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 1 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 An exception, of All free roots except particles have a suffix or infix of some sort indicating its 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 rising or falling ´ or `. Along with this, the vowel carrying a tone also carries a strength, an aspect of the root which carries grammatical information, and this strength can be on 1 of 3 levels. Polysyllabic compound Words carry the vowel strength on the second to last syllable.

The vowel i can be found as a non prolonged sound in some bound morphemes, but never occurs as the vowel of an unbound morpheme.

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.

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
 * }

Noun Morphology
Behru Nouns may be modified to show the nouns role in the sentaence. This modification is shown through vowel strength, final consonant mutation, and suffixes. A nouns number is also shown in this way, and there is no distinction between number and role markers. The standard Hedri dialect has 9 sentence roles and 3 numbers attached to the noun fusionally, but several dialects to the North have fused many postpsitional suffixes to the location suffix to form anywhere between 10 and 19 roles. The three numbers of Behru are one, few, and many. The few number is used for small groups of things, pairs, and a cluster of things. The many number implies that there are too many of a noun to be easily counted. There is also a mass noun suffix, -mik, with its own endings, but grammatically it is treated effectively identically to the one number. Nouns, excluding irregular ones, can be divided into the following declension groups: k, t, n, ik, ot, l, a, i, e, r. The declensions may also be divided into animate, inanimate, and abstract/mass, each of which use slightly different endings.

Vowel declension
(note) using vowel sandhi, the endings for all declensions can be predicted based on the a declension endings.)

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. Another feature of Behru verbs is exculsive transitivity. A Behru verb MUST change form in order to change its transitivity, unlike english, where most verbs can have their transitivity changed. A Behru intransitive verb differs from the English verb as it may agree with either the subject or the object, and uses different sets of endings for both. An intransitive verb agreeing with the object gives a sense of inevitability to the action, like the difference between "I slept" and "I collapsed on the bed after an exhausting day." Aspects, moods, transivity, and tenses are indicated with changes in stem. Stem changes in a regular verb, cet, to speak, and a regular vowel verb, mala, to move, are shown here. Malë would mean "I moved something" and malal would mean "I moved over there". Cedl is a nonsense verb form, it is shown simply to show the morphological changes in a regular consonant verb. After the stem is changed, person-number endings must be applied. Some moods are only compatible with certain tenses, for example, the intention mood is only used with the future stem, and the varying command/ request moods are exclusively present stem.

Step 1: Mood
Present tense As you can see, there are several processes capable of changing a behru verb stem. The first is weakening. Weakening is used to form the irrealis stem, which is used for all statements not known to be true. To get the present stem, the final vowel or stop is weakened. In order to get the possible condition stem, both the stem vowel and final stop must be weakened. To weaken a stem, vowels are reduced to their weakest forms and final stops become fricatives. For intransitive verbs, the l is removed and the stem vowel is weakened. The stem then has mood markers attached to it. Notice how some mood markers have their own tone. These mood markers are infact bound verb roots, which are attached to the possibility stem. This list is by no means exhaustive in how many compound verbs can be formed this way. Intransitive forms are formed by suffixing l and voicing the preceding stop. The command form is formed uniquely. The command form strengthens the root vowel, and suffixes -la to intransitive verbs. The tone of the root is then shifted to the last syllable. Notice how malal is contracted to mall before mood endings. "Pure" intransitive verbs are intransitive by default, and have the marker l removed from all endings.

Step 2: Tense
Past tense, indicating things that have already happened, is indicated with the infix le. le is added before the final consonant of the present transitive stem, present intransitive stem, or either form of the irrealis stem. In the irrealis stem, le is reduced to l and if the preceding vowel is ë, it is elided Unless the final consonant is already an l, in which case nothing happens. Future tense, for actions that may happen in the future, is formed similarily, with the infix ne (weakend to nî). Mood markings are then added. (note: request and command forms are exclusively present tense.)

Step 3: Aspect
Aspect is the simplest part of the Behru verb. It is indicated, with one exception, with unchanging prefixes. The most common aspect, which indicates a continous action, is created through reduplication. To reduplicated, the first consonant and core vowel are attached before the stem of the verb. The verb may then be conjugated as normal.

Examples

cèt: talk cecès: is talking cecî`s: might be talking cecèles: was talking

brúvi: watch, supervise bubrúvi: is watching

Adverbs of frequency
mo-always

chyo-usually, typically

nan-sometimes

fu-rarely

kwa-never

Speed
hexe-qickly

glyoglyo-slowly

Other
kan- indicates an action that has been finished by a certain time (used less frequently than the english perfect)

pa-indicates a unexpected, breif, and violent action, pazòdl is often taken to mean "explode"

Subject Agreement
The Behru verb agrees with its preformer, or subject, in person and number. The subject endings are optional to attach if the subject is in first or second person, but not for third person. The Behru verb endings are the most important part of Behru honorifics. As you can see, every ending except fourth person has at least two forms. Humble form is used to lower onesself in very polite conversations, and is often used by salespeople to humble themselves before customers. Honorable form expresses great respect, and is paired with humble form. The prefix yo- is used in front of nouns to give them respect, similar to how the respectful form is used with verbs. In the first person endings, the few and many endings carry different implications. mëmalalizh would mean "we are moving" (just us) but mëmalalye would mean "we are moving" (inculding the people being spoken to.) Because the many form means "all of us", there is no humble form, as that would sound insulting to the people being spoken to. In polite conversation, the first and second person markers are replaced with the fourth person endings, to avoid sounding prideful or accusatory. The fourth person endings are used to name a vague, distant, or unknown subject as well. These endings are used to indicate an action directed to the self, "cèleshu" would mean "I said to myself."

Descriptive verbs
Descriptive verbs are a special form of intransitive verb that are used to show ongoing states, like "the boiling rock" or permanent states, like "the rock is hard". Descriptive verbs function as both adjectives and participles. They agree with the noun being described in number, and use the intransitive stem. They are placed before the modified noun.

Voice
Behru verbs have three voices, passive, causative, and permissive. The causative and passive voices may be fused to make the causative passive, and the permissive voice may fuse with the passive as well.

Causative formation labialization
The second voice is the causatve voice. It indicates that the subject was made to do another action by an external force, which is put in the "cause" case. In the causative voice, thr initial consonant is not palatalized but labialized, and the core vowel is prolonged. labialization consists of adding a w. Before some consonant clusters, a theme vowel is added, but labialization is much easier than palatalization. In this voice, the core vowel is of medium strength

Last consonant>theme vowel

W,b,p,f,v, adds o (and wo changes to o)

y adds e and y disspears

Regular formation

Cèt cwèt

O formation

Mála mowála, brúvi brovü´vi (note Sandhi)

E formation

Gyámo gewámo

Permissive formation: internal reduplication
The permissive indicates that an outside force allowed an action to happen. Said force is also in the "cause" case. The permissive has the most unusual formation. It uses a variant of internal reduplication. To form the permissive, first take the inital consonants and core vowel of a stem, like the brú in brúvi, then add a voiced fricative of the same class as the final consonant in the cluster, so brú to brúzh, then add another copy of the core vowel and the ending, so brúvi to brúzhuvi. The core vowel is strong (default strength)

Last cluster consonant>added internal consonant

b,p,f,v,w adds v fúwi to fúvuwi

t,d,s,z,l adds z zòt zòzot

c,j,sh,zh,r,y adds zh cèt to cèzhet

K,g,x,gh,h adds gh kàsa kàghasa.

Combining Causative and Permissive with the passive
To combine passive with the causative or permissive, one first changes the stem to causative or permissive, then palatalizes it. Example: Kàsa to kwàsa to kuyàsa, brúvi to brúzhuvi to bryúzhuvi. The core vowel is prolonged.

Deriving verbs to nouns
The most common way to change a verb into a noun is adding the suffix -ka to the end of a fully conjugated verb. Ka conjugates as a normal "a" noun, despite being only one syllable. Ka is used in a great variety of sentance constructions. For example, "rùnalu shùnza mási cèt ka céshro" "She doesn't like the act of speaking in front of other people" glossed "she dislikes speaking in front of other people."

Another suffix, do, means "time". "vén wálina dohi múk hyèliphro" "at the time the woman slept the dog ate" glossed "the dog ate while the woman slept"

A third suffix/ noun, "zo" means thing. An example of usage would be "céshro zo mecésu" "Things he likes I don't like."

The fourth suffix, hen, means "er" in english. It is attached to the stem of the verb only. Remember sandhi when adding it

cèt "speak" plus hen would be "cèsen" "speaker. mála "move" plus hen would be "málahen" "mover".

The fifth suffix, hik, is used in the same way as hen. hik means "way of doing something". It is often used in questions that would be translated with how. "Béhru cèsik gáluk fi" "What is the way to speak Behru?" "How do you speak Behru."

Transitive vs. Intransitive
The most basic structure of a Behru sentence is a statement. This is an example of one "kàrt zothlo", the rock broke. Intransitive verbs form the simplest sentences. They only require two "heads". A head is a noun or a verb. The transitivity of a verb in Behru is unchanging, unlike English. Consider the English sentences "the rock broke" and "the rock broke the window". As you can see, in English, the number of heads can change the meaning of a verb. An intransitive verb uses two heads, and indicates an action that happnenes/ is done by the subject alone, to itself. An intransitive verb can have its noun head in either the "doer" or "reciever" cases. Most of the time the "doer" case is used for the noun of an intransitive verb, but when the receiver case is used, as sense of inevitability is given. "kr`t zòthlo" would mean "the rock broke"(as an inevitable result of something else) as apposed to "kàrt zòthlo" which lacks that nuance. A transitive verb adds a third head, the object. in a transitive verb, the subject does something to the object. The second type of Behru verb is the transitive type. a transitive sentence would be "kàrt zòs'hro" meaning "the rock broke (something)". "But wait?" you say, "you just said transitive verbs need three heads, a subject, verb, and object." Well, actually, that sentence did have three heads, and sounded grammatically correct, to a Behru speaker. Because "zòt" is in its transitive form, the listener would understand that the rock was breaking something, rather than itself, and whatever that something is simply wasn't stated. This is a very common thing to do in Behru, so common that the language lacks a proper third person pronoun.

Bitransitive
The third type of verb is the bitransitive. The most common fully bitransitive verbs in behru are "chówa" give, and "sùk", recieve. These verbs have many alternate forms depending on the relationships of the giving and receiving parties, but all of these variations carry the same meaning and transitivity. These verbs are conjugated as transitive verbs always, despite having a unique structure. "Chówa" and "sùk" require a subject, object, and direction or origin. Several verbs have optional bitransitive structures as well, should they deal with the movement of objects, like mála.

Directional intransitive
The fourth kind of transitivity is really a subset of intransitive verbs. Intransitive verbs of movement, like "xòp", run, may take a direction, like "kr`tsi xobli", I ran to the rock.

"bu" transitive
The fifth, and final, transitivity class, and the most unique, is the "bu" class. "bu" verbs require an entire subordinate clause as their object, and are conjugated as transitive. They are so named as the subordinate clause they take as object is marked by the postposition "bu". A bu verbs would be "máya", hope (for). An example of usage would be "kr`te málil bu máyu", I hope they move the rocks.

Passive
The passive has the function of making a transitive verb subjectless, without making the verb intransitive. For obvious reasons, passive verbs are always transitive. Passive verbs agree with their objects, and their objects are put in the "doer" case. Here is an example of the nuance of the passive voice. Transitive:"kr`t zòs'hro" the rock broke (something) "kr`t zothlo" the rock broke and "kàrt zlyòthlo" the rock is broken (by something). In some cases, the object in a passive sentence is kept in the object case, this gives a sense of regret and disdain from the speaker, "kr`t zlyòthlo" would mean "the rock is broken" (why did it have to happen?).

Chaining nouns and verbs
Behru nouns and verbs may be chained in a variety of ways with post position particles.The simplest way to chain nouns together is to add "ce" to the last word in the list. Only the final word is declined, with the preceding words left in the subject singular. An example:"yóng kl`msa ce dòn" "(that is) the man and woman's child." If one wishes to specify the number of all the nouns listed, ce is added to every noun in the list (this adds emphasis to the "together" aspect of the nouns). For example; "ñàwa ce múzh ce níklun" "That bird and those dogs are both short." For verbs, the particle "ce" is not required, instead, the first verb is left in stem form and the second verb is conjugated, for example: " Hyèp kàsahro" "He eats and drinks." Most compound verbs are formed in this way as well. To convey the sense of "or" when using a choice between two nouns, replace "ce" with "lya" (only use this construction for nouns) It works the same as "ce". Example: "Jë`mig byë´k lya hyîfika" "Are you eating meat or fruit?"