Re: Fadawana si Buruda

Roger Mills wrote (among other things):
> It would be interesting, and perhaps an act of human kindness, if you
> would explain just how these changes are "regular"; of course I don't
> expect you to reveal your Conlanging Secrets (TM) :-)))))))
>
>
>
Foolish mortal!  You dare inquire about the arcane lore of the
Conlanging Secrets (TM)???  Okay, I'll tell you.

In this language, you need to know three things to define a consonant:
its place of articulation, its method, and its voice.
- There are three places of articulation: labial, dental, and velar.
- There are three methods, roughly: stop, nasal/approximant, and fricative.
- There are three "voices": voiceless, voiced, and prevoiced clusters.

As every syllable is phonemically CV, you don't have to worry about
clusters.  There are only three vowels: a, i, and u.  This means that
every syllable is defined by four variables: place, method, voice, and
vowel.

For example, the syllable "ta" could be described as having place 2,
method 1, voice 1, and vowel 1.  A syllable like "gu" would have place
3, method 1, voice 2, and vowel 3.  Now let's imagine that our example
"ta" were a noun of some sort.  A very short noun, but a noun
nonetheless.  The default case for a noun is the agent case, so we have
to change it to put it in the patient case.

To do this, we swap its place with its method.  In this case, it would
change from place 2 and method 1 to place 1 and method 2.  This changes
"ta" to "ma", as "ta" is place 2 (dental) and method 1 (stop), while
"ma" is place 1 (labial) and method 2 (nasal).  The same rule applies
for words of any syllable.  A word like "rizuwa" (meaning "star") has
places 2, 2, and 1 for its three syllables, and methods 2, 3, and 2.
Swapping these gives us "riyuda".

Fundamentally, a word like "rizuwa" isn't really "rizuwa", but a
collection of patterns.  Whether those patterns apply to the voice of
the syllables across the word, or the vowels, or the methods of
articulation really isn't important, as it varies by case and number.
What matters is that those patterns stay the same, however they're applied.

To work out an example, "tazha" (dog):
        singular - paucal - plural
agent: tazha - malvi - bartu
patient: mazha - tarki - bampu

The whole point of this was to come up with another method of alteration
than the ones usually used; affixes, infixes, umlaut, etc., as this is
intended to be a non-human language.  Does this system do that, or does
ANADIEW?

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