Brefic

Overview

As of now, Brefic is a sketch of a language, primarily an experiment in grammar design. I wanted to see if it was possible to design a language in which nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and even prepositions are merged into a single part of speech, without requiring any sort of part-of-speech markers (as in Esperanto) or otherwise seeming too artificial. Perhaps one day it will grow into a full language.

The grammar of Brefic is designed to minimize "grammaticalization." As many concepts as possible are included in the category of content words, and the small set of particles serves only to make the connections between them clearer. This maximizes the freedom to combine concepts with other concepts, and the freedom to include or omit concepts as desired.

=Basic Grammar=

Parts of Speech
Content Words - All words which carry any sort of semantic content whatsoever. This includes nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and even post-positions. Brefic content words can move between these functions without any sort of modification, though the meaning of using, say, a "nounish" word as a "verb" or vice-versa is well-defined. It is possible to express entire sentences using nothing but content words (and not just tiny sentences, either.)

Particles - Words which do not carry any semantic meaning at all, but mark the relationships between the content words to help reduce ambiguity in parsing the sentence. The aforementioned all-content-word sentences can become very ambiguous, especially as they grow longer. Therefore Brefic contains a small word-class of particles to make them more precise when needed. Brefic's set of particles is small and bounded.

Interjections - These are words like "Hey" that are used to express an emotion (as opposed to naming an emotion, such as the noun "anger.") I won't define specific interjections or rules for using them - my focus is on content words and particles.

Modes of Grammar
Brefic contains a wide range of possible ways to express sentences, ranging between two main "poles."

Leftward mode - This is the mode of quick yet ambiguous sentences. It is based off of the long strings of nouns that can appear in Germanic languages (though many languages have something similar, but in the opposite word order.) This mode requires no particles (except the occasional conjunction like "and" or "or") but as a consequence, it isn't always clear exactly what modifies what. The only general dis-ambiguating rule is that modifiers come before the words they modify. Thus the word orders in the quick mode are:


 * Subject-Object-Verb - ex: Jo das wid = "I that see" = "I see that"
 * Subject-Verb-Object is possible in a sense, though it would translate literally to "There is/are which is/are by "
 * Adjective-Noun - ex: rux haus = "red house"
 * Genitive-Noun - ex: jo haus = "I house" = "my house"
 * Noun-Postposition - ex: haus-in = "in the house"
 * Number-Noun - ex: tri haus = "three houses"
 * Adverb-Verb - ex: rapid cur = "fast run" = "run fast" (This is actually quite flexible, since there's no distinction between adjectives and verbs - the adverb can be used as a modal verb, and thus appear after the main verb without any sort of particle.)
 * Verb-Modal Verb - ex: ed deb = "eat must" = "must eat"
 * Relative Clause-Noun - ex: apl ed hom = "apple-eating person" = "person who eats apples"

Rightward mode - This is the mode of unambiguous yet somewhat longer sentences. Brefic contains particles which are analogous to "parentheses" and "commas" to show exactly what modifies what. These particles also reverse the word order of the quick mode - the open-parenthesis particle, de, also functions as Brefic's only preposition, with which adjectives can appear after nouns, objects (and even subjects) can appear after verbs, and so on.

To illustrate the difference between these two polar extremes, consider an example in which letters represent content words and parentheses & commas represent particles:


 * A B C - the leftward mode, with no particles. We know that B modifies C, but A might modify either B or C.  A longer string of content words would have even more permutations as to what modifies what.

The rightward mode can distinguish the two:
 * C(B, A) - C is modified by B and A (spoken as C de B fo A )
 * C(B(A)) - C is modified by B, which is modified by A (spoken as C de B de A )

And of course, it's possible to mix the leftward and rightward modes:
 * A C(B) - A and B modify C (equivalent to C(B, A) above).
 * B C(A) - same as above
 * B(A) C - equivalent to C(B(A)) above
 * C(A B) - also equivalent to C(B(A))

Content Words
To understand Brefic content words, it helps to think of them all as nouns. This isn't the only way to describe them - they can also be described as all verbs - but I'll stick with the noun-based explanation for now. "Verbs" are nouns referring to actions - the English verb "sleep," for example, can be used without modification as a noun meaning "the act of sleeping," as in "I'll get some sleep." In Brefic, every verb is like the English verb "sleep" in this regard. There is no need for any equivalent of the -ing or -ation suffix. I will refer to this as the "gerund rule."

Brefic "adjectives" are nouns referring to states, qualities, or properties. To illustrate with an English example, English color words such as "red" or "blue" can be used both as adjectives and as nouns referring to the concepts of the colors (though one can also say "redness," "blueness," etc.) Brefic has no need for suffixes like English -ness - all adjectives have it "built in." Alternatively, think of all adjectives as verbs meaning "to be " (and they can be used as such) and turn those verbs into nouns via the gerund rule.

Brefic has no prepositions, but postpositions (technically it has a preposition de, but that's considered a particle.) Brefic postposition-nouns usually correspond to nouns referring to what the postposition marks (such as "interior" or "purpose" or "direction" or "the space over something") though some of them are better expressed as verbs with -ing at the end (such as "using" or "doing" or "undergoing.")

That's all well and good, but how do we go the other way? How do we use these nouns as verbs, adjectives, adverbs, or postpositions?

First, it's important to understand the entire Brefic sentence as a noun phrase. Jo un arbor wid, "I see a tree," would mean roughly "the seeing of a tree by me" or "my seeing a tree" or "my sight of a tree," etc. Saying this noun phrase as a sentence means that you are asserting the existence/happening of the noun phrase you're referring to. This means that all nouns, even the most "nounish" of nouns, are impersonal verbs meaning roughly "There is/are " (The trouble with this English translation is that "is" and "are" implies tense, whereas what I'm trying to express here is a tenseless concept.  The "tense" of the sentence would be expressed as a modifier within the "noun phrase" itself, such as "X which happens in the future" or something like that.)  For verbs, this "reverses" the gerund rule - to say "There is an act of sleeping done by me" is almost exactly equivalent to "I am sleeping." This is based on a somewhat philosophical idea that "existence" and "happening" are the same thing - "happening" is "existence" for events, and "existence" is "happening" for objects.

What about modifiers? In general, the "leftward mode" of Brefic grammar operates on the principle that modifiers come before the words they modify. "Modifier" in this sense refers not just to adjectives and adverbs, but even to subjects, objects, genitives, relative clauses, and postpositional phrases. In English, we can use nouns as modifiers by sticking them in front of other nouns, as in "truck tires" or "sound amplifier." There is some vague-yet-obvious-from-context meaning connecting the two nouns, but it's always clear that "sound amplifier" is a kind of "amplifier," not a kind of "sound," and "truck tires" are a kind of "tire," not a kind of "truck." (Not all English compounds work this way, but all Brefic compounds do.) Brefic modifiers operate on these exact same principles. For example, to express the concept of "angry person," one would say engo hom, which translates more literally to "anger-person." Likewise for verbs we have ed hom, "eating-person", i.e. a person who eats. In general, A B can be translated as "B which is related to A in the most direct way that makes sense, given the context" (or "B of A" if you want to be short.)

Both postpositions and relative clauses are considered specific versions of "modified modifiers." For example, in hom would mean "in-person" - a person who is inside something, or a person "of the interior." But haus in hom is more specific - it means "house-in person," or a person who is inside a house (or a "person of the interior of a house.") The root haus modifies in, which modifies hom.

Compounds
Compounds in Brefic mean exactly what they would mean if they had spaces separating their roots - compounds and strings of roots are interchangeable. Thus, the same left-branching rules apply to compounds - the root at the end is the "kind" of thing the compound refers to. It's possible to turn postpositions into case suffixes, and auxiliary verbs into tense suffixes, merely by compounding them. It's theoretically possible to express an entire sentence as a single, giant compound, but that wouldn't be too easy on the eyes.

Particles
Particles in Brefic are designed to help resolve ambiguities and free up the word order. Particles follow special rules different from the general rules that Content Words follow, and for this reason I intend to keep the number of particles in Brefic down to a small size.

de - roughly "of" (though it can also mean "which is," "who," or "that,") this is the only "preposition" in Brefic. It is used to indicate that the word before it is modified by a word or phrase appearing after it. For example, hom de engo is equivalent to engo hom, angry person, and Jo wid de un arbor is equivalent to Jo un arbor wid. This particle fills the dual role of freeing up the word order and splitting sentences up into smaller phrases to reduce ambiguity.

ut - a kind of "close-parenthesis" for a phrase beginning with de. For example, Un hom de engo un arbor wid would mean "There is a person who angrily sees a tree." However, Un hom de engo ut un arbor wid would mean "a person, who is angry, sees a tree." The ut blocks the de from "capturing" the words after it. This particle is not necessary if the de-phrase terminates at the end of the sentence (as the first example shows.) A well-ordered sentence can take advantage of this rule to have several de's and fo's and yet no ut's at all.

fo - roughly "and of", this indicates that a phrase modifies the same thing as a previous de-phrase. Example: hom de werd fo engo means "a green, angry person," whereas hom de werd de engo would mean "a person of green anger." A single ut particle acts as the close-parenthesis for all the fo particles associated with the de particle it complements. If de and ut can be visualized as parentheses, then fo can be visualized as a comma. For example, "A de B fo C fo D de E fo F ut fo G" can be visualized as A(B, C, D(E, F), G). I believe that parentheses and commas like these show with complete unambiguity what modifies what (i.e. A is modified by B, C, D, and G, and D is modified by E and F), so the particles that translate to these symbols should create complete unambiguity as well.

da - similar to de, but differs in its relation to ut and fo. The differences are:
 * It takes no fos - encountering a fo is equivalent to encountering the end of a sentence. Ex: A de B da C fo D = A(B(C), D)
 * A single ut will complement every da to its left between it and the nearest de (or the beginning of the sentence, if there is no de to its left.) Ex: A da B da C da D ut E = A(B(C(D))) E.

daut - a kind of ut that closes all parentheses that need to be closed.

Compound Particles
An earlier version of Brefic had a complex system of compound particles used for inserting unspoken particles between roots. However, this was eliminated because these compound particles would either require reversing the roots of compound content words or prohibit compounds entirely. The new system is designed to avoid this butchering of compound content words.

Compound particles (apart from daut above) take the form (de,fo,da) + (da,fo). The compound particle is a version of the first element - the second element merely provides information about the phrase that the particle is subordinating.


 * -da - Means that the phrase tends towards a rigid "modifier modifies its immediate neighbor" principle. Example:  Un nan deda trianglformmesurcanperddid. - "A man who lost his ability to do trigonometry."
 * -fo - Means that the last element in the phrase has lots of modifiers. Usually it means that the last element has 3 or more modifiers, though in the case where the phrase contains only 3 elements, it indicates that the last element has 2 modifiers.  Ex:  Loc defo jerdei trisethor John go Bob ad un auto mo wend. = "The place where John sold a car to Bob yesterday at 9 P.M."

Logical particles:
Logical particles are considered a separate class from the above grammatical particles. They include conjunctions such as "and" and "or," and the negation particle "not."

ei - means "and." For numbers, this means "plus."

mei - means "except" or "but." For numbers, this means "minus."

ou - means "or"

ar - exclusive or

na - means "not." Na appears immediately after the word it negates. Ex: arbor-na = not a tree / not trees

nei - "nand," i.e. "not both"

nou - "neither...nor"

nar - "both or neither"

A quick yet ambiguous way to use ei, ou, etc. is to simply put them between the two things they are coordinating, ex: Jo apl ei oranxfrut ed - "I eat apples and oranges." However, this could also mean things like "My apples exist and the eating of oranges happens," since the reach of the ei conjunction is not clear. Therefore, Brefic allows these logical conjunctions to be combined with the de...fo...ut constructions described above. Examples:


 * Jo ed eide apl fo oranxfrut fo pitsa fo tart. - "I eat apples and oranges and pizza and pies." [I eat and(apple, orange, pizza, pie.)] (If this began with de rather than eide, it would mean that I eat these things all at once.)
 * Can oude caid fo cuc fo brul fo ed ut de apl mo. = "Apples can be cut or cooked or burned or eaten." [Can or(cut, cook, burn, eat)(apple undergo)] - See the section on "Compound De-Phrases" to understand how this works.
 * Arde rexnan fo rexfem ut go did? - Was it the king or the queen who did it? [exclusive-or(king, queen) do past-event?]
 * Noude rexnan fo rexfem fo ridaxist ut go did. - Neither the king nor the queen nor the jester did it. [Neither(king, queen, jester) do past-event.]

Tense Markers
Tense markers in Brefic are nouns meaning things like "future event," "past event," etc. They can appear either as modal verbs modified by the main verb or as adverbs modifying the main verb. Some important tense words are:
 * wil = "future event," the future-tense marker.
 * did = "past event," the past-tense marker.
 * nau = "current event," the present-tense marker.

Examples of use:
 * Jo ed wil = "There is a future event of eating done by me" = "I will eat."
 * Jo wil ed = "There is an act of eating which is a future event done by me" = "I will eat."
 * Wil jo ed = "There is an act of eating done by me which is a future event" = "I will eat."

Tense markers can be modified by words such as prox and tel (meaning "near" and "far," respectively) to indicate their temporal distance from the present. Ex:


 * Jo ed prox wil - "I'm about to eat."
 * Jo ed prox did - "I just ate."
 * Jo ed tel wil - "I'll eventually eat."
 * Jo ed tel did - "I ate a long time ago."

Aspect markers behave similarly. Some important aspect markers are:


 * ing = the non-punctual aspect marker, means the "middle" of an action or event (not the chronological half-way point, but more broadly "neither the start nor the end.")
 * oft = the frequentative, means "frequent" or "often"
 * hei = past event which is still directly relevant in the time being talked about

However, the verbs called "modal verbs" are different - they can't convey their meaning as an adverb, so they must be modified by the main verb. Example: Jo ed can = "I eat-can" = "I can eat" (The phrase ed can can be translated as "ability to eat.")

Comparison
Brefic has two comparison words - plu and min ("more" and "less", respectively.) These can modify words just like any other modifier:
 * plu werd = "more green"
 * min acwa = "less water"

Brefic's equivalent of "than" is to simply modify the comparison word. For example:
 * foil-plu werd = "greener than a leaf" (lit. "leaf-more green")
 * litr-min acwa = "less water than a litre" (lit. "litre-less water")

(The hyphens are optional. I tend to use them as markers of unusual word order.)

Comparisons of equivalence or similarity are accomplished other ways. The simplest way is to directly modify a property word:
 * sang-rux = "blood-red" (="redness of blood")
 * montan-alt = "as high as a mountain" (lit. "mountain-height" or "mountain-high")
 * tu-haf-cwant = "as much as you have" (lit. "you-have-amount.")
 * ster-cal = "as hot as a star" (lit. "star-hot")
 * haus-grand = "as big as a house" (lit. "house-big" or "house-size")

Another way is to use the word leic, meaning "like," "similarity," etc.


 * acwa-leic cem = "water-like substance"

The superlatives are perplu and permin, meaning "most" and "least," but translate more literally to "completely more" and "completely less."

Case Marking
Brefic has optional postpositions to mark the subject and object. They are:
 * go - the subject postposition, means "done-by," "to do," "to cause." It refers to the direct cause of an action, event, state, or anything in general.
 * mo - the direct-object postposition, means "done-to," "to undergo," or the noun "undergoing." It refers to something that is changed or affected by an event.
 * am - "to experience," this refers to subjects that don't perform or change anything, but merely experience a state, sensory input, etc, or possess a quality or property.
 * li - a direct/indirect object postposition which refers to something that is directly involved in the event but not changed or affected by it.
 * es - literally "to be," this is often used as a case marker in sentences that state the properties of something.
 * ir - means "effect," this can be used to mark the result of an event or action. Can act as a "case-marker for case-markers," when go and mo are being used as a verb, to indicate what is being done/undergone rather than (or alongside) what is doing/undergoing.
 * gam - a portmanteau of go and am, this means "to cause oneself to experience something."

None of these markers are obligatory. When neither subject nor object is marked, the case is either deduced from whether the nouns can act as subjects/objects/something else for the action-word they modify (e.g. "apple" is very rarely the subject of "eat"). When this doesn't make the case obvious (ex: Jo un cwan wid - "I a dog see") we follow the convention that the implied order is subject (go/am) first, object(mo/li) next.

Examples of use:
 * Jo-go un apl-mo ed = "I eat an apple"
 * Un apl-mo jo-go ed = "An apple, I eat"
 * Jo-go ed de un apl-mo = "I eat an apple" (Notice the particle de - it keeps the verb ed the head of the sentence.)
 * Jo-go ed un apl-mo = "An apple undergoes an act of eating done by me" = "I eat an apple." (This construction is allowed, but hinges on the assumption that the main verb ["ed" in this case] is another modifier to the case-marker ["mo" in this case], rather than a modifier to something else.)

More examples:
 * Das ir jo go did. - I did that.
 * Jo am formmesur li saf. - I know geometry.
 * Jo go tu mo formmesur li saf. - I teach you geometry.
 * Tu mo formmesur li saf. - You learn geometry.
 * Hauswitr am frag. - The window is broken.
 * Hauswitr mo frag. - The window breaks.
 * Jo go frag. - I break something.
 * Ta am Bob es nom. - His name is Bob.
 * Tu go ta mo Bob es nom. - You name him Bob.
 * Jo am frix - I am cold.
 * Storm go jo mo frix. - The storm makes me cold.
 * Jo am apl li wid. - I see the apple.
 * Tu go jo mo apl li wid. - You show me the apple.
 * Jo gam apl li wid. - I look at the apple.
 * Jo gam greswad. - I am walking.

There are more "cases" beyond these. They are represented by other postpositions, such as ad, us, in, fro, loc, etc. The simplest postpositions can be optionally dropped just like the postpositions above, making sentences such as Disdei jo un apl ed wil, "Today I will eat an apple," possible.

It is important to remember that none of these case-markers are particles. They are all content words in their own right, and they can be used for things other than case-marking. For example, Jo go means "I do."

Relative Clauses
A relative clause in Brefic is simply a "verb" that modifies a "noun." For example:
 * ed hom = "a person who eats."
 * hom de ed = same as above.

This does not mean that every time a verb modifies a noun, the noun is the verb's subject or agent - rather, like all modifiers, the connection between them is "the most direct relationship that makes sense, given the context." For example:
 * ed haus = "restaurant" (eating-house, i.e. a building for eating)
 * ed apl = "eaten apple"

However, the relationship can be clarified by inserting a content word between the verb and noun:


 * ed por haus = "house of the purpose of eating"
 * ed mo apl = "apple of undergoing eating" (i.e. eaten apple.)
 * ed go hom = "person of doing eating" (i.e. person who eats.)

Note that the words mo and go are not acting as case-markers for ed in the above examples (i.e. they're not rendering "eating" in the nominative or accusative case.) Rather, they are modifying apl and hom to indicate that they undergo or perform something, respectively. Less ambiguous versions would be ed ir mo apl, ed ir go hom.

The verb can acquire subjects, objects, adverbs, postpostional phrases, etc. the same way as any other verb does - by adding them as modifiers. For example:
 * apl ed hom = "person who eats apples"
 * apl mo ed hom = "person who eats apples" (clearer)
 * apl mo haus in ed hom = "person who eats apples in houses"

To put the relative clause after the noun, simply use the particle d.


 * hom de apl-mo ed
 * hom de ed de apl

With relative clauses that appear after the nouns they modify, it's possible to use third-person pronouns to refer back to the noun that is modified. Example:


 * haus de ta-in pitsa-mo ed = "house of eating pizza in it" = "house in which pizza is eaten"

However, this only works if the relative clause appears after the noun it modifies, since pronouns can only refer to something mentioned earlier. If one were to say ta-in pitsa-mo ed haus, the pronoun ta would refer to something mentioned earlier, not haus.

Subject-Verb-Object (and Object-Verb-Subject) without Particles
In a Brefic sentence with no particles, the "head" of the sentence is always the last word. That is, X Y Z is a "kind of Z", and saying X Y Z as a declarative sentence means that kind of Z exists/happens. Particles can create equivalent sentences, such as X Z de Y, which is still a "kind of Z" because the particle de subordinated the Y to Z. But a sentence X Z Y is something different - a "kind of Y."

In Brefic, it is possible to "imitate" Subject-Verb-Object word order by saying the equivalent of "There is which is by ." Likewise for Object-Verb-Subject - "there is which ." This works for many sentences, and produces something functionally identical to the SOV equivalent - but there is an important limitation. As soon as the universal quantifier "all" gets involved, the meanings of these seemingly similar constructions begin to diverge.

Consider an example:
 * Jo wid omni cos - "Everything that I see exists."
 * Jo omni cos wid - "I see everything."

There are two ways to avoid this:
 * Use the particle de to create a legitimate right branch from the verb. Example: Jo wid de omni cos - "I see everything"
 * Use a case marker at the end of the sentence, and hope that it's understood that the verb modifies that case marker rather than the object noun. Ex:  Jo wid omni cos mo.

Generally, the first option is preferable because it doesn't add any ambiguity (in fact, it reduces it.) The second option actually increases ambiguity, since it leaves the original interpretation (without the case marker) still possible.

Subordinate Clauses
Since Brefic does not distinguish between clauses and noun phrases, a subordinate clause is simply an entire clause that is attached as a modifier to something (e.g. a verb.) For example:
 * Jo cred de jo ta cop can = "I believe that I can buy it." (="There exists my belief of my it-buy ability")
 * Jo ta cop can jo cred = "I believe that I can buy it." (same as above, but with different word order because of the absence of a de particle.)

Coordinating Conjunctions
To indicate that two events share a place, time, manner, etc., one would use the nouns for "place," "time," "manner," etc. Examples:


 * Jo did wid de ta fo cron de tu ta wend. = "I saw it when you sold it." (="I saw it of [i.e. at] the time of you selling it.")
 * Tu ta wend cron jo did ta wid. = same as above.

Notice that cron in the above example is both a modifier to the verb wid and modified by the clause tu ta wend. Substituting other nouns in place of cron will create different "conjunctions."


 * Jo did wid de ta fo loc de tu ta wend. = "I saw it where you sold it." (="I saw it of [i.e. at] the place of you selling it.")
 * Jo did wid de ta fo caus de tu ta wend. = "I saw it because you sold it." (="I saw it of the cause of [i.e. which is] you selling it.")
 * Jo did wid de ta fo por de tu ta wend. = "I saw it in order for you to sell it." (="I saw it of[i.e. for] the purpose of you selling it.")

Concatenative Verbs
Unless particles are used, Brefic verbs concatenate in the opposite order of English verbs. Consider the English sentence "I want to be able to stop eating pies!" A Brefic equivalent would be:
 * Jo tart ed halt can wol! (lit. "I pie eat stop can want!")

Other word orders:
 * Jo wol de can de halt de ed de tart. (an imitation of English-style concatenative verbs, where de roughly fills the role of English "to"+verb.)
 * Jo wol de tart ed halt can.
 * Tart ed halt can jo wol.

Compound Postpositions
Brefic compound postpositions follow the same internal order as English compound prepositions such as "into" and "onto." "Onto," for example, is epad. As a noun, it would translate to "surface-destination." "Onto the moon" would be luna epad, or "moon-surface-destination." Some more examples of compound postpositions:


 * Inwers - "inwards," "interior-direction."
 * Exfro - "from outside," "exterior origin"
 * Supertra - "through the space over something"
 * Epsub - "under the surface of something"
 * Epprox - "near the surface of something"
 * Interxirc - "around the region between two or more things"
 * Weisujet - "about the ways/methods/manners of something"

Compound De-Phrases
When a second de-phrase immediately follows an ut terminating a previous de-phrase, the constituents of the second de-phrase all modify each constituent of the first de-phrase. Example:


 * xambr de sedax fo tapis fo dormax ut de blu fo mol fo flamabl-na fo Bob port = room of chairs, rugs, and beds which are all blue, soft, nonflammable, and Bob brought them. [ room(chair,rug,bed)(blue,soft,nonflammable, Bob bring) ]

Trades and "Super-Verbs"
In Brefic, the word troc, "to trade" is a good example of a "super-verb." To fully describe an exchange, one must name two traders and two traded items, and somehow indicate which item is going to whom. To say "You and I trade apples and oranges" is not enough, because it isn't clear who is getting what. And piling up postpositions is no solution, because both traders are playing the same semantic role (i.e. it is innacurate to say that one trader "causes" the trade while the other is a passive bystander, and naming both as the agents would leave the first problem remaining.) In Brefic, a good way to describe a trade is as follows:


 * Troc de jo un apl don fo tu un oranxfrut don. - roughly, "There is an exchange in which I give an apple and you give an orange."

In this, the verb troc outsources its burden to two dons. The dons link each item to the trader who gives it to the other trader. A simpler outsourcing is used for the concept of "replace."


 * Jo go insted de sedax prend fo cest pon. - "I replace the chair with the box." lit. "I do substitute(chair take, box put)."

While we're on the subject of exchanges, Brefic has separate vocabulary words for "buy," "sell," and "pay" for the convenience of being able to say short things such as "I bought an apple" etc.

=Sounds=

Where more than one sound is indicated, the pronunciation of the letter is the free choice of the speaker.

Vowels:

 * A = [a] as in father
 * E = [e, ɛ] as in great or set
 * I = [i, ɪ] as in machine or sit
 * O = [o, ɔ] as in so or sore
 * U = [u, ʊ] as in rude or push

Brefic has an unwritten schwa sound - see below.

Diphthongs: ai, au, ei, eu, oi, ou, ui, iu. The diphthongs ei and ou should be pronounced [ɛi] and [ɔu], respectively, to avoid sounding too similar to [e] and [o].

Consonants:

 * B = [b]
 * C = [k]
 * D = [d]
 * F = [f, v]
 * G = [g]
 * H = [h, x] ([x] is not in English)
 * J = [j] like y in yes
 * L = [l]
 * M = [m]
 * N = [n] ([ŋ] before c or g)
 * P = [p]
 * R = [r] (any "r-like" sound)
 * S = [s, z]
 * T = [t]
 * W = [w, ʋ] ([ʋ] is not in English)
 * X = [ʃ, ʒ] like sh in show or z in azure

Every consonant carries an optional, unwritten schwa after it if it appears without a following vowel. For example, a string of consonants such as "csrlpctrx" is pronounceable as /kəsərələpəkətərəʃə/, or any variant with some of those schwas removed (e.g. /kəsrəlpəktərʃ/.) Many Brefic words contain consonant clusters that appear in European languages, but pronouncing them as a cluster is not obligatory. Stret, for example, can be [sətərɛtə] as well as [strɛt] and any intermediate form, such as [sətrɛt].

=Dictionary=

Main article: Brefic Dictionary

Pronouns

 * Jo = I, me, my
 * Tu = you (singular)
 * Ta = he, she, it, they(singular)
 * Sel = oneself (which can mean "myself" "yourself" "themselves" etc.)
 * Wos = you (plural)
 * Tem = they, them
 * Nus = we
 * Ses = each other
 * Dis = this
 * Das = that
 * Dise = these
 * Dase = those
 * Cwe = what, which

=Numbers=

Digit words:

 * 0 = nul,
 * 1 = un,
 * 2 = du,
 * 3 = tri,
 * 4 = cwar,
 * 5 = cwin,
 * 6 = six,
 * 7 = set,
 * 8 = oit,
 * 9 = nof

des = "more than one," a plural quantifier which can be used as a digit in its own right. Ex:

des haus = houses

desmil = thousands

Powers of Ten:

 * dec = 10
 * cent = 100
 * mil = 1000
 * wan = 10000

Suffixes:

 * -jon = ^2  ex: miljon = 1000000 (applies only to 1 number root)
 * -jard = ^3 (applies only to 1 number root)
 * -plex = ^10 (applies only to 1 number root)
 * -im = ^-1 (applies to whole number before it)
 * -jem = ordinal

Compounding
For most number roots, compounding indicates multiplication. Ex:


 * dusix - twelve (can also be called cwartri, tricwar, sixdu)
 * dudec - 20
 * triset - 21
 * decimtri - 3/10 (notice that the fractional number decim came first - otherwise the number would be 1/30)

The exception is un, which means "1+" when compounded with other numbers. Ex:


 * undec - 11
 * undusix - 13

When un appears at the beginning of a compound number, it applies to the whole number. When it appears in the middle, it applies to the result of all the multiplications of the numbers after it - the result of that is multiplied with the previous number root. Examples:


 * untridec - 31
 * triundec - 33

Other additions are expressed using the conjunction ei, meaning "and." Example:
 * miljon ei dec = a million and ten

The particles de and ut can act as parentheses to disambiguate longer number chains. Ex:


 * tri de miljon ei dec ut = 3(1,000,000 + 10)

Note that, unlike typical mathematical parentheses, Brefic's de must appear after something, so de milion ei dec ut tri is not allowed (or would attach to some word before the number rather than multiply with the tri.)

=Example text=
 * Jupiter grand de omni otr Sol xircwad planet plu. - Jupiter is bigger than all the other planets that circle the Sun.


 * Xel werd cron jo saf de celc mal. - When the sky is green, I know something is wrong.


 * Jo canna de das mo cop de tri mil dalr pei. - I cannot buy that for three thousand dollars.


 * Did cop de jo fo das tart fo dujem deimidpost hor fo ed por. - I bought the pie at 2 P.M. to eat.


 * Bon de tu das rapid lex can. - It is good that you can read that fast.