Matlang, Day 7

Hey y'all, it's back to Matlang.

In our continuing saga, I will start to outline my vision of Matlang grammar.

In English, the essence of the clause is in the verb. Look at the sentence now the whole world had one language and a common speech. The essence is in the verb, have. Everything else describes in detail that action of ownership. Who had, what was had? Everything else is an argument to the verb. I think, with my limited linguistic knowledge, that most languages are that way.

In Matlang, our goal was to create a language based off of principles of Material Logic. The fundamental concept of Material Logic is, in fact, concepts. There is also the principle of substance and accident: Substances are the essential, unchangeable, defining characteristics of a being, while accidents are things applying to it that are unessential and changeable. In other words, heads and modifiers.

But the substances are all nouns.

Therefore, we must in Matlang have clauses be based off of the noun. In the aforementioned sentence, it is the world which is the basis of the sentence.

Let's form a structure of the same sentence in Verb-based and Matlang terms:

Verb-Based
have{world
     -the
     -whole
     |{and|language
           -one
          |speech
           -a
           -common
-past
Matlang
world
-the
-whole
-have{{and|language
           -one
           -past
          |speech
           -a
           -common
           -past
-past


I'd like it to have a somewhat head-initial syntax, like world whole have language one speech common.

And for our first five words, they will be nouns:

1. Sōcrāt-, Socrates (duh)
2. pater-, father, ancestor
3. mater-, mother, origin
4. phrāter-, brother, friend (informal)
5. adelph-, brother, monk (formal)

Matlang, Day 6

I just realized I've posted every other day. I actually wrote this earlier, I just set it to post later.

At the bottom is an .sc file of the sound changes. It's for Mark Rosenfelder's Sound Change Applier, I should write a review of it one of these days :).

Anyways, this a declension of ferō to bear:

   Matlang      Latin        Greek
ferō   feromes ferō ferimus ferō   feromen
fereri ferete  fers fertis  fereis ferete
fereti feront  fert ferunt  ferei  ferousi

This is assuming Matlang is descended from PIE. But it isn't; it's descended from Pre-Matlang. Which means we can supply changes to Pre-Matlang:

  Pre-Matlang       Matlang
*ferō   *feromes   ferō  feromes
*fereis *feretis → ferīs feretis
*fereit *ferount   ferīt ferount


But wait. Wasn't the entire point of Pre-Matlang to have agglunative endings which wear away into inflections in Matlang? And wasn't this whole project supposed to be based off of Material Logic? This means we can scrap the verbs and start over...with nouns. Until next time...

--

C=mnpbftdþkgxqGQsrlywRL
V=eaoiuëäöêâôîû
S=tdþ
K=kgx
W=qGQ
H=fþx
P=ptk
D=bdg
Y=kgxqGQy
F=ie
B=uo
Ä=ëäö
N=pbkgs
*Labiovelars
W/S/_F
W/S/u_
W/S/_u
q/k/B_
q/k/_B
G/1/n_
Q/1/n_
G/w/_
Q/w/_
n1/nG/_
*Aspirates
H/D/V_V
þ/b/u_
þ/b/r_
þ/b/_r
þ/b/_l
*s
s/r/V_V
s/1/_P
s/h/#_
1/s/_P
*Liquids
y//V_V
*Beschwaed vowels
Ä//_#
Ä/a/_
*Beiotaed vowels
ei/ê/_Y
ei/î/_
ôi/ê/_
âi/ê/_
*Syllabics
R/ra/N_
L/la/N_
R/ra/#_
L/la/#_
R/or/_
L/ol/_
*spelling
f/ph/_
þ/th/_
x/ch/_
q/1u/_V
q/que/_
1/q/_u
g/1u/_V
g/gue/_
1/g/_u

Matlang, Day 2

Today, I'll be doing those lovely airflows modified by your tongue's location. That's right, vowels!

Pre-Matlang Vowels
These are the basic sound correspondences:

Gr La PM
e  e  *e
a  a  *a
o  o  *o
e     *eə
a  a  *aə
o     *oə
ē  ē  *ē
ā  ā  *ā
ō  ō  *ō
i  i  *i
ī  ī  *ī
ī  īa *ei
ū  oe *oi
ai ae *ai
āi ī  *āi
āi ō  *ōi
u  u  *u
ū  ū  *ū
eu ū  *eu
ou ū  *ou
au au *au

So this is our system:
Monophthongs: /a e i o u a: e: i: o: u:/
-i Diphthongs: /ei ai oi a:i o:i/
-u Diphthongs: /eu ou au/
-ə Diphthongs: /eə aə oə/

Matlang, Day 1

Today, I'm announcing the start of an engelang project I'm going to call Matlang until I come up with a native name. Its goal is to create a language with a phonology and lexicon of PIE, Latin, and Greek; and a morphosyntax based on the principles of traditional Material Logic. Since I envision Matlang being inflectional, I will create first Pre-Matlang (based off PIE) with agglutination and a PIEish phonology. I will refrain from lexicon, because that takes too long.

Okay, here we go...

Today I'll do
Pre-Matlang Consonants
Nasals: /m n/
Plosives: /p b pʰ t d tʰ k g kʰ kʷ gʷ kʷʰ/

Oral continuants: /s r l j w/


Differences in PIE and Pre-Matlang:

• I've gotten rid of the palatovelars, because both Latin and Greek merge them with velars.
• I devoiced the aspirated plosives, as they both became unvoiced in Latin and Greek.