Adwan

Adwan (Ad: Áðẃana) is a partially naturalistic con-lang invented for the sake of gaining a wider understanding of general linguistics. The language itself developed a life of its own, and with each passing day, it grows with more vocabulary, more additions, and more characteristics that make it stand out from other inflecting languages.

Name
The name "áðẃana" comes from the archaic Adwanic noun, "áðe", which means "mind", and "ẃan", which means "to speak". It is an archaic compound word, not used anymore due to an evolved vocabulary, which means "a spoken mind." It is unsure as to how Ádẃana was completely formed, as the subject in "a spoken mind" is in the passive voice, and Adwan doesn't have a passive voice.

Phonology
To view complete phonological tables of consonants, diphthongs and vowels, click here.

Adwan has a moderately unique phonology, as it has extensive use of using the consonant /j/ coupled with both vowels AND consonants, without actually having a letter for /j/; this is due to original Adwanic Runes not having a rune for the /j/ phoneme; phonemes using /j/ were completely different runes that at the same time resembled the original phoneme, thus, the usage of an acute accent for a /j/ sound, and the use of a diaeresis for a doubled sound was used to maintain original Adwanic spelling. It is said that Adwan tends to sound like a mixture of Icelandic, Norwegian, Czech, Polish, and, even Welsh due to the use of the Alveolar Lateral Fricative (/ɬ/).

Alphabet and Orthography (Åneþurav nę Şemyçav Áðẃanaz)
Adwan is a fairly phonetic language; everything is sounded out as it is written. "Pevle" will always be pronounced /pevle/, and "Ar" will always be pronounced /ar/. There is only one sound change that isn't marked directly by the orthography, and that is the nasalization of ‘m’. Generally, for a lot of consonants, ’m’ will become nasalized; so if ‘m’ isn't a dominant, stressed consonant, it will be /ɱ/; A good English example is the word "symphony". You don't say /sɪmfəni:/, you say /sɪɱfəni:/. M is nasalized when preceding all consonants except for C, Ç, S, Ş, T, and Þ. It is NEVER nasalized when preceding vowels.

Syntax and Morphology
As in many Indo-European languages, Adwan is highly inflected; Adwan inflects nouns for number, grammatical case, and, seldomly, gender; Adjectives decline for adjective class, and case; Numbers decline for grammatical case; pronouns decline for number and gramatical case, and determiners decline for grammatical case. Verbs are conjugated (and agglutinated, to an extent) for tense, mood, and aspect. A distinctive feature in Adwan is the lack of auxilliary verbs, as they are all conjugated into the verb, and lack of distinction in voice. Due to heavy inflections, Adwan also lacks articles, so there is no difference between "the cat likes mice" or "a cat likes mice"'; the distinction between a regular cat liking mice, and cats generally liking mice is made thanks to the Generic tense of verbs.

Word Order
Adwan's word order is unique from many European SOV/SVO languages, as it is VOS; this makes it particularly hard for English speakers to wrapt their heads around, as the sentence "Bob likes apples" would literally be worded "Likes apples Bob". Due to the heavy inflection that Adwan goes through, however, word order is quite free. The standard is VOS, yet many pieces of literature and poetry can follow other word orders. Other word orders are also used to emphasize things, if only used seldomly. Usually, questions are formed using intonation and stress (and the usage of a question mark), but if incredibly important, or necessary, VSO is used.
 * Þuvo afrkad Bobev. (VOS) Has no particular emphasis, assuming the speaker has no particular intonation.
 * Þuvo Bobev afkrad. (VSO) Puts emphasis on the verb, 'to like'.
 * Afkrad þuvo Bobev.(OVS) Puts emphasis on the apples.
 * Bobev þuvo afkrad. (SVO) Puts an emphasis on Bob.

General Rules:
 * Adjectives don't have any specific order, though they usually precede the noun. Due to declensions, however, in many dialects, they are all grouped together and form a section of their own, and either go VOAS, or VAOS. Ex: The big black dog jumped over the little brown fox would originally be Rompyé xu pyþor kafevu martyð gronor norne dogúv, yet using a VAOS order, it would be Romyé pyþor kafevu gronor norne xu martyð dogúv. HOWEVER, it is to be known that it is not prudent to put adjectives after the noun, for they screw up the VOS order and add emphasis to the verb AND the adjectives. Note, adjectives are bolded.
 * It is a general rule that prepositions precede the object they are attached to. It is not a strictly enforced rule with sentences that only have one preposition, but with complex sentences with many prepositions, they must always precede the object.
 * Adverbs, generally, always follow a verb.
 * Commas do not denote stops, but merely break sentences down to a verbal phrase; it is grammatically incorrect to have more than one verb in a phrase -- a comma must separate verbs. For pauses that commas tend to be used for, such as in the English language, a hypen (-) or a double comma are used.
 * Usually, direct objects come first, and then indirect objects. Ex: The dog bit the girl's cat. Şecyé catað povloz dogúv. (Direct translation: Bit cat of girl dog)

Gender
Adwan is not a gendered language at all. Most nouns are neuter nouns, and end in -y, -a, or -u. The reason nouns aren't gendered is that if an item's gender is unknown, it is neuter, rather than being automatically masculine. However, gendered nouns aren't that uncommon, as a dog in general is dogúl, a dog that was specified previously as being a boy (ie. my poor dog jack!) would have a masculine ending, therefore, it would be dogél; the same rule applies for femenine gendered nouns. A feminine dog would be dogól. Another great example of the flexibility of gender in Adwan is the usage of the noun "sibling" and "parent". There are no actual words for "brother" or "father", merely "male-sibling" and "male-parent", etc. Ex: Parent is Fevny; therefore Mother would be Fevno, and Father would be Fevne.

Case
Adwan inflects its Nouns, Adjectives, Pronouns, and Numbers. Nouns are inflected for number, grammatical case, and occasionally, gender; Adjectives are inflected for grammatical case, and adjective type (Descriptive or Predicate); Pronouns are inflected for case, person, and number, and determiners and numbers are inflected for grammatical case.

In Adwan, there are 7 cases; the Nominative, which marks the subject; the Accusative, which marks the direct object; the Ablative, which marks the causative object; the Genitive case, which marks relationship and posession; the Dative case, which marks the indirect object; the Locative case, which marks the location, and the Vocative case, which marks the noun being addressed.

A good way to find out the case of a noun is to ask yourself these questions:

Nominative/Strůň: ''who? what?''

Accusative/Eçůň: I have what/who?

Ablative/Kůsůň: because of who/what?

Genitive/Xentyň: of who/what?

Dative/Ostreň: to whom/what?

Locative/Úråň: at/around what?

Vocative/Äraň: I call whom?

Noun Declensions
Nouns are separated into two groups; nouns ending in a/á, y/ý, or u/ú are genderless/neuter, and take up the neuter conjugation when used as nominatives with verbs. Nouns ending with e/é are masculine and should take up the masculine third person conjugation when used as the nominative, and o/ó are feminine nouns, to be used with the feminine third person conjugation when it is the nominative used with a verb.
 * NOTE, all declined nouns MUST end in a consonant. If they don't, you're declining them wrong.
 * SECOND NOTE: Proper nouns that don't end in either endings must be adjusted to declensions. Ex: Bob is a masculine name, therefore the nominative of Bob is Bobev; this applies to all names from other languages. All Adwanic names follow noun rules.

Vóška -- House; Marty -- Fox; Dogú -- Dog; Fevne -- Father; Prvlo -- Sister.

Adjective Declensions
Adjectives are seperated into two groups with three subsets per group. The first group, the descriptives, are adjectives that describe the noun. In English, these are the adjectives that precede nouns. The second group, the predicates, are adjectives that describe how a noun is doing. Most of the time, predicates follow a ‘to be’ verb. In English, they, for the majority of the time, follow the verb ‘to be’. DESCRIPTIVE SUBGROUPS
 * The yellow dog is big. Yellow is to be declined in the descriptive, as it describes the noun, while big is to be declined in the predicate, for it describes how a noun is doing.

Descriptive adjectives are divided into each of these subcategories: PREDICATE SUBGROUPS Usually an adjective will be given without a root at all, and will only be identified as an adjective, giving the adjective freedom to express up to 6 different functions in one declension, not to mention the function actually declining it gives it. Groň -- Big; Kafás -- Brown; Þnoš -- Boring; Grot -- Big; Oř -- Happy; Glyzeraž -- Not dirty, not clean.
 * Descriptive adjectives that end in -ň are related to size, shape, and overall moderately permanent adjectives.
 * Descriptive adjectives that end in -ás are related to color, and temperature, and overall adjectives subjected to change within time.
 * Descriptive adjectives that end in -š are related to feelings, emotions, and overall things that are definitely temporary.
 * Predicates ending in -t are related to size, shape, and overall moderately permanent adjectives.
 * Predicates ending in -ř are related to color, temperature, and overall adjectives subjected to change within time.
 * Predicates ending in -ž are related to feelings, emotions, and overall things that are definitely temporary.

Personal pronouns
Personal pronouns are the most irregular of all words in Adwan, for they don't necessarily follow a uniform way of changing affixes like Nouns and Adjectives do. Personal pronouns don't all end in the same suffix, leaving personal pronouns in Adwan to be the most irregular parts of speech in the whole language. Note: Personal Pronouns declined in the Genitive are the equivalent to both English posessive determiners, and possessive pronouns. Therefore: Adwan has no distinction between posessive pronouns and posessive adjectives, for the role of posession is maintained solely by the genitive declensions of said pronouns.
 * "My dog is big" would be "Æny gromor zå dogúv", which, when translated directly to English, would say "Is big of me dog."
 * "The big dog is mine" would be "Þuðy zå gronor dogúv", which, when translated directly to English, would be "Is of me big dog".

Demostrative Pronouns
Along with personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns are irregular, too, and don't follow a pattern of suffix-changing declensions, like Nouns, Adjectives, and Numbers do.

Demonstrative pronouns in Adwan have three distinctions: proximal, which refers to objects near the speaker (this, in English), medial, objects near the address, and distal, objects far from both (that for English) (Note: That in English can be both medial and distal). This is similar to the demonstrative pronouns in Spanish (este/esto/esta for proximal, ese/eso/esa for medial, aquello/aquel/aquella for distal).

If you can see, all declined forms of each demonstrative pronoun keeps the first and last letters of the word, and declines by changing, adding or subtracting infixes, rather than changing prefixes or suffixes. Adwanic demonstrative pronouns go through a process of Vowel Migration when changing to plural; each vowel is assigned a specific part in a cycle of vowels phonemes, and to pluralize, they go through a transformation that leads them to the next vowel in line. Therefore, y turns into u, e turns into a, and a turns into y.

Relative and Interrogative Pronouns
Relative and Interrogative pronouns in Adwan are moderately regular, as they follow the same declension rules Adjectives, Nouns and Determiners do. Like in many languages, relative and interrogative pronouns are pretty much identical, but in Adwan, it's only the roots that are identical, for each is then declined according to not only grammatical case, but according to whether the use of it is Relative or Interrogative. Pronouns will always end in -ða; it is up to their class (relative or interrogative) to decide what declensions they should take on.
 * The root word for "what" is þeða, but when used in the accusative as an interrogative ("She saw what movie?") would be þeðna (Voé þeðna?), as opposed to the relative usage of what ("What she saw was a movie."), where it is still in the accusative, since it is a relative pronoun, the declension is different, leaving what to be þeðmna (Voé þeðmna, þuðyé ůçenav.)
 * Voé þeðna? is, in a gloss, "See-she-past what-int-ACC?", directly: "Saw what?"
 * Voé þeðmna, þuðyé ůçenav. is, in a gloss, "See-she-past what-rel-ACC, be-it-past movie-NOM.", directly: "Saw what, was movie."

Indefinite Pronouns
Indefinite Pronouns are pronouns that specify unspecified objects, places or things. As with other parts of speech in Adwan, they are too, interchangeable in usage and their function depends solely on their declension. Indefinite prounouns can be used as determiners, and even nouns, so their declensions are extremely important.

Indefinite pronouns do not distinguish between number, and only decline for grammatical case. They all end in -ẃe. Tugryfẃe -- Everyone