Adwan

Adwan (Ad: Aðwana) 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 "aðwana" comes from the archaic Adwanic noun, "aðe", which means "mind"; and "wan", which means "to speak". It is an archaic compound word, not used anymore due to an evolved vocabulary, which means "a spoken mind."

Phonology
Adwan has a moderately unique phonology, as it has extensive use of using the consonant /j/ coupled with both vowels AND consonants. It is said that Adwan tends to sound like a mixture of Icelandic, Norwegian, Czech, and Polish. Adwan is percieved to be in the middle between a syllable timed language, and a stress timed language. However, it must be noted that the length of Adwan's vowels have no grammatical effect, while the stress put upon them does.
 * /ŋ/ is only seen in the nasal vowels ą, ę, and ų.

Alphabet and Orthography
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 NEVER nazalized when in the beggining of a word, or when predecing a vowel. Note, for the vowels A, E, I, O, U and Y, an acute accent can be added to focus stress on that particular syllable (this happens a lot when the stress isn't on the penultimate syllable. When the penultimate syllable rule is broken, an acute accent occurs to guide stress, and elongate the noun). Ex: Many times, however, a word will be seen with an accent on the penultimate syllable. This is to stabilize, on some words, the stress, as the number of syllables might change during declension and conjugation. Example: HOWEVER, for consonants, the acute accent represents a preceding /j/ sound; ŕ = jr; ś=js, etc. This is mainly due to the fact that when there'd be vowels preceding the j which preceded consonants, new phonemes would form and throw off the meanings. NOTE: Consonants with acute accents are a seperate letter of the alphabet, and are, therefore, a part of the alphabet, as opposed to vowels which are just stress-change indicators.
 * The adjective Jĕþór, or blue, has an accute accent on the last vowel, which changes the word's stress to the last syllable, as opposed to the penultimate syllable.
 * Byblyobéfa already has, by default, stress on the e before the f. However, as declension occurs and more syllables might be added, the stress it kept on the e, as opposed to changing to the default penultimate syllable.
 * 1) The Locative case is the only singular case for first declensions that adds on another syllable, so byblyobéfa, which is bookcase, in the Locative, would be byblyobéfene. Without the accent, the stress would have moved on to the second-to-last e, but the acute accent prevented that.

Dialect changes
There are two different dialects that are mutually intelligible; the eastern dialect, which has the pronunciations below, tend to reflect the more Slavic side of Adwan. These changes don't make any difference to a non-native speaker, as they all fall within the same sound-range and Adwan doesn't need to make distinctions between them.
 * A: a becomes æ
 * E: ɛ becomes e
 * Č: tʃ becomes tɕ, or tʂ
 * G: g becomes ɣ
 * Ĥ: x becomes χ or ç
 * J: j becomes ʎ
 * Ĵ: dʒ becomes dʑ
 * Ö: œ becomes y or ø
 * Š: ʃ becomes ɕ, or ʂ
 * V: v becomes β
 * Ž: ʒ becomes ʑ

Orthographic Changes
Letters in the Adwanic Alphabet periodically change depending on the formality of their use. It is quite odd, though, as some letters are only used in standard form, and others are used in only formal and casual terms. Shown below are some of the orthographic changes that occur in Adwan. Many of these orthographic changes are due to a revolt in the diacritics used (for an acute with a consanant added a preceding /j/, yet ẃ wasn't necessarily /jw/, and the circumflex resembled an upside-down haček, which should soften consanants, not harden them). Nevertheless, Ĵĵ and Ĥĥ are still used everyday, as it is only a matter of knowing that, just how there are many kinds of prthographic ways to write English (cursive, print, different types of a's and different types of g's, etc), there are different ways to write Adwan.
 * Ĥĥ is also commonly written as Ȝȝ
 * Ĵĵ is also commonly written as Ʒʒ
 * Ẃẃ is also commonly written as Ƿƿ

Epenthesis
Many words in Adwan will end and begin with the same sound, which can be problematic to speak when speaking such texts. A good example of sentences that do so is such a sentence: To prevent this phonological phenomenon, also called elision, epenthesis occurs, which divides phonemes by adding an extra sound. This only ever occurs to words in which elision occurs on consonants, for with vowels, a glottal stop is used. While no written grapheme shows the epenthesis that goes on between matching consonants, it must be known that a /ɨ/ is put in between the double phonemes to avoid elision.
 * Žemyš šlynąč nëšlynąš aþö fevnaš nëfevnač.
 * Žemyš šlynąč poses a problem, and if nothing is done, elision occurs, causing it to sound like this: žemy šlynąč, or žemyš lynąč

Syntax and Morphology
As in many Indo-European languages, Adwan is highly inflected; Adwan inflects nouns for number, grammatical case, and, seldomly, gender; Adjectives, and numbers decline for grammatical case; pronouns decline for grammatical person 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. 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 general word order follows a VOS pattern, and, sometimes, a VSO pattern if the subject is in posession of someone or something. However, due to the heavy inflection that Adwan goes through, word order is quite free. The standard is VOS and VSO, 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, OSV and SOV is used.

Note: It is also incredibly common to see SVO and SOV word orders among informal usages and in partial standardizations for those learning Adwan.

General Rules:
 * Adverbs, generally, always follow a verb.
 * Commas do not denote stops, but merely break sentences down to a verbal phrase. 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.

Gender
Gender in Adwan is used in a different degree than gender in other European languages are. While Adwan still preserves gender-based declensions, they completely define the noun, as opposed to just the noun being a feminine or a masculine noun. A good example of this is the noun Fevna, which means Parent. Like most nouns in Adwan, Fevna would be declined as a neuter noun, but fevna declined in the feminine, fevnač, would mean mother, or, literally feminine parent. Another example is šlyna, or child. Šlyna declined in the masculine, šlynaš, would be boy-child, or son. Many nouns in Adwan have three-way distinctions; the neuter or general, the masculine and the feminine. Nouns declined as masculine are literally masculine, (Ešneťanev literally means gentle-person, yet ešneťanef means gentleman, and ešneťaneť means gentlewoman. Another example of the three-way distinction is woman. Woman is löjek, man is löjeĥ, and adult is löjen.

Case
Adwan inflects its nouns, adjectives, pronouns, determiners, and numbers. Nouns are inflected for number, grammatical case, and occasionally, gender; adjectives are inflected for grammatical case; 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: ''who? what?''

Accusative: I see what/who?

Ablative: because of who/what?

Genitive: of who/what?

Dative: to whom/what?

Locative: at/around what?

Vocative: I call whom?

Case examples in English: Example sentence using all cases: Ignore the fact it doesn't make too much sense, I just tried to show a sentence that had all cases.
 * Nominative: I like apples.
 * 1) Since you are the subject, you are in the nominative. However, for phrases like these, Adwan lacks a nominative as it is a pro-dropping language.
 * Accusative: I like apples.
 * 1) Apples are the ones being directly affected by the verb. No preposition governs the accusative, for the accusative has a direct connection with the verb. Apples here are in the accusative because they are the ones being affected by the verb.
 * Ablative: I like apples from Texas.
 * 1) Texas, here, is in the ablative because it is the causing noun. Of course, there are also various prepositions that govern the Ablative, with the default being "from". The Ablative has a lot of similarities to Latin's Ablative and many Slavic languages's Instrumental case.
 * Genitive: I like my mom's apples.
 * 1) English has a relatively alike system when it comes to posession. The Genitive marks the posessor, which, in this sentence, is mom". Note: a noun in the genitive is like saying "of the/a noun", so, typically, the genitive follows the noun or item in posession, as opposed to preceding it.
 * Dative: I like to save some apples for my sister.
 * 1) The noun in the Dative here is sister, as it is the indirect object. The Dative, along with the Ablative and the Locative, are the three prepositional cases used in Adwan. Generally, prepositions such as "to", and "for" that refer to objects are in the Dative case.
 * Locative: I like to eat around the apple.
 * 1) The noun in the Locative here is the apple, as it, too, is an indirect object, yet it has to do with location. Many times, prepositions like "to" are also in the Locative, if they have are aimed at a specific location. The Locative takes care of prepositions of direction and location.
 * Vocative: I love you, Apple.
 * 1) The noun in the Vocative is the noun being adressed. Many times, they are names of people. It has the equivalent of "O, apple!", or "Dear Apple!". It deals with nouns that don't serve to function as actual objects, and no prepositions govern the Vocative.
 * Mom! Dad's apples are in front of the bookcase, along with the book I bought for my friend's birthday.
 * Fevnač! Čyryč jeg byblyobéfene afkry fevnyš, morsašasnï saż čežuþ byblë žojöšnýčkandevog výjö za.

Noun Declensions
Nouns are one of the most important parts of speech in Adwan. Each noun is declined for above case according to function in speech and preposition, if any. Nouns are declined for Grammatical Case, Number, and, seldomly, Gender. Nouns will always either end in -a, -n, -v or -e, and are declined according to their ending.

Nouns are, for the most part, generally declined as neuter nouns, though gender declensions are the same as neuter declensions, only with different suffixes. Most nouns are neuter by default until specified otherwise. For example: Parent in Adwan is Fevna, Father in Adwan is Fevnaš, and Mother is Fevnač. Nouns in the first and second declensions are made feminine by adding the suffix -č, and are made masculine by adding the suffix -š. Nouns in the third and fourth declensions, however, go through consonant changes. In the third declensions, the first n of the declension turns into ĥ. Therefore, gwinevren, or professor, declined in the feminine dative would be ''gwinevrekoð. Likewise, it being declined in the masculine dative would be grinevreĥoð.'' Nouns in the fourth declension follow the same pattern, but with different consonants. Nouns in the fourth declension that are declined in the masculine change the v into an f. Ešneťanev, for example, is gentleperson, but to have gentleman, it would be declined into the masculine, which would end up looking like ešneťanef. Oddly enough, the feminine paradigm for the fourth declensions have a different consonant that might cause problems. A glottal stop (represented by the t-with-haček in Adwan, ť) replaces the ending v, therefore gentlewomen would be ešneťaneťn.

Adjectives
Adjectives in Adwan are much less complicated than other declensions are. Adjectives are inflected only for grammatical case, and they only have three declensions. Many of these declensions have alike, similar, or even share the same endings as some nouns and pronouns do, therefore it's essential to be able to spot them in their usage.

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.

Pronouns also decline to the Comitative case, which is similar to the instrumental case, and it represents "with". Therefore, kona is with me. Note: Personal Pronouns declined in the Genitive are the equivalent to both English posessive determiners, and possessive pronouns. 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. An important thing to remember is the use of epenthesis that many words in general go under, so ‘Śu’ would sould like ‘iŚu’, only the ‘i’ being weaker than it would be in normal terms.

Relative Pronouns
Relative pronouns are the most regular of the pronouns in Adwan, as they follow the general rules of suffix changes and what-not. Relative pronouns are used when a noun is already in use, but that same noun has a double case. This problem occurs quite a bit, and is solved by the use of Relative pronouns; they also work to link sentences together and take the place of subjects that aren't specified.

All relative pronouns end in -að, so they all follow this declension

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, a type of Ablaut, 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.

The order of Vowel Migration has three different cycles, and they go as so:

First Cycle: Y = U, U = E, E = A, A = Y

Second Cycle: Ö = Ĕ, Ĕ = Ą, Ą = Ë, Ë = Ö

Third Cycle: Ï = I, I = Ę, Ę = O, O= Ï

Verbs
Verbs in Adwan are conjugated by affix changes and agglutinations, depending on the tenses used. Verbs in Adwan are conjugated for Tense, Mood, Aspect Number and Person, not to mention the class of verbs they are. There are three classes of verbs in Adwan; -an verbs, -en verbs, and -on verbs; they are all conjugated differently, yet follow a similar patter in conjugation. There are no verbs that are conjugated irregularly. Ironically, while other languages have verbs that follow orthographies and have irregular conjugations, Adwan has verbs that don't follow verb suffix rules, but follow a particular conjugation pattern.

There is no distinction as to why some verbs end in -on, -en, and -an.

To Be
Adwan has 3 different types of to be's. The first one is a locative to be, to be used when in, at, or near a location. This verb is Čyren; usually, in informal writing, Čyren could be used and the noun, although declined in the locative, wouldn't require a preposition if it was simple, as context could tell the rest. Also, when Čyren is used, it is a great indicator for a noun in the locative case.

The second verb for to be is Ïn, and it is used exclusively with predicate adjectives. The usage of Ïn used to be rare, as adjectives had different declensions, but Ïn was revived with the loss of the Predicate Adjective declensions. Generally, if you're adding an adjective after ‘to be’, Ïn would be used.

The last but not least verb is Þuðan, the first verb in the entire Adwan language. This verb is used when neither of the two other ‘to be's’ match the criteria, say I am a boy would use þuðan, so on and so forth.

Verb Conjugations
Due to the lack of auxilliary verbs in Adwan, there are a higher number of conjugation paradigms for Adwanic verbs than there are in many languages.

Person
Adwanic verbs conjugate to four grammatical persons:
 * First Person
 * Second Person
 * Third Person
 * Third Person Feminine
 * Third Person Masculine
 * Fourth Person

Number
Adwanic verbs conjugate to two grammatical numbers:
 * Singular
 * Plural

Tense
Adwanic verbs conjugate to threegrammatical tenses:
 * Past
 * Present
 * Future

Aspect
Adwanic verbs conjugate to four grammatical aspects: The Aspects in Adwan are very much like the ones in English, if only different slightly. The perfect is like English's perfect, the perfective is the simple, and the imperfective is relatively close to the progressive/continuous in English.
 * Perfect
 * Perfective
 * Imperfective
 * Inchoative

Mood
Adwanic verbs conjugate to seven grammatical moods:
 * Indicative
 * Generic
 * Declarative
 * Subjunctive
 * Imperative
 * Conditional
 * Precative

Polarity
Adwanic verbs conjugate to two grammatical polarities:
 * Affirmative
 * Negative

Voice
Adwanic verbs conjugate to three grammatical voices:
 * Active
 * Passive
 * Middle

Voice Paradigm
Of the three voices in Adwan, the Active voice is the most important, as it contains all the vital affixes and conjugations. The active voice is, for those that don't know what it is, when the subject is the doer of the verb, which is in many cases, the most voice used. Many times, the middle voice is also called the reflexive voice. One well known language that has this voice is Ancient Greek.
 * Active voice: I ate a fish.
 * Passive voice: I was eaten by a fish.
 * Middle voice: I ate myself.

Another thing to note about the Passive and the Middle voice: each have a static suffix that denote their usage. One must know the Active voice paradigms to know the passive and middle voice paradigms, as they build off of the active voice. NOTE: Below you'll notice some affixes change per mood. This is due to Vowel Harmony. Although it is not a big feature in Adwan, it still exists in Mood changes. Epenthesis rules apply to Passive and Middle voice affixes.
 * Active voice: I ate a fish --> Ĥozje šlnu.
 * Passive voice: I was eaten by a fish --> Ĥozjeþno šlnë. The fish here is the cause of you being eaten, since you're still the subject. The Passive voice, however, has declined much, and is only used for formal and abstract things such as "i am born..", etc. Usually, the Passive voice has been abandoned for the active (I was eaten by a fish, would be A fish ate me)
 * Middle voice: I ate myself --> Ĥozjeðnu. The middle voice was never used much, as its only use was to have the same functionality as reflexive pronouns, which don't exist in Adwan.

Modal Verbs
Adwan, as stated above, has no kind of auxilliary verb. Many things that English has are worded quite differently in Adwan, and this can be a throwoff, so here's the general way some things are worded as they are with not using some modal verbs that English has (like may, should, etc). Many of these are interchangable with tenses to fit the mood of a sentence. Also: many of these are so flexible in English, that some modal verbs have other uses than the ones stated below. Keep in mind these are just general, commonly used forms of these modal verbs.
 * Would: is expressed by the conditional mood.*
 * Shall: to have the intention to...
 * 1) Example: I shall go to your house.
 * 2) Would be: Þefas gréĵenav ton al vjóškene śu.
 * 3) A literal translation is: I have the intention to go to house of you.
 * Should: to have the intended obligation to...
 * 1) Example: They should be sweet to their sister.
 * 2) Would be: Þefyš greĵyhrăju ïn fjor al pravloč aþö.
 * 3) A literal translation is: They have the obligation to be sweet to sister of them.
 * Can: to have the ability to...
 * 1) Example: I can't sleep.
 * 2) Would be: Þefasta jerynoð zaðan.
 * 3) A literal translation is: I have not the ability to sleep.
 * May: to have the permission to...
 * 1) Example: May I go home?
 * 2) Would be: Þefas ĵykernevyn a ton al šorcómene za?
 * 3) A literal translation is: I have the permission I to go to home/habitation of me?
 * 4) Note: Adwan is a pro-drop language, which means personal pronouns are dropped if they're in the nominative; however, to ask a question, the pronoun is usually placed there. It has the same effect of the particle do in English. Questions like Do I have..? in Adwan would, when literally translated, say I Have I...?
 * Have to: To have the secondary need of/to...
 * 1) Example: I have to go to school.
 * 2) Would be: Þefas šreťamuževyn ton al ezi.
 * 3) A literal translation is: I have the secondary need to go to school.
 * 4) Note: This is used when it's not a necessity. Things like I need water, or I need sleep, things needed for survival, utilize the verb muževan, or to need.