental, marked by the particle /mo/. It has several uses. The characteristic one is marking the means of an act. When used with a noun of location, it instead assumes a locational meaning, and likewise a temporal one when used with nouns of time. It is also used with the passive voice to reintroduce the deleted subject argument, and with certain inherently passive verbs.

For meanings not covered by these six cases, or for the resolution of ambiguity, any number of words (e.g. /taŋo/, "middle") related to the noun by the inalienable genitive can be used. The word itself takes either the dative, alienable genitive or instrumental case according to the same semantic rules that govern their use as obliques elsewhere.

Pronouns

The Taiji lexicon contains personal, demonstrative and interrogative pronouns. The latter of these are also used as relative pronouns and as the basis for deriving a set of indefinite pronouns. These pronouns grammatically function largely like nouns. They may appear in the same syntactic positions within a clause, and they take the same postpositional clitics for case. Unlike nouns, they do not the demonstrative pronouns as definite articles. Any given pronoun's definiteness is instead set. Only the personal and demonstrative pronouns make a distinction between singular and plural.

Personal

The personal pronouns are the most basic and commonly used pronouns. The first and second person pronouns are unique, while the third person simply uses the proximante demonstrative pronouns. Unlike nouns plurality is not indicated by partial reduplication. For the first and second person it is instead indicated by wholly different morphemes. The first person has two plural morphemes which differ in clusivity. /ŋɯ/ is exclusive and does not include the addressee, while /pa/ is inclusive and does. The third person, using demonstrative pronouns, indicates plurality with a different vowel.

Demonstrative

There are five types of demonstratives, anthropic, non-anthropic, plural, locative and temporal. The locative demonstratives indicate location and the temporal ones time. For other references, one of the remaining three types are used. For a singular noun denoting a person, the anthropic demonstratives are used, while all other singular nouns are referenced using the non-anthropic demonstratives. All plural references use a plural demonstrative.

Among these demonstrative pronouns, there is a three place distance distinction between the proximal, medial and distal.Typically, the proximal is used for near the speaker, the medial for near addressee and the distal for away from both the speaker and addressee. For the temporal demonstratives, the distance is from the present rather than the speaker.

The marking of both distance and the type of pronoun are systematic. The consonant of each monosyllabic demonstrative indicates distance and the vowel marks the type.

The anthropic, non-anthropic and plural demonstratives may be used as determiners to modify nouns. This is simply done by placing them before the noun in question. The only necessary agreement is that the type of demonstrative must match the noun.

Interrogative

The interrogative pronouns are closely related to the demonstratives. There is an anthropic, non-anthropic, locative and temporal interrogative pronoun, each of which use the same vowel as their demonstrative counterpart. All of them share a common consonant indicative of their role as an interrogative. These interrogative pronouns are /ŋø/, "who", /ŋo/, "what", /ŋa/, "where" and /ŋy/, "when". There is no plural interrogative pronoun.

Indefinite

The indefinite pronouns are derived from the interrogative ones. This is done using several prefixes

Verbs

Taiji verbs distinguish tense, aspect, mood and voice. These categories are partly marked using auxiliary verbs, which themselves have meaning on their own. Some of these auxiliary verbs are irregular, using suppletion to distinguish these categories. There are also several purely grammatical particles which modify verbs.

Tense and Aspect

Taiji distinguishes two tenses, non-past and past. The non-past refers to events in the present and future while the past denotes previous events. These two tenses are complimented by two aspects, the imperfective and perfective. The imperfective refers to incomplete or habitual actions, while the precise meaning of the perfective depends on the verb. For dynamic verbs, it indicates tha the action is completed while for stative verbs it indicates a transitory state, as oppossed to a persistent, fundamental one. Since an action ongoing in the present can not be complete, the perfective forces a future interpretation of the non-past tense.

Both tenses and both aspects are marked using a set of particles. The non-past and imperfective are unmarked. The past is indicated by the particle /ta/, and the perfective by the particle /po/. The past perfective may be marked by combining the two as together, but the contraction /pa/ is more common.

Voice

There are three voices in Taiji, the active, the passive and the causative. The active is the most commonly used and is the voice in which all verbs are by default. The other two voices are formed using auxiliary verbs. The passive is formed using the verb /hɯ/, "become". The passive voice deletes the subject argument of a transitive verb and promotes either its object or dative argument to the position of subject. The deleted subject argument may be reintroduced as an oblique instrumental argument. The causative voice, formed with the verb /nɯ/, "do", instead introduces a new argument. A causal agent is introduced in the nominative case as the subject, and the original subject is demoted to a dative argument. A verb which has taken the causative voice may then take the passive voice.

Mood

Mood is indicated using both auxiliary verbs and grammatical particles. There are several moods indicating modality. These overlap with the marking of evidentiality. There is also a subjunctive mood and an imperiative mood.

The same set of auxiliary verbs marks both epistemic and situational modality. There are four such modal verbs, /ŋe/, "can", /ha/, "should", /me/, "want", and /kɯ/, "must". While the verbs used are identical, the syntax used for epistemic and situational modality differs. For epistemic modality, the entire clause, including the subject of the modified verb, is nominalized using the particle /no/ and then treated as the subject argument of the modal verb. For situational modality, the subject is not nominalized. Instead it appears as a dative argument of the modal verb along with the nominalized clause as a subject.

The modal verb /kɯ/ also functions an evidential. If a speaker does not have direct knowledge of the event they are describing, then /kɯ/ is necessary to indicate that the speaker is only making an inference based on the information they have.

The subjunctive is marked using the particle /mi/. The subjunctive is most commonly used in subordinate clauses to mark a situation as unrealized or hypothetical as opposed to factual. The subjunctive may, however, also be used in a main clause. When used like this, the subjunctive expresses a situation desired by the speaker. Such a subjunctive may be used to make a polite request.

The imperiative mood is used to issue commands. It has no marking other than the lack of an explicit subject and context.

Negation

Verbs are negated using the auxiliary verb /mu/, "there is not". On its own, /mu/ serves as a suppletive negative for the existential verb /pɯ/, entirely replacing the verb.

Copula

There is no explicit verbal copula in Taiji. Instead, the predicate is simply placed where it would appear as an object without any explicit verb.

Numerals

Cardinal

Ordinal

Distributive

Syntax

The syntax of Taiji is consistently head final. Modifiers precede the core constituent of any phrase.

Word Order

The basic word order of Taiji is Subject Object Verb. Adverbial elements precede the object, and internally usually assume the Time Manner Place ordering often found in SOV languages.

Subordinate clauses

Interrogative clauses

Interrogative clauses are formed in one of two ways. Polar yes-no question require only that the particle /i/ be placed at the end of a clause. Interrogative clauses which contain an interrogative pronoun are marked by the presence of the pronoun itself. An interrogative clause may be used on its own to ask a question, or embedded in another clause.

Relative clauses

Relative clauses precede the nouns which they modify. When the modified is one of the core arguments of the relative clause, then it may either be replaced by an appropriate proximate demonstrative or simply omitted in the relative clause. In such cases, omission is more commonly used. If the argument is instead an oblique one, then it must be replaced by a demonstrative in the relative clause.

Orthography

Sample

External Links