Behru cesik

Setting
Behru Cesik (a combination of Behru, an ethnonym, cet, to speak, and the suffix -hik, indicating a manner of doing something) is a language spoken in the southern half of the lower Sedonese basin, the Hedri plains, and in the northern portions of Kakinsake. Its speakers form a distinct ethnicity in the south of Sedone, independent from the dominant Idili. The Behru people originated from the distant and now extinct Behru empire, which attempted to settle the Hedri area 1500 years prior. The empire has collapsed since then, and the Behru people are now isolated, their nations being increasingly encroached upon by the native peoples they had once tried to conquer.

Phonotactics
All Behru free morphemes of native origin consist of a 2 syllable root with a maximum structure stop-fricative-approximant-vowel/syllabic l or r-consonant-vowel. Bound morphemes are permitted to have a reduced structure, so long as they start witha consonant should they be allowed to occur word initially. All syllables must start with a consonant. Alll free roots except particles and nouns in the agent case singular have a suffix of some sort indicating their grammatical role in the sentence.

Vowels
All roots that can exist unbound, along with several bound roots, hold a tone. This tone may be either a high ´tone like in lé, or a low tone le (low tone is unmarked). A high tone is only found in noun, verb, and particle roots, it is never found on the suffixes with the exception of several toneshift sandhi rules. In addition, a vowel may be of one of 3 "strengths". A weak vowel is reduced and centralized, and may carry have a high tone. A medium vowel is clearly pronounced but clipped in length. A strong vowel is held out in length. Some roots contain the sequence CV l/r C(V). The combination of a vowel and and l and r usually fuse in an unusual way.
 * roots containing l or r may strengthen according to two different series.

Sandhi
Sandhi in behru can be divided into two categories, tone sandhi and consonant sandhi. Vowel sandhi only occurs word internally, as all morphemes that can occur at the front of a word start with consonants.

Consonant sandhi
n assimilates in the point of articulation of the following consonants


 * note: The effects of rule 10 are never written, as they can always be determined, samt will always be pronounced as |sahmt|, no rules can reverse this.

Notes: the only rules which can change the voicing of c and j are rules 2 and 7.

Only the rules 1, 2, 6, 7, and 8 occur across word boundaries. Final consonants affected by rules 6 and 7 across word boundaries double. The h doesn't dissapear of rule 8 occurs across word boundaries.

Orthography
Behru romanized orthography matches the symbols given in the phonology section. Sandhi is indicated always in both written systems. The Behru native writing system is an alphabet, with symbols for vowels, consonants, vowel strength and tone arranged into syllabic blocks, written up to down, left to right. Pictures of these will be uploaded later.

Basic Grammar
Behru in the modern day is highly fusional, although the language of old, in the days of empire, was far more agglutinative. This older stage of the language is popular in literature, but this article primarily focuses on the Hedri colloquial. All root morphemes of the language can be split into 4 groups. All free morphemes are part of onne of 3 parts of speech, verb, noun, or particle. Adjectives and adverbs do not exist as a part of speech, they can exist as either prefixes or derived from verbs. The language is most commonly uses a subject object verb word order, but there are no strict rules on word order in most sentences. The language is exclusively head final, with all modifiers placed before the head. The verb always comes a finally when it is the head of a clause, and is the only portion of the sentence that may not be omitted under any circumstances.

Morphemes
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Free
! scope="col"|Bound
 * Semantemes
 * Verbs, Nouns
 * adjectival prefixes, adverbial prefixes, derivational sufixes
 * Grammemes
 * Grammatical particles
 * grammatical sufixes, positional sufixes, grammatical infixes
 * }
 * grammatical sufixes, positional sufixes, grammatical infixes
 * }

Simple consonant variation nouns
A behru noun has 3 principle parts, the default, weak, and plural forms. The plural form is used in the plural (obviously), and the weak form is used in the patient, genitive, possesive, comparative, and compound cases.

Basic endings
Endings using the first principle part These endings can be added to the 1st prinicple part of the noun using sandhi. One thing must be noted for consonant nouns, nouns ending in a simple voiceless stop will often have a semivowel inserted between the consonant and the ending. Which semivowel is inserted requires knowledge of the second principle part, nouns ending in an ii, like mügíi, will have a y inserted, nouns ending in an uu will hae a w inserted. Nouns ending in aa have nothing inserted. Therefore, the noun múk, mügíi, múugye, will have a y inserted in the ablative (múkyehn), as that ending starts with the vowel e, and múk's second principle part ends in ii.


 * V means vowel of the second syllable, which is reduplicated. Schwa endings do not reveal the final consonant in vowel ending nouns.

Consonant declension
Voiceless consonant ending 1: stems marked in Bold require knowledge of the invisible vowel, always marked in the second principle part

2: stems marked in are formed off of the second principle part

3: stems marked in are formed off of the third principle part

4: endings marked in use the ablative stem, and are similar across all nouns. Forming the ablative stem require knolwedge of both the first and second principle parts.

Endings added to the combining stem
These endings are added to the combining stem, and must themselves be declined before the noun is used. These nouns may only be declined in the dative, locative, vialis, and ablative. They are effectively "prepositional nouns".

Showing that a noun is posessed.
If a noun is owned by another noun (marked in the posessive case), an infix is inserted before the second syllable/final consonant that agrees with the possessor. The genitive case is only used when one noun owns another noun, or with relations (my mother, your father). If one noun is part of the other noun, then a compound word using the combining stem is used instead. Inanimate objects always use the combining stem, never the posessive. The possessed nouns may be further declined, múbik (our dog), múbigii (our dogs), múbigiiñipi (for our dogs).

note: the consonants n,m,ng,ñ,r,l,f,v,sh,and zh are considered part of the previous syllable when followed by another consonant, for example, xworji divides into xwor-ji, xamp divides to xam-p, thus you'd get xworziji and xamzip, not xwozirji and xazimp.

Verb Morphology
Behru verbs are conjugated by factors, person, number, transitivity, tense aspect, and mood. Many Behru sentences consist of only a verb, as both the subject and object may be dropped if they can be determined by context.

The passive and causative stems
The passive is formed by palatilizing the last consonant in the first consonant cluster (adding a y). The causative is formed by labialization of that same consonant(adding a w). The first vowel is lengthened in both forms. Some initial consonants/ consonant clusters must be sonorized before being palatalized or labialized. The causative stem is included in the principle parts to show whether or not this happens. You must check this in the dictionary entry on the verb's stems. For example, the causative stem of cet is crwiit. To change it to passive, replace the w with y, crwiit to cryiit. Sandhi changes cryiit to crshiit. The causative stem of lup is lvuup. The v was a w, changed to a v by sandhi. So replace the w(changed into a v), with y, lvuup to lyuup

Clitic verbs
There exists a closed class of clitic verbs in Behru which are suffixed to the stem of a free standing verb. The basic stem is not used, instead the special compound stem is used. The form of the special compound stem is unpredictable and thus is a principle part. (note: the basic stem is used in ordinary compound verbs, not the special compound stem.)

cet becomes cocash/ cocay

mála becomes hmáalash/ hmáalay

zén becomes zhóni/ zhónis

zot becomes zootwash/ zootway

xworji becomes xworojii/ xworojii(s)

Common clitic verbs

-es/et: possible, eg: cocayesú: I can speak

ghóon: to start, eg: cocazhghóohnlo: he is about to begin speaking

shosu: to cease, eg: zéyëdacosuji: we will stop moving momentarily

Tense and aspect in compound verbs.
The very last verb in a compound always recieves the tense/aspect infixes, in the same manner as a normal verb.

thus, cocayet: can speak, as in cocayedbi: we can speak, vs cocayenit: was able to speak, as in cocayenidbi: we were able to speak.

Polypersonal agreement
The Behru verb agrees with its preformer, or subject, in person and number. A transitive verb also agrees with its object in person, subject, and number. Verb endings are added to the stem in the same manner noun endings are.

The copulas
The copulas are suffixes attached to the predicate noun in an equative sentence. It conjugates irregularily. The -lu copula is the stative copula, you use it to say "the dog is red". The ru copula is the change copula, you'd use it to say "the dog has gotten redder", or "the dog is red but it wasn't the last time I saw it.". The byu copula is used to indicate resemblance but not equality, "that dog is like its owner."

The comparative copula
The comparative copula states one thing is more x than another. The copula comes after the adjective it is using for comparison. Its "subject" is what is described, and the "object" is the basis of comparison, in the comparative case. The top of the columns indicate what is being described, the beginning of the rows, what they are being compared to.

Basic case
The basic case is used for

-the agent of a transitive verb

múk shüneha kyocarayáa: the dog pushes the man

-the participant in an intransitive verb

múk cetlo: the dog speaks

-before the topic particle zú

múuge zú nebalíl: as for dogs, they run

The topic
The topic of the sentence is a noun marked with the postposition zú. It is used in the gnomic tense, to set that noun apart from other nouns in a dsecription. The topic need not be the subject of the sentence, it can be in any case. Verbs marked with a 4th person agreement agree with the last stated topic in a discourse

Causative case
The causative case is used for the cause of a verb in the causative.

cinidémiye múk nwiinibahlo: because I spoke, the dog ran

Some verbs can use the basic or causative cases, this causes a subtle change in meaning

shúun kwootri: the man throws it (causes it to fly), vs.

shúuñe kwoootlo: because of the man, it flies (the man did something else leading it to fly.

Ablative case
used for the origin of a motion

shúun zú béhrusokihn zéninlíil: as for the man, he came '''from the Behru homeland. '''

Comitative case
Is used for the companion in an action.

shúun múkyant ninzebahlon: the man was running with the dog.

And to make adverbs out of nouns

másajákint cenitlo: she spoke strongly (wih strength).

Vialis case
Used to indicate means of travel

shúun sedoñci béhrusokimpi zénihnlo: the man went to Sedone through the behru homeland

jálokimpi wunëdici kodú: I fly to my home '''by aircraft. '''

Instrumental case
Used to indicate tools used to complete an action.

molumikl hmoonlíil: it shines with heat.

Adessive case
used to indicate something an action was done without.

wálübakint cidolashamash sedoñci zénihnlo: she went to sedone without talking to her mother.

Locative case
Used to indicate the location of an action

doonde wudihi nebahloon: the children run '''in the house. '''

Dative case
used to indicate the indirect object of a verb, the exact meaning varies.

The target of a verb of motion shúuñci múk nenibahlo: the dog ran to the man.

The target of a bitransitive verb:shúun wulüdici kwoonitri: the man threw it at his house.

Patient case
used to indicate the direct  object of an intransitive verb.

shúun tëlübyáaha túnijrehlo: the man took off '''his overshirt. '''

Posessive case
used to indicate that one noun owns another.

shüneng tóbi: the man's overshirt

Numbers
Behru has a base 12 numbering system. Simple numbers are simply suffixed after the nouns they count. The result is then declined like a noun.

Compound numbers.

To make complex numbers, like 25, or 156, one strings together the simple numbers in a sequence of addition from the biggest to the smallest number.

25: fumu fu(24) and mu(1)

156: srangu sran(144( and gu(12)

157: srangumu

305: fowanggudat

when a number is affixed to a noun, it is declined like a noun. Typically, the penultimate vowel takes a ` accent and is subject to vowel strengthening or weakening. For example, 25 beds would be mùkfùmu, but if declined in the owner case, it would be mùkfümungò, and in the direction case, it would be mùkfùmuhi. 10 beds would be mùksùk. towards the (12^12)*11 people would be shúnrusesifòshashi

Ordinal numbers
Behru ordinal numbers are formed simply by prefixing a number to a noun. They are usually prefixed to a noun like -tsék(place) or -ya (time, as in a cycle)

Fractional numbers
Fractions in Behru are formed by the suffix -t for numbers which end in a vowel and -ta for ones ending in a consonant. The fractions for half, third, fourth, and twelfth are formed irregularily. They are -kir, nisa, besa, and gusa. they are used the same way normal numbers are, mùkrusèt would be 1 eleventh of a bed. If one wishes to count the fractions, those numbers are suffixed past the fraction. mùksransùktaruse would mean "eleven 154ths of a bed"

Usage of numbers, and approximate quantities
A specific number is always declined in the "few" number, as the few number is considered to encompass all small or specific quantities. A general number, like -not, which means some, is considered a mass noun, and all mass nouns use the "many" case.

General quantity suffixes -hok: every,all -mok: none -hot: some -huk: most -muk: few

Number modifying suffixes: -sát: around, aprroximately -kère: only, just