Adwan

The Adwanic language, (English: Adwan, French: Adouanne, Spanish: Aduána, Adwan: Aðẃana) is a fictional art language that is said to be Indo-European, though exact proof is unsure. Adwan, an isolating language, therefore, only shares grammatical roots more than lexical roots with any of its neighboring languages.

The name Aðẃana literally means The Adwanic one. Like the lack of distinction between the nationalatiy of being English and the language English, Adwan lacks the distinction between the nationality of being Adwanic and the language, Adwan. It is common, however, to use Sachvyż Aðẃanyň, or Language of the Adwanics, when referring to the language and Chiðaùm Aðẃany, or Person of Adwan.

Features
The controversy between the classification of Adwan's family comes without reason, for Adwan shares many things with other Indo-European languages, yet has many differences from them (plus the fact that it is isolating and therefore only shares about 3-5% words with any European language, with the exception of cognates).
 * Adwan is a fusionally synthetic language. This means that words change depending on their usage (I am would be það, yet you are could either be þus or þuš, depending on the number).
 * Adwan also expresses a very agglutinative nature when it comes to verbs, which conjugated by stringing affixes together.
 * Verbs in Adwan are conjugated to four persons, two numbers, three tenses, sixteen aspects, four voices, four moods and three polarities.
 * Adwan lacks auxilliary verbs and modal verbs, instead making extensive use of affixes to change modality, aspect, tense, mood and voice.


 * Adwan is a pro-drop language; the person is conjugated into the verb.
 * Adwan declines nouns for number, and grammatical case. Gender is lost in most nouns, though some can be declined for gender by adding respective affixes.
 * Adwan has 7 cases; nominative, genitive, accusative, dative, ablative, locative and vocative, and 2 numbers; singular and plural.
 * Adwan also conjugates some prepositions to personal pronouns, much like prepositions in Celtic languages. (Zuþ means with; with me -- also considered as the comitative conjugation -- comes out as žaþ; note, preposition conjugations are usually ALWAYS irregular).
 * Loanwords to Adwan are generally rare; about 3-5% of Adwan's vocabulary is shared with other European languages (though something like mesa is found in Spanish, mesa in Adwan means island, while mesa in Spanish means table).
 * Adwan is syllable timed; stress is always put on the penultimate syllable unless stated otherwise (acute accents over vowels show irregular stress rules, which are incredibly common).

Phonology
Adwan empoys 30 consonants and 8 vowels (with a numerous amount of diphthong combinations).

Consonants

 * The phoneme /ɬ/ is not an allophone of /l/.
 * Bilabial plosives (‹b› and ‹p›), glottal plosives (‹ʔ›), palatal approximants (‹j› ‹ɥ›), velar fricatives (‹h›), velar approximants (‹w›), and alveolar lateral fricatives (‹ɬ›) can never end a word.

Palatalization
Palatalization in Adwan is tricky, as it is not shown in written speech whether a letter that precedes a ‹j› is to be palatalized or not. Vowels are never palatalized, as palatalization only ever happens to consonants. Most of the time, consonants are always palatalized if they precede a /j/. For example: In the word Skjorta (booth), the /k/ is palatalized to /kʲ/, which merges the sound of /k/ with /j/ to form one syllable. The /k/ in skjorta is palatalized because it precedes a /j/. It should be noted that /j/ doesn't palatalize consonants (technically, it would if it ended a word that has a penultimate letter as a consonant, by ‹j› never ends a word in Adwan), and in some dialects goes from /j/ to /ʝ/ (a stronger form of /j/). /J/ is only ever pronounced fully as /j/ when it begins a word.

Note: /ɬ/, /w/, /ɥ/, /ʔ/, /l/, /r/, and occasionally /ð/ and /θ/ are never palatalized.

Phonotactics
Adwanic words generally follow a CV(CV)N pattern, where N represents a final letter (a,c,d,ð,ď,e,f,g,k,l,m,n,r,þ,s,t,v,z,ž and ż). Adwanic words, however, can reach an incredibly high number of words (most of these being verbs); an example of this is the verb deteriorate, or vachmeżychfan, conjugated to say it would most certainly have been deteriorating would be vachmeżychfyseżyðetaùd.

Diphthongs in Adwan are considered a single V, rather than VV.

Alphabet
The Adwanic alphabet consists of 38 letters:

A B C Č D Ð Ď E F G Ğ H CH I J K L Ł M N Ň O Ö P R Þ S Š T Ť U Ü V W Ẃ Y Z Ž Ż

Consonant-wise, Adwan is completely phonemic. Along with the 37 letters in the alphabet, Adwan also has the traditional digraph ‹ch›, representing the phoneme ‹x›.

Latin Alphabet Extensions
Adwan employs 14 letters that are foreign to the basic Latin alphabet. These letters are considered letters on their own, rather than letters with diacritics.
 * ‹Č,č› represents the phoneme ‹tʃ›, as in the English word chocolate.
 * ‹Ð,ð› represents the phoneme ‹ð›, as in the English word therefore.
 * ‹Ď,ď› represents the phoneme ‹dʒ›, as in the English word jam.
 * ‹Ğ,ğ› represents the phoneme ‹ɣ›, which doesn't exist in English. It is a ‹g›, but smoother and in the back of the throat, almost like a ‹g› version of ‹x›; it is represented as in the Greek word γάλα.
 * ‹Ł,ł› represents the phoneme ‹ɬ›, which doesn't exist in English. It is almost like saying ‹š› and ‹l› together but quickly, or blowing while your tongue is curled back. It is represented as in the Welsh word lloyd.
 * ‹Ň,ň› represents the phoneme ‹ŋ›, as in the English word sing. Note that the ‹g› isn't pronounced, and the ‘n‘ is velarized.
 * ‹Ö,ö› represents the phoneme ‹ø›, which doesn't exist in English. The closest sound would be the ou in would, only a bit higher. It is represented as in the French word peu, or the Norwegian word søt.
 * ‹Š,š› represents the phoneme ‹ʃ›, as in the English word cash.
 * ‹Ť,ť› represents phoneme ‹ʔ›, like the pause in the English phrase uh-oh. Note how you don't sayd uhhhoooh together, but you break them apart -- that's what ‹Ť,ť› does.
 * ‹Ü,ü› represents the phoneme ‹y›, which doesn't exist in English. Say ee and round your lips as if saying ‹ö›. It is represented as in the French word tu.
 * ‹Ẃ,ẃ› represents the phoneme ‹ɥ›, which doesn't exist in English. It is like a ‹j› + ‹w› sound (y + w for non-IPA users). It is represented as is in the French word lui.
 * ‹Ž,ž› represents the phoneme ‹ʒ›, as in the English word vision, or as in the French word je.
 * ‹Ż,ż› represents the phoneme ‹dz›, as in the English word cards. 

Acute Accent; Stress
Adwan adds acute accents (and double acute accents to all vowels with umlauts) to all vowels to add stress if the stress isn't on the penultimate syllable.
 * ‹Á,á› represents stress on the ‹a›.
 * ‹É,é› represents stress on the ‹e›.
 * ‹Í,í› represents stress on the ‹i›.
 * ‹Ó,ó› represents stress on the ‹o›.
 * ‹Ő,ő› represents stress on the ‹ö›.
 * ‹Ú,ú› represents stress on the ‹u›.
 * ‹Ű,ű› represents stress on the ‹ü›.
 * ‹Ý,ý› represents stress on the ‹y›.

Grave Accents; Diphthong Formation
Apart from acute accents, hačeks, grave accents are also added to vowels that create diphthongs. As Adwan is a phonemic language, double vowel clusters do not form diphthongs, but are pronounced each. A vowel cluster that has the second vowel with a grave accent creates the diphthong. Note: Diphthongs for the vowels ‹ỳ› are allophones of ‹ì›.
 * ‹À,à›
 * ‹Eà, eà›; represents the sound in the word can, stressed to sound slightly country.
 * ‹È,è›
 * ‹Iè, iè› represents another rounded sound, like ‹ià›. It sounds like a northern Norwegian "e", or like the word "kit", rather like "Kih-et", said in one syllable.
 * ‹Ì,ì›
 * ‹Aì, aì›; [aɪ̯]; represents the sound in kite, or eye. 
 * ‹Eì, eì›; [eɪ̯]; represents the sound in cake, or fate.
 * ‹Öì, öì›; [øɪ̯]; represents the sound of ‹ö› plus ‹y› or ‹i›.
 * ‹Uì, uì›; [uɪ̯]; represents the sound in the Spanish word muy. It's a combination of "oo" and "ee", for non-IPA readers.
 * ‹Ù,ù›
 * ‹Aù, aù›; represents the ow sound in cow.
 * ‹Eù, eù›; represents the eu sound in the Spanish word Europa. Like ew but with an open "e" rather than "i".
 * ‹Iù, iù›; represents the sound in English ew in one syllable.
 * ‹Où, où›; represents the o sound in the English word float. 
 * ‹Yù, yù›; is an allophone of ‹iù›

Syntax & Morphology
Adwan is an inflecting language, where many words change their form depending on their function in a sentence. This may pose a problem for many English speakers, Chinese speakers, or other speakers of analytical languages, for analytical languages depend on word order to convey their meaning, as opposed to morphology.

Adwan, as an inflecting language, inflects verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, numbers, and determiners depending on their function in a sentence, or their case (or person, mood, voice, tense and aspect, for verbs).

Word Order
Because of the inflections that go on in Adwan, word order is generally a lot freer than it would be if it didn't have all those inflections. Adwan generally follows an SVO word order, though many word orders are feasible depending on the mood or emphasis they want to put on the sentence. Many times, word order can change voice and mood to words without actually changing the mood or voice. In the OVS order, the verb should be in the passive voice, but because of the word order, the passive voice is not needed. It is, however, much more common and easier to follow a generic SVO order and use morphology to change meaning, rather than word order.

Cases
Adwan has seven cases to which decline its nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numbers and determiners. They are the nominative, the genitive, the accusative, the dative, the ablative, the locative and the vocative.

The Nominative and the Accusative are subject-object cases. No prepositions govern either case; the verb distinguishes the subject and the direct object; in the phrase Paul eats apples, "Paul" is in the nominative, and "apples" is in the accusative. Nothing ever stands in the way between a nominative and an accusative case, other than the verb, theoretically.

The Genitive case is the case of posession and relation. Since Adwan's ratio of adjectives is low compared to its nouns and verbs, many nouns act as adjectives when used in the genitive. In the phrase The dog house, when compound word usage is not preferred, the genitive case is used, in which the phrase would then mean The house of dogs, in which "dogs" would be in the genitive. the genitive is ideally the "of" case; posessors always follow the nouns, rather than the nouns following their posessors like in other languages. In the girl's cat, the girl is the posessor and comes before the cat; however, in Adwan, the girl comes after the cat, because a possessive noun is like saying "of [a/the]". Therefore, the girl's cat would be the cat of the girl. Note: Irregular prepositions govern the Genitive case, but since there are only a few, the genitive doesn't qualify as a prepositional case.

The Dative, Ablative and the Locative cases are prepositional cases in Adwan; these are the three cases which are governed by prepositions. Many prepositions are alike and must therefore have a distinction to their usage, which is why the three cases come in. The Dative case refers to the indirect object as a recipent of the verb; the ablative case refers to the indirect object as the causative noun, and the locative case refers to the indirect object as a locational noun. The Vocative case refers to a dialogue case, used when addressing someone in specific. It is the least complicated of the cases, and only ever used in day to day dialogue, rather than writing (though it does occur a lot in writing with dialogues). In the phrase Hey, Paul!, "Paul" is in the vocative, because it is being adressed.
 * The ablative case is the most isolated of these three, as its usage differes from the dative and locative. It is the case of instrument and cause, therefore in the phrase Paul eats apples with a fork, "fork" would be in the ablative.
 * The dative case and the locative case share many prepositional uses, but establish a line of distinction when it comes to their usage. The locative case uses prepositions of direction and of location, while the dative uses the same prepositions but doesn't refer to location or direction. In the phrase I'm going to the store, the "store" is in the locative, because "to" refers to a place; however, in the phrase I gave an apple to my mom, "mom" would be in the dative, because it is a recipent of an action. Many times, it is easy to distinguish which preposition and case to use by seeing their usage. If it's not instrument, or location, it's in the dative, most likely.

Prepositions
Prepositions in Adwan govern three cases; the dative, the ablative, and the locative. Each preposition is assigned to only one case, as there is no amiguity, however, many prepositions are copulas of eachother (such as v and ef, which both mean "in" but describe different situations.

Below is a list of all prepositions used in Adwan, listed under their respective cases Italicized prepositions are default prepositions for the respective case; therefore, a case without a preposition is automatically assumed to be that preposition.
 * Dative
 * 1) At - Ła
 * 2) Compared to - Deìnaìpora
 * 3) For - Y
 * 4) Than - Kö
 * 5) To - Šču*
 * 6) Toward - Aì
 * Ablative
 * 1) About - Ðö
 * 2) According to - Voch
 * 3) After - Ďeňkwy
 * 4) Against - Seď
 * 5) Among - Kaìch
 * 6) As opposed to - Vsorysjonšču
 * 7) Because of - Oďy
 * 8) Before - Kpy
 * 9) By - Her
 * 10) Concerning - Ğaù
 * 11) Despite - Or
 * 12) During - Kureùň
 * 13) From - Žeìň*
 * 14) In - V
 * 15) Like - Som
 * 16) On behalf of - Def
 * 17) Regarding - Jar
 * 18) Since - Jeùr
 * 19) Until - Ďeù
 * 20) Versus - Raùch
 * 21) Via - Sery
 * 22) With - Zuþ
 * 23) Without - Saþ
 * Locative
 * 1) Across - Tra
 * 2) Against - Des
 * 3) Around - Naìsle
 * 4) At - Er*
 * 5) Behind - Chva
 * 6) Between - Þ
 * 7) By - Ièt
 * 8) From - Ďa
 * 9) In - Ef
 * 10) In front of - Jeg
 * 11) Into - Šlaù
 * 12) Near - Per
 * 13) Next to - Vel
 * 14) On - Ü
 * 15) Outside of - Daùr
 * 16) Over - Chu
 * 17) To - Al
 * 18) Under - Och
 * Genitive
 * 1) Ago - Doň; used prepositionally, rather than postposionally in English. Three years ago in Adwan would be Doň jaìsar nyhy, or Ago of three years.

Declensions: Nouns, Adjectives, Numbers and Determiners
Nouns, Adjectives, Numbers and Determiners, for the most part, follow the declension tables below. Other than irregular nouns, adjectives and determiners, every declinable part of speech (except for pronouns!) follow the declensions below. Note: Gender does now specifically own a declension, but rather has a special affix that changes gender; adding -š or -eš will make a noun masculine, while adding -č or -oč will make the noun feminine. All nouns come in neuter form, except for slang terms and informal terms that are gender specific. While nouns can technically be declined into gender, it must be known that inanimate nouns can NOT be declined for gender, for it is culturally sexist and incorrect.

Šlyna can be šlynač or šlynaš, since it means child, and a child can be generally unspecified, masculine or feminine. Parm, however, cannot be correctly declined to parmeš or parmoč, for a road cannot be feminine or masculine (note, feminine and masculine declensions are still given for said noun, but they are only for demonstration.)

Weak Declensions
Declensions shown below mainly consist of suffixes and infixes.

First Declension
Nouns in the first declension are controversially thought to be strong, though in some paradigms they do add suffixes. Nouns in the First declension end in -a. Šlyna = Child;

Second Declension
Nouns in the second declension follow the same idealogical patter than nouns in the first declension do. Nouns in the Second declension end in -e. Bre = Adult

Third Declension
The third declension deals with all nouns ending in -ch, -g, -s, and -z. Feaz = Tourist

Fourth Declension
The fourth declension deals with all nouns ending in -ď, -l, -r, and -ž. Maìr = Mayor

Fifth Declension
The fifth declension deals with all nouns ending in -c, -ð, -t, and -ż. Kaùleð = Hiker

Sixth Declension
The sixth declension deals with all nouns ending in -n, -k, -f, and -v. Marin = Sailor

Seventh Declension
The seventh declension deals with all nouns ending in -d, -ğ, -m, and -þ. Parm = Road

Strong Declensions
Nouns in the strong declension in Adwan change vowels rather than changing affixes. The stem to the word is literally changed, as opposed to the affixes added to words in weak declensions. Note, ablaut only happens to case changes, not number changes.

NOTE: nouns in the strong declensions are indeclinable for gender.

First Declension
The first declension deals with words that end in -és, -ér, and -éż, which are typically adjectives. Motér = Strange

Prefixes
While Adwan's lexicon does depend on heavy derivation (mainly by use of compound words and a less synthetic use of the case systems), prefixes do in fact exist in Adwan -- most of them to add grammatical meaning.

Dwa, Dwať
The prefix Dwa / Dwať carries an incredible amount of meaning in Adwan; apart from being important, it is also quite versatile in its usage. Essentially, the prefix dwa is attached to verbs to change modality. Because Adwan has no auxilliary verbs, the direct translation for the English should, or shall does not exist; atleast not in standalone form. The prefix Dwa (or dwať if the verb starts with a vowel) is attached to a verb that needs a change in modality. In the phrase They should be nicer to their sister, the prefix dwa is attached to the verb to be because it changes the modality of the verb, therefore leaving the phrase to be Dwaþyleþ taìchjúr pravloč oìð. (note, the preposition "to" is left out due to the defualt preposition for the dative case being "to"). Should-they-act-themselves in-ABL spirit-ABL brotherhood-GEN.
 * They should act towards eachother in a spirit of brotherhood.
 * 1) Dwaþryšeğam v tyrtaì povlačny.

Neì, Neìť
While in English there is only one word for the conjunction "and", Adwan has two; these two copula have different usages though they roughly translate to the same thing. One of the conjunctions that means "and" is shown in the form of the prefix neì or neìť, depending on the beggining of the word. The prefix, as stated above, roughly means "and", though in the sense that it does not connect two clauses, phrases or sentences together.

The other conjunction meaning "and", aùň, connects two separate clauses together. In the phrase I speak Adwan and English, the prefix neì is used, because rather than connecting two clauses, it connects two objects (note, the sentence can be rearranged for the other usage, though this is the most common one); therefore, the sentence would look something along the lines of Ẃas Aðẃanu neìťAňglu; however, a sentence like I speak English and I speak Adwan would look like Ẃas Anglu aùň ẃas Aðẃanu. Below are phrases with their correct usage.

NOTE: Neì becomes neìť if the beggining of the noun begins with a vowel. Another good example is the common excerpt from the Declaration of Human Rights. Roughly, the prefix is used when listing things that are in the same case, while the standalone conjunction isn't.
 * I eat breakfast in the morning, and I eat dinner at night.
 * 1) Ẃescas v mateì, aùň fúskas ła juchoð.
 * All humans are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience, and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
 * 1) Tuð lyfaň őveryšecht šesnúr neì trynúr v ceraì neì teréň. Þurnysecht zuþ tryneùf neì ğastéň, aùň dwaþryšeğam v tyrtaì povlačny.

Adjective Comparisons: Taì, teì, nuì, noì,
Like English, Adwan has adjectival comparisons, only, where English has them in the form of suffixes, Adwan has them in the forms of prefixes. Adwan has five adjective prefixes, two of which are found as suffixes in English and three of which are found as adverbs. NOTE: If the adjective the adjective comparisons are modifying start with vowels, a glottal stop, ť, is inserted, therefore: the prefixes would be taìť, teìť, and tuìť.
 * Taì resembles the comparative comparison in adjectives, the -er that's added to most adjectives in the English language; therefore, if chjér is the adjective for nice, and one wanted to say nicer, it would come out as taìchjér, though note that the noun mus still be declined after adding the prefix.
 * Teì resembles the superlative comparison in adjectives, the -est that's added to most adjectives in the English language; therefore, nicest would be teìchjér. Note: while many adjectives in English can't take the -est suffix (and therefore use the adverb "most"), in Adwan, the prefix teì can be added to any adjective.
 * Nuì resembles the adverb "very" in Adwan; the adverb "very" does not technically exist in Adwan, though it exists in prefix form; therefore saying very nice would be tuìchjér.
 * Noì resembles the adverb "so" in Adwan. The adverb for "so" does exist, as a matter of fact, but it is merely a standalone version of the prefix toì, therefore you are so nice would be þus toìchjúr..
 * Nwy resembles the adverb "too" that specifies an excessive degree; therefore, the phrase you are too nice would be þus nwychjúr.

Verbs
Verbs in Adwan are the most complex part of speech in Adwan due to their agglutinative nature. Rather than change endings to change mood, tense, aspect, person and number, Adwan employs a number of affixes to change such things. The only thing resembling fusional conjugation in verbs are the conjugations per person, which change per conjugation.

Adwan has three conjugations; verbs ending in -an, verbs ending in -en, and verbs ending in -on.

Person
Adwan conjugates to 4 persons, with the 3rd person having an additional 3 genders, thus having a total of 6 persons total. Below is a table for the conjugation for each type of verb and for each person. NOTE: The nominative pronoun is NEVER used in general sentences, as the person is conjugated right into the verb. The nominative pronoun, however, does double as an oblique case, and, when used with a general pause and a comma, does not come off as redundant. Nominative pronouns are only used in oblique usages and when to emphasize certain things.

In Adwan, the first step (and probably only step depending on the context) of conjugating a verb is conjugating it for its person. In Adwan, rather than changing verb endings for each tense, aspect, voice and mood, affixes are added to the conjugated verb.

Tense & Aspect
Tense and Aspect come off as merged in Adwan, for there is no separate affix for each tense and each aspect, but rather, the combination of Tense and Aspect produce one affix (Past perfective has the affix -je-, while the past imperfective has the affix -eży-).

Adwan is a language rich with tense and aspect. There are three tenses (past, present and future), and three aspects (perfective, perfect, and imperfective). Tense alone, however, is not enough to express what is going with the actions, therefore, Aspects are employed (and merged with tenses) to change the aspect of the verb. Compare ate with had eaten, etc. Below is a table with the respective affixes for each combination. NOTE: -Ø- means no affix is added.

Standalone Aspects; Adverbs in affixes
One phenomenon that occurs in Adwan is the fact that there are two different kinds of aspects; tense aspects and standalone aspects.

Tense aspects are aspects that have merged with tenses to become one. There can only be one tense aspect in each verb.

Standalone aspects are aspects that can co-exist with other aspects. Aspects such as the inceptive can function with the imperfect (present imperfective inceptive: I start eating, past perfective inceptive: I had started to eat,etc). Below is a table with each standalone aspect. Note: Standalone aspects require a tense aspect to function correctly, unless in the perfective for the present tense.  NOTE: if affixes don't seem to agree phonetically (they seem hard to pronounce), an -e- may be inserted between them to help pronunciation. Also, there are two aspects added to Adwan that I can't find any names for (nor can I find that they are technically aspects, but they function like them, therefore they are considered aspects in Adwan).

Many aspects tend to have the same functions that many adverbs do, therefore giving Adwan more than one way to express a statement.

Ex: one could either say Łorac ẃertan y šusko to say I want to study for school, OR, you could use a standalone aspect and use Ẃertaceło y šusko; since many aspects (which aren't always technically "aspects" but act like them) could duo as verbs, some verbs aren't necessary when using them in sentences, and thus, this shows Adwan's incredibly agglutinating nature, as affixes could stack up to create and incredibly long verb that just might take a sentence to say in English.

Each aspect has a unique function that might not correlate with other aspects. Some aspects duo as adverbs, while some are purely temporal, and others can be expressed by separate verbs. The choice between using an affix instead of an adverb, or a verb is purely cultural, as there is no difference between Łorac ẃertan y šusko and Ẃertaceło y šusko; it is merely a matter rephrasing things.

Prospective
The prospective aspect states things that are going to happen, though these things don't necessarily qualify as being in the future. The closest thing in English is the comparison between I am going to eat and I will eat. However, it must be noted that certain forms exist in Adwan that don't exist in English, such as a future paired with a prospective, which comes out sounding like I will be going to eat in the sense that you will eat in the near future of the near future. Note, however, that the prospective aspect can only work if the verb is in the imperfective.
 * Past
 * 1) Imperfective: I was going to eat.
 * Present
 * 1) Imperfective: I'm going to eat.
 * Future
 * 1) Imperfective: I will be going to eat.

Causative
The causative aspect poses a problem for many, as the way it is structured is a little odd. Essentially, the causative aspect roughly translates to someone having something or someone do something. In English, there are various ways the causative is implied, such as She makes me study, or she has me study. However, causative verbs aren't only verbs in which something is being forced to do something. The causative often duos with the imperfect; that is to say, instead of saying I am eating, one could also say I have myself eating, though the meaning is usually alot less emphatic than it is in English.