Valannō

Valannō Lyore or Valannic is the language of Valanne, and lingua franca of the main lands and regions around the Holy Sanctuary of Ilarúnen.

Classification and Dialects
Valannic is an agglutinative, polysynthetic and highly inflected language. The classical form Valannō pertheä, which will be the main subject of this page, has many features that will seem familiar to those who have basic knowledge of the Proto-Indo-European languages and of Uralic/Altaic languages. It means that nouns and adjectives are inflected in up to eleven cases, nouns and verbs have four numbers, including a dual form, and verbs are conjugated for all grammatical verb-related features. There are rudimental traits of vowel harmony, which stem from the Proto-Valannic language. A few features from Bantu languages, mainly Kiswahili, may also occur, such as word classes and implementation of (in)direct object and preposition markers within the verbs.

With the passing of time, more vulgar and simplified variations have emerged, mainly the vernacular Low-Valannic tongue Valannō mangreä ( 'vulgar Valannic'), spoken in the valleys around Mēoran. I will eventually add some notes on the differences between the 'book' language and the common spoken language.

Consonants
Consonants in Valannic are always pronounced as given in the table below. Voiced consonants at the end of a word or syllable for instance, will not lose its voiced pronunciation. However, some consonants may undergo changes in conjugations or in contraction of phonemes. This depends heavily on the consonants that they interact with, or a shift of word accent. Mostly voiceless plosives may become aspirated or voiced in such cases.

Geminated consonants are pronounced longer than their single equivalents, but do not undergo other changes. The following consonants appear also in geminated form: mm, nn, ll, rr, pp, tt, cc, ss.  'gg ' is found in transliteration to the Latin alphabet, representing /ŋg/, but is not part of the Valannic script

When two consonants are in the same box, they represent the voiceless (left) and voiced (right) variation of the same sound. The rh is an aspirated version of the regular alveolar tap.

All of the above consonants are represented in the alphabet by one letter, geminated consonants will have a diacritical mark to identify them as geminated. Some consonants have a labialised equivalent, which do not qualify as a single sound, even though they are represented by a single letter. These consonants are: Note that in the latinised representation, /qu/ and /gu/ are written with a u and not a w.

Vowels
Valannic has 7 vowels and 9 diphthongs.

All vowels have a short and a long equivalent. The long vowels carry a macron to indicate its lenghtened pronunciation. The length of the short vowels can be under the influence of its position before a stop or a liquid/sibilant consonant, but so will their long equivalents. In pertheä, there is little dynamic in pronunciation of vowels, because vowel length is important to distinguish words that look alike. However, in closed syllables (ones ending in a consonant or consonant cluster ) a will tend to be pronunciated more backed /ä/, while e and o will tend to be pronunciated more open, /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ respectively.

All written vowels are pronounced. Lyore is pronounced with two syllables: Lyo - re. /'ʎo.ɾe/

Diphthongs
Valannic has 9 falling diphthongs. All diphthongs appear in a short and long version, in which the lenghtening is expressed in the first part of the diphthong: In conjugations of nouns and verbs, and a few other words, one will sometimes find a tilde ~ over a letter. A tilde also lengthens a vowel sound, but slightly more melodical. These vowels or diphthongs are the result of contraction or ellipsis of phonemes when conjugated, e.g:
 * quenāin (inf. to grow) -> aorist equẽinan (I grew)
 * auvāin (inf. to wake (s.o. up)) -> aorist hãuvan (I woke)

Phonotactics
Not all combinations of consonants are allowed in Valannic, though the amount of phonemes is significant.

The nucleus of a phoneme is always a vowel, which can be any of the above listed vowels or diphthongs. Though a single vowel can technically form an entire phoneme, most phonemes also contain at least one consonant, typically preceding the vowel. Hence the typical structure of a phoneme or syllable is:

(C)(C) C V (C)(C).

Allowed onsets are vowels, diphthongs and essentially all consonant letters from the alphabet, including 'ng ', ' ps ', 'ts ' and 'x '. Geminated consonants can appear as an onset withín a word, but never at the beginning of a word. Consonant clusters can be non-palatal plosives followed by liquids r and l, including the aspirated plosives. Of these clusters, the ones with a voiceless non-palatal, non-aspirated plosive can also be preceded by an s. The labiovelar qu sound preceded by an s is also allowed as an onset.

The coda of a phoneme is mostly a vowel, but consonants are common. Fairly common consonant endings are a nasal n or m, a liquid l or r, or a sibilant s. Fricative or plosive endings are also allowed. Non-palatal plosives tend towards their voiced equivalents. The voiceless equivalents will tend towards the the fricative, aspirated sounds. The velar nasal sound /ŋ/ is also allowed.

The only consonant clusters at the end of a phoneme are nd, ld and rd. At the end of a word, these phonemes change to ns, ls and rs respectively. Earlier phonemes in Proto-Valannic may have been more complex clusters, but these all seem to have been simplified to less complex sounds.

Complex consonant clusters are allowed in Valannic words, and it would go too far to make a table of every single one of them. However, these consonant clusters will only occur as a merging of multiple syllables, and thus phonemes, within a single word, and when broken down into syllables, they will obey the above rules.
 * Ereb Umbreon [ 'e.ɾeb. um.'bɾe.on ] - The Land of the Black Wolves.
 * Vangyorolar [ ʋan.'ɟo.ɾo.laɾ ] - the zodiac.

Stress and pitch-accents
Valannic does not qualify as a tonal language: tone alone does not affect the meaning or function of a word. The stress in a word is often easy to recognize and rarely influenced by conjugation. However, since Valannic is an highly agglutinitive and inflected language, words can become very polysyllabic. Vowels are mainly open and often multiple long vowels appear in one word. Under these circumstances, in some longer words a second pitch accent will occur, aside form the main stress.

Stress in a word is expressed by tonal height; the stressed syllable has a high (H) tone, the unstressed ones are low (L). In short words (two or three syllables), the main stress is on the second- or third-to-last syllable, so HL(L) of LHL. Stress does not primarily affect the length of the vowels. In words from the vowel classes, the stress does not change during conjugation, as in non-compound words conjugations never have a tonal influence. So sýnome (HLL) and sýnomelerun (HLLLL) ('of the specific temperaments') have the same stress, and no second pitch accents,
 * Calbas   'apple´ [ 'kal.bas ]: HL
 *  Sýnome  'temperament' [ 'sɨ.no.me ]: HLL
 * Anyaras   'queen' [ a.'ɲa.ɾas ]: LHL

In words from the consonant classes, the main stress may change during conjugation, but this effect is consistent during more extended conjugation. This phenomenon is known as 'metric stress' in the singular nominative and accusative cases. In longer coumpound words, a second pitch-accent may occur.
 * Orrýn'    'horse'  [ 'o.rɨn ], but orrýn  ā 'horses: [ o.'rɨ.n:a: ] and orrýnyainen: [ o.'rɨn.jaɪ̯.nen ]
 * Nomoguntýs 'archer' [ no.mo.'gun.tɨs ], but nomoguntý rā  'archers': [ no.mo.gun.'tɨ.ɾa ]
 * Lyorongarodhār  'the Speaking Mountains' [ 'ʎo.ron.ga.,ro.ða:r]:  HLLHL

Writing System
The writing system of Valannic is an alphabet, consisting of 44 consonant sounds and 16 vowel sounds, so 60 in total. These do not only represent single letters, but also the vowel diphthongs and some of the consonant clusters mentioned above. These letters also have adjustments for length by applying diacritical marks, which are not given below. Interpunction is provided within the below table in grey.

In the yellow boxes the plosives and derived fricatives are given. The fourth column represents the labialised and nasal variants. The red boxes are the remaining nasal sounds. The green boxes form the rest group of liquids and sibilants and their derived forms.

The blue boxes are the 7 vowels and 9 diphthongs that form single letters. These can be adjusted for length or fused vowels/diphthongs by applying diacritical marks, but these are not viewed as different letters.

Grammar
Valannic grammar is rather regular and there are few exceptions to the rules.

Nouns
Nouns are divided in a/e-class, o/u-class, and 2 consonant classes. These classes do not qualify as genders, and there is no gender congruency with for instance adjectives. A noun can be declined in eleven different cases and in four numbers, so that a noun has 44 different forms.

First, here´s an overview of the cases: Nouns come in vowel stem classes and consonant stem classes. Below you can find the regular declension of both classes. The above conjugations are considered regular conjugation. There are some irregular conjugations, mostly in short words with a complex vowel structures:

Verbs
Verbs can be split up into two classes: consonant stem verbs and vowel stem verbs. Both classes have verbs with thematic vowels -a and -o and athematic vowels. Athematic consonant stem verbs take -e as a conjugational vowel when needed. Furthermore verbs have three roots from which all conjugations are formed.

Verbs are conjugated for person, number, voice, mood, tense and aspect.

Person and number
Verbs are conjugated for person and number: Valannic recognizes a singular form, a dual and 2 plural forms, as well as a first person, a second person and third person animate and inanimate.

Below is the indicative active conjugation of the present tense of the verb xaphein.

Not all of these forms are used regularly and are mostly 'book language'. Especially the dual form will only be used in relation to specifically paired items such as eyes, ears, or hands. Also a word like ruazis ('twins´) is conjugated with the dual form. The more common plural form is plural 1, which is an aspecific plural. It just refers to multiple items of the singular form, whereas the plural 2 refers to a specific group or earlier mentioned group. One could argue that this is a 'definite' form, but plural 1 can be definite as well. Valannic has no definite articles, so context mostly determines if definition is appropriate in translation.

Since conjugation of verbs is fairly regular, in further examples only the root will be given.

Tense and aspect
Then there's tense and aspect. Valannic has a present tense, a future and exact future tense, an imperfect tense, a perfect tense and a pluperfect tense. Furthermore there is the aorist aspect. The exact difference in aspect between imperfect, aorist and perfect is rather hard to make when taking a close look. In general one could state that imperfect refers to a state of being or an ongoing action in the past, the aorist more or less refers to single actions in the past (like a story-telling past (or present) would), and the perfect aspect refers to closed actions that took place in the past, that altered a state of being with an ongoing effect in the present. The aorist aspect kan also be translated as present tense, e.g. when talking about habitual actions or when something does not apply to a certain time aspect.

Present, imperfect and future tense are formed from the present tense root. Perfect, pluperfect and exact future tense are formed from the perfect tense root. Aorist has its own root.

The table below shows an overview of how the different tenses are built up.

Voice
Valannic has three voices: the active, the medium, and the passive voice. All three voices are formed synthetic, without the use of auxillary verbs, exept for the passive perfect tense.


 * In the active voice, most verbs require a direct object and sometimes even an indirect object, i.e. they are mostly transitive verbs. These verbs are often - but not necessarily - expanded by the pronoun suffixes. Some common intransitive or inergative verbs however are also expressed in active mood, like phanein (to die).


 * The medium voice root is formed by adding -the after the active root. In the medium voice, the verbs expresses inergative or intransitive actions, which do not take (in)direct objects, like yabethein ('  to sleep  '), or sarwathein ('  to work  '). Sometimes medium is also used to express reflexive verbs: tastāin -  '  to wash'   -> tastathein -   'to wash one's self, in conjugation mostly, but not obligatory, augmented bij a reflexive pronoun incorporated in the verb: tastathenar aliëm ýssē - they wash themselves with cold water.


 * In the passive voice, the subject of the sentence is the one that underwent an action passively, instead of being the active agent. The passive voice is made in two ways:


 * 1) consonant stem verbs take -v after the active root, which leads to contraction of -av to- õ and of -ov to ū. This contraction is caused by the following passive voice suffix -i.
 * 2) vowel stem verbs take -ê after the active root, followed by the passive voice suffix -i. When the preceding vowel is an a or e, -ê contracts with that vowel to -ễ.

Mood
The last feature according to which verbs can conjugate is mood. There are 5 moods, which are represented in different tenses:
 * The infinitve mood simply describes the action that it expresses, without conjugations.
 * The indicative mood describes an action, possibly conjugated for all verb-related features, as a fact or objective point of view. It does not express any feeling or doubt the subject may have about that which is stated.
 * The conjunctive mood expresses certain points of view that the subject of the sentence may have, related to opinion, feeling, irrealistic situation or an indirect quotation. Also the conditional mood (if..., than...) uses the conjunctive.
 * The optative mood expresses a wish or hope that the subject of the sentence may have. It means anything like:  'I wish...', 'I hope...', or 'may he...' or  'if only...'. 
 * The imperative mood expresses a command or assignment for the one spoken to. The present imperative is used for urgent or direct commands (as one would give a disobedient child or e.g. in the army), whereas the aorist imperative is used for more polite or less urgent ones (cf. 'keep off the grass'-like general orders, or used in prayers). An even more polite way of ordering someone to not do something, would be using the imperative of the verb quessāin -  to not want, followed by an infinitive: quessā ýdāin! - please, don't do it!
 * The participium is the adjectival form of the infinitive, comparable to the English present participle 'walking' or 'sleeping'. These forms are also present in the future, aorist and perfect tense, each with different grammatical and idiomatic nuances.

Pronouns
The pronouns are a means to describe the different persons or actors that may appear in a sentence in an independent manner, so without the use of a noun. They are also conjugated for all noun cases, though most overlap. Pronouns come in different forms. They can be personal pronouns, demonstrative, possessive, interrogative, reflexive. In Valannic, forms of the pronoun are also used to conjugate the verbs, making Valannic a ´prodrop´ language, and nominative personal pronouns practically obsolete.

In the below table the personal pronouns for each person are given. It includes the verb conjugation (See also the tables for verb conjugation in person and number). The nominative case - which is rarely used, mostly for emphasis - is an independent word. The other cases are used as markers that are integrated within the main conjugated verb of the sentence, or the one it applies to. These markers are placed just before the conjugation ending of the verb.

auvan  - I wake up. auva-tya-n - I wake you up. hãuva-ssa-n -  I woke them up..  

laulor - '' They tell. laulo-que-r - They tell you. lelaulū-nye-r - They have told me. ''

lelaulūnyet man auvétyan - you have told me to wake you up.

Note that different verbs may take different cases.

The below table shows the other derived pronouns for possive, reflexive, and prepositional use:
 * The possesive pronoun is incorporated in the noun to which it refers, in a similar manner as the pronoun markers are in the verbs. It is attached after the last consonant of the stem of the noun, also in vowel-class words.

anyaras - ''the queen. anyar-enn-as - our queen''.

orrýn - the horse. orrýn-eny-e - ''my horse. (the final -e is a vowel added to prevent illegal word ending).'' Yeza ō varya - The object is his. Calba yaza etastōn ērōn - The apple has been washed by him.
 * The prepositional pronoun is used, when a preposition refers to a person or other actor previously introduced, which can not be describe by a noun. This form is placed before the preposition, congruent with the case the preposition takes. For instance, za taking the genitive case means 'of', whereas it means 'by' when the partitive case is used.
 * The reflexive pronoun is used when there is an emphasis on the fact that the action in the sentence is erformed by the subject itself.

Tyona ýdēt - you can do it yourself

Lexicon
Valannic Lexicon Periodically updated