word derivation in sabyuka (some principles)

Hi,

I'm glad to show you what I did so far (not so much to be honnest) about
word derivation in sabyuka. First I'll talk about roots. Every root must
end in a weak vowel 'à, i, u' (there are three series : weak 'à, i, u';
mid 'a, e, o' strong 'â, ê, ô') or in a consonant (except a few CV
words)
The general patterns are : (I)V(C)(V) / (I)VCCà

Verbosely, it is : a root is at least made of one vowel (V), optionnally
preceeded by one initial cluster (I), optionally followed by one
consonant(C) and eventually a vowel (V) , or two consonants and a schwa
necessarily.
Initial (I) is any consonant or 's' followed by any sonorant 'v, y, l,
m, n' (except 'r' because *sr is an illegal cluster which turns to 'sl'
(just because I can't pronounce it !!!)).

Examples will make it clearer :

V :
CV : 'xa' "to be" (an exeption because of final 'a')
VC : 'ic' "to go"
VCV : 'urà' "water"
VCCV : 'aktà' "to lead"
CVC : 'leth' "to believe"
ClVC : 'smak' "to want"
CVCV : 'sabi' "to know, kowledge", manu "man"
and so on...

The most productive pattern is CVCV



Then, sabyuka is a nominative language with 6 cases. Referential roots
(for instance 'manu' can be directly declined : the declination basis is
found by :
- deleting every final 'à' *urà > ur-
- consonantizing into 'y' final 'i' *sabi > saby-
- consonantizing into 'v' final 'u' *manu > manv-

Here are the cases and the words declined :

Nominative (NOM) : -à
Accusative (ACC) : -(à)na
Genitive (GEN) : -i
Dative (DAT) : -u
Instrumental : -(à)ru
Locative : -e

NOM : urà, sabyà, manvà
ACC : urna, sabyàna, manvàna
GEN : uri, sabyi, manvi
DAT : uru, sabyu, manvu
INST : ullu*, sabyàru, manvàru
LOC : ure, sabye, manve

* from illegal *urru, that I can't pronounce :).
Schwa is there only to break illegal clusters, such as sabyàru from
*sabyru. In certain dialects, or non colloquial fast speech, there is
pronounciations such as [s'abiru] for [s'aby@ru], but the writing is
only |sabyàru|.
As you can see, words are always accentuated on the root basic vowel :
such words are called "first derivation words". You can add for instance
a suffix to the root ('sabyàjà' > "the-one+who-knows" >> "grammairian")

There are also "second derivation words", which can use, for instance, a
particular case of the root (I borrow this feature to Euskara). The
accent moves to the final vowel of the root to make a new root. Example
: /s'abyu/ > /saby'u+kà/ = "that+which-leads-to-the-knowledge" -->
"language".
'Ure' > 'urekà' = "that+in-the-water" --> "fish"
And so on.

There is also a few infixes, such as the metaphoric (sometimes called
poetic) infix "-ek", placed before the (first) vowel. The meaning is
really hard to define and there are plenty of uses. Compare :

'yol' "to cry" > 'yekol' "to rain"
'teq' "to tell" > 'tekeq' "to sing"
'mat' "to see" > 'mekat' "to desire"
"dem" " to do" > 'dekem' "to build"

So I will stop here. Congratulations if you managed to go so far. Any
comment or suggestion will be welcome :).

Julien.

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