Lili

Warning: Lili is work in progress, please wait. --- Lili is an engineered language made with the goal of being an "atomic language", in the sense that words are made of "semantical atoms", words that cannot be divided any further. Or at least, I'll try to make it like that (lol).

Syntactically unambiguous
It must always be clear what the particles, markers and adjectives refer to.

Oligosynthetic
There shouldn't and won't be any word for "child", for example, because that's a complex concept. Instead, you have to compound "human + young". There won't be any word for "steal", either. You have to compound it.

Disambiguable
You can always disambiguate a sentence if it's ambiguous.

Consonants
Lili has 16 consonants:

b: /b

c: /ʃ

d: /d

f: /f

g: /ɡ

j: /ʒ

k: /k

l: /l

m: /m

n: /n

p: /p

r: /r

s: /s

t: /t

v: /v

z: /z

Vowels
Lili has 5 vowels:

a: /a

e: /ɛ

i: /i

o: /ɔ

u: /u

Stems
Stems are little words that contain only one element. For example, "rend" means "apple".

Compound words
Compound words are words that contain three or more (it must always be an odd number) elements. For example, "rendikickau" means "red apple".

rend: apple (operand)

k: (connects a noun to an adjective) (operator)

ckau: red (operand)

Every element is separated by an "i" or an "l", everything is lowercase and word spacing is optional. You can write it as "rendi kickau", "ren dikickau", "rendiki ckau", or with any other spacing. The elements that occupy an odd position are called "operands"; while the elements that occupy an even position are called "operators".

Another example is "fereinsiovop", which means "to see".

fere: to feel (operand)

ns: (instrumental: with/by the means of) (operator)

ovop: eye(s) (operand)

Switch
Putting an "e-" before an operator makes it switch the two operands.

For example: "ovoplensifere" has the same meaning as "fereinsiovop".

ovop: eye(s) (operand)

ens: (switch version of "ns")

fere: to feel

Syntax
Lili has a SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) word order. For example, "I eat an apple" is "cinakirend"

c: I (operand)

nak: to eat/drink (operator)

rend: apple (operand)

Warning: "cinak" is not a grammatically valid sentence, because it has two (an even number) elements. The correct sentence is "cidinak".

c: I (operand)

d: (connects a subject to a verb) (operator)

nak: to eat/drink (operand)

Parentheses
Parentheses serve to make semantically unambiguous sentences. For example, if you want to say "I eat a red apple", you have to say "cinakipi rendi kickau". Parentheses are neither operands nor operators.

c: I (operand)

nak: to eat/drink (operator)

p: open parenthesis

rend: apple (operand)

k: (connects a noun to an adjective) (operator)

ckau: red (operand)

In this case we use a parenthesis to indicate that it's only the apple that is red, not the whole sentence. Without the parenthesis, it would have meant "the fact that I eat an apple is red", which doesn't make sense.

Degree words
Words like "zuca" usually mean a thing or its opposite. In this case, "zuca" means "sad-happy". To give this word a degree, you must use the operator "k" and then one of these operands: vuon, vuen, vuan, vun, von, ven, van.

zucalkivuon: very sad (-3)

zucalkivuen: sad (-2)

zucalkivuan: a bit sad (-1)

zucalkivun: neutral (0)

zucalkivon: a bit happy (+1)

zucalkiven: happy (+2)

zucalkivan: very happy (+3)

Verbal tenses
"z" is the operator that introduces time, while "puf" is the operand that means "past-future". For example:

cidinak: I eat/drink (no tense)

cidinaki zipi pufikivuan: I just ate/drank (immediate past)

cidinaki zipi pufikivun: I'm eating (present)

cidinaki zipi pufikivon: I'm about to eat (immediate future)

Singular and plural markers
Unmarked nouns in Lili are neither singular nor plural. To mark them as singular or plural you need to add the operator "k" after the noun, and add sn to make them singular, pn to make them plural, or gn to make a generalization. This is optional.

rend: apple

rendikisn: an apple

rendikipn: some apples

rendikign: apples in general

The generalization marker is used in sentences like these:

aboti kigni dipi dusmikivuen: humans are stupid

abot: human

k: (connecting operator)

gn: generalization marker

d: (connecting operator)

p: (open parenthesis)

dusm: dumb-smart

k: (connecting operator)

vuen: degree marker (-2)

Genders
After the operator "k", add the operand "na" for "female" or "vu" for "male".

ci dinak: I eat/drink

ciki naldinak: I (female) eat/drink

ciki vuldinak: I (male) eat/drink

Case prepositions
There are a lot of operators that function like prepositions that function like cases. For example, "cm" is the comitative operator, that means "in company of", "with". For example:

cidi asob icmij: I play with you

c: I (operand)

d: (connecting operator)

asob: to play (operand)

cm: (comitative operator)

j: you (operand)

As another example, "ns" is the instrumental operator, that means "by the means of".

cidina kinsizrau: I eat with a fork

c: I (operand)

d: (connecting operator)

nak: to eat/drink (in this case the context is clear) (operand)

ns: (instrumental operator)

zrau: fork (operand)

Stems
Coming soon

Compound words
Coming soon