Seezzitonian

    Hi!  I'm Dennis Himes.  Those of you who have been on the list for a
while may remember me as the creator of Gladilatian, which I was developing
as a fictional language and incorporated into my novella A Diamond Found on
Paradise.  After the novella got finished, however, I became less active,
and it's been over a year since I last posted.  Except for going nomail
during vacations, though, I've been lurking all the while.  I've also been
developing a new language, and, in fact, a whole new planet, species, and
history.  The planet is Umuto, the species is the asiit (singular asit),
and the language is Seezzitonian.
    My plan is to develop a website using the conceit that it is the site of
a human scholar on Umuto (named Roger Kerr).  The central feature of the
site will be that human's translation from the Seezzitonian of a classic
story, along with a lot of hyperlinks which are essentially extensive
footnotes, explaining the relevant culture, politics, language, geneologies,
etc.  Later this could be expanded with Kerr commenting on other related
stories and subjects and his colleagues (both human and asit) adding their
comments as well.
    Seezzitonian (/se DI 'to nI @n/ in English, Paapaitit Seezzitoyit
(/'p& paI tIt/ /'se DI to jIt/ in Seezzitonian) was the language of the
SSildifian Empire, which ruled most of the asiit for many generations, and
remains the language of scholarship up to this day.  ("This day" being the
time of Roger Kerr's life, in the 24th century.)  Seezzitonian is a highly
inflected language.  Nouns come in five genders and have 25 cases.  The
genders are feminine, masculine, positional, transportable, and uncountable.
All genders have singular forms, and all but uncountable have plural forms.
There are two independent cases, nine adjectival cases, and fourteen
adverbial cases.  Adjectival cases agree with the nouns they modify in
gender and number.  Adverbial cases agree with the verbs they modify in
tense and mood.  Verbs have five moods and three tenses.  Verbs agree with
their subjects in person and number.  First person has both inclusive and
exclusive forms, and third person has forms for each gender.  Since there is
no uncountable plural this makes fifteen person/gender/number combinations.
For each mood/tense combination there are paradigms for verbs with vowel
endings, verbs with consonant endings, and negative verbs (which always have
consonant endings).  Aspect is marked by prefixes.  Adjectives are stative
verbs.
    I have a preliminary version of the webpages up.  None of the central
story is there, but some of the supporting pages are, including the
beginning of the language section.

main Umuto page:        http://home.cshore.com/himes/umuto/umuto.htm
main Seezzitonian page: http://home.cshore.com/himes/umuto/lang.htm
my main page:           http://home.cshore.com/himes/dennis.htm
my novella:             http://home.cshore.com/himes/dennis/diamond.htm
main Gladilatian page:  http://home.cshore.com/himes/glad/lang.htm

 ===========================================================================

                 Dennis Paul Himes    <>    himes@cshore.com
                   http://home.cshore.com/himes/dennis.htm

Disclaimer: "True, I talk of dreams; which are the children of an idle
brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy; which is as thin of substance as
the air."                      - Romeo & Juliet, Act I Scene iv Verse 96-99

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