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. 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. The singular cases use the strong core vowel for most cases, the weak vowel for the reciever and owner, and a prolonged core vowel for the few and many forms.

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

Showing that a noun is posessed.
If a noun is owned by/part of another noun, Its stem is modified by a suffix. Notice how in the declination charts there are two possible endings for a noun in the owner case. Although in modern days these suffixes simply agree with the animacy of the noun, in the past they indicated whether the owned object was removable or not. Nonremovable posessions were indicated by the inanimate owner suffix -ngo, and indiacted unremovable things like your arm, your mother, or your feelings. The animate suffix indicated things that you bought/took and could be easily given away, like your dog or your house.

Locational suffixes from the owner case
Locational suffixes are added to the genitive stem of a noun

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.

Step 1: Mood and transitivity
In Behru, mood and transitivity are fused categories. Moods are associated with either a weak or strong stem of the verb. The weak stem indicates uncertartainity.

Formation of the strong basic stem Formation of the strong derived intransitive stem Formation of the weak basic stem Formation of the weak intransitive stem Note: verb roots can be divided into 2 groups: roots that can be either transitive or intransitive (like cét)

and true intransitive verbs (like nèb). True intransitive roots use only the strong basic and weak intransitive stem forms. They can never be used in a transitive sense in the active voice. These roots are listed in bold in the vocabulary section, and may end in the ordinarily forbidden consonants b,f,v,d,s,z,c,j,sh,zh,g,gh.

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. A transitive verb also agrees with its object in person, subject, and number. . 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.) The fourth person endings are used to name a vague, distant, or unknown subject. 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 adjectives. They agree with the noun being described in number, and use the intransitive stem. They are placed before the modified noun. When descriptive verb endings are not used, a participle is implied. Resultant state endings are used to indicate an action has already happened to the described object

An illustration of the three ways to describe nouns with verbs

lwóhmro kàrt: rock that is being heated up

lwóhmlo kàrt: rock that is heating uo

lwómlu kàrt: Hot rock

lwómru kàrt: Rock that has become heated

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.

Passive formation formation
In order to form the weakened stem of a passive verb

Permissive voice
The permissive indicates that an outside force allowed an action to happen. Said force is also in the "cause" case.

It is indicated by internal reduplication The weak stems of the causative and permissive forms are formed the same as the passive.

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 sentence structure
A Behru transitive verb agrees with both its object and subject in person and number. The subject of a Behru sentence is unaltered, and the object is put in the receiver case

A transitive sentence: shún kr`du zòsrozha

Man-subj rock-few-obj break-3rdperson-one-subj-3rdperson-few-obj

Gloss: The man breaks some rocks

Because transitive sentences agree with the subject and object, Behru does not have pronouns, as they would be redundant. A sentence consisting of only the verb would look like this: cézvung (we talked to you)

Intransitive sentence structure
An intransitive verb in Behru may either be intransitive by default or derived from a transitive verb. A transitive verb agrees with its subject, which may be either in the basic or receiver cases. The verb still agrees with it in person and number, though. Here is an example of the differance in meaning depedning on the case used

basic case: shùn dwéhnlo "The man cooled off" (intentionally) vs. shü´hnë dwéhnlo "The man cooled off (because it was cold outside). This is why Behru cesik is considered to have "fluid ergativity" as linguistics say.

"Bu" particle
Verbs associated with the bu particle usually have to do with opinions or thoughts. cét (to speak, to say) and hmèn also use thebu particle like quotes, it marks off the subject thought about or the words said. In most verbs, bu indicates the target of an opinion. Bu may encapsulate a subordinate clause without using abstract nouns like zo or ka. An example would be: "náwa së´mvarime" bu mü´klë dòn cèsraya.

"Mom can't see us" the kid said to his dog.

Passive sentence structure
In a passive sentence, the subject is deleted, the passive verb agrreing in person and number with the object instead. The object is left in the basic case, rather than the receiver case. The subject may optionally be indicated through the means case. The passive can indicate two things, a vagueness about the subject, and a dissapointment about the action referred to on the part of the speaker. When the passive form is used with an intransitive verb, it is always used to indicate dissapointment.

A passive sentence: mùgvo kàrt zryònesro (The rock was broken by the dog) or, deleting the subject: kàrt zryònesro (the rock was broken). Even the object can be removed: zryònesro (it was broken) Usage with the intransitive: kàrt zònetlo: the rock broke (speaker wishes that didn't happen.)

Causative and Permissive sentence structure
In a causative or permissive, a third player, the causer, put in the cause case, either forced (in a causative form) or allowed(in a permissive form) an action to happen

an example of a causative sentence: shúnwe rùnayònën "cálmu" bu dòn cwèsrozha: The person made the child say to the other men "I'm fine".

The direction case
The direction case inicates the destination of a verb of motion, or the goal of another action.

The location case
The location case indicates the location or context where an action takes place.

The origin case
the origin case indicates the origin of an action, or the reason for an action, sometimes meanin "because"

Conjunctions
tu: sentence a but sentence b

fa: sentence a thus sentence b

lya sentence a or sentence b

Behru cesik uses only these three conjunctions independantly, most other sentence linking is done through clause subordination.

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?"

Example text
Sározòng màdzò lóhnro tu, cérazo gi. From order there is peace, but also stagnation.