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First thoughts on Prevli or Pervil

From:Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>
Date:Thursday, September 8, 2005, 6:11
Prevli ~Pervil is the language of the "primitive" Lang-lang people who live
in the mountainous interior of Yanatros, the large island where my dialect
of Kash is spoken. They are also "feline" descended, but of mysterious
origin-- a different species from the Kash, and cannot interbreed. Where the
Kash are mostly black-furred, the L-L are mostly tawny, but stripes, spots,
and black-white combos occur. The Kash find them quite exotic.

Subject to change without notice...

Numbers: 0 duN (which probably means 'nothing')
1 nak, 2 lat, 3 tan, 4 sar, 5 pan, 6 pnak, 7 plat, 8 ptan, 9 psar
10 naknó, 11 nonák, 12 nolát... 20 latnó, 30 tannó... 100 sasta
Ordinals add am- (before C) ~ ma- (before CC)

Personal pronouns:
1st sg. kan ~gna
2nd sg. mil ~bli
3rd sg. --- or zok ~sko ("z" is probably /dz/, phonology not yet totally
figured out...)
1pl. kant ~kanta
2pl. milt ~miltä
3pl. zet ~zeta

Reflexive pronouns: (basically reduplications) kanka, milmi, osko, kantak,
miltim, este

Subject+Object pronoun forms:
1sg+2sg kòum, 1s+3s kaska, 1s+1p kakant, 1s+2p kämilt, 1s+3p kazent

2s+1s mek, 2s+3s mez, 2s+1p milkänt, 2s+3p mezent (no 2s+2p)

3s+1s zehak, 3s+2s zehim, 3s+3s zehen or hen(?) (non-reflex.),
3s+1p zehat, 3s+2p zehimti, 3s+3p zehent or hent ("h" is probably /x/ or an
allophone of /k/)

1p+2s mikänt, 1p+3s eskant, 1p+2p imlitkän, 1p+3p zeknat (no 1P+1s)

2p+1s imlikna, 2p+3s imlitse, 2p+1p miltikän, 2p+3p miltent (no 2p+2s)

3p+1s zetan, 3p+2s zetel, 3p+3s zeten~zetne, 3p+1p estant
3p+2p estim, 3p+3p zetant (non-reflex.)

I don't think these will be any more taxing to the Lang-lang brain than
Basque aux. forms :-)))))

There is some vowel harmony going on, possibly fossilized, I'm not sure
yet...The original thought was that every base must contain either all high
vowels (i,u) or all low vowels (e,o,a), all front (i,e,&=ä) or all back
(u,o,O=ò). (/a/ can be either front or back). But this seems to lead to
considerable homophony...  Morphophonemics are not yet figured out yet
either; quite likely a form like /pnak/ '6' will be pronounced either [fna?]
or perhaps [mpa?].  The plural morpheme is -t(a), d/r alternate
allophonically-- that's about all I know so far.

Prevli ~Pervil is from *pede 'tongue' + *wili 'word'.

I think the underlying form of most words is CVCVCV(CV), where alternate V
may be deleted under so far unspecified circumstances.

Comments?

Replies

taliesin the storyteller <taliesin-conlang@...>
Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>