Vbazi Grammar

Here is the grammar of my conlang Vbazi, on which I work since a few months

I've decided to post it because I realise that as the day pass, the grammar
has less and less to be changed and adapted, what makes me think it has
become able to fit almost all the forms of sentences I could encounter. What
remains to do is simply to complete a vocabulary, as complete as I can, but
I can post the grammar.

You are advised, it is a very long post.


PHONOLOGY

Vowels

Monophtongs
|i| = /i/
|e| = /e/
|y| = /E/
|a| = /a/
(no other monophtongs than these four unrounded front vowels)

Diphtongs
|iw| = /iu/
|ew| = /eu/
|yw| = /Eu/
|aw| = /au/

|ii| = /i@/ (end of the words), /ij/ (everywhere else)
|ei| = /ei/
|yi| = /Ei/
|ai| = /ai/

Consonants

|p t k b d g| = /p t k b d g/
|w j| = /w j/
|ph th kh| = /p_h t_h k_h/


|h| = /h/ (but can be said /x/ at the end of the words)
|m n q| = /m n N/
|v z| = /v z/
|l| = /l/

these seven last can be syllabic, the situation when they will be are
previsible and when they are in other situations they need ' to be syllabic

Always syllabic when there is no vowel after
- /h/ after a voiceless stop: |kh| = /kh=/
- /l/ after a voicelles stop, a nasal, /j/, or /w/: |ml| = /ml=/
- Nasal after a stop: |km| = /km=/
- Fricative after a stop as only letters of a word

Needs a ' to be syllabic
- voiced fricative after a voiced stop: |dv| = /dv/, |d'v| = /dv=/
- /l/ after a voiced stop: |bl| = /bl/, |b'l| = /bl=/
- /l/ after à voiced fricative: |vl| = /vl/, |v'l| = /vl=/
- Nasal after a voiced fricative: |zm| = /zm/, |z'm| = /zm=/

(I think these examples cover all the possible combinaison involving a
syllabic consonant)


STRESS

The stress will fall on the first syllable in a word of one or two syllables
and on the second in a word of three or more syllables

A secondary stress will fall on the penultimate syllable in words of five
and more syllables. Another secondary stress will fall on the 4th to last
syllable in seven syllable words... That patern is regular an can continue
but up to now I've never had to stress a word of more than 6 syllables, but
longer words could theorically occur.

When the syllable that should be stressed is one with a syllabic consonant,
if the word it one syllable long, there will have no stress, if there are
more than one syllable, the stress will move to the next syllable since two
syllables with syllabics can't occur next


WORD ORDER

The word order is hard to explain with the S-V-O system

To represent this with such a system I'd need S=subject, V=verb, D=direct
object, and I=indirect object and the possible forms depending of which
areguments are present are:

V
SV
DSV
ISV
DIVS

The better way to explain the word order I found is represented as:

1b. 2. VERB-1a. 3.
Acc > Dat > Nom

When there are arguments, the higher in the hierarchy (Acc > Dat > Nom)
takes the place 1, the second takes 2...

1a has to be filled only with the pronoun of the same Number-Person-Case as
that argument and, if it is a noun, the noun goes at 1b, 1b has only to be
filled if it is a noun and that place stay empty if  the argument is only a
pronoun

So the verbs always inflect only with the highest argument in the hierarchy,
that argument will be called "principal argument"

With irregular verbs, the only irregular pattern is that 1a stays empty and
even if it is a pronoun, only 1b is used


PRONOUNS

Vbazi pronouns distincts:

- 4 numbers: Singular, Dual, Paucal, and Plural (So do all the nouns too)
- 4 persons: 3rd and 4th distincted by using 3rd for the first 3rd person
you talk about and 4th for the second and alterning for all the others
- Inclusive and Exclusive 1st person (for all numbers but singular)
- Familiar and Polite second persons at all numbers
- Human and Non-human for 3rd and 4th person at all numbers

It makes 31 pronouns multiplicated by the 5 cases, Nominative, Accusative,
Dative, Genitive, and Agentive (that I will not talk about until the part
about voices) that are also marked on nouns


         Sing  Dual  Pauc  Plur

1st inc         im    id    iv
    exc   i     mi    di    vi

2nd fam   e     me    de    ve
    pol   y     ym    yd    yv

3rd hum   kh    km    kld   kv
    non   za    zam   dza   zav

4th hum   th    tm    dyt   tv
    non   ze    zym   dzy   zyv


This is the nominative form. Cases are shown on pronouns by adding -i for
accusatives and -in for datives. The pronouns that begin by a vowel take a
l- when following a word ending by a vowel

The possessive form is an irregular set that often contain a /g/ sound, and
does not make the distinction between familiar and polite at second person:

         Sing   Dual   Pauc   Plur

1st inc          gim    gid    giv
    exc   gi-    ni-    aindi- vig

2nd       ne-    me-    de-    ve-

3rd hum   khig   khim   kaid   kivg
    non   zag    gzam   gza-   gva-

4th hum   thig   thi-   gith   gitv
    non   ze-    zy-    dzy-   gzy-

A final - means that it needs an additional suffix to inflect for the number
of the possessed thing

-lyi for singualr
-law for dual
-lyw for paucal or plural


NOUNS

The nouns can be inflected for one of the 4 numbers

singular: zero
dual: -m
paucal: -d (-ld when the noun ends with a consonant)
plural: -v

And declined for one of the 5 cases (from which I'll only name 4 now)

Nominative: zero
Accusative: -jl
Dative: -wl
Genitive: -g (or -ag when the noun ends with a consonant)

The case marking will go before the number marking for Accusative and Dative
and after for Genitive

There is no definition by affixes or articles.

Nominative, Accusative and Dative nouns can have a genitive complement that
goes before it


VERBS

That is the biggest category in Vbazi, because english adjectives are verbs
and adverbs are auxiliaries

Each root can mean two verbs (a stative one and a dynamic one) and one noun.
There are also a dozen of roots that have an impersonnal meaning also but
this is the exception

A root used simply conjugated with the principal argument will be stative,
when there is also the marker "de" before the verb, the verb is dynamic.

The three possibilities don't all exist a lot of werbs don't have both
stative, dynamic, and nominal meanings

The conjugation of the verb is the pronoun that goes in the 1a space except
for 3rd and 4th person. At 3rd and 4th person, the pronoun is different when
used in 1a than it is when used elsewhere.

3rd and 4th persons when used as endings:

           Sing  Dual  Pauc  Plur

3rd  hum    ja    jam   iid   jav
     non    eb    em    ed    ev

4th  hum    (l)a  (l)am (l)ad (l)av
     non    eib   eim   eid   eiv

they extra l are used only when the verb ends with only one consonant, when
there are more it does not appears.

-dzeiv- = root with "to sleep" as one meaning

stative form: dzeivi = I sleep
dynamic form: i de dzeivei = I make you sleep


Everything that is an adjective in English will be a stative verb in Vbazi

to be blue = -thyik-
to be happy = -hiwb-
to be cold = -laivz-

The corresponding dynamic verb of a stative verb "X" will usually be
translatable as "make X" or "become X" depending of the transitivity

I am happy = hiwbi
I make you happy = i de hiwbei

There are exeptions but it remains almost the same as "make X"

I am different = madiki
I change you (make you different) = i madikei

We(inc-dual) are numerous = dilim
I multiplicate you two(fam) (make you numerous) = i dilmei


These forms of adjective equivalents are only good for attributes, for
equivalents of epithets a form like "that is" is used

The blue house is huge -> the house that is blue is huge

To make that construction, I use "participe words"

For 1st and 2nd persons these words will be used:

Sing: hib
Dual: dja
Paucal/plural: hli

i hib gan dzeiv =~ I, who is tall, sleep

For 3rd and 4th persons these words are used

Non-human: zi
Human Sing: hid
Human Dual: mib
Human Paucal: li
Human Plural: vib

vgew zi thyik khadzja = The blue house does not move


VERBALIZERS

Nouns can also be verbalized by four suffixes, here are three of them:

-jal-: abessive
-yz-: exess
-iiz-: identity

with the noun "phiz" which mean "human", you have:

phizjali: I am humanless
phizyzi: I have too much humans
phiziizi: I am a human

They also have dynamic forms:

de phizjali: I become humaless
de phizyzi: I come to have too much humans
de phiziizi: I become a human


TO BE

That identity verbalizer is one of the possible translations of the verb "to
be"

The uses of "to be" in english are

Auxiliary: I am eating
Locative: I am there
State: I am happy
Description: I am intelligent
Origin: I am from Spain
Identity: I am a human

The sames in Spanish with Estar-Ser distinction are:

Auxiliary: Estoy comiendo
Locative: Estoy aqui
State: Estoy contento
Description: Soy intelligente
Origin: Soy de la España
Identity: Soy un humano

In Vbazi, "to be" can't be an auxiliary

And I've already said that the identity use is made by "-iiz-" suffix and
State/Descriptions uses by stative verbs that means adjectives. The
Auxiliary use of "to be" has no equivalent in Vbazi.

The Origin would be said by another form like "My country is...", "My city
is"...

The Locative use is taken by the verb -qiil-

qiili ly vgew = I am in a house ("ly" is the preposition for the location
and is what to use with the locative)

"Here" is "laid" and "to be here" is not "-qiil- laid" but the contracted
verb "-qiilad-" that makes it a verb meaning "to be here", "I am here" is
"qiiladi"

The dynamic form of -qiil- (and -qiilad-) is "to go" or "to come" that are
not distinct

de qiili ly vgew = I go in a house (the house is simply a place where the
going takes place while "ly" is for location)
de qiili lai vgew = I go to a house ("lai" means the house is the
destination)
de qiili laha vgew = I go from a house ("laha" means the house is the
origin)


COMITATIVE

The comitative is the 4th verbalizer I talked sooner

Adding -yib (or -dyib if it ends with a vowel) to a noun or a pronoun X will
be the verb "to be with X"

e = you
edyibi = I'm with you

And the dynamic form is "to get with X"

de ledyibi = I get with you


The verb "dyib" means "to be together" and its dynamic form means "to get
together". These two verbs can't take a singular ending (unless I find a
litteral, mystical, philosophical, or psychological use for saying "I am
together")

dyibim = We(inc-dual) are together
de dyibim = We get together


The stative form can be used as auxiliary "I sleep with you" will simply be
the verb "to sleep" with the verb "to be with X" with the X being "you" used
as auxiliary

I sleep with you = edyibi dzeiv
I walk with you = edyibi de zaljyb


TENSE-ASPECT

the tense-aspect system is made by prefixes (this is the reason why is
placed "-" at the beggining of each verbal roots)

There are Past and Non-Past for tenses and Progressive, Perfect, Imperfect,
Habitual/Iterative for aspects

The prefixes are the following:

      prog perf imp  hab

past   -    jal  -    ha

nonp   jyl  je   na   hajyl

The present does not distinct progressive and imperfect. The futur will use
a temporal auxiliary on the non-past


AUXILIARIES

The vbazi list of auxiliary is huge because, all the English adverbs are
Auxiliaries in Vbazi and Auxiliaires also take some constructions like
comparative, superlative, and evolutions and marks aspects like
intention/accident, continuative...

Here is a board in which I can enter some Vbazi auxiliaries from which I'm
the proudest and that I hope are not ANADEWs (they appear without the "-" at
beginning and end, but they take TAM and agreement with the principal
argument):

              Qualitative         Quantitative

Superiority   better              more
              viiz                pyg

Inferiority   less better         less
              jeh                 zbil

Egality       as well             as much
              kaiv                dzaib

Exageration   too well            too much
              dagz                nyiz

Lack          too bad             not enough/too few
              vywz                gmaq

Positive      well                a lot
              taid                lwed

Negative      bad                 a few
              dvkal               kild

Increasing    better and better   more and more
              kitil               nyz

Decreasing    less and less well  less and less
              pait                hew


So a sentence like "I do not walk enough" implies a quatitative lack and
needs the "gmaq" auxiliary, so:

I walk = de zaljybi
I do not walk enough = gmaqi de zaljyb

For those of these auxiliaies that imply a comparaison (superiority,
inferiority, and egality), the word "a" that can be translated in "than" or
"as" is used with the compared noun or pronoun

I walk better than you = viizi de zaljyb a le
I walk as much as you = dzaib de zaljyb a le
I was walking less than you = jylzbili de zaljyb a le


Other Auxiliaries include the Continuative that will mean "continue
to/keep/stay/still": -mjaz-

I talk = de vbazi
I continue to talk/I keep talking = mjazi de vbaz

I am tall = gani
I am still tall = mjazi gan

I grow = de gani
I continue to grow/I keep growing = mjazi de gan

I am with you = edyibi
I am still with you/I stay with you = mjazi edyib

I am here = qiiladi
I stay here = mjazi qiilad


MODES

Modes are made by prefixes that go before the Tense/Aspect for stative verbs
and are mixed with the "de" marker for dynamic verbs.

I sleep = dzeivi
I want to sleep = jezdzeivi

I talk to you = i de vbazei
I want to talk to you = i djez vbazei

So "to want" is jez-/djez

must = gz-/dez
can/be able = ve-/dev
may = bl-/dl

These modes can go on the auxilaries with the form that goes on stative
verbs

I walk better than you = viizi de zaljyb a le
I want to walk better than you = jezviizi de zaljyb a le

More than one mode can go one a single verb or auxiliary

I want to be able to walk = jezvedzeivi

NEGATIVE

The negative of a verb is made by adding a word after it

For pure verbs that are not auxiliaries, the word to use is (l)aq. The "l"
is only used if the preceding word ends with a vowel

I sleep = dzeivi
I don't sleep = dzeivi laq

For an auxiliary, the word to use is (l)yq

I sleep well = taidi dzeiv
I don't sleep well = taidi lyq dzeiv

For making a modal prefix, other words have to be used and because more than
one modal prefix can be used at the same time, there are words that exist
depending which of the auxiliaries you want to make negative

The counting goes from the end to the begginingof the word

1: waq
2: vdyq
3: qe
4: yheq

I want to sleep = jezdzeivi
I do not want to sleep = jezdzeivi waq (because the mode is negativized)
I want not to sleep = jezdzeivi laq (because the verb is negativized)

With two modes:
I want to be able to sleep = jezvedzeivi
I want to be able not to sleep = jezvedzeivi laq (the verb)
I want to be unable to sleep = jezvedzeivi waq (the last prefix)
I do not want to be able to sleep = jezvedzeivi zdyq (the second to last
prefix)


FUTURE TENSE

The future tense can only be made with a temporal auxiliary with the
non-past

I sleep = dzeivi
I will sleep tomorrow = vjazdi dzeiv
I will sleep today = vjazi dzeiv
I will sleep in a moment = tailepi dzeiv


THE VERB -H-

The verb -h- has no meaning, it is used as indefinite verb or as a verb in
reference to another, in some case it is near in meaning to the verb "to do"


Before = tei
After = tai
While/when = ti

I walk = zaljybi
I walk before you do = zaljybi tei a he (we have again the "a" used for
comparisons)

It is also used for answers like "I do" or "I am" in "hi"

When used as auxiliary it marks the Imperative:

he dzeiv: sleep

It can only be used like this at 1st and 2nd person but at all the numbers
including 1st singular so when a person talks to oneself, he will use this
instead of the 2nd person like English


PREPOSITIONS

First there are the prepositions for motions and place

There are three propositions that encode the link between the following noun
and the movement (as I said when I talked of the verb -qiil-)

(l)y = place (to use only if there is not a preposition of the next type)
(l)ai = destination
(l)aha = origin

And there are other preposition that means a place compared to another

gii = inside
vai = outside
zja = on
we = under
giw = in front
zgle = on back
hyw = at right
bl = at left
mei = in the middle
qa = around
ba = near
jy = far

So:

I go to the house = qiili lai vgew
I go in the house = qiili lai gii vgew
I go at left of the house = qiili lai bl vgew
I go from near of the house = qiili laha ba vgew
I go while I am near of the house = qiili ba vgew

When mixing "(l)ai" and "ba" (that would mean that the destination is near
of X) into "(l)aba" you have something like "in the direction of" which
implies that one does not necessarily get to the place

I go near of the house = qiili lai ba vgew
I go in the direction of the house qiili laba vgew


VOICE

There are three voices in Vbazi: Active, Passive, and Middle

The active voice is what I explain since the beggining of the post

I kill you = i de pawnei


For the passive voice, the agent takes the ending -(a)he ("a" only if the
word to which it is added ends with a consonant) and the verb takes the
ending -ama, and does not conjugates, the principal argument has to be
marked out of the word at 1b

You are killed by me = e lihe pawnama


The middle voice has three forms. The simgle argument is placed before the
verb with the nominative ending and the verb takes one of the three ending

-ygna if it is singular or if the group affects itself as a whole
-ykle if it is plural and that each member of the group affects oneself
-yqke if it is plural and that each member of the group affetc each or some
of the others

I kill myself = i pawnygna
We(inc-dual) both comit suicide = im pawnykle
We(inc-dual) kill each other = im pawnyqke

Actually, I can't think of an example where the group affect itself as a
whole but there are probably some so I keep this


NUMBERS

The system is vicesimal but since I've already explained it on the list I'll
not explain it again

The numbers are irregular verbs meaning "to be 5" or "to be 40" and their
dynamic forms means "to become 5" or "to become 40"

We(inc-plur) are 20 = iv zyq
We are becoming 20 = iv de zyq

The words like half, first, last, double are not usefull to be explained
here since it relieves of th vocabulary and I will not beggin that subject