Difference between revisions of "Eruvite"

Revision as of 10:04, 27 June 2007

Eruvite is one of the primary spoken languages of Eluvatar.

Phonology

Eruvite distinguishes 21 distinct phonemes, 16 consonants and 5 vowels to be specific.

Consonants

Eruvite lacks any consonant clusters within the same syllable except for /nd/, which appears as a syllable coda. Syllables may begin with any of the language's consonant sounds with the exception of /θ/, which may only appear as a syllable coda. Syllable codas in addition to /θ/ are limited to /s/, /m/, /n/, /l/, /r/ and /nd/.

Vowels

Grammar

Eruvite is a heavily inflected language.

Roots and Stems

The language is based on root morphemes which are subsequently modified with stems to create nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Root morphemes fall into two distinct classes: noun-verb roots and adjective roots.

This system often results in single words which translate poorly into English and other languages, where they are instead expressed with multiple words. For example, where an English speaker would say "I am tall" a speaker of Eruvite would add to the root for tall (bano) the stem necessary to create a verb and properly inflect it, resulting in simply "banuvo". Native speakers will often choose the combination of roots and stems when speaking which will result in the fewest words in everyday conversation (though these words will not necessarily always be short).

Nouns

Verbs

Eruvite verbs are a complex construction of [?] different components:

root-transitivity/voice/subjunctive-affirmative/negative/dubiative-primary mood-aspect-tense/person-secondary mood

The very first component of any verb is the root, which carries the basic meaning.

The second component of a verb marks the transitivity and voice of a verb, and is used to indicate the subjunctive, conditional and hypothetical moods as well. A verb may be either intransitive or transitive, and from the perspective of a English speaker a change in transitivity will change the meaning of a verb. For example, "mend" ("go") as verb can either be translated as "go" or "send" depending on whether it is intransitive or transitive respectively. From an Eruvite perspective however it is one verb, simply different inflections. There are three voices: active, passive and reflexive for situations in which the subject and object are the same.

The subjunctive mood denotes a condition, the conditional mood denotes something which is dependent on a condition and the hypothetical mood denotes a statement which is not true but potentially could be so.

The second component expresses the affirmative, negative or dubitative mood. The negative mood negates an action, while the dubitative mood expresses uncertainty.

These same stems, when added by themselves to a root, are also used to answer questions affirmatively, negatively or dubitatively, as Eruvite does not have words for "yes", "no" or "maybe" as English does.

Adjectives

Adjectives constructed with noun-verb roots are placed after the word which they modify, while those constructed with adjective roots are placed before the word which they modify.

Adverbs

Orthography

Eruvite is written with the Eruwar, a featural abugida, and the Sindarin Cirth alphabet for Sindarin loanwords.

Transliteration

The most commonly used contemporary method of transliteration for the Eruvite language is the Romawar system.