Mésylþo

Mésylþo is my ongoing effort - one that's been scrapped and reworked a good number of times - to create the most beautiful language possible to my sensibilities.

=General information=

=Phonology=

Consonants
[ɦ] also exists in the language, transcribed as ‹h›. It intervenes in potential diphthong formation.

/r/ has many possible realizations, including a trill, rhoticization of the previous vowel, an alveolar approximant, or a uvular fricative.

Consonant clusters within syllables do not exist.

Vowels
Orthography for vowels is identical with the IPA values. Non-RTR ("tense") vowels occur before a consonantal coda.

Pitch-accent is represented by an acute accent over the nuclear vowel of the accented syllable.

Phonotactics
Mésylþo allows V, VC, CV, and CVC syllables, with no diphthongs.

Approximants only appear in onset position.

/ç/ only appears in coda position. When it appears after a consonant, the previous consonant is unpronounced and typically unwritten.

Vowels are broken up with /h/. A potential diphthong beginning with a high vowel is broken up with the appropriate approximant.

Posterior coronal fricatives assimilate progressively when adjacent.

Each syllable necessarily contains two morae - that is, syllables without a coda have a lengthened vowel.

Nasals in contact regressively assimilate. Person suffixes ending in [s] also behave this way.

Prosody
Mora-timed with a regular pitch-accent pattern: the initial tense syllable in a word takes pitch. This creates some minimal pairs with pitch when this syllable has /a/ as a nucleus, ie lácna (field[ACC]) vs lacná (to drown[AI]).

Only one vowel (the first) in a word may be tense.

=Morphology= Mésylþo has two grammatical genders, also called classes: animate and inanimate. These are by and large also semantic classes, but there are a number of nouns that are semantically inanimate while grammatically animate and so are better treated as genders.

"Root" refers to the word as shown in the lexicon: a single open-class morpheme. "Stem" refers to a word without affixes; that is, the open-class morpheme and any clitics.

Nouns
Nouns are inflected for person, case, animacy, and number, with the latter three features typically expressed together within a single suffix.

Eight cases exist: Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Instrumental/Associative (considered a single case), Locative, Comparative, Ablative, and Vocative, though for semantic reasons, not all exist for both animate and inanimate classes.

Many adjectives may also be attached to nouns in a clitic form, as a prefix closest to the root.

Animate Paradigm

 * The vocative is a postposed particle.

Person
Singular possessive markers are prefixes. Plural markers are suffixes paired with the appropriate singular marker.

Verbs
Verbs come in four different paradigms: Animate Intransitive (AI), Inanimate Intransitive (II), Transitive Animate (AI), and Transitive Inanimate (AI). Crucially, this means that verbs must be used appropriately for their paradigm: for instance, the root for throwing an inanimate noun such as a ball is hílo, while throwing an animate object (whether actually alive or not) is arrówe.

Verbs are obligatorily inflected for person and number (in a single prefix). Transitive verbs are obligatorily inflected for the person and number of the object (in a single suffix). They may also be inflected for tense, aspect, and voice as individual agglutinations.

The verb to be does not exist; a noun may be derived as a verb with the suffix vi immediately following the stem. In a similar fashion, to possess takes the form of the suffix lowe (plural lovø).

Person
Subject prefix is always furthest from the root. The plural suffix is paired with the singular prefix, before the object suffix.

Object
Object suffixes are always furthest from the root.

The object suffix placement is also that of the passive suffix -oc.

Adjectives
Adjectives can be treated as verbs ("to be X") but also tend to have clitic forms that prefix the noun, closest to the root. In the lexicon here, verbal adjectives will be marked with (v), and clitics with (c).

=Lexicon=

Demonstratives
Demonstratives precede the noun.

Numbers
Base-12 system. Numbers are prefixes or particles (cardinal). Ordinals are prefixes with the addition of a further prefix ðe.

Open Class
=Examples=

Random sentences
Ilmálcifuþhe.

1-neg-spit-pl

"We do not spit."

Ilmálþiwawalalihe ruf ilþiwawalálihe. 1-neg-hab-sing-pl but 1-always-sing-pl

"We never sing but we always sing."

The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11: 1-9)
Óma þírmar, waþáfiwes þinneþomésylþolowehøsil. (At this time, all people had one language.) Ic þáfiwes þisróvahøsil avássi þírmar, þisollóhilšal lácma Šinaršu ic þiséssisil amójis folá'š'šu. (And at the time people moved from the sea, they found a field in Shinar and lived in that place.) ''Ic þimmésylþohøsil þísana, "Ynnamóhø, mácnicsamøs ilmoncáchešali, ic ilǿcvoršuhešali." Ic þimmácnicsalovøhil sucénamøras, ic þimvíþumenlowehil morþarmar.'' (And they said to them, "You all should come, bricks we will make, and we will burn them much." And they had bricks for stones, and bitumen for mortar.) Amójis þáfiwes, þimmésylthohøsil, "Ynnamóhø, ilmoncáchešali $$ $$
 * 1) Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
 * 1) And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
 * 1) And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.
 * 1) Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth."
 * 1) And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.
 * 2) And the Lord said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
 * 3) Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech."
 * 4) So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
 * 5) Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.