Re: More on the Hermetic Language

Nik, hello there! I return home after a few days on the
road, and will attempt to respond to some of your
questions before I dive into yet another busy workday...

3/9/03 1:41:11 AM, Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>
wrote:

>Paul Burgess wrote:
>> There are
>> four genders (masculine, feminine, neuter, and royal)
>> but in practice you can 98% ignore this and treat all
>> nouns as neuter.
>
>Interesting.  What does "Royal" mean?  Are the genders
"natural"?  Is
>the _mna_ that you use before several words a gender
marker?

Masculine and feminine in Hermetic are "natural"
genders. "Royal" gender applies to royalty, deities, or
items closely associated with them. For example, "mna
saimo," "hook"; but royal gender "mna saimono,"
"crozier" as a symbol of royal power.

"Mna" is the article-- neither definite nor indefinite,
just an article. The rules for its use vary with noun
case. For instance, it always occurs before any noun in
the nominative case, common or proper, unless its place
is taken by a number or a demonstrative. But in the
genitive, dative, and instrumental cases, it occurs
before the noun only with a reflexive or emphatic sense.

>> The Hermetic verb has two persons (first and
second/third)
>
>Interesting division.  Does number come into play?
Nope, no difference in the verb itself for singular,
dual, or plural-- these are indicated only in the nouns.
(And, of course, in pronouns.)

>> three tenses (past, present, and future-- though they
don't really
>> quite correspond)
>
>How do they differ from what you'd expect?
Complicated topic. The short version: the "present" verb
can also indicate action in the recent past, or (to a
lesser degree) immediately impending future action. And
the present also sometimes indicates *slightly* more
remote past action with a continuing present effect. The
future indicative carries with it a greater sense of
assurance that the action is going to take place. Where
one is somewhat doubtful whether the future action is
actually going to come off, there is a *tendency* to put
the verb in the future optative.

>> five aspects (standard, inceptive, telative,
durative, and
>> causative)
>
>What do these aspects mean?  I can guess at all but
"standard", altho
>causative seems odd to clump with aspect.  Can these
aspects be
>combined?  For example, can you have inceptive-
causative?

"Standard" is the plain, "unmarked" verb. Inceptive
indicates an action or state which is beginning-- e.g.
"golis," "it is red"; "golliis," "it reddens." Telative
similarly indicates an action or state which is ending.
Durative indicates an action or state which is extended
or repeated-- relative to the standard aspect, which may
(depending on the particular verb) already signify a
more or less extended or repeated action. And causative
is, well, causative-- am trying now to remember from
which language I purloined the idea of a causative verb.

Aspects cannot be combined within a single verb.
"Combining" aspects requires the use of an auxiliary
verb, usually the verb "vaoliso," "to do." For instance:

zodis, "he moves it around in a circle"
zodliis, "he starts out moving it around in a circle"
zodpais, "he moves it around and around in circles"
vaolliis mna zodpaisoth, "he starts out moving it around
and around in circles" (lit., "he starts out doing the
moving it around and around in circles")

>> and eight moods (indicative, subjunctive, optative,
conditional,
>> imperative, jussive, potential, and permissive).
>
>How is subjunctive used?  What's jussive?  I'm assuming
potential and
>permissive are more-or-less equivalent to "can/be
able" and "may"?

Yes, you're on the bullseye with potential and
permissive. Subjunctive is complicated and idiomatic--
in Hermetic it includes everything they told you you
could do with the subjunctive in Spanish or French
class, plus everything they told you *not* to do with
the subjunctive in Spanish or French, plus (probably)
more. Will have to tackle that one in more detail some
time when I'm more wide awake. :)

As for jussive, the story behind this (and there is
often a story associated with points of Hermetic grammar
or vocabulary) is that I slapped these labels on the
conjugation of the verb when I was 13 or 14, way back
when Richard Nixon was still in the White House. I later
(in some instances, soon afterwards) became aware that
the label didn't really fit. But it stuck anyhow.

I see this thread contains quite a discussion of the
jussive. The jussive properly so called is, in Hermetic,
expressed by the subjunctive.

The Hermetic jussive, on the other hand, expresses
action performed under real or perceived necessity or
compulsion or obligation. In many instances, it would be
more or less equivalent to "must" or "has to." But
sometimes not-- e.g. I remember that I forgot to return
a book: "Omighdvanthais mna sipiroth." Probably in this
instance not quite as strong as "I must return the
book!", but more like "I ought to return the book."

And then there's the most famous occurrence of the
jussive in Hermetic literature, at the end of chapter 20
of "The Celestial Labors": "Mna kipri chovothonol
igaodis." Which is traditionally translated into
English, "The soldiers of the dark royal one dare not
disobey." (Lit., "The soldiers of the dark royal one
must hear." [jussive]) In other words, sometimes
something like "dasn't not"!

>Do the affixes stay constant, or do they change
depending on what word
>their added, or what other affixes are combined with
them, etc?

The affixes generally remain pretty much constant.
Though, for example, the optative marker changes from
"vo" to "fo" when the first-person marker "om"
immediately precedes.

>How do you do equatives? (as ADJ as ...)  Are
adjectives also
>agglutinative?  How do the negative forms work?  Would
the forms of an
>adjective meanings, say, good be "bad", "worse",
"worst" or "not good",
>"less good", and "least good"?
You're on target with the six forms of comparison in
adjective and adverb-- which, yes, are also
agglutinative. The negative form of the adjective would
also be used to mean, e.g., "without goodness."

The equative in Hermetic is a noun case. It would occur
as the equivalent of a predicate nominative, though it
can also modify any which noun in a sentence:

Mna pnitho, "wandering sage"

Mna Cnaltho pnithom, "Cnaltho is a wandering sage"

Mna Cnaltho pnithom octhil ghmonas, "Cnaltho, a
wandering sage, was playing chess."

Mn'Ikon'imoilas mna Cnalthoth pnithom ith. "Indigo
visited Cnaltho, a wandering sage." (The word "ith"
indicating that the equative is modifying a noun in the
accusative case.)

>> Sentence order is fairly flexible. Most common
overall
>> orders are SVO and VSO, but other orders also do
occur
>> for emphasis or variety.
>
>Are there any restrictions on order?  Or is it merely a
matter of
>certain orders being rarer than others?
By and large, it's a matter of some orders being quite
common, and some orders being (to a greater or lesser
degree) rarer. I can think of a few restrictions on
order-- e.g., an attributive adjective would, I
*believe*, never precede the noun it modifies.

>> Hermetic is properly written in a script called mna
>> Thiposo
>
>Could you give us a description of the pronunciation of
your conlang?

Possibly some time. I'll be honest, phonology is by far
my weakest point, and thus probably also by far the
weakest point of Hermetic. There are some interesting
phonemes in Hermetic-- for instance, two forms of /r/,
neither pronounced like the /r/ in English, though I
think these two forms in Hermetic are allophones.

There was a time, 25 or 30 years ago, when I read a lot
of books on linguistics, as an amateur pursuing the
hobby of tinkering with his own constructed language.
But that was long ago, way back before my beard turned
grey. At present, I'm just surprised I can still sling
around a term like "allophone"! :)

>> Not terribly phonetic!
>
>In what ways does it diverge from the ideal?  Are there
multiple sounds
>for a single letter and/or combination of letters, or
are there multiple
>spellings for the same sound, or both?  That is, is the
pronunciation
>ambiguous from the spelling, or is the spelling
ambiguous from the
>pronunciation, or (like English) both?
Yes, sometimes multiple sounds for a single letter;
sometimes an alphabetic letter can also serve as a
syllabic sign (e.g., the letter "vatho" for /v/ or
/va/). There's also a diacritical mark, "mna thopo,"
which is lots of fun-- it indicates "vowel following,"
and the vowel may be indicated, or if it's not
indicated, then it's /o/. However, only certain
characters take thopo, and under some circumstances, if
a letter can't take thopo, then the letter immediately
preceding takes thopo, if it can ("mna thopo
chichoranisa," receding thopo). If thopo cannot be used
to indicate an /o/ in either of these ways, then the
letter "otho" is used, except in the final syllable of a
singular noun, where if there's no thopo involved, then
/o/ is usually simply left unindicated.

I can also think of a *very* few instances where
spelling would be ambiguous from pronunciation. But most
of the time, in Hermetic, it's pronunciation ambiguous
from spelling.

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     E-mail   paul@paulburgess.org
     Website  http://www.paulburgess.org
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