Ælis/Morphology

This page will cover the most important building stones that Ælis uses to construct words.

Basic word structure
Ælis words are nearto always clusters of several roots, constructed with one simple but fundamental guideline: the head of the root word cluster has a nominal value; the tail of the root word cluster is dependent, adjectival or adverbial. An example:  tE [te] means 'human/person'. uBlE [uble] means 'strong'. An interesting and possibly unique feature of the Ælis root word approach is that semantically related words are nearto always lexically similar. The following words are lexically related, which in correlation means that they have a certain amount of root words in common:
 * tEuBlE [te>uble] means 'a strong person'
 * uBlEtE [uble>te] means 'human strength'

tEnAiO [tenaio] ==> person>quality>little; a bad person --> enemy

tEnAlE  [tenale] ==> person>quality>much; a good person --> friend

mAnAlE  [manale] ==> male>quality>much; a good man --> male friend

nInAlE  [ninale] ==> female>quality>much; a good woman --> female friend

nInArA  [ninara] ==> female>quality>total; a perfect woman --> female best friend / girlfriend

etc.

Qualifiers
Qualifiers are a set of five roots used as suffixes to nearly any other morpheme which express a certain amount, degree or quality of something. Qualifiers are essential building stones of the Ælis morphology. There are five levels:

sI [si] (nothing) - iO [io] (little) - uA [ua] (moderate/middle/half) - le [le] (much) - rA [ra] (all/total)

Below are a few example words. Look at which nuance the qualifiers add to the roots:

This word construction pattern can be applied to almost every root word. As such, qualifiers are a very important aspect of the language's morphology.

Number concepts
Along with the 21 common letters of the alphabet, Ælis uses a set of ten additional symbols called number concepts, from now on referred to as "Lisqa". Lisqa are proper root words which all have a numeric value:

Lisqa constitute a fairly important aspect of the languages' morphology, mainly because the underlying idea doesn't share any common ground with concepts found in the English grammar (or probably most human languages' grammar, for that matter). A first important remark is that these number concepts are not the same as cardinal numbers. Instead, lisqa are used to form certain types of words in which the corresponding numeric value is somehow conceptually present. A noteworthy example can be found in the very name of the language: 1lIS consists of 1 (1) and lIS (concept, idea), the concept of one meaning as much as 'peace' or 'harmony', or of course ' uni ty'.

Counting
Though lisqa aren't proper numbers, they are used to create them. The Ælis counting system could technically be called bi-quinary (5x2), although probably decimal is easier and also accurate. The numbers from 0 to 9 are formed by prefixing a number concept to the morpheme qA [qa], which can mean 'number', 'amount', 'countable' or 'unit'.

Accordingly, the first ten cardinal numbers are:

For all positive numbers 10 and up, multiple number concepts are combined as if they were digits. E.g.:

To distinguish positive from negative numbers, the root word clusters qElE [qe-le] and qEiO [qe-io] can be suffixed, which are to be interpreted as meaning positive addition and negative addition, respectively. Therefore:
 * 1qAqElE = +1
 * 2qAqElE = +2
 * 1qAqEiO = -1
 * 2qAqEiO = -2

The root word [qa] always dilineates different numbers. For instance, while 12qA [æ'eqa] is the number 12, a formulation like 1qA2qA [æqa'eqa] could be used for enumerating lottery numbers, for the results of a sports game, etc.

Personal pronouns
Another aspect where the number concepts play an important role is in personal pronouns. These exist in 6 grammatical persons and three genders. The genders are purely semantical, so they don't govern the declension of nouns or the like. The undefined pronouns are not to be confused with the neuter grammatical gender. They are used if a speaker is either unaware of the gender, doesn't wish to specify, or, in plurals, for referring to a group where both sexes are present. Furthermore, the personal pronouns are only used for arguments that can be interpreted as having a character: people, or sometimes animals, anthropomorphized objects (in literature), ect.

Axial paradigm of time and space
The linguistic continuum of time and space in Ælis is shaped by 'dimensional' axes. The key root word in this domain is dA [da]. Bear in mind the theory of both the number concepts and the qualifiers. Look at the table below, and the paradigm will become clear.

Pluralization
The topic of pluralization is peculiar, as it differs from the 'traditional' singular/plural pattern. Ælis, root words are principally ambiguous as long as they're not specified. For instance, '[te]' can mean both 'person', 'people', and 'human'; '[ma]' can mean both 'man', 'men', 'manly', 'manliness', etc. E.g.:

lA mA hAaNdAuA [la ma ha'andaua]
 * ==> There is a man here
 * ==> There are men here
 * ==> There is male presence here

By adding the root qA [qa], with either a number concept or one of the qualifiers, these roots transform into precise (countable) and imprecise (non-countable) amounts, respectively. Compare:

...
 * 1qAmA [æqama] (one man)
 * 2qAmA [eqama] (two men)
 * qAiOmA [qaioma] (a few men)
 * qAlEmA [qalema] (many men)
 * qArAmA [qarama] (all men)
 * etc.

Moreover, [qa] can be combined with a number concept and a qualifier at the same time, by which both nuances will be incorporated:


 * lA 9qAiOmA hAaNdAuA [la uoqaioma ha'andaua] (nine men (not much) are here) --> There are only nine men here.

Further reading:
 * → Main page
 * → Writing Ælis
 * → Topicalisation
 * → Root word list and vocabulary