Leyshasky

Leyshasky, Lxeįsxaski, is a native American language isolate found in Southern Texas. The Leshaskian name for Leyshasky, Lxeįshaski, is a compound, meaning Tree sound, due to the tall, thin trees of the forest from which the Leyshaskian tribe hailed from.

Leyshasky contains many interesting features, such as topic-conjugation, the retention of a dual number, and a nominative-accusative alignment. Leyshasky possesses three cases, and suffixes postpositions, rather than have them as particles or as separate cases. Another feature are the postpositional suffixes in Leyshasky, which are an opened class, meaning new postpositional meanings can be made by combining existing affixes. Leyshasky is highly agglutinative, as it conjugates its verbs for subject, object, number, topic, mode, tense, telicity, aspect and mood. Leyshasky lacks adverbs, and their meaning is instead coveyed using topic and aspectual suffixes. Leyshasky also has a relatively low number of adjectives, instead utilizing affixes, much like topic affixes, which attach to nouns to modify them.

Leyshasky's main feature, however, is its incredible lack of verbs. Most verbs and actions in Leyshasky are expressed with the verb Magxa, or to be, and a combination of topics. Leyskasky is rich in topics, thus leaving most verbs to be used by magxa. Note the following five verbs in English, and then their Leyshasky counterparts. Clearly, verbs in general reach long lengths, as they conjugate using topics to change meaning. Note the English phrase,
 * To walk, Magxamete'a, be(magxa)-motion(me)-ground(te'a)
 * To run, Magxameyate'a, be(magxa)-motion:fast(me:ya)-ground(te'a)
 * To swim, Magxamesuyu, be(magxa)-motion(me)-water(suyu)
 * To sing, Magxañemasxaskistlxu, be(magxa)-culture(ñema)-sound(sxaski)-productive(stlxu)
 * To fly, Magxameflo'a, be(magxa)-motion(me)-wind(flo'a)


 * I kept chasing the bear but I lost it.

and its translation in Leyshasky,


 * Magxameyate'atlxõ'etemyedxẽ'ne'a kolumsilat'yįt.

A closer translation to the phrase above would look more like "I chased the bear but didn't exceed". Many things come into play that are conjugated into the verb. Note the gloss:


 * Be-motion-fast-ground-attentively-me-past-iterative-atelic bear-prepositional-to-definite.