Chunotl - a conlang

Chunotl is a conlang (constructed language) I sketched during the year 2004.

There's a brief lexicon available.

Phonetics / phonology

The following graphs uniformly denote the corresponding phonemes. The notation for the phonemes is supplied in X-SAMPA.

Grammar

Chunotl is pretty isolating. However it uses a few suffixes to mark "semantic cases": agent, patient, topic and oblique.

Syntax is almost strictly head first (right branching). I might say "VSO", but really there are no subjects or objects in the classic sense.

Nouns

Root examples:

1. In agent case, the root doesn't change. Gender and number are not grammatically distiguished.

   For some particles, which I will introduce later, the agent case is marked with -ea.

2. In patient case, -oa is appended to the root (if it ends in a consonant) or -soa (if it ends in a vowel).

   E.g.:
edenoa
endusoa


3. In topic case, -acl is appended for consonants and -cl for vowels.

   E.g.:
edenacl
enducl


4. In oblique case, -eve is appended for consonants and -meve for vowels.

   E.g.:
edeneve
endumeve


   Nouns whose function is ruled by prepositions are declined in oblique case.

Verbs

Verbs are invariable.

In general, a verb is described as the relationship between from one to three basic parts: the agent, the patient and the topic, which will be noted as A, P and T.

The nature of that relationship could, of course, be arbitrary. However, in practice, A, P and T play their intuitively "natural" role. (I.e., the agent plays an agent role, etc.)

For instance:

It's not necessary the three parts to take part in the meaning of a verb:

It's also not necessary for all the parts to appear in a sentence, so that a verb might be translated with many other verbs, depending on the emphasized part.

(For example, if the patient is the focus, "to teach" might be "to learn", etc.)

Basic syntax

The order of agent, patient and topic doesn't change the meaning, but the focus:

Constructions with prepositions

(Notice the topic suffix is put over the nucle of the construction: "star")

Interesting particles

There are declinable particles (which I don't know how to call -maybe "relative pronouns") which create interesting constructions.

Imagine this particle somehow builds a nominal construction, it "opens a construction". In the middle, if accurate, the arguments are located. And finally, it's completed with a verb.

The first of them is:

c-: "what <verb>s", "the one that <verb>s"

For example:

If one would need to put c- in oblique case, the preposition which governs it is put after, as if it were a postposition:

Thus, c- builds nominal constructions. If they need to be used, to decline them the corresponding suffix is added to the verb.

(The case of the particle (which gives meaning to the construction) should not be confused with the case of the construction (which signals its real function)).

The rest of the "interesting particles" behave in a quite similar way:

l-: "<verbing>", builds circumstancial clauses.

ax-: "X that <verbs>"

Builds modifiers. Since the language is 'head first', the modifier construction is put after the modified construction.

(Note: "psatl" refers to eye pupils).

oct-: "<to verb>", also builds nominal constructions, nominalizing verbs:

(Semantic note: "nedr" is "to love, but also "to like, to enjoy")

(Another note: the preposition "xol" is a mean/instrument "with", while "shedr" is non-agent company "with")

ts-: "that X <verbs>"

To avoid the X about it's spoken being always the same as the modified construction of the relative clause, "ts-" can be declined in oblique case with a dummy preposition: "xa", which means nothing at all:

Adjectives and adverbs

Adjectives and adverbs are invariable. Actually, they aren't two word classes, as there is nothing distinguishing them intrinsically. They are preceded by the "vao" particle:

Does this make you think/feel anything? Tell me.