Fén Ghír

"An bhé chuc cún dhér dó gil me dí. Och tel lé gérul del ténan me dí, lú chím lú ba lú lé bhoc del lór me dí cór tol. En gar dí me gon."-Lúdhí Fén ba Ógil Níradh.

"We take from Iron it's rightful prize. And if we sail to the wide world's end, all know that we'll return from the depths a thousand times. Death cannot keep us."-Old Fén War Song.

Introduction
This is my first attempt at a conlang, originally conceived as a part of a larger game that never took off. It is the only language from the game that reached anything nearing completion. Inspiration and influence were drawn both from my earliest impression of Irish while falling back on my stronger knowledge of English and French. The grammar was largely completed before I had much experience with linguistic theory or the conlanging community, thus while functional it may be somewhat backwards at times and occasionally lacks for easy terms to descripe itself.

General information
The language is designed for a conworld and as such aims to be as unique as possible. However, as both an early conlang and due to initial worries for aesthetic features as well as content it draws heavily on a few sources;

Irish Gaelic served as the largest inspiration, more obviously in regards to grammatical lenition, Head first and phonology in general. English and French are heavy influences as well due to my stronger knowledge of them.

Some aspects are new, largely aiming towards simplification while remaining unique; the isolating aspect, copula and relative clauses are unique to the language and derived from my desire to keep things as simple and categorical as possible.

Morphemes originally were derived by mixing French, Irish and English words beyond the point of recognition. This was later largely supplanted both with the use of randomized generators and compounds and other mutations derived from these morphemes.

Fén history
Derived from the Galav culture which spread far during the early Iron Age. The Fén came about as the Galav spread over what would come to be known as Nílíra or the Fén Highlands and eventually spread over the rest of the peninsula. The Fén are the only remaining people of the Galav culture that retain complete cultural independence under a High King. They are in turn divided into six petty kingdoms and the northern island colonies, with four major cultural sub-groups and dialects. Culturally, they are adopting the style of their imperial neighbours and loan words along with it.

To do
"Té dégep me gír cur tol fabhen pon éloc léc cíp dó dégep ghír."

"Language is always expanding to meet the needs of an expanding language."

Current Issues:


 * What purpose does accusative serve directly? Having been influenced heavily by Irish, Fén uses "cór", "del", "ce" and "dó" in the same way many languages use accusative. Currently in a lot of cases, it either emulates English or could be made into an adjective in many ways. It may be necessary to expand the case or else examine what uses remain for it.


 * Could there be issues if Perfective is lost?


 * Can Nér be removed in favour of Del? Hit against you v. Hit to you. Counter Example: "Race to the store against me", could this be worked around [or just the ambiguity of "Run to him" v. "Run against him"]

Also, vocabularly. Always more vocabularly.

Phonology
The following is a rough approximation of Címén Ghír, or "Sacred Fayn" which is used taught and used as a neutral dialect amongst the educated classes;

Irregularities
The dialect represented here is the formal version of Fén which is resistant to external sandhi and as the dialect from which the written language is derived, most changes are reflected in spelling. However, in the case of root words and compounds, it may be seen that some fronted vowels vowels are shifted before sonorants; i (/ɪ/) becomes í (/i/), e (/ɛ/) becomes é (/e/). In these cases an accent is usually added ignoring etymological rules.

This rule is also followed in the case of a and á, which are pronounced as /ɑ/ and /ɑ:/ respectively when prior to a sonorant with "a" indistinguishable from "o". This is the only Sandhi which is not recorded as some dialects offer alternate pronunciations which keep "a" distinguishable from "o".

Phonotactics
Compounds in Fén are constructed with strict sandhi rules, which reflect the fundamental phonotactic laws of Fén;

When the initial word ends with a consonant and the second begins with one, the consonant is dropped from the initial word and the consonant in the latter is lenited, if possible.

When the initial word ends with a vowel and the second begins with a vowel, the vowel is dropped from the initial word.

When the initial word ends with a consonant and the second begins with a vowel, the consonant and vowel become a few consonant.

When the initial word ends with a vowel and the second begins with a consonant, the structure remains unchanged.

In the above table, C represents a consonant, V a verb and L represents a lenitioned consonant when possible. Finally, bracketed letters are dropped.

Typical syllabic structure of a Fén word then is;

(V)-(CV)-(CV)-CVC-(V)

Lenition in these occurs in non-initial [and occasionally initial] consonants due to historic merging and thus cannot necessarily be predicted.

Exceptions occur rarely due to independent consonant vowels, where CVC-V-CVC structure can occur. This is rare however. Further exceptions may occur due to common endings such as én, on or an which serve more as suffixes and thus do not interfere with syllable structure.

Similarly, there are exceptions outside of these words, typically amongst words who merged prior Pyrittyl-Galavic split. These are sometimes visible due to a lack of internal lenition, though that may occur for other reasons.

Determiners
In Fén, Determiners double as pronouns if the meaning is of them is made clear. relative pronouns precede relative clauses, as in English. ex. "I will give my word to whoever merits it."

The initial determiner or proximal determiner, fills the role of both "this" and sometimes "the" in English, once established in a conversation the proximal determiner sticks and is used in cases even where "that" would be used in English by the other speaker.

The distal determiner serves to emphasize a contrast, thus would be used in sentences with a proximal determiner or shortly afterwards in order to posit some sort of relationship between the two or simple emphasize them in contrast to each other.

The alternative determiner is used in order to switch the proximal or distal determiner. Where in English this doesn't receive any special emphasis, in Fén the first time the subject which the term "this" refers to in a conversation is changed, an "Alternative Determiner" is used, in order to show as much.

Ígelá and ígel see much less use than the simpler pronouns, such as "lo" but in written word, they might follow in the sentence after a relative pronoun, though lo in that case is also acceptable and more common. Ígel may be used in a sense similar to "on" in French or "one" in English.

Quantifying determiners
It should be noted that these do not cause a noun to pluralize.

On their own, these give an amount of something that one possesses, when a possessive ba is inserted then it's a quantity of the total and is used similarly to the difference in English between "A lot" and "A lot of".

There are two import cases that this can precede Cídér and Fabhan.
 * If preceding Cídér it is a general statement on how likely something is, literally how much possibility it has. "Éna ba cídér" is "rarely".
 * If preceding Fabhan it refers both how long until something occurs and how often something occurs; "(Lé bhé dén dir) Ne Én Fabhan (cur ít)" Means "(This will be done in) No Time" while "''(Bhé dén dir) Ne Én ba Fabhen (cur ít)'" means "This was never done" or more literally "This is done none of the time".

Verb and noun phrases
Fén language branches leftwards on Verb/Noun Phrases. Adjectives, Adverbs and Possessive precede the Verb/Noun.

Verb phrase
+Quantity in this case refers to the number of times an action is performed rather than the number of people performing it; "Hit twice" would be used rather than "Hit two times"

Verbs are modified by the adjectives preceding them and since grammatically an adjective can often be used as a noun and vica versa, the noun in a verb phrase has the first possible consonant aspirated and always precedes either a preposition or if it is a part of a list, a subcoupla.

Verbs are followed by the Subject [Accusative Noun]. In cases where the division is unclear [due to the verb doubling as a temporal adverb for example] is when the preposition "ag" is used to make the Accusative.

Noun phrase
Nouns work in a manner similar to verbs. A particular quality in nouns is that they are either preceded by a preposition, a relative determiner, a subcoupla or the end of the sentence.

Lenition
If a noun or verb is preceded by number, adjectives or an adverb, then lenition occurs in the first consonant.

Sight->'Cím'

Dark Sight (A Foreboding Vision)->"Pél chím."

Very dark sight-> 'Bér pél ch'ím"

Copula
A Sentence may begin with a Copula, this gives the context of whether the sentence is positive, negative or comparative. 'An' is often dropped if the speaker feels that the sentences are clearly divided by his tone. Someone speaking fast, with an accent or with a complicated sentence and meaning, will use "An". Writers will use it to create a sense of formality, especially in accounts and reports. Sometimes it will be added in order to emphasize the division or contrast with the between to sentences. In English it might be directly translated as "Yet" or "Though", but it can also be used in a formal list prefacing important items, where "Therefore" or "Thus" could be used.

These serve as basic contrasts and correlatives, In and On are often used to imply causality between two sentences though technically only state the correlation of two clauses. Depending on the truth value of a the first sentence, it can either be a causal "thus" statement or a conditional "if" statement.

Subcopula
Subcopula are for individual causes of negatives or causal statements within verb or noun phrases that do not affect the truth value of the entire sentence.

Grammatical order
Fén syntax is relatively flexible in principle; each noun phrase begins with a preposition and ends with a noun. There is a strong sense of natural order in the language, which is as follows;

Using these terms, the Fén sentence order becomes;

Verbal clauses
Verbs are given tenses in a fashion similar to English; Have, Is or Go precede the verb in various orders to give it a tense.

All adverbs not listed here are categorized as "Other". These adverbs make up the majority and do not describe the Mood, Voice or Time of an object.

It shoud also be noted in that Adverbal order is important particularly in terms of mood and voice adverbs;

Where adverbs precede the order of the mood adverb, that mood or voice adverb is affected rather than the verb itself.

Perfective verbs are expressed with time [cébh/cóbh]

Rather than exhaustively provide examples over the list,


 * colspan="2"| "''Rún re me di.'"
 * colspan="2"| /run rɛ mɛ dɪ/
 * Rún||re||me||di
 * love||||||
 * colspan="6"|I love you.
 * }
 * love||||||
 * colspan="6"|I love you.
 * }
 * }




 * colspan="2" | "Té rún ít me di."
 * colspan="2"| /te run it mɛ dɪ/
 * té||rún||ít||me||di
 * love||it||||
 * colspan="6"|Either "I'm loving it." or "It is the case that I love it"
 * }
 * love||it||||
 * colspan="6"|Either "I'm loving it." or "It is the case that I love it"
 * }
 * }




 * colspan="2" | "Med bhé rún re me di"
 * colspan="2" | /mɛd ve run rɛ mɛ dɪ/
 * med||bhé||rún||re||me||di
 * love||||||
 * colspan="6"|"I wish I had loved you."
 * }
 * love||||||
 * colspan="6"|"I wish I had loved you."
 * }
 * }




 * colspan="2" | "Bhé té med rún re me di cébh bhocá."
 * colspan="2" | /ve te mɛd run rɛ mɛ dɪ cev wɑka:/
 * bhé||té||med||rún||re||me||di||cébh||bhocá||
 * love||||||||before||then
 * colspan="6"|"I had wanted to love you until then."
 * }
 * love||||||||before||then
 * colspan="6"|"I had wanted to love you until then."
 * }
 * }

Vocative noun phrase
The person who is being addressed usually precedes the rest of the sentence. This is particularly used when addressing to get their attention someone;

It may also be worked into the sentence, preceding the subject, re [thou], ré [you] or dé [we]. This is used to clarify or single out a subject;

Nomative noun phrase
This is the subject or actor in a sentence. It usually comes around the end of a sentence, unless the location or time of the action is being framed.

Nomative nouns are marked with "me".

It should be noted that in "to be" sentences [which use té as the principle verb] there is usually no agent or actor. This is covered in the "té" section.

Accusative noun phrase
Accusative nouns are the direct objects of the sentence, which follow the verbs immediately. They are identified largely by syntax as they follow the verb immediately. There is a vestigal "ag" but this is not used except in rare cases of ambiguity.

Indirect noun phrases
This refers to most cases of indirect objects which usually immediately follow Accusative nouns. In this category are both dative and instrumental. The difference between the two being order alone; Dative follows after Accusative, while Instrumental and Relative will follow after Dative or the relevant noun.

Framing noun phrases
These are similar to a dependant clauses in English, though necessarily not conditional; these frame the place, time and reason why an action happened as well as an original source. It should be noted that if a place is part of the action or only partial, then that place should be either an Accusative/Dative [I went to the field] or relative [I went to the person who was at the field].


 * Instrumental phrase; Objects which are used as instruments in order to perform an action.
 * Locative phrase; Objects which indicate where the action is taking place.
 * Temporal phrase; Objects which indicate when the action is taking place. Closely related to Locative.
 * Causal phrase; Objects which indicate for what reason an action is taking place.
 * Perspective phrase; Object which is the source of the information.

The above four are markers for dependant clauses which frame the action and thus typically come after the noun. For poetic reasons or reasons of suspense, these may be shifted about just as in English.

Ce, Cu & Cór
Words following Cór are the ones which are "under" the words preceding it while similarly, those following Ce are the ones over the subject. This is applied consistently within Fén.

Thus if someone were in an unfortunate, horse related, accident and wanted to signal their location they would say,

Or alternatively, if asked why she wasn't helping to clear the wreckage, a quicker witted survivor might declare

If soldier participating in the Trojan Wars had a dim witted friend looking around the camp for him, he might find context to utter such a phrase as,

In addition to this cór, cu and ce have more metaphorical uses as well.

Cór is often used to refer to qualities, particularly transient ones, which are related to an object.

Cu is used for a more existential link between objects, one not related to qualities but rather something inseparable to person proper. Often the phrases in which cu are used, rather than cór are ones which make use of a determiner and make a statement about being a particular thing rather than having a certain quality (or set there of).

Ce by contrast is may be used in to refer to a subject of an action or discussion, like how we would look at something or talk about something.

compared to,

If one were to maintain the order and say, Té balin rinob ce tílan ít, it would be interpreted as "[There] is bad writing on this book" which would be a strange construction but it could be interpreted as meaning "The reviews of this book are poorly done" [though that would generally be pluralized to "rinoba" or "writings"].

Finally, cu can play two roles here, first is if "weak writing" is not followed by a determiner, in which case it retains the more general meaning of in;

Which conveys that part of the book, though not all of it, contains weak or poor writing. However under other circumstances, cu serves to mark two things as fundamentally inseparable. For this an absent minded Dóthan looking over some old notes and remarking what tripe it is, Dim if he were in the room, might declare to her;

One final point with these particular prepositions, which does carry over to others, is that there is an important difference between the accusative/dative and locative sense of these prepositions. Those that precided the subject, are accusative or dative and those that follow are locative.

Del, Do & Debh
These mostly relate to the English use of "To", "From" and "Towards" though there are some exceptions which will be covered as I remark on them.

Rel & Cun
Rel and Cun are comparatives, roughly analogous to "than" and "like". These prepositions follow after the thing they thing they compare.

An example of this might be gleamed from a conversation between Paruc & Donil meeting their friend after his first day of work as a stable hand;

Rú & Núr
Rú indicates a method or tool used to accomplish a task was done with [not "bhe"] rather than person who did it or what one is near.

Núr meanwhile fills the purpose of "near" or when one is "by" something else.

Tonúr, Núr & Cu
Tonúr, Núr and Cu can at times serve similar but distinct roles. This section serves to clarify both the different between them and the general use of all of them.

An important distinction between English and Fén is that tonúr refers more specifically towards "fencing" or setting up a barrier around something, encircling might be a slightly closer term in this sense. Meanwhile, less strict sense of "surround" is filled by cu.

Thus, a Fén Comic Book villain who's been ambushed by heroes might shout to his henchmen during battle;

While after defeat, he might bemoan the incompetence of his henchmen by shouting

Nédén & Nér
Fairly different but have an similar inherent contrast to them.

Nér is used in the sense of something which resists the action; You fight against someone or hit a book against a table. "Del'' is an alternative, at least dialectically; "Fight to him" or "Hit book to table" but it's a weaker contrast and can lead to ambiguity; "I raced north against you" using "del" rather than "nér" could also mean "I raced northwards to you".

Nédén is something facing another thing, especially from opposite a threshold. It's more complex in terms of when it is used, but is also rare.

Cóbh, Cébh & Cur
Relatively self-explanitory. May expand on the difference [of lack there of] between time/place but it seems pretty well congruent to English.

Cóbh may be used to mean before or until, which one it is depends entirely on whether the verb is progressive. A non-progressive verb simples means "I did it before", progressive means "I was doing it until...".

The difference for the others is less noticeable, with cur it simply implies a process that began before and will end after. Cébh implies that one will have already been doing the thing at this point, "I will have a drink after you left" vs. "I will be drinking after you're old and grey" [usually used to imply "still" in this sense, but not necessarily].

Pon & Tén
Not overly complicated but give a reason and a point of view.

First to note is that pon is followed with éloc when the reason is a subclause [which is most of the time] an example would be, "I did this because of what you said before". It isn't when it is followed by a single word or noun-phrase, thus "I did this for you" or "You should have done it for that reason" would omit éloc

Tén is something that would be translated as "According to" or something along those lines, it makes the sentence subjective to a degree.


 * 1S: Used to subjectify, "I think".
 * 1P: Used to clarify or expound on rhetoric, "We say that..."
 * 2S/P: Used to clarify "You're saying?", "You said" [i.e. "You said X previously!"].
 * 3S/P: Used to subjectify, "According to him..."
 * 4S/P (Ígel/ibh): Used to generalize, "Its said that..."

Ba
Ba is a possessive Marker, which until any other preposition in Fén is preceded the genative case that it creates and further is unique in that it may appear at any point in the syntax relative to other prepositions without altering the meaning of it

Bhe (ne)
Bhe is like "Ba" remarkable in that it can occur anywhere in syntax. However, the word it marks, unlike Ba, follows it.

A "ne" preceding the bhe marks it as a negative, and thus should be translated as "without".

Fén and clauses
In Fén a great deal of focus are put upon various clauses in a sentence. There are three basic types which occur for different reasons;

Primary clauses
These are essentially a full sentence on their own but they may be linked with the above copula. They typically begin with a copula or a verb (in cases where the copula would be dropped) and conclude with the subject. These are essentially sentences on their own and follow typical word order;

I give you the ball.

becomes;

Bél lirod del re me di.

Dependent clauses
In Fén there are two types of dependent clauses which are quite distinct from each other. One depends upon the initial copula, which often make the rest of the sentence dependant on them. These sorts of sentences involve two full clauses, where the second is dependent on the first;

The other form of dependant clause in Fén is one which rather than describe a distinct action that the first is dependent on, rather describe the context in which the action takes place. These involves reasons, adding perspective to a statement or giving the time/place a sentence takes place in. These Clauses begin preposition and end either the whole sentence or else with another clause marking another dependant clause:

In some cases there may be multiple dependant clauses;

The order in these dependant clauses is usually: Locative-Temporal-Causal-Perspective.

Relative clauses
In Fén relative clauses are rather common and often mark another action within the sentence. These begin with a relative determiner, however there are no strict rules on there ending. Verbally this is usually distinguished by tone, while writers may use commas or expect their readers to understand based on context. 'ci and 'cibh are gaining popularity as verb and written endings in some faster speaking dialects, but are not yet considered standard in Fén.

These relative clauses can sometimes be worked into the shorter form of dependant clauses to express cause which is something rare in English, the result is something like this;

Although, it could also be expressed with dependant clause using a conditional copula;

It is also important to note that perhaps more often than in English, these relatively clauses may build on top of each other;

Subcoupla follow the relative determiner that starts the clause;

Pluralization

 * a is added to a verb to pluralize it if it ends in a consonant, if it ends with a vowel, bh (to pronounced as a "v" rather than a "w") is used. If an uncountable quantifier is used before it (Many, Few, Some), it is not pluralized. Noun-Adjective/Verb-Adverb.

Snake->Neren

Snakes->Nerena

Mountain->Nila

Mountains->Nilabh

Diminutive

 * -íg can be added to the end of a word to emphasize smallness or cuteness.
 * bé- may be used as a slightly more respectful form amongst friends, essentially meaning "my good..."

"Michael"->"Mikey"

"Mical"->"Micalíg"/"Micíg".

Yes/No
The Fén language does not have a term for yes or no but rather will reply with an shortened affirmative or negative, most simply, "Té ít"or a fitting determiner depending on the situation.

"En té ít'"-Negative. "An té ít" -Double Negative [Similar to French "si"]

Té
There is no active noun clauses with the verb Té. Instead an accusative object is either confirmed as existing, compared to another object or positioned around on.

This makes sentences take a rather passive appearance compared to English particularly when it comes to describing qualities, which Fén divide into 3 categories;