Meyadhew

Hello y'all!

I've been working on a new language since Christmas which was
already planned to be in my animal universe but I had to redesign my
older ideas since my concepts about Meyadhew changed dramatically.

It is used to sound like a Bantu language since i was always interested in
those languages (especially in the Nguni languages Zulu and Xhosa)

But that is a secondary feature in Meyadhew. The reasons I introduce it to
the Community before i plan all the grammar and an okay-sized vocabulary,
because I have some ideas to pick with you and I was wondering
whether someone had those in a conlang or have seen in a natlang.

1. Meyadhew has a Bantu-esque class system, with ten classes featuring
C1: animals (man included)
C2: natural powers (eg. water, fire), gods, body parts and plants (animate nouns in
a less concrete sense)
C3: inanimate objects (eg. knife) (which don't fit any other cathegory)
C4: abstract concepts (eg. love) (which don't fit any other cathegory)
C5: collective or plural-by-meaning nouns
C6: places
C7: time concepts
C8: actions (which don't fit any other cathegory)
C9: qualities (which don't fit any other cathegory)
C10: emotions (which don't fit any other cathegory)
There are no verbs, adjectives or adverbs as such.

2. In Meyadhew, an inflecting-fusional-agglutinating language, there is a required particle
(called Main Particle abbr. P) which is somewhat like a copula:: the various forms of lú
(the acute accents are used here instead of macrons which i can't write in iso-8859-2)

This expresses the time and various circumstances of the sentence, as well as the
speaker's relations to the information (I want, I hope, I know, I've seen...).

3. The action is expressed by the _verbal noun_ abbr. V which is the noun
denoting the concept of the
action. To this connect the verbal prefix which expresses the mood of the _action itself_
(this can be active, passive and stative) while the Particle's various forms express
the circumstances of _the whole statement_ (this is important when there ane
motűre than one verbal nouns).

4. There are other two main part of the sentence: the Main Adverb and the Verbal Adverb
these are somewhat like a subject and object but the distinction is the following:
The noun which belongs directly to the particle is the Main Adverb abbr. M., the one
which belongs to the verbal noun is the Verbal Adverb abbr. A. This can be either
an indirect object, an object or a subject of passice sentences. This is what the action
affects.
It is somewhat like an accusative system.

5. But the matter is, that Meyadhew has 5 cases,

ablative
dative
genitive
stative
possessive

the genitive is not the usual genitive but a "general adverbial case", which is
also the basic form of the noun.
The stative is being used for adverbs describing circumstances of the action.
The possessive is the latin genitive case.

We have two cases that both can denote the main and the verbal adverb in a sentence.
When the action comes from the main adverb and points towards the verbal adverb,
(the main adverb is the source and the verbal one is the target)
then M is in ablative, V is in dative. But this can be the opposite too,
since it basically depends on the _meaning_ of the action.

And for every sentence you should put the M and V in the right case even for
actions like "eat" where it is hard to tell which is the source an the target.

for "eat", the eater is in dative because is *receives* energy, food for the eaten and
the eaten one is in ablative since it is the source of the food.

6. And you should stronly agree with the nouns: the Particle agrees with the Main
Adverb by a prefix, the verbal noun agrees with the Verbal Adverb if there is one
or with the Main Adverb too if there aren't any.

7. And of course there are other problems like predicate sentences and possessive sentences
and personal subjects etc. but these are less extreme and odd.

That is not a complete introduction, it is just a bunch of oddities of Meyadhew. Even I did not
write any words in Mey. The phonology, morphology etc.
will follow when it will be less fluid.

-- Mau

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